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AoS is a successor to WHFB for the following reasons:

GW replaced WHFB with AoS.
AoS uses various similar rules mechanisms to WHFB.
The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.
All the armies from WHFB are available to play in AoS.

The fluff isn't even just derived, yes it is very different and there is a long time skip but it is a direct continuation of the WHFB fluff picking up where the End Times left off.

puree wrote:

How do you decide whether your game was balanced or not?

I can't believe someone just asked that.

Surely if you just played a game you have a very good idea whether it was balanced - you just played it, you know how close it was or how one sided it was. You probably talk to the other guy who is saying the same thing.

So a close game means it was balanced? lol

How else would you define it?

The result of a game might be close because one side is much stronger than the other and suffers very bad luck, or vice versa.

puree wrote:
How else would you define it?

Maybe a battle between two forces of equal strength where each player has an equal chance of winning? You know, the definition of a balanced game?

Whether or not the outcome is close has nothing to do with whether the two sides are balanced. I've played games where bad rolls and good tactics ensured that one side got decimated. Doesn't mean the two forces weren't balanced.

The question was about whether A game/YOUR game was balanced, that has nothing what so ever with having equal sides, it also has nothing to do with some other random players playing.

Also as I noted, the 2 players who talk about it afterwards are the only the only people who can say it was balanced based how they felt it went. It was a game between them and them only.

So yes it may have been close due to some poor luck, but that is likely to be something obvious that will come out in any post game talk and whether it was balanced.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.

Is it though? Canonically it might be a "continuation" of the end times, but the old fluff isn't mostly irrelevant to the new setting, apart from the occasional backhanded comment about "the world that was". Even the characters who were transferred over (Archaon, Nagash etc.) have been changed from their established image. It's like an alternate universe in a comic book; the character's basic background is essentially the same at first, but then you see that it's nothing like what you're used to. This isn't me hating on AoS, but for all the minor similarities it may as well be a continuation of D&D or Star Gate.

Maybe a battle between two forces of equal strength where each player has an equal chance of winning? You know, the definition of a balanced game?

my emphasis.

This is a flawed statement.

In order for 2 players to have an equal chance of winning (the definition of balanced game!) then the forces involved must account for not only Victory conditions, terrain placement, scenario rules etc but also player ability.

A game with 2 equally strong armies may well be a one sided slaughter even with even luck and other things being equal, simply due to player skill. At least 1 wargame I play I will beat anyone locally in an even pointed fight, it is 'my' game that I have played tons of, I dare say that there are games I will regularly lose at as well.

There is a big difference between an actual balanced game between 2 specific players and a scenario designed to hopefully be balanced between 2 players of equal ability.

 Tainted wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.

Is it though? Canonically it might be a "continuation" of the end times, but the old fluff isn't mostly irrelevant to the new setting, apart from the occasional backhanded comment about "the world that was". Even the characters who were transferred over (Archaon, Nagash etc.) have been changed from their established image. It's like an alternate universe in a comic book; the character's basic background is essentially the same at first, but then you see that it's nothing like what you're used to. This isn't me hating on AoS, but for all the minor similarities it may as well be a continuation of D&D or Star Gate.

AoS is going to be seen as WHFB's successor. There's really no getting around that and people are going to be comparing them for years to come. AoS replaced WHFB in GW's line up, they bear the same name, they use the same models. WHFB is what we had, AoS is what we have to replace it. If GW didn't want them to be compared then they handled it in entirely the wrong way.

puree wrote:

Maybe a battle between two forces of equal strength where each player has an equal chance of winning? You know, the definition of a balanced game?

my emphasis.

This is a flawed statement.

In order for 2 players to have an equal chance of winning (the definition of balanced game!) then the forces involved must account for not only Victory conditions, terrain placement, scenario rules etc but also player ability.

A game with 2 equally strong armies may well be a one sided slaughter even with even luck and other things being equal, simply due to player skill. At least 1 wargame I play I will beat anyone locally in an even pointed fight, it is 'my' game that I have played tons of, I dare say that there are games I will regularly lose at as well.

There is a big difference between an actual balanced game between 2 specific players and a scenario designed to hopefully be balanced between 2 players of equal ability.

