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Even if you have a scenario based system, points are still good. Like Aeronautica Imperialis, it came with a bunch of scenarios but also had points values so it was easy to modify the scenario to the models you actually have on hand.

Scenarios are good. But without points you're still eyeballing it. And when you're eyeballing it, things go off the rails quick because most people are horrible at eyeballing game balance. It is a very difficult thing to do properly.

auticus wrote:
Scenarios are good. But without points you're still eyeballing it. And when you're eyeballing it, things go off the rails quick because most people are horrible at eyeballing game balance. It is a very difficult thing to do properly.

To be fair, points are a very difficult thing to do properly as well. Poor points system (like, say, 40k 'goes off the rails quick' for precisely the same reasons)" A well engineered points system is however, pretty damned effective at helping to balance games. But you need a huge amount of initial input along with a lot of playtesting and continued readjustments, feedback and updates to make sure it is maintained.

Eyeballing it, in a similar vein, can go off the rails quickly, as you correctly point out, but then again, with a bit of practice and experience, it gets easier to adjust and 'judge'.

Neither is necessarily 'better' per se, (or rather 'preferable' to me, I enjoy both) if you ask me.

I like the fan point systems, but I don't want a GW one. The 40k forum here revolves around under/overpowered armies etc, and a lot of the posts from players who like the min/maxing stuff are downright cringeworthy.

I would rather GW perhaps lay out more guidelines for each force in scenarios and in the 4 page rules than institute an across-the-board point system.

coldgaming wrote:
I like the fan point systems, but I don't want a GW one. The 40k forum here revolves around under/overpowered armies etc, and a lot of the posts from players who like the min/maxing stuff are downright cringeworthy.

I would rather GW perhaps lay out more guidelines for each force in scenarios and in the 4 page rules than institute an across-the-board point system.

Or suggestions on how to create thematic and interesting armies as well as how to 'match up' against someone beyond 'shrug... Just eyeball it'.

Point-less games can be fun, but it takes the right attitude and a co-operative approach to the game to get the most out of it. The biggest failure of Aos isn't the lack of points, it's the lack of suggestions as to 'how' to play point-less games since for so many folks, playing with points is all they know. Gw chucked their players into the wilderness and they expected them to survive and thrive and just 'get it', but they didn't give them any tools, or compasses or even a 'how to skin a rabbit for dummies' book. White dwarf would have been the perfect vehicle for pushing this 'attitude' and 'style' of gaming but as far as I'm aware, gw haven't really done it much yet. Maybe it'll change though

Deadnight wrote:

coldgaming wrote:
I like the fan point systems, but I don't want a GW one. The 40k forum here revolves around under/overpowered armies etc, and a lot of the posts from players who like the min/maxing stuff are downright cringeworthy.

I would rather GW perhaps lay out more guidelines for each force in scenarios and in the 4 page rules than institute an across-the-board point system.

Or suggestions on how to create thematic and interesting armies as well as how to 'match up' against someone beyond 'shrug... Just eyeball it'.

Point-less games can be fun, but it takes the right attitude and a co-operative approach to the game to get the most out of it. The biggest failure of Aos isn't the lack of points, it's the lack of suggestions as to 'how' to play point-less games since for so many folks, playing with points is all they know. Gw chucked their players into the wilderness and they expected them to survive and thrive and just 'get it', but they didn't give them any tools, or compasses or even a 'how to skin a rabbit for dummies' book. White dwarf would have been the perfect vehicle for pushing this 'attitude' and 'style' of gaming but as far as I'm aware, gw haven't really done it much yet. Maybe it'll change though

I agree. I think the basic rules could use a whole page of "How to Build Your Army" and then some indication of how to play your first games and where to go from there. The scenarios in the starter box book do lead you through how to build up an army and get familiar with the rules, but the base rules could use a similar thing.

The thing is that a lot of people LIKE building busted armies. With a point system, they find the cracks and exploit them.

These people are not a stark minority either. They are everywhere.

