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 TheCustomLime wrote:
How is AoS comparable to an RPG? The only adventure is Khorneman axe's glorious journey into Sigmarine #143's face. There is no character advancement, no loot, no time for any form of meaningful roleplay and no story development. Does AoS allow for your Sigmarine to go into a town and talk to some locals? Does AoS allow your Chaos Lord to poison a duke's wine to throw his fiefdom into disarray?

No. AoS is a wargame. It represents battles and battles only. That is what it was developed for.

And what do the battles represent? If there is no story, they are abstract math, vectors and geometry. Fine if you want to boil your games down to that, but I want to dress them up a little bit.

Regarding Aos being comparable to an rpg, I said that a diy approach to wargames (regardless of whatever Wargame you use - we frequently do this with infinity, historicals and flames of war) draws on the same creative energies and shares a lot of the similar dna and focus as RPGs in how we bring our fictional worlds to life, and on 'telling', or rather 'bringing to life' an event or story. You create characters, you write backstories, you read the lore of wargames, right? You live and take part in events in a made up fictional universe. You are being creative.

It is a Wargame. As you say. So it makes sense that a war, or a battle will be a central part of the plot, by definition. It will be Based around battles. No argument. But why can't battles can't have stories and events attached to them, or be a part of greater narratives? Saying it starts and ends with 'the battle' and that there is nothing else is kind of short sighted if you ask me. I mean, you're not necessarily wrong if you just want to view it as 'a battle' but I will wonder - surely there is a reason as to why the battle is taking place? Sacrifices for khorne? Land? Seize the bridge? Stop the ritual? Doomed final stand? Defend the supply convoy? Rescue the princess?
Surely there Is a potential for an antagonistic relationship between the generals who have faced each other countless times before? Just as you frequently play against your mates and have your friendly rivalries with them. And why can't the characters involved in your wargames have goals and motivations and backstories and reasons for why they are doing what they are doing and why they are there?

No character advancement? Then name your khorne man, and Link your games. Chart his course. Describe his deeds. Give him cool names and titles (even if it is captain cantaimtosavehislifeicus.Watch his attempted rise to glory or laugh as he falls. You don't need to 'level up' for your characters story to progress.

No loot? Who cares? No, seriously, I don't. you don't need loot to tell a story. It always bothers me when Things like levelling up and looting corpses is seen as an integral part of RPGs. Some of the best rpg sessions I've been in didn't have a single fight or reason to loot. RPGs are ultimately about telling stories and bringing stories to life. And there is no reason you can't tell a story via a wargames medium.
(And if you really want loot - your reward is to sack the village, glut yourself on blood, sacrifice the villagers to the dark gods and with this, draw more followers to your banner with your success. Loot doesn't have to be a game mechanic, it can be represented by story, and plot.)

No meaningful role play? You're telling a story, right? And charting the course of various events through your game along with your characters role in them. Surely you are capable of imagining your general making decisions, shouting orders through the chaos of battle, visualise him leading the doomed final charge and his final fall on the spears of his enemies?

Can you go into a town and talk to some locals, or poison the Dukes wine? Probably not - I'd argue a Wargame is the wrong medium to describe these events. And that's actually ok. Different things do different kinds of stories better than others. One medium doesn't need to do everything. but since the battle is the central aspect of this story, there is no reason that you can't say that you got to this place based on local information (or maybe thanks to local knowledge of terrain, your guys stage an ambush on the other guys supply convoy, or know a short cut thst lets you cut across the pass and attempt to stop the ritual. There is no reason the battle could be taking place after the Dukes wine got poisoned, his fiefdom is in disarray, and your army is rampaging across while a desperate band of defenders tries to hold them off and give time for the refugees or the Dukes son to escape. When I talk about taking a gm's attitude to the game, I mean precisely that. Base your game within the context of a story and bring it to life. That's all. It's fun.

I agree with you that Wargames can be played in a similar way to Roleplaying Games.

But I disagree that AoS is any better at it than any points based wargame out there. Anything you can do in AoS, I could have done in any previous edition of Warhammer if I wanted. In fact, I did. I had narrative campaigns with growth, consequences, a consistent story, the whole lot.