Yes, so yes you are so right. The big difference is one is called good game design, the other well it don't really matter what you call it except for good game design.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
If GW didn't want them to be compared then they handled it in entirely the wrong way.

Well, that I can agree with. It may have worked better if they treated it as a new, separate game IMO, but that's been discussed before. I can see why people compare the two, I just don't think that there's much point in doing so.

 Tainted wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.

Is it though? Canonically it might be a "continuation" of the end times, but the old fluff isn't mostly irrelevant to the new setting, apart from the occasional backhanded comment about "the world that was". Even the characters who were transferred over (Archaon, Nagash etc.) have been changed from their established image. It's like an alternate universe in a comic book; the character's basic background is essentially the same at first, but then you see that it's nothing like what you're used to. This isn't me hating on AoS, but for all the minor similarities it may as well be a continuation of D&D or Star Gate.

So, the point you are trying to make is that AOS's fluff is derived from WHFB but isn't exactly the same? I don't think anyone was contesting that.

To address your greater argument saying that AoS has only minor similarities is disingenuous. AoS's titular character, the antagonists, the supporting characters and ideas are from WHFB. They use the same models and terrain. As an example, the newest Seraphon release had zero new models. It was just a repackaging of old WHFB stuff.

It also doesn't hurt that the full name of the game is Warhammer: Age of Sigmar.

So, yes, it is totally valid to compare the two games. Age of Sigmar is a direct replacement for WHFB. If it wasn't they would've just started from scratch and scrapped everything except for Chaos and Sigmar.

 Tainted wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
If GW didn't want them to be compared then they handled it in entirely the wrong way.

Well, that I can agree with. It may have worked better if they treated it as a new, separate game IMO, but that's been discussed before. I can see why people compare the two, I just don't think that there's much point in doing so.

The point in doing so is typically to express why a person might have like WHFB but doesn't like AoS.

I'd actually say a lot of the criticism of AoS are direct criticisms of AoS anyway, and even a lot of the comparatives you could ignore WHFB and still apply it as a direct criticism of AoS.

AoS having no balancing mechanism has sod all to do with wfb.

If someone brings 20 goblins and the other guy brings five greater demons and gets the outnumbered bonus there's no doubt who will win but there's nothing to tell people at home not to play like that.

Even poorly done points values are better than no points values.

It's very clear there was no real play testing beyond the starter set and that's why it's a bad game.

In D&D there are no points values. There's nothing to prevent a DM from throwing five balors and a dracolich up as the first encounter against a first level party. Granted, D&D has more guidance not to do this, but the 'balance' systems in D&D (levels, hit dice, experience, encounter pools) have always been pretty much completely unbalanced.

Age of Sigmar is like a tabletop rpg where two DMs set up mutual encounters to play against each other, both responsible for making the game challenging but not unfair, with victory measured in whether both sides had fun and could get invested in the narrative playing out, not in which side 'won'.

That works well enough for me, but that's a pretty niche way of doing things, not far removed from simply playing with the figures as toys without any rules at all. A functional (not 'perfectly balanced', just 'functional') game could still be played that way, but could also be enjoyed by a much broader range of people, and more importantly could be happily played between people with more varried game sensibilities.

I'm a fluff player in other games as well. I pick my malifaux team based on how they fit together aesthetically and narratively, but the games balanced well enough that I can still have enjoyable, engaging games against much more competitive players, players who are my friends, and who I like to play games with despite the fact that they play games for different reasons and get different kinds of enjoyment out of them.

I can't play AoS against those friends, and imo that's a pretty big mark against the game, as much as It seems designed with my sensibilities in mind.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I'd actually say a lot of the criticism of AoS are direct criticisms of AoS anyway, and even a lot of the comparatives you could ignore WHFB and still apply it as a direct criticism of AoS.

People can and should criticise AoS for it's own flaws, but I've seen people criticise it simply for being different to Warhammer. Now obviously a lot of people liked Warhammer and there will be a lot of things they enjoyed about it that they won't find in AoS. But you could say the same about any two games. Sure, AoS is supposed to be the succesor to Warhammer, but if someone go into a game of AoS expecting it to be like WHFB then they'll mostly be disappointed. If they treat it as a different game then they'll see it has its own pros and cons, like any game does. So yeah, you could compare AoS to Warhammer, and you could also compare it to WMH or Infinity, but at the end of the day they're all different games and people will like or dislike them for different reasons.