Points can work if the company doing the points actually cares about making them work. THe problem with 40k and WHFB is that they never really worked and GW never really cared about making them work.

I agree eyeballing it and bad points lead to the same place... a bad experience where one side blows out the other. The problem is that a lot of people love that.

The people that exploit cracks in a point system are the same people that will ensure that their armies with no points are obviously overpowering the opposition as well.

They know, for example, that a 1 wound model that has 3+ to hit 3+ to wound -1 rend and 3+ save is vastly superior to a 1wound model that has a 4+ to hit 4+ to wound, no rend and a 4+ save, but will argue that both sides have similar wounds so its balanced.

A fan made point system that cares about balance (pick one, there are several options, all of which provide roughly the same experience IMO) or if GW made points that cared about balance would reflect that the first model costs more because its better.

Eyeballing it remains in the abstract though.

I think the root of issues here is that many people are so used to the non balance of GW points that the same outcome of steamrolling someone comes with no points as well, but no points is easier because you just pick up models.

I'm not going to say thats wrong, I'm just going to say for me thats not how i want to spend my limited freetime. (hence why i spent so much of my time developing azyr and why i will do my best to keep it updated, because it works!)

While I think fan made point systems are great and I appreciate the work put into them. They dont work for PuGs. They CAN. But they dont. Its not the fault of the system. The thing is people put a large emphasis on things being "official". And I kinda understand that.

As I said, I dont think people are expecting a tight balance. But they are expecting a semblance of balance in a official light. Scenarios are ok, for people who like to play them. But once more, it just doesnt work for PuGs. For many reasons.

If GW wont put forth the effort of a point system for the PuG's then they shouldnt get the marketshare.

Well, the discussion about points if off topic but I see arguments for both sides.

I think what GW should have done is give each war scroll a power rating, say 1 for a unit of 10 Skinks, 3 for a unit of 20, and so on. This would not be too hard to work out since each war scroll is a set of mathematical stats plus a couple of special rules. The basic stats could be very quickly calculated in a spreadsheet. The special rules would need to be worked out "by hand". Synergies between war scrolls could be ignored, as this would tend to lead to fluffy, faction based armies being more powerful.

Then GW could make a scenario with power rating 8-12, rating 18-22 and so on, giving players a reasonable idea of the size of army they should use.

puree wrote:

What the pick up gamer wants is points. We dont need tourney level rules or point structures. But what we do need is a quick way to set up a fairly balanced game vs a stranger.

You don't need points then, you just need a set scenario that is reasonable balanced. Just as points are based around a set scenario (usually the battle line on a clear table) and don't balance other scenarios.

I don't see why people see scenarios and points as almost exclusive.

Infinity is the ultimate scenario game, awfully boring to play straight kill-the-enemy stuff but really shines in scenario play and there are a ton to choose from)

.... And it has a point system that works rather well despite there being a ton of stats and special rules.

Table wrote:
So points. AoS needs it even if just to recapture the pickup market stateside. The point haters could still not play with them. Everyone wins.

How does everyone win? Point haters would be stuck out in the cold. Try and find a game without points. That would be like trying to find a game of 40K that is Unbound. Yeah you can't have it both ways. GW has tried it and us Geeks and Nerds have shown GW we will not use 2 systems. So GW went one way. Just look at the hate for Unbound. You can't have it both ways. Case closed.

Davor wrote:
How does everyone win? Point haters would be stuck out in the cold.

People who hate points are very, very easily served by...playing without points. It's not that hard.

In reality, I doubt there are many people out there who actually hate points, full stop. What you find are people who like AoS, and have latched onto the idea of no points as a good thing as an overall defense of the game. Put a good points system in front of nearly any gamer, and they'll be fine with using it.

Davor wrote:

Table wrote:
So points. AoS needs it even if just to recapture the pickup market stateside. The point haters could still not play with them. Everyone wins.

