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Evoking the concept of a person with whom I personally would rather not play a game of toy soldiers is hardly conjuring "extreme" negativity. And to the extent that the connotation is negative, well ... yeah, that is in fact the point. I don't want to play toy soldiers with someone who is only restrained by (their interpretation of) RAW. There are games that assume that approach and I don't play them because I don't want to play with (read: against) people attracted to that mindset.*

Rules are designed. They express a point of view. They are intentional. Mechanics are meant to achieve certain goals. For example, points-based list building is intended to restrict the players' options. Boundaries can be really fun; list building is pretty much a mini-game in itself. It can be very satisfying to puzzle over writing an efficient list. This isn't a coincidence; it's what the designer(s) intended. The challenge is to make the best use of every single point. Other considerations, such as whether you like the model or whether the list makes any kind of narrative sense, are ancillary as a matter of design. Those considerations may be important to a given player but they are external to the design of the game.

For that reason, I don't understand why anyone would bring an illegal list to the LGS. The points stand in for an assumption of mutual consent. If your list is legal, I should be willing to play against it as a matter of being willing to play the game at all. That's the logic of pick up play. Take that a step further, in the tournament context, and it becomes "if the list is legal, I cannot refuse to play it without disqualifying myself." This is just to demonstrate the huge emphasis the points mechanic places on "legality," the concept of faithfully applying the rules as written. In this style of game design, the rules are meant to restrain the players. And despite half-assed references to "fun being the most important thing" (whose definition of fun?), this design encourages players to play right up to the rules.

* This is my feeling about miniatures gaming. I feel the opposite about wargaming. Even so, my wargame of choice is ASL; a scenario-based game with (basically) no list building.

My basic inklings are as follows;

I preferred 8th Edition, the End Times (barring the Archaon Unbound and Battalion rules) were fantastic as well. As much as you can run whatever you want now for thematic armies, the complete lack of character customization outside of one or two weapon choices on a model really kills so much of the fun of making an army.

However, the game is fun and I like it for what it is. On the few occasions that I do play it we use the battle-plans in the "big rulebook" and agree to rough wound limits, the removal of the "silly" rules, toning down summoning if necessary (though the battle-plans often do a good job of this on their own) and make sure to play properly with mission rules and percentages in play. The games are always fun and usually fairly close as the sudden death victory conditions can be smartly achieved by different armies.

It's not the best game system in the world by any stretch and I prefer 8th Edition rules, narrative, setting, characters, customization, etc, but I still like it and have lots of fun whenever I play.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think a huge factor in whether you enjoy Age of Sigmar or not is how your community is as Manchu pointed out, and this is not saying "good community" versus "bad community". Those looking for fully balanced competitive games will have to adopt house rules and third party systems to really enjoy it. The more casual crowd will have an easier time getting by but still have to be careful not to pull a "I want to field all eight of my Bloodthirsters" on an unprepared opponent, no matter how thematic it might be.

Caederes wrote:
this is not saying "good community" versus "bad community"

Strong point. What I want from a game is the guideline for with whom I want to play, that's all. In this context, "that guy" is someone who begins and ends with RAW. It's no coincidence that four pages of rules strikes critics of AoS as a flaw rather than a feature. The larger example is, of course, the unforgivable absence of points-based list building. In fact, most of the criticisms of AoS that I have seen focus on what it is supposedly missing rather than what it is.

My sympathy for AoS is probably rooted in my experience with RPGs. I hate playing RPGs in the legalistic RAW-style and there are many RPGs written with exactly that kind of play in mind, including some of the most prolific. To me, that approach entirely misses the point. I prefer game premised on guidelines, where the gameplay itself is a matter of rulings. While a rule is a universal imperative to be applied or executed whenever it is triggered, a ruling is a judgment call that makes the most sense in a certain circumstance. I think AoS is intentionally designed to be played in this spirit.