AoS is not uniquely "better" for narrative gaming. I could make an argument that in some ways it's less good for the type of narrative I enjoy, but that's quite subjective.

However, AoS removes balanced competitive pick up games from the equation, and requires negotiation and compromise before you ever pick up the dice. This subtracts from the potential of the system for no gain - you don't get anything in return for losing points apart from people suddenly realising that they could have ignored points all along. Whoop dee doo, did we need to blow up the setting to lead people to that mundane idea?

Also, in before "Warhammer was never balanced" and "we're better off without those TFG competitive players."

AoS is for playing skirmishes set in the AoS universe. It isn't a rocket ride to the moon and won't suddenly transform your wargaming into an in-depth story telling mode.

There are some wargames designed to tell stories, such as Longstreet by Sam Mustafa. AoS doesn't contain any story telling rules. What it has to frame scenarios is only its own so far admittedly rather sketchy fluff.

The Sigmarines fight Chaos to get a magic hammer. The FyreSlayers fight the Sigmarines because the Chaos will pay them some ur-gold. The Seraphons fight the Fyreslayers because they are fighting for the Chaos and Seraphons hate Chaos. And so on. This is no different to historical scenarios.

To me there isn't any problem with consultation and working out a scenario before having a game, it's just that you can do this with pretty much any wargame. There's nothing unique and special about AoS in that respect.

 Da Boss wrote:
I agree with you that Wargames can be played in a similar way to Roleplaying Games.

But I disagree that AoS is any better at it than any points based wargame out there. Anything you can do in AoS, I could have done in any previous edition of Warhammer if I wanted. In fact, I did. I had narrative campaigns with growth, consequences, a consistent story, the whole lot.

AoS is not uniquely "better" for narrative gaming. I could make an argument that in some ways it's less good for the type of narrative I enjoy, but that's quite subjective.

However, AoS removes balanced competitive pick up games from the equation, and requires negotiation and compromise before you ever pick up the dice. This subtracts from the potential of the system for no gain - you don't get anything in return for losing points apart from people suddenly realising that they could have ignored points all along. Whoop dee doo, did we need to blow up the setting to lead people to that mundane idea?

Also, in before "Warhammer was never balanced" and "we're better off without those TFG competitive players."

For the record, I agree one hundred percent. Your are completely correct.

Aos did not invent this kind of wargaming, despite the narrative that sprung up in its wake that points are evil, and this is now the one true way. At best, it opened some people's eyes to this way of playing, but unfortunately the narrative took no prisoners. Aos rather ruthlessly forces people down this road. and thats not necessarily a good thing.

There is no reason that you can't do 'story' with any other Wargame. In fact, I'd encourage it with every other Wargame. Alongside your pugs and tournament games. You need the will and the attitude to do it, and I can only encourage people to give it a try. I think it's better to play one Wargame a dozen different ways, than twenty wargames in exactly the same way (you change the language, but the conversation remains the same).

 Kilkrazy wrote:
AoS is for playing skirmishes set in the AoS universe. It isn't a rocket ride to the moon and won't suddenly transform your wargaming into an in-depth story telling mode.

You need players to evoke and tell the story, not necessarily the 'rules'.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

There are some wargames designed to tell stories, such as Longstreet by Sam Mustafa. AoS doesn't contain any story telling rules. What it has to frame scenarios is only its own so far admittedly rather sketchy fluff.

So you need rules to tell you to tell a story? I don't think you do.

And let's be clear - the Fluff is extremely sketchy right now, and this will take years to fill, but there are plenty generic hooks that you can use to tell a story kilkrazy.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

The Sigmarines fight Chaos to get a magic hammer. The FyreSlayers fight the Sigmarines because the Chaos will pay them some ur-gold. The Seraphons fight the Fyreslayers because they are fighting for the Chaos and Seraphons hate Chaos. And so on. This is no different to historical scenarios.

Never said it was 'different'.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

To me there isn't any problem with consultation and working out a scenario before having a game, it's just that you can do this with pretty much any wargame. There's nothing unique and special about AoS in that respect.