How does everyone win? Point haters would be stuck out in the cold. Try and find a game without points. That would be like trying to find a game of 40K that is Unbound. Yeah you can't have it both ways. GW has tried it and us Geeks and Nerds have shown GW we will not use 2 systems. So GW went one way. Just look at the hate for Unbound. You can't have it both ways. Case closed.

Can't any game be played without points? It's not AoS is especially designed well to support pointless list comp.

I don't use points in any of the games I play. I just bring what I think is right

Davor wrote:

Table wrote:
So points. AoS needs it even if just to recapture the pickup market stateside. The point haters could still not play with them. Everyone wins.

How does everyone win? Point haters would be stuck out in the cold. Try and find a game without points. That would be like trying to find a game of 40K that is Unbound. Yeah you can't have it both ways. GW has tried it and us Geeks and Nerds have shown GW we will not use 2 systems. So GW went one way. Just look at the hate for Unbound. You can't have it both ways. Case closed.

If you have trouble finding a game with people who don't like points then maybe, just maybe, that is because people who don't like points are a tiny minority outside of the Historical gaming side of the hobby?

If people have the option to do both (as they did with WHFB and 40k), and people choose to play with points, does that not suggest that games should be made with points because that's what the community wants?

Considering their sales numbers and what we know from court cases, it seems AoS is selling a little less or maybe the same (at best) as WFB was selling. Was it really worth it to blow everything up, piss off a bunch of veteran customers and revamp an entire model line to have about the same amount of sales? Ive talked to some FLGS owners here and AoS starters aren't selling. The models that are selling are being used for KoW and frostgrave when I see them being used in stores. The new kits are widely mocked for their prices, the rules are mocked for their simplicity and goofiness, I just haven't seen a lot of excitement around any part of AoS locally.

AoS isn't being played or sold at FLGS for the most part it seems. Its being played and sold primarily at GW stores.

FLGS players seem to be primarily competitive bent as well as pick up game inclined, both things that AoS does not cater to.

I think the GW suits seriously underestimated the animosity they would instill in their audience by pushing this change and seriously overestimated the appeal of 'fantasy space marines'. It seems like they though this would get 40k players to buy the fantasy line, but from my limited perspective it caused more 40k players to quit then to cross over.

Beyond that, the idea that competitive games, pick up games, and points values are 'badwrongfun' was ludicrous, and the designers (I don't blame the suits for this at all), really showcased a rather ugly mentality when they decided the problem with their game's sales wasn't that they had written bad rules for their game, or that the company had employed terrible business practices in selling the models for it, but rather that their audience was 'doing it wrong', and needed the new game to force them to 'do it right'.

I don't think AoS is wholly terrible, and I don't think it's beyond saving, but it would take a pretty serious change in attitude and practice from both the business types and the design types at GW, changes of a nature that neither seem particularly adept at.

 jonolikespie wrote:

If you have trouble finding a game with people who don't like points then maybe, just maybe, that is because people who don't like points are a tiny minority outside of the Historical gaming side of the hobby?

Or maybe it simply shows that many people have simply not been introduced to that style of play, and more importantly, shown that it can be a valid way to play and enjoy your wargames. similarly, if you can't find them it might suggest that folks who don't play with points simply don't frequent Facebook groups or Internet forums or simply game in other circles. My experience of diy gamers suggests to me most of them just aren't visible and don't go to where the hardcore players like to hang out. Doesn't necessarily make them a tiny minority...

 jonolikespie wrote:

If people have the option to do both (as they did with WHFB and 40k), and people choose to play with points, does that not suggest that games should be made with points because that's what the community wants?