I definitely agree that AoS is more suited to an RPG style of play. It's just a shame they didn't incorporate more RPG elements (a la Mordheim) and really go for it that way! They've left it up to players to fill in the blanks, which again RPG players are good at doing, but isn't something usually needed in a wargame.

I also think AoS lends itself better to smaller scale games, another positive for approaching it like an RPG. If they had elements of gaining experience / etc for your warband, that also could have been really cool

 RiTides wrote:
I definitely agree that AoS is more suited to an RPG style of play. It's just a shame they didn't incorporate more RPG elements (a la Mordheim) and really go for it that way! They've left it up to players to fill in the blanks, which again RPG players are good at doing, but isn't something usually needed in a wargame.

I also think AoS lends itself better to smaller scale games, another positive for approaching it like an RPG. If they had elements of gaining experience / etc for your warband, that also could have been really cool

I would concur completely about adding more mordheim feel, this game could have/should have been soo much better, there were so many missed opportunities here its mind boggling.

 Manchu wrote:
Evoking the concept of a person with whom I personally would rather not play a game of toy soldiers is hardly conjuring "extreme" negativity. And to the extent that the connotation is negative, well ... yeah, that is in fact the point. I don't want to play toy soldiers with someone who is only restrained by (their interpretation of) RAW. There are games that assume that approach and I don't play them because I don't want to play with (read: against) people attracted to that mindset.*

So you simply equate "person I do not want to play against for reasons" as "that guy". I think intelligent civilised conversation should avoid labelling large swathes of people as jerks. But that's just me.

Rules are designed. They express a point of view. They are intentional. Mechanics are meant to achieve certain goals. For example, points-based list building is intended to restrict the players' options. Boundaries can be really fun; list building is pretty much a mini-game in itself. It can be very satisfying to puzzle over writing an efficient list. This isn't a coincidence; it's what the designer(s) intended. The challenge is to make the best use of every single point. Other considerations, such as whether you like the model or whether the list makes any kind of narrative sense, are ancillary as a matter of design. Those considerations may be important to a given player but they are external to the design of the game.

For that reason, I don't understand why anyone would bring an illegal list to the LGS. The points stand in for an assumption of mutual consent. If your list is legal, I should be willing to play against it as a matter of being willing to play the game at all. That's the logic of pick up play. Take that a step further, in the tournament context, and it becomes "if the list is legal, I cannot refuse to play it without disqualifying myself." This is just to demonstrate the huge emphasis the points mechanic places on "legality," the concept of faithfully applying the rules as written. In this style of game design, the rules are meant to restrain the players. And despite half-assed references to "fun being the most important thing" (whose definition of fun?), this design encourages players to play right up to the rules.

You sure come across as someone overly restrained by the rules.

Yes of course rules express a point of view. But they only impress that point of view if you and the people you play with are too narrow minded to see outside the box.

You don't understand why anyone would bring an illegal list to the LGS.... I don't understand why anyone would limit themselves to a legal list if what they want to play isn't legal. The trick is to not be a jerk ("that guy" if we want to use the vernacular) about it AND don't assume someone you don't agree with is a jerk for no other reason than they don't agree with you.

Maybe I'm lucky that I started WHFB when I was young enough and creative enough to see it as a sandbox to do what I wanted to do rather than a rigid structure I must follow.... but it sure seems to me like a lot of the praise AoS gets for being free and open comes from people who must have been too narrow minded to see WHFB could be as free and as open as you wanted it to be.

The structure was always there as a fall back for the times when you don't feel like negotiating something out of the ordinary with someone you don't know (given you said you have little interest in pick up games that shouldn't have affected you) or times you couldn't agree with someone (and having a "that guy" present is not a prerequisite for disagreement, some of my best friends and best gaming mates were the ones I disagreed with the most on game balance issues, I'd typically just concede and play how they wanted to play and use the outcome as a springboard on how to balance the next game).