Very true.

I find myself agreeing with both Deadknight and Da Boss when reading through the last two comments. With regards to RPG elements, I always thought Necromunda handled it in a very good way because A.) it was fun and B.) the tables and structure did away with the need for a DM.

What I would love for Age of Sigmar is a kind of "Dungeon Master's Guide Book" filled with ideas for running campaigns and rules, charts and tables to use to link your games. Yeah, we could home brew something - but it's fun to have something created for you and to use that. If AoS is designed to be played narratively by the designers it is a shame they do not go to town on some nice campaign supplements for us. (The big books fall short of this, only being scenarios and source material and nothing more).

And with regards to points again. If such a "Dungeon Master's guide book" was to exist for AoS, it could include a number of point systems and talk about the pros and cons of using each or none at all. Kind of like how Inquisitor handled the "Ready Reckoner" - I don't think it was used as standard in Inquistor campaigns (although I was too young when it came out and never got the chance to play it) - probably because the disclaimer included on why you should or should not employ it.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.

I am weirded out by historical wargaming. Never got into it, and tried the standard FoW, BA, Saga and WFB Ancients a few times. Hadn't really thought about it until you said this, but this is one of the key things for me.
I always thought that it was down to preferring my factional genocide on the fictional side, but after reading KK's post I've realised it's something else -
It's historical. It's over, done, finished. There's nowhere for it to go, everything you could ever possibly know about the setting is already known (archaeology aside).
You may not know who won the battle, but you know who won the war.
I just can't get behind that, holds no interest for me. The fact that AoS is so open-ended / poorly written (potato, puhtarto) is a big plus for me on that front.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.

Yet apparently this wonderful dream of a goal can be attained if I play Seraphon versus Chaos in AoS.

And all the AoS "GW only" types will no doubt write several walls of texts to tell you that AoS can do all this and all those other games are poor quality. (In either Rules, Figures, Sculpts, Background or any combination of those)

#The-way-of-the-GWophile

@Deadnight

While what you are saying is true it is neither unique to AoS nor is the game really built for it. You could have all of that in a game like Bolt Action or Infinity.

Have you tried Frostgrave Deadnight? It seems to have what you are looking for in AoS built in.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
@Deadnight

While what you are saying is true it is neither unique to AoS nor is the game really built for it. You could have all of that in a game like Bolt Action or Infinity.

Have you tried Frostgrave Deadnight? It seems to have what you are looking for in AoS built in.

One of my group is planning an ice/winter board for AoS because of the winter time of war stuff in Balance of Power - which has been pointed out also gives us the perfect excuse to play Frostgrave...

RoperPG wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.

I am weirded out by historical wargaming. Never got into it, and tried the standard FoW, BA, Saga and WFB Ancients a few times. Hadn't really thought about it until you said this, but this is one of the key things for me.
I always thought that it was down to preferring my factional genocide on the fictional side, but after reading KK's post I've realised it's something else -
It's historical. It's over, done, finished. There's nowhere for it to go, everything you could ever possibly know about the setting is already known (archaeology aside).
You may not know who won the battle, but you know who won the war.
I just can't get behind that, holds no interest for me. The fact that AoS is so open-ended / poorly written (potato, puhtarto) is a big plus for me on that front.

I hope you will not become increasingly disappointed with AoS as more of the fluff is gradually revealed.

RoperPG wrote:

hobojebus wrote:


It's a miniature wargame the whole point is to win, same as every other game.

On an unrelated topic, I need to get a new bulb for my projector. It's projecting quite hard, but it just isn't that bright.

Ahh the AD hominem for when you can't actually counter a point but still really want to say something.

Attacking the poster instead of the argument just shows everyone you have nothing worth saying.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

I hope you will not become increasingly disappointed with AoS as more of the fluff is gradually revealed.

Didn't anyone tell you? The realms are infinite!
Seriously though, I get the impression that AoS will run more like 40K than WFB in that regard;
The major players, events & locations, along with a selected supporting cast, will be covered - the rest will just be blanks where people can write "here be dragons" or whatever on their own version of the map.