Not necessarily. Henry Ford had a famous quote – ‘if I had just given people what they’d wanted, I’d have built a faster horse’. ‘What the community wants’ can be very intertwined with ‘this is all the community knows’. People played with points because quite often, it was all they have been exposed to and all they knew, hence anything else is often regarded as beyond the pale and scoffed at as somehow ‘unworkable’ – gamers can be surprisingly conservative and downright hostile to alternative ways of playing wargames, different thinking as well as being proactive about their hobby. I think one good thing with AOS is that is has started a conversation amongst players and opened their eyes to alternative ways to match forces and ‘game-building’ and the hobby is not necessarily a worse place for opening people up to a parallel way of playing games. Id personally like to see this conversation mature and evolve and see where it goes.
Similarly, I think it's dishonest to talk about 'the community' as a hive mind that wants one thing - it's a very fractured, schitzofrenic community at the best of times, and while some want points, others don't and some probably aren't all that bothered.
The problem with the argument about people having the choice to do both is that with points, with an ‘official’ and defined ‘way’ of playing a game, that ‘choice’ is often illusory, since its quite simply taken out of your hands and people will not step out of the narrow confines of ‘officialdom’, will only play a narrow slew of scenarios and will only build armies for a narrow spectrum of what's potentially available. (and this is not meant in any way to discredit a top-down ‘defined’ way of playing games – part of the success of warmachine/hordes is because of its universality and strength of its ‘organised play’ for example, but I do think it's important to acknowledge the limitations and consequences of that style of Wargame).

There's a difference between trying to sell cars to people who asked for horses to ride around on and trying to sell sieves to people who asked for a bucket to carry water.

For casual pick up games, an underlying structure for force organization is necessary, for the same reason that you can't carry water in a sieve. Points systems may be imperfect, they may have leaky holes, but AoS's 'no system' is nothing BUT holes, and to the extent that I've seen it played at all in the local store that's only thanks to community efforts stepping forward to fill the gap.

 Malisteen wrote:
I think GW seriously underestimated the animosity they would instill in their audience by pushing this change and seriously overestimated the appeal of 'fantasy space marines'.

Beyond that, the idea that competitive games, pick up games, and points values are 'badwrongfun' was ludicrous, and the designers (I don't blame the suits for this at all), really showcased a rather ugly mentality when they decided the problem with their game's sales wasn't that they had written bad rules for their game, or that the company had employed terrible business practices in selling the models for it, but rather that their audience was 'doing it wrong', and needed the new game to force them to 'do it right'.

I don't think AoS is wholly terrible, and I don't think it's beyond saving, but it will take a pretty serious change in attitude and practice from both the business types and the design types at GW, changes of a nature that neither seem particularly adept at.

100% spot on. Im seeing alot of the "you are doing wrong" GW mantra bleeding into the pro-AoS online community. The fact is, at least in SoCal and im betting in the wider states, is that PuGs are far far far more frequent (or was) than clubs. GW has been trying to act like this isnt the case, and they have paid heavily for it in lost sales in the wider SoCal area. GW and a few fans like to make out that our play style was what was wrong with the scene. That all PuGamers are filthy net list WAAC guys. That if they introduce points, we will just break the game and WAAC all the "real hobbyists" away. This is asinine. Very few people ive played in my 10 year stint have been TFG. And as ive said, GW has thrown out this demographic as unwanted. The problem with that is many of us will have moved on to better systems for our playstyle when GDubs figures out they need us back.

The debate around AoS quickly became highly polarised, with the anti- people making statements like it was literally unplayable, the worst game ever, not even a game.

It's not surprising that this caused a reaction from people who actually like AoS, and the line chosen was to defend the features of AoS -- especially no points -- as being a huge positive move, so people who opposed it were negative, backwards-looking bullies, in effect.

I don't think either position is tenable, and they certainly have done nothing to help the discussion, so I suggest we keep off those points in this thread.

I can say pretty surely that AoS is basically dead in NoVA. On of the FLGS in my area quit stocking GW altogether (HordesMachine & X-wing exclusively), and the other only has any because he has to in order to sell 40k. Kings of War took over in the vacuum, and the books are conveniently placed right next to the AoS stuff in a sort of "I'm an option, too" way.

Me? I grabbed some Stormcast minis on ebay to paint. A game would be welcome, but I can take it or leave it.