I mean, don't get me wrong, probably 50-75% of the games I played of WHFB were RAW legal, mostly because I did tend to play pick up games more than anything (though even pick up games I often negotiated to play something not RAW), when gaming among friends we were not RAW more often than we were (usually screwing around with army construction, points values we didn't think were fair and some core rules we didn't like).

I completely disagree that AoS should be more like Mordheim. As Bottle mentioned in the OP, one of the great and largely overlooked strength's of AoS's design is how it scales. Mordheim's design is extremely scale reductive; it's a paragon skirmish campaign game. This makes no sense for AoS as either a fantasy battles game or as one of GW's major product lines.

And although I also disagree that Mordheim has anything to do with RPGs, I was just using the example of RPGs to contrast rules against rulings. In terms of a design that emphasizes execution of rules, writing illegal lists makes no sense because the points system mechanic is the basis of good faith play. Your would-be opponents have no interest in you breaking the rules. The perceived strength of this design perspective is that consent to the fairness of the game is implicit in the rules themselves.

AoS is designed from an entirely different paradigm. The rules of AoS do not establish the parameters of what is fair; the design assumes the players will come to their own understanding (like the classic D&D group would). This isn't asking all that much. We managed it as kids on the playground, after all. Now I will be (have been) the first to concede this makes AoS unsuited to pick-up gaming.

 Manchu wrote:
This isn't asking all that much......... this makes AoS unsuited to pick-up gaming.

Well then to me it is asking too much.

I'd argue that it's also too much for people not experienced with war games in general, but that's subjective.

Experience with miniatures games, much less the point system mechanic, is not required to have a sense of what is fair or, for that matter, what is fun.

my experience is that AoS scales quite badly, especially with the mish mash combat system, the bigger the fight, the poorer AoS handles it.

It's difficult to address pure value judgments.

 thekingofkings wrote:
my experience is that AoS scales quite badly, especially with the mish mash combat system, the bigger the fight, the poorer AoS handles it.

In my experience bigger AoS battles work really well. And when both sides have support units in the back, hard hitting monsters, elite troops, sorcerers, etc, suddenly it's not about making everybody run straight and fight anymore. You try to send your faster units around to pick up artillery and wizards, and, as a reaction to that, you build defensive lines trying to prevent it. On larger scales, the alternated combat mechanic is way more in depth and require careful choices and mind games with your opponent.

 Haechi wrote:

 thekingofkings wrote:
my experience is that AoS scales quite badly, especially with the mish mash combat system, the bigger the fight, the poorer AoS handles it.

In my experience bigger AoS battles work really well. And when both sides have support units in the back, hard hitting monsters, elite troops, sorcerers, etc, suddenly it's not about making everybody run straight and fight anymore. You try to send your faster units around to pick up artillery and wizards, and, as a reaction to that, you build defensive lines trying to prevent it. On larger scales, the alternated combat mechanic is way more in depth and require careful choices and mind games with your opponent.

all we got was frustrated with the masses of models all mixed in, the alternating mechanic as it is written in AoS performed abysmally, especially when the model count hit about 450+ per side. This game for us( sounds like your experience was different) was absolute rubbish at 1000+ models. the game bogged fast and was just a mess. we saw no depth, just poorly conceived mechanic. IMO the initiative system worked alot better than this. Chronopia had a much better model of alternating as well.

 Manchu wrote:
Experience with miniatures games, much less the point system mechanic, is not required to have a sense of what is fair or, for that matter, what is fun.

Experience is helpful if you don't want to do it via trial and error. As for what's fun, that's subjective. I'm sure some crazy kids could find the quest for a balanced game given no inherent balancing mechanism a fun endeavour.

I didn't play a pointed game of anything until I started back in the hobby in 2011.

Before that, I had 8 years or so of Buy it, Build it, Play it and we had tons of fun (casual and at the local GW).

I can see some people worrying that their pick up games might be affected by the Eyeball It In nature of AoS, but do they never play the same person twice at their LGS? Ever?

(edited to make a bit more sense)

AoS provides rules for movement and combat, plus a wide selection of unit types, and leaves the scenario design -- including balance -- up to the players.