And no, if you play the game with your well known friends using eyeballed armies without any comp, you can't reliably judge balance of entire army vs entire army.

You are talking about something that was not asked.

The question was

I've yet to meet anyone irl or on a forum that has played a balanced game with the basic rules if they use anything other than the starter set..

The question was not whether 2 players can tell an 2 armies in an upcoming game will be balanced, it was not even whether 2 armies are balanced. It was whether they have played a game that was balanced. It is eminently possible for 2 players to finish a game and discuss that and say yay or nay.

If you want to say that you can't judge balance to the Nth degree and exactly 50%, well fair enough. But balance will generally be taken as 'good enough', and 50% will be beyond any point/comp system..


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I guess that most people would prefer a fair game but funnily enough, you would be suprised with how much fun I have playing a lost game in an unbalanced match.

Many games are known not to be balanced. Chess being one by a small margin. But many old boardgames, like Avalon hills wargames were considered unbalanced to some degree. I pulled TP:Stalingrad out the garage the other week, I game I really liked many many years ago. It was known for favoring the Germans, but in many ways that made me prefer to play the Russians - fighting against the odds is usually more interesting. Such a game also had the advantage that I rarely expect to have 2 players of equal skill for a given game, having the person with more experience or skill at a given game take the harder side to win is a good way to play.

Deadnight wrote:

hobojebus wrote:AoS is not D&D there's no rp elements there's not even a detailed enough setting to attempt it.

Not really true. Regarding the setting, let's be clear as well (and I really have no dog in this fight), but the Aos setting is pretty damn new. It takes years for these settings to attain the level of depth and complexity that you are saying it doesn't have. I think it's a bit unfair to demand it all straight off the bat. Other games, like for example infinity (from a tiny company) are quite bare bones in terms of derailing their setting. I wouldn't judge Corvus belli too harshly for this, considering their size, and I wouldn't necessarily judge gw too harshly either... Yet.

I just said this in another thread, but "depth" is for suckers. Adding layers and layers of complexity and detail to a setting is just worldbuilding, that clomping foot of nerdism that'll suffocate a fictional world as quickly as anything else. Infinity's actually a pretty good counterexample - the Human Sphere and AoS have about the same amount of background released for them, despite the former being about ten years old, but Infinity feels infinitely more real and inviting because the creators took the time and the interest to make it so. They work hard to communicate a world that's very clearly something dear to them, a reflection of their own interests and personalities. That world has a soul. AoS doesn't, and no amount of additional verbiage, "depth" or layered complexity is going to fix that. It was a very odd decision on GW's part to try and sell a world like that as the basis of a "narrative" game, but like Killkrazy, I doubt narrative play was actually an idea that really came up in AoS' development before the marketing phase.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
@Deadnight

While what you are saying is true it is neither unique to AoS nor is the game really built for it. You could have all of that in a game like Bolt Action or Infinity.
.

you're telling me things I already know lime. I've probably said those same words a hundred times here.

*breathes in calmly*.

Ok, I apologise.i really don't mean to sound snarky lime (and apologise if it comes across that way) but you do realise I have been bleating on here for months that I have no interest in playing Aos (I dislike the models, I dislike the game mechanics etc) and that I already do 'all of that' in the wargames that I play with my mates, such as flames of war, infinity, historicals like dux bellorum, occasionally dropzone commander and even had some ideas with firestorm armada. I've frequently talked about this, and brought it up and recommend the approach.

In fact, if you go through my posts, you will see me state this repeatedly. (Sometimes I genuinely wonder if people never read what I write, or just assume 'Aos defender' when they don't see all the negative all the time in my posts and simply charge in.)

Aos is not 'unique' to narrative wargaming, but saying the game isn't built for it is false - it's an approach that is compatible with every game, Aos included. It's just Aos focuses on players using this approach exclusively and does it ruthlessly. (And to be fair, let gw do it. Let them aim for a niche if that's what they want to do. Privateer press carved out their niche by picking a demographic, and aiming primarily at the competitive scene and they've done quite well, it'll be interesting to see if gw can do something similar)

 TheCustomLime wrote:

You could have all of that in a game like Bolt Action or Infinity.

