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I'm still pretty new at AoS and my wife who wants to start playing has never touched it before. She also only speaks English as a second language and has requested that I teach her instead of getting her to read the BRB.

For ease of both of us to learn, and to try to knock out a quick game while the baby is asleep, I am trying to build an army list and battlefield for us to play on the kitchen table