No, it isn't. AoS has rules for two opponents facing off with a win condition that says either one of them will win and the other lose or they will draw. Nothing about that makes it an RPG like experience other than YOU deciding it it.

 Malisteen wrote:
In D&D there are no points values. There's nothing to prevent a DM from throwing five balors and a dracolich up as the first encounter against a first level party. Granted, D&D has more guidance not to do this, but the 'balance' systems in D&D (levels, hit dice, experience, encounter pools) have always been pretty much completely unbalanced

I've always found the critical rating system to be reasonably good at matching players to appropriate encounters.

 Tainted wrote:
Bottle, I always enjoy your posts on AoS, you often bring up a lot of good points and you're one of the few people willing to discuss AoS without bias. In regards to AoS being tactically unsatisfying, I agree that it doesn't have the same tactical depth of WHFB, but using the battleplans from the books does make it more engaging than a standard pitched battle.

Thanks for the kind words :-)

Yes I agree about the Battleplans, although I have actually had a bad experience with the Battleplan "The Trap" basically because we didn't set any limits on the summoning before the game began and so my Necromancer just hid behind a forest and summoned up units constantly to grind down the ambushee making for a not particularly fun game in the end.

But I wouldn't say AoS has to be tactically unsatisfying, just that it can be without proper planning pre-game. If we had set about including enough extra troops on the other side to deal with my Necromancer's constant summoning - or - set a limit of the summoning so that I couldn't have tipped the balance in my favour so easily, I am sure we would have had a great game!

Battleplans are great, but it's still important to set those limits and expectations before the game begins to make sure it's not a steamroller for one of the sides.

I think I'm about to hit my stride with AoS now and begin having amazing pick up games and custom narrative scenarios - and it's thanks to everyone on this little forum really for giving advice and tips on how to make games enjoyable :-)

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Malisteen wrote:
In D&D there are no points values. There's nothing to prevent a DM from throwing five balors and a dracolich up as the first encounter against a first level party. Granted, D&D has more guidance not to do this, but the 'balance' systems in D&D (levels, hit dice, experience, encounter pools) have always been pretty much completely unbalanced

I've always found the critical rating system to be reasonably good at matching players to appropriate encounters.

Exactly. Even D&D has a system for roughly matching a party to an equivalently-powerful group of creatures. AoS tells you to use "what you think is right."

puree wrote:

Maybe a battle between two forces of equal strength where each player has an equal chance of winning? You know, the definition of a balanced game?

my emphasis.

This is a flawed statement.

In order for 2 players to have an equal chance of winning (the definition of balanced game!) then the forces involved must account for not only Victory conditions, terrain placement, scenario rules etc but also player ability.

A game with 2 equally strong armies may well be a one sided slaughter even with even luck and other things being equal, simply due to player skill. At least 1 wargame I play I will beat anyone locally in an even pointed fight, it is 'my' game that I have played tons of, I dare say that there are games I will regularly lose at as well.

There is a big difference between an actual balanced game between 2 specific players and a scenario designed to hopefully be balanced between 2 players of equal ability.

But I would argue that a ruleset can't and shouldn't account for player ability. A balanced game is one in which each side has an equal chance of achieving their objectives. If one player is much more skilled than the other, then they should win. A well-written game rewards good tactics and a player's ability to use them.

 Tainted wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.

Is it though? Canonically it might be a "continuation" of the end times, but the old fluff isn't mostly irrelevant to the new setting, apart from the occasional backhanded comment about "the world that was". Even the characters who were transferred over (Archaon, Nagash etc.) have been changed from their established image. ... ...

That's what 'derived' means. It doesn't mean 'the same', it means 'to base a concept on an extension or modification of (another concept).'

hobojebus wrote:
AoS having no balancing mechanism has sod all to do with wfb.

If someone brings 20 goblins and the other guy brings five greater demons and gets the outnumbered bonus there's no doubt who will win but there's nothing to tell people at home not to play like that.