Correction. I already have all of that in infinity, flames of war etc. See above.

What I am defending specifically is the approach - whether you call it diy wargaming, narrative wargaming, scenario-base games, forging the narrative or whatever. Too often I see people's utter incomprehension and hostility towards the idea of taking control of your own game, and who refuse to see the value in a co-operative and player driven approach to wargames, spouting that you can't have fun this way, that it doesn't work, and it properly annoys me. Aos merely crystallises all this hostility, and I think it is misplaced ed and unwarranted. And for the record, I get equally annoyed with the idiots on the other side shouting that points are evil and don't work, tournaments are terrible and tournament players is a derogatory term and synonymous with Waac and destroying the hobby and that Aos is the pinnacle of creative wargaming in terms of board design, terrain use and painting. Pfft.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

Have you tried Frostgrave Deadnight? It seems to have what you are looking for in AoS built in.

Thank you - while I appreciate the recommendation, I don't think I'll be ablle to. The models thst I e seen didn't really inspire me, but to be honest, I've not had a deep look into it yet. I know a lot of people are talking about it, and I might get round to having a look at it as some point in the future, but bear in mind as well, I already am invested rather heavily in warmachine/hordes (huge khador army, decent circle and retribution armies), infinity (Ariadna, yu-jing, pan-o), and also play flames of war and historicals with my mates on a Friday Evening (their armies, not mine - I generally provide the infinity stuff for our games...)with a small amount of 40k projects on the side (Horus heresy is tempting me) along with Dreamforge and anvil industry models as painting projects.
Then there is that marathon I'm signed up to doing in June, and a new job, and I doubt I'll have time to invest in another Wargame. Sometimes you just have to be ruthless with your time.

Ah. So we are in agreement then.

Also, I don't use the official Frostgrave minis. I use WLG Romans along with some fantasy creatures for my Warband. That's the beauty of the game. You aren't married to tbe company when you buy into it like with GW.

puree wrote:

And no, if you play the game with your well known friends using eyeballed armies without any comp, you can't reliably judge balance of entire army vs entire army.

You are talking about something that was not asked.

The question was

I've yet to meet anyone irl or on a forum that has played a balanced game with the basic rules if they use anything other than the starter set..

The question was not whether 2 players can tell an 2 armies in an upcoming game will be balanced, it was not even whether 2 armies are balanced. It was whether they have played a game that was balanced. It is eminently possible for 2 players to finish a game and discuss that and say yay or nay.

If you want to say that you can't judge balance to the Nth degree and exactly 50%, well fair enough. But balance will generally be taken as 'good enough', and 50% will be beyond any point/comp system..


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I guess that most people would prefer a fair game but funnily enough, you would be suprised with how much fun I have playing a lost game in an unbalanced match.

Many games are known not to be balanced. Chess being one by a small margin. But many old boardgames, like Avalon hills wargames were considered unbalanced to some degree. I pulled TP:Stalingrad out the garage the other week, I game I really liked many many years ago. It was known for favoring the Germans, but in many ways that made me prefer to play the Russians - fighting against the odds is usually more interesting. Such a game also had the advantage that I rarely expect to have 2 players of equal skill for a given game, having the person with more experience or skill at a given game take the harder side to win is a good way to play.

What? Jesus man read the thread.

The first quote is me directly answering your claim that playing with friends, you can make a balanced game in AoS raw without comp.

The second quote is the initial statement of someone else, to which mr. Moongoose answered, then I asked the latter how, then you expressed disbelief that I even asked, which was funny btw, then we had more posts I think, then the first quote happened? Might have changed a subject just a bit by then eh?

Yes we were discussing if you can tell whether the game was balanced or not after a single game. That's what I initialy asked, how does one know and you replied.

Anyway, in 5th edition, Carnifex was what? 160 points? After few years with that nids book, hundreds of games and many discussions, everybody knew that it was overpriced. But how much, especialy when there was no clear terrain guidances? There was no clear answer, you'd have to drop points, wait, see and adjust.