I imagine AoS is doing better now then it's release once the vets finally said so long and moved on to other systems. The main issue that AoS will have to deal with now is whether or not there is a market for a game like AoS. A fun, casual narrative game with a Magic: The Gathering balancing mechanic of "if everything is OP, nothing is OP".

I'll stand by things I've said in the past with regards to the switch. If GW had put out a 9th edition with all the army books in it, called it "Warhammer: The End", and charged 200 bucks for the thing along with a goodbye message to vets this whole thing would have been received better. The lack of communication for half a year waiting for any idea of what was coming was a really poor decision on GW's part. Frankly I think that helped to create the animosity most Vets have about the game.

As for the points I am of the opinion that the free form nature of the game makes makes points...pointless. All you are doing with points is buying wounds anyway so why not cut out the middle man. A high point model is a high point model because of killing power, and killing power has so many external factors that play a part in whether a model is "worth it" or not I think just going by wounds just makes things easier.

Wounds is a horrible balancing mechanism.

A goblin has 1 wound. A sword master has 1 wound. One is significantly better than the other, but by wounds they are equal.

Malisteen wrote:There's a difference between trying to sell cars to people who asked for horses to ride around on and trying to sell sieves to people who asked for a bucket to carry water.

For casual pick up games, an underlying structure for force organization is necessary, for the same reason that you can't carry water in a sieve. Points systems may be imperfect, they may have leaky holes, but AoS's 'no system' is nothing BUT holes, and to the extent that I've seen it played at all in the local store that's only thanks to community efforts stepping forward to fill the gap.

Malisteen, I don’t actually disagree with what you are saying here at all. In fact I’ve probably said it myself that AOS is a truly terrible game for PUGs and tournaments. But the thing to remember is that it’s not really designed for either, so why are we judging it based against those criteria? AOS isn’t a ‘casual, pick up game’. AOS isn’t anything new, but it harkens back to the old-school ways of playing wargames before things were ‘hard-coded’ with a top down ‘defined’ way of playing. It harkens back to a more co-operative approach to game-building, and draws on a lot of the same energy, and the same attitudes that you’d see amongst folks that successfully run pen and paper RPGs. Bear in mind, I have no issue with points whatsoever and am not advocating against them in any way– I actually see great value in a robust points-based system, and my favourite wargames are in fact points-based (warmachine/hordes and infinity fyi) and will happily support and shout the merits of a well-built points based game. The thing is, I have no issue with point-less games either – we often play flames of war in this manner for example, and I can’t recall any personal examples where eyeballing it in this way has led to such a poorly balanced game that we had to walk away from it – generally, it worked out and ended up as quite a tight game. I simply try to acknowledge the limitations and the consequences involved in both styles of play.

That said, I can’t fully agree with your ‘sieve’ analogy. The thing with analogies is that anything else can also be used as an analogy– you call AOS a sieve for carrying water, someone else will call aos an open-ended sandbox. ‘no system’ might be ‘nothing but holes’ to you (and you’re not wrong for feeling that way), but I just see it as open-ended, and someone else might see a game based on ‘structure’ or ‘with a system’ as being akin to a straight jacket that stifles creativity and open-ended games by forcing a specific way of playing that isthen seen as ‘right’ or ‘default’ and any deviation from that ‘norm’ becomes something to get angry and hostile to. They’re not wrong for feeling that way either and to be honest, there is some justification behind that argument. The fact that some amongst the community are stepping up to the plate and organising and building their games, and trying to be proactive and empowered about their hobby and how they play their games is something that I see as a good thing. But then again, I believe in self-responsibility and self-empowerment as a means to improving oneself.

auticus wrote:Wounds is a horrible balancing mechanism.

A goblin has 1 wound. A sword master has 1 wound. One is significantly better than the other, but by wounds they are equal.

then don't just use wounds?