Plenty of games are like this, though in historicals you usually create your army on its historical original, rather than picking units from different armies.

However I think most AoS players will build an army from one 'race' or faction, which is more or less the same thing.

At any rate, that is the game and there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with it. If you're looking for a tightly balanced game with points values and army lists, you have come to the wrong shop.

In regard of scaling, there's no doubt that in any game, as you add more types of units, and larger numbers of units, there are more possible combinations, which gives you more interesting tactical decisions.

The draw back is that the game takes longer to play. Ultimately the added complication can become a diminishing return. IMO 40K reached that point by added Flyers. It partly depends on the space and time available.

In Achtung Schweinehunde! (Harry Pearson) there is a brilliant story of a group of Napoleonic officers who, while on leave, built and painted a large model castle and toy soldiers and had a narrative siege game that went on for days.

It's rare that we have the time for such elaborate games, so rules for larger battles usually have mechanisms to reduce the amount of processing players have to do to operate the game. For example, the figures are mounted in blocks so they don't have to be moved one by one. The combat process might use a look-up table or a multiplication factor to reduce the amount of dice rolling.

In this respect, it seems to me that AoS won't scale well. If you have 10 figures in a fight, you have to roll 10 To Hit dice. If you have 50 figures in a fight, you have to roll 50 To Hit dice (possibly more, if any of the troops get bonus attacks for being en masse.

As you add more units to the fight, you are presented with more decisions about what order to activate units. This will add to the time needed. The 50 figure fight involving six or eight units might take five and a half or six times longer than the 10 figure fight with only two units.

Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?

Obviously because sometimes tedium starts to override fun. It's why I played about 2 big games with my Tyranids and then never again, they ceased being fun.

 thekingofkings wrote:
my experience is that AoS scales quite badly, especially with the mish mash combat system, the bigger the fight, the poorer AoS handles it.

My thoughts exactly.

I loved the 40K look of large IG infantry armies. But moving them is a chore. Placing them to benefit from cover is another one. Deciding who gets to strike, etc. is another one. That's part of the reason I've almost left 40K for good.

In AoS you have rules encouraging you to take large blobs (like spear skellies) and again moving, knowing who gets to strike etc. is another one.

There's a point in which looks take a backseat to practicality.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?

Obviously because sometimes tedium starts to override fun. It's why I played about 2 big games with my Tyranids and then never again, they ceased being fun.

When it stops being fun you stop, and decide not to repeat the experiment until a bank holiday weekend. That doesn't invalidate the experience of people who do have fun playing 1,000 figures a side using AoS.

I've spent bank holiday weekends playing massive WW1 naval battles like Jutland. There aren't any shortcuts in this, because a ship is a ship and has to be manoeuvred and fought separately. Not everyone would enjoy it.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?

Obviously because sometimes tedium starts to override fun. It's why I played about 2 big games with my Tyranids and then never again, they ceased being fun.

When it stops being fun you stop, and decide not to repeat the experiment until a bank holiday weekend. That doesn't invalidate the experience of people who do have fun playing 1,000 figures a side using AoS.

I've spent bank holiday weekends playing massive WW1 naval battles like Jutland. There aren't any shortcuts in this, because a ship is a ship and has to be manoeuvred and fought separately. Not everyone would enjoy it.

Of course, it's subjective, but being subjective doesn't invalidate it as a point. One of the things I liked about WHFB was having 100 models lined up but only a few "entities" to move around. The aesthetic of 20 dudes facing off against 20 other dudes just doesn't inspire me.... meanwhile the prospect of spending 20 hours playing a single game also doesn't inspire me.

There's a reason many people lament the loss of Epic 40k, some of us liked the large scale game without the hassle that large scale 28mm 40k comes with.

My main game is KoW, but I hold the opinion that AoS was a huge missed opportunity to create a high quality fantasy skirmish game. I played a demo game of it and just wasn't impressed.