The whole 40k internet and one unit that had point cost already. You don't balance entire armies at once anywhere near proper with your friends, your games might be 60 - 40, might be 70 - 30, who knows especialy if you play with sudden deaths. After few years of playing and with other's reports from internet, yes, you can say you developed some intuition, still not really reliable though.

I'm just about people coming here claiming they had a balanced game with model count or eyeballing. The same applies to countless "we counted wound and it was balanced". Yeah, 100 slaves vs 100 slaves then sure.






Automatically Appended Next Post:
Btw my balance doesn't have to be 50 - 50, it' s impossible. But model count, or saurus wound = skink wound? That's obviously not good enough to claim that games are balanced.

RoperPG wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.

I am weirded out by historical wargaming. Never got into it, and tried the standard FoW, BA, Saga and WFB Ancients a few times. Hadn't really thought about it until you said this, but this is one of the key things for me.
I always thought that it was down to preferring my factional genocide on the fictional side, but after reading KK's post I've realised it's something else -
It's historical. It's over, done, finished. There's nowhere for it to go, everything you could ever possibly know about the setting is already known (archaeology aside).
You may not know who won the battle, but you know who won the war.
I just can't get behind that, holds no interest for me. The fact that AoS is so open-ended / poorly written (potato, puhtarto) is a big plus for me on that front.

On the contrary - we can only ever know so much about history, and there's the realms of what if?

What if Alexander didn't stop in West Asia? What if the Mongols didn't stop in Eastern Europe? What if the greeks fought an intercity war in the summer of 356BC? Or held a retaliatory raid on Persia after Darius was defeated?
What if WW2 didn't stop in 1945, or the Russians didn't enter?
We've no real idea what armies looked like or thought until after the Dark Ages (with the exception Romans).

You could literally spend your gaming career playing historical based games and never touching a real battle.

Herzlos wrote:

Spoiler:

RoperPG wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.

I am weirded out by historical wargaming. Never got into it, and tried the standard FoW, BA, Saga and WFB Ancients a few times. Hadn't really thought about it until you said this, but this is one of the key things for me.
I always thought that it was down to preferring my factional genocide on the fictional side, but after reading KK's post I've realised it's something else -
It's historical. It's over, done, finished. There's nowhere for it to go, everything you could ever possibly know about the setting is already known (archaeology aside).
You may not know who won the battle, but you know who won the war.
I just can't get behind that, holds no interest for me. The fact that AoS is so open-ended / poorly written (potato, puhtarto) is a big plus for me on that front.

On the contrary - we can only ever know so much about history, and there's the realms of what if?

What if Alexander didn't stop in West Asia? What if the Mongols didn't stop in Eastern Europe? What if the greeks fought an intercity war in the summer of 356BC? Or held a retaliatory raid on Persia after Darius was defeated?
What if WW2 didn't stop in 1945, or the Russians didn't enter?
We've no real idea what armies looked like or thought until after the Dark Ages (with the exception Romans).

You could literally spend your gaming career playing historical based games and never touching a real battle.

Oh I get that. My post was because KK's post gave me a 'ding!' moment. I wasn't trying to suggest that it's not possible to enjoy historicals in any way, more that I personally have a block on being able to approach them in that way, and the realisation that it's probably why I prefer fantasy settings.
It might also explain why 30k/HH leaves me cold, too.

Some of my best friends are FoW players, etc. etc.

What other fantasy and SF games do you like?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What other fantasy and SF games do you like?

At the risk of getting too far off topic, I don't mind WMH - except the bulk of the local players rank quite well in southern tournaments so normally for me it was an exercise in putting stuff back in my case.
I've got a reasonable Imperial X-wing fleet, and I've tried Armada.
Curious about Guildball but my usual group aren't that fussed, I've gone off 40K (local meta is now normally just vehicle fleets).
A few of us are looking at giving Frostgrave a proper go.
I've tried most Mantic games, but they just haven't bitten me - although I'll be interested to see how their TWD license works out.
Other than that, Bloodbowl's the only thing I'm looking forward to.
Nobody plays Malifaux locally, after an abortive attempt a year or so ago when a couple of the local neck beards killed any interest because they cheated and cheated and cheated.
DZC just doesn't appeal - never been a fan of small-scale stuff.
Other than that I'd have to generate interest in anything other than those mentioned, and I just don't have the time.
Until AoS came out I'd spent about a year on hiatus from gaming as I was struggling to find anything to be excited about.
Within my local group, AoS is a perfect fit. That's obviously not the same as saying it's a 'perfect' game, I'm aware it isn't. But for us it ticks all the boxes we hadn't realised needed ticking.