I've made the point before but 'points' on their own are not necessarily a good balancing mechanism either - even in well crafted points based systems, like warmachine you get issues and hard counters and cases where two points of x isn't equal to two points of y. What makes games like warmachine balanced isn't just it's use of a robust points system though it helps enormously. As well as use of points, it uses two, or three-list formats, frequent errata, a huge reliance on 'soft' counters (essentially everything can kill everything else, so things'll probably work out) it uses sideboards (advanced duty roster), it uses multiple victory conditions (scenario and assassination) and it uses a very comprehensive (and arguably restrictive) set of scenarios that all essentially boil down to variations of 'grab the geometric shape in the centre of the board'. And please, before you go off on me, this is not me having a go at warmachine - for the record, warmachine is my favourite setting and Wargame.

No one thing balances games. It's as true for 'wounds' in Aos as 'points' in warmachine.

auticus wrote:
Wounds is a horrible balancing mechanism.

A goblin has 1 wound. A sword master has 1 wound. One is significantly better than the other, but by wounds they are equal.

But all the points do is measure a units killing power vs another and there are many more factors that are involved in a game. yeah a sword master is better at killing then a goblin in CC, but how long until the Swordmaster gets into combat? one turn? two? Paying those points for a model that spends the first two turns doing nothing is silly. I mean to offset the fact that a goblins suck they are cheap...and when you have a cheap model the best way to run them is by running a LOT of them. So what do you end up spending your points on in the end?

more wounds...always just wounds. So why not just cut out the middle man?

Wounds can be an all right balancing mechanism, and even models can. It sounds very wrong coming from the old WFB mindset, and is not going to work for competitive play. But AoS has a different mindset I find. It's more of a cooperative game than a competition. You're not really trying to prove your "generalship" above the other person. You don't really care if you win or lose. You're just trying to have a fun game that tells a story. This as has been said doesn't so easily lend itself to pick up games. But I think a lot of gripes people have with the lack of balance comes from the old mentality.

Most people who had been playing WFB for years and looked at the AoS ruleset reacted in shock and horror. Even I did. But if you can change your frame of reference (and particularly try the game out with a different perspective), you might find there's a lot about the design that works.

There are gamers of all types. GW would do well to make pickup games easier. People enjoy that aspect of the hobby and building lists. The difficulty is marrying everything they want to do under one official system.

coldgaming wrote:
Wounds can be an all right balancing mechanism, and even models can. It sounds very wrong coming from the old WFB mindset, and is not going to work for competitive play. But AoS has a different mindset I find. It's more of a cooperative game than a competition. You're not really trying to prove your "generalship" above the other person. You don't really care if you win or lose. You're just trying to have a fun game that tells a story. This as has been said doesn't so easily lend itself to pick up games. But I think a lot of gripes people have with the lack of balance comes from the old mentality.

Most people who had been playing WFB for years and looked at the AoS ruleset reacted in shock and horror. Even I did. But if you can change your frame of reference (and particularly try the game out with a different perspective), you might find there's a lot about the design that works.

There are gamers of all types. GW would do well to make pickup games easier. People enjoy that aspect of the hobby and building lists. The difficulty is marrying everything they want to do under one official system.

I've had a similar sentiment myself. For what AoS is and for what it is trying to do it is fine as is. If I want to get my Mass Battle fix I'll play 9th age (Which, in less then a year have managed to create an interesting game system and balanced rules, something GW has failed at for as long as I have played WHFB).

If you are playing a narrative game with the scenarios in AoS I have never felt that a game has been lopsided or not fair with just wounds.

If GW is doing an organized play like WMH that would be worth seeing. GW bringing back some older practices way faster than I expected, I'm hopeful now that before the summer they will bring back Outriders or some form of PrssGanger since from what I hear and see AoS active areas seem to usually have a local community "organizer" or whatever you call that person who organized game nights, test games, weekend events and championing which ever game. While not the case everywhere I think that's quite fair and would be helpful to at the very least try and get some new blood or gamers that still have their Fantasy armies to try AoS out.

Really, anything is possible. Yeah, it would have been great to have had this kind of support at launch but oh we'll.