All they needed to do was adapt the excellent LotR SBG rules, actually bother to create a points system and it would have been perfect.

Pretty sure they can't use lotr for licensing reasons.

hobojebus wrote:
Pretty sure they can't use lotr for licensing reasons.

I thought I read they had renewed the LotR license exclusively to block other miniature manufacturer from getting their hands in a well-known IP?

jouso wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
Pretty sure they can't use lotr for licensing reasons.

I thought I read they had renewed the LotR license exclusively to block other miniature manufacturer from getting their hands in a well-known IP?

No I mean they can't use that system for their own games because it's linked to lotr which is a IP they don't own, that combat system will only be useable for that game.

hobojebus wrote:

No I mean they can't use that system for their own games because it's linked to lotr which is a IP they don't own, that combat system will only be useable for that game.

Sorry but that's BS.

Both X-wing and ST-Attack wing are based on the same system, developed by two independent companies (and in turn based heavily off wings of glory, which uses basically the same system on a generic WWI and WW2 setting).

The game mechanics are totally independent of the setting. GW could perfectly release a Warhammer New Dawn (or whatever fancy name they came up with) based on WotR mechanics.

hobojebus wrote:

jouso wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
Pretty sure they can't use lotr for licensing reasons.

I thought I read they had renewed the LotR license exclusively to block other miniature manufacturer from getting their hands in a well-known IP?

No I mean they can't use that system for their own games because it's linked to lotr which is a IP they don't own, that combat system will only be useable for that game.

Considering the LotR mechanic was used for warhammer historical skirmish games for Pirates, cowboys n whatnot............are you sure about that?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?

Obviously because sometimes tedium starts to override fun. It's why I played about 2 big games with my Tyranids and then never again, they ceased being fun.

When it stops being fun you stop, and decide not to repeat the experiment until a bank holiday weekend. That doesn't invalidate the experience of people who do have fun playing 1,000 figures a side using AoS.

I've spent bank holiday weekends playing massive WW1 naval battles like Jutland. There aren't any shortcuts in this, because a ship is a ship and has to be manoeuvred and fought separately. Not everyone would enjoy it.

Of course, it's subjective, but being subjective doesn't invalidate it as a point. One of the things I liked about WHFB was having 100 models lined up but only a few "entities" to move around. The aesthetic of 20 dudes facing off against 20 other dudes just doesn't inspire me.... meanwhile the prospect of spending 20 hours playing a single game also doesn't inspire me.

There's a reason many people lament the loss of Epic 40k, some of us liked the large scale game without the hassle that large scale 28mm 40k comes with.

Being subjective means it's only a valid point for you.

AoS isn't designed as a mass battle system, it doesn't scale up to mass battles very well, but if people enjoy such battles anyway, you won't stop them by saying that you don't enjoy such battles.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
AoS isn't designed as a mass battle system, it doesn't scale up to mass battles very well, but if people enjoy such battles anyway, you won't stop them by saying that you don't enjoy such battles.

Since there are warscroll battalions built upon other warscroll battalions, specific bonus rules for having 20+, 30+, and 40+ models within a unit, and no limit to the maximum size of your units, I do think AoS was designed, for better or worse, for people who want to play AoS as "massed battles."

Keep in mind that mass battles games tend to deal with units in the strict sense of formation. So hundreds of miniatures can end up counting for just a dozen or so "game pieces." The idea of playing AoS with thousands of miniatures strikes me as severely misguided, especially when deployed as an argument against the game's design.

 Manchu wrote:
Keep in mind that mass battles games tend to deal with units in the strict sense of formation. So hundreds of miniatures can end up counting for just a dozen or so "game pieces." The idea of playing AoS with thousands of miniatures strikes me as severely misguided, especially when deployed as an argument against the game's design.

I see your point but to be fair all of the games I played have actually been with a large model count and we find, kind of like infantry in hordes, that the body count rises quickly and you very very soon, probably by turn two, have much less models on your side .