Here's my thoughts on AoS.

When we first heard the rumors of AoS, that points and the Old World were both being tossed aside, I was skeptical about it. I was told by some ever stalwart GW supporters to wait and see and try it when it came out.

Then it released with 3 pages of rules. I read them and understood what GW was trying to do; make a very toned down game where there was no cost of entry and what essentially looked like a skirmish game. However, for me, the appeal of Fantasy was in the infantry blocks and the Movement phase being the most important part of the game (it should come as no surprise that 7th ed was my favorite). I was pretty fair with my opinion; AoS didn't appeal to me, but I could understand how AoS could appeal to some and I refrained from calling it gak. The stalwart GW supporters told me that previous editions of Fantasy were bad, that's why the game failed and that AoS was superior.

After the initial release, one of our more actively competitive (ex)-Fantasy players decided to try to run an AoS tournament and most people who had played Fantasy competitively signed up. Both myself and one of my best friends wanted to run our Tomb Kings; we had both started Fantasy at the same time with Tomb Kings as our first army almost 10 years previously at the local GW. We both loved the theme of them in the Old World, the look of the models, and the types of armies we could make. However, I soon found out that my favorite unit, the Tomb Guard, had lost a lot of its flavour and feel, which upset me because I had created my army around them. My disappointment was compounded when I realized that the Tomb King I had spent days painting no longer could take the Destroyer of Eternities, that I couldn't use Khatep any more and that the Casket of Souls had lost almost all of its flavor and a lot of its power. Some other units had gotten stronger that I owned, but my favorite models that had also been effective units had lost all the character I had known since I picked up the 6th edition books.

In light of my disappointment, I made a Wood Elf list instead. I even managed to get excited by imagining how much more thematic they would be on round bases and how skirmish style would suit them far better. Here too was some confusion when units that had been very good in the 8th edition book were now utterly bad instead, but the core of what had attracted me to Wood Elves changed very little and that was enough to make me feel enthusiastic about AoS.

That changed very quickly at the tournament. I hadn't expected to do well; my Tomb Kings were always a far more competitive army in the past with the Wood Elves being an army I had collected over time, with a few units bought to give it some punch in 8th. However, I was pretty ignorant of a lot of the new combos and units from other armies, which it turned out was pretty common for every player there and it was quickly decided that without points or any other inherent system of army building; lists of Vargheists and Dwarf flame cannons as well as my best friend's Necropolis Knight list were broken beyond belief. The absolute lack of balance wasn't the worst part for me though, my worst game was actually against a player who loved the randomness and new fluff of AoS.

I had decided very early on I would prefer not to be matched up with him when I could hear him across the room explaining at great length to his opponent how much better AoS was than 8th and how much fun the new Khorne army was to play; as I said earlier, the very casual skirmish nature of AoS isn't for me. What really made me remember why I stopped playing pick-up games long ago was when he started mocking me for playing "pansies". So with all this in mind I prepared myself to play the guy, complete with being taunted that he'd charge all my units kill them and that once again, I was playing an army of pansies. His enthusiasm quickly fell apart when he lost Juggerknights to the random dangerous terrain rolls from charging through the Wood Elf forests, when I moved away from his units and shot them with the waywatcher's shots that do 2 wounds per fail. My army was called dumb after getting my first and last win of the tournament.

After the tournament I realized that AoS was absolutely not for me. Competitive play was agonizing at best, as the ban and comp lists as well as list building needed to a ton of work to get to a point where there was a semblance of balance. My experience with the Khorne player reminded me why I dislike casual/fluffy players and pick-up games. To top it off, my favorite army had lost all it's lore, with my favorite units losing the mechanics that made them unique and appealing to me. In the end, I sold my Tomb Kings to my best friend, as I know as disenchanted as we had both become with the game, he loved collecting the army and I knew they'd be in good hands.