Even poorly done points values are better than no points values.

It's very clear there was no real play testing beyond the starter set and that's why it's a bad game.

So what would happen if someone took Nagash *and* Skarbrand in a 20 or so model game, against infantry with maybe a monster or two?
As you're so certain it's a terrible game?

 Bottle wrote:
Yes I agree about the Battleplans, although I have actually had a bad experience with the Battleplan "The Trap" basically because we didn't set any limits on the summoning before the game began and so my Necromancer just hid behind a forest and summoned up units constantly to grind down the ambushee making for a not particularly fun game in the end.

But I wouldn't say AoS has to be tactically unsatisfying, just that it can be without proper planning pre-game. If we had set about including enough extra troops on the other side to deal with my Necromancer's constant summoning - or - set a limit of the summoning so that I couldn't have tipped the balance in my favour so easily, I am sure we would have had a great game!

Summoning is problematic because no matter how you try to limit it you're still adding free units to your army. It's a shame since summoning seems to be a big part of an undead army, both in fluff and play style. However a lot of people like to treat summoning as an alternate deployment method, so the total armies including summoned units are still even but you get to summon things when and where you want them, at the risk of not casting the spell succesfully.

It's a shame AoS has to be house-ruled a lot for balance, but apart from that I like the simplified core ruleset with the specific rules on warscrolls. It makes it much easier to learn an army's capabilities when you don't have to keep flipping back a forth to check special rules.

Whilst I disagree with some of the OP's points, I appreciate a level-headed post.

I enjoy what it encourages. It's what I've dubbed as a palette cleaners to more intense (i.e. other) games.

For me, the only thing I don't like is summoning. I get that on a straight battle summoning actually puts you in a negative when it comes to percentage, but on other battleplans it can actually ruin it.

 Guildsman wrote:

But I would argue that a ruleset can't and shouldn't account for player ability. A balanced game is one in which each side has an equal chance of achieving their objectives. If one player is much more skilled than the other, then they should win. A well-written game rewards good tactics and a player's ability to use them.

I don't think anyone was saying the rule set should handle it.

The argument was that each player had and equal chance of winning is the definition of a balanced game.

However, If a balanced game is players having equal chances of winning then player skill is important. If you will usually win because you are better then by definition you are not playing balanced games as there isn't an even chance of winning/losing.

A rule set cannot handle this as you say (not strictly true, there are mechanisms like handicaps). That is why competitive players like points, it allows them to say I won due to skill as everything else was equal (assuming terrain etc wasn't a factor). The whole tourney concept is predicated on the actual games not being balanced for the most part, but that lack of balance is down to who is the better player. If the actual games were balanced then the tourney winner would simply be the luckiest.

So what competitive players use as a definition is:

A game where both sides played by equally good players have an equal chance of winning. The equal forces (as in the post I was replying to) is neither here not there in reality, though the simple battle with even sides is obviously the most common way of doing it.

This was what was being asked to start of with earlier in the thread:

I've yet to meet anyone irl or on a forum that has played a balanced game

How do you decide whether your game was balanced or not?

No one was asking whether the forces were equal or would 2 random players would find it balanced, it was whether the game that was actually played was considered balanced, only the 2 people who played a game can say that, and that will depend on their own abilities.

 Tainted wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Yes I agree about the Battleplans, although I have actually had a bad experience with the Battleplan "The Trap" basically because we didn't set any limits on the summoning before the game began and so my Necromancer just hid behind a forest and summoned up units constantly to grind down the ambushee making for a not particularly fun game in the end.

But I wouldn't say AoS has to be tactically unsatisfying, just that it can be without proper planning pre-game. If we had set about including enough extra troops on the other side to deal with my Necromancer's constant summoning - or - set a limit of the summoning so that I couldn't have tipped the balance in my favour so easily, I am sure we would have had a great game!

Summoning is problematic because no matter how you try to limit it you're still adding free units to your army. It's a shame since summoning seems to be a big part of an undead army, both in fluff and play style. However a lot of people like to treat summoning as an alternate deployment method, so the total armies including summoned units are still even but you get to summon things when and where you want them, at the risk of not casting the spell succesfully.