And now, finally, it seems like there won't be any more Tomb Kings models. I couldn't be more disappointed with how AoS turned out as it lost all the appeal that 7th and 8th editions of Fantasy had for me; the tactics and strategy, the lore that tied it together and the faction I started with.

Thanks for your account! A really honest look at why AoS wasn't right for you, and I hope the experience wasn't too souring (although the fact you sold your army suggests it probably was).

I'm a fan of AoS but it does sadden me to hear stories like your own.

Seconded.

Experiences like yours make me really glad my local group are all pretty similar-minded so we don't get stuff like that.

Shame that you got put up against someone who was obviously a tool, and that AoS hasn't turned out to be for you.

It wasn't exactly the game mechanics, just how pretty much 90% of my army lost its flavour and effect on the board.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
It wasn't exactly the game mechanics, just how pretty much 90% of my army lost its flavour and effect on the board.

Not wishing to pick at scabs, but which units that were good in 8th and became bad in AoS?

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
It wasn't exactly the game mechanics, just how pretty much 90% of my army lost its flavour and effect on the board.

While I understand this statement, what I want to ask you is... Why not try building a new army with a new flavor then?
This is what I enjoy the most with AoS. Here is a quick round up of the armies I am collecting so far, and it includes Tomb Kings!

- My main army is a Blood Elf army, inspired by said elves, from World of Warcraft. I use a mix of high and dark elves, all painted with the same red gold and green colors. I've added crazy conversions to it, such as a blood cauldron carried by two black stegadons and a female version of Darkblade for Valeera Sanguinar.

- I have a Sylvaneth army in witch I added home made warscrolls to spice it up.

- As soon as the Tomb Kings were announced to disappear, I ordered 240E of miniatures, and built a full charioteer force lead by Setra. It matches the formation warscroll and has a lot of personality!

- I am currently building a savage orcs army with a lot of ogres monsters. I replaced all ogres riders with savage orcs and simply use their normal warscroll.


Anyway. I'm not saying you're wrong, at all. But as a player who loves "flavor" like you say, I believe you can find a new one. What about a full bat-winged themed VC army?

I sincerely hope you will find the inspiration to build a new army. Good luck!

I'd hazard a guess that it's hard to get motivated to drop 240E to try and regain some flavor after having your existing stuff essentially ruined.

I mean, what's the risk that you'd spend all that time and money and still not be happy? What if he could maintain that flavor by just moving to another game?

It may be best to keep playing 8th edition, I think.

I don't think AoS can replicate the feeling of WHFB because AoS lacks various rules that had important tactical effects in WHFB. As well, the legacy army war scrolls are somewhat condensed. Some of the special characters from the army books have been dropped or rolled up into a generic special unit, and clearly a lot of the special rules have been revised.

Accept that AoS is a different type of game. It's better to compare AoS with games like Songs of Blades and Heroes, and Dragon Rampant.

WHFB should be compared with games like Warmaster Fantasy, Hordes Of The Things, and Kings of War.

Herzlos wrote:
I'd hazard a guess that it's hard to get motivated to drop 240E to try and regain some flavor after having your existing stuff essentially ruined.

I mean, what's the risk that you'd spend all that time and money and still not be happy? What if he could maintain that flavor by just moving to another game?

I don't know, but I feel like the consumers habits have evolved too. You can get a complete army for 240E. It's money for sure, but it's not that much money either... When you look at the prices of everything these days, how much a new phone costs you, or video games, or just a night out drinking, 240E is not that much for a complete set of units you will play for years without having anything to add to it. I've only just recently come back to the hobby, and of course when I was younger 240E seemed crazy to me. Now I'm 28 and I have a job. It seems more accessible than it used to be =].


But of course I'm not saying he should "gamble" his money on the hope he would have fun with it. But we all like to dream about armies while looking at the lists right? What I'm trying to say to him is that he should try to look at it with a new eye, and maybe find a new flavor he could like =]