It's a shame AoS has to be house-ruled a lot for balance, but apart from that I like the simplified core ruleset with the specific rules on warscrolls. It makes it much easier to learn an army's capabilities when you don't have to keep flipping back a forth to check special rules.

Yep, this is how I play summoning too. I wouldn't even say it's a house-rule per say, because the rules state you can use as many models from your collection as you wish and a perfectly reasonable interpretation of that is to wish to use as many models as will make a balanced game and no more :-)




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ShaneTB wrote:
Whilst I disagree with some of the OP's points, I appreciate a level-headed post.

Thanks, and out of interest which points do you disagree with? Perhaps it can add to the discussion :-)

puree wrote:
The question was about whether A game/YOUR game was balanced, that has nothing what so ever with having equal sides, it also has nothing to do with some other random players playing.

Also as I noted, the 2 players who talk about it afterwards are the only the only people who can say it was balanced based how they felt it went. It was a game between them and them only.

So yes it may have been close due to some poor luck, but that is likely to be something obvious that will come out in any post game talk and whether it was balanced.

It wasn't a question about your game being close, it was a question whether that game was balanced or not. Your emphasis of my YOUR changes nothing, you don't have a slightest idea about balance after playing a given game once. You have to take skill, luck, terrain, mission into account. If you told me that you switched armies, then table sides and armies, then with different terrain setup, repeat, I'd say sure we can start talking. If you think you can judge an impact of skill and luck after a single game that was played without balancing mechanism to begin with (and no, sudden death doesnt count lol) then you have no idea.

People coming here claiming that they had a balanced game with basic AoS rules, it's all worthless bs unless they playtested it.

Plumbumbarum wrote:

It wasn't a question about your game being close, it was a question whether that game was balanced or not. Your emphasis of my YOUR changes nothing, you don't have a slightest idea about balance after playing a given game once. You have to take skill, luck, terrain, mission into account. If you told me that you switched armies, then table sides and armies, then with different terrain setup, repeat, I'd say sure we can start talking. If you think you can judge an impact of skill and luck after a single game that was played without balancing mechanism to begin with (and no, sudden death doesnt count lol) then you have no idea.

People coming here claiming that they had a balanced game with basic AoS rules, it's all worthless bs unless they playtested it.

You have no idea either, we must both be clueless BSers.

Whether any scenario is balanced for 2 players will quite possibly depend on who plays which side. Playing from both sides multiple times may achieve nothing more than working out that that Player A is indeed better than Player B, as they find Player B with side 1 is balanced but he gets slaughtered with side 2. If the they increase side 2 then Player B playing side 1 now gets slaughtered but finds side 2 balanced.

To take an anecdote from another system, I played Andromedans against Gorn in a local SFU campaign game in a very large (for that system) fleet battle. I was at a very noticeable disadvantage, the Gorn outpointing me by about 40-50% and with the Andromendans generally accepted as being terrible in fleet battles as opposed to small squadron fights. It was a great tense and close game (its not the sort of game where luck really plays a huge part at that scale either). If the sides had been swapped I'd have almost certainly obliterated the Andromedans. Its likely that anyone else in the campaign playing the Andromedans would have never fought that battle at all as they would have expected defeat was a given. For what ever reason that is one game I happen to be very good at, and those I play with openly accept that. Then there are games where I will get my arse handed to me without a bonus, as the other guys have their games that they are good at and I am not.

AoS is designed with the idea that you talk to the other guy to work out what will make a fun interesting balanced game. That is certainly going to be damned hard with a stranger, but with the people you regularly play with it is really not that hard. We know each other, we know playstyles, armies, and who is better or worse etc. With the people you play with regularly it is also not that hard to talk afterwards and work out how balanced it was, for the 2 players with the forces used.

So when people come here and say that yes they have had balanced games then you should probably just accept it.

They may not have a generic scenario that any other 2 players of random ability with random armies can play and get a balanced battle, but that is a different thing altogether.

Plumbumbarum wrote:


People coming here claiming that they had a balanced game with basic AoS rules, it's all worthless bs unless they playtested it.

How does this thought process hold up with people who have never played AoS and talk about how it can't be balanced or the rules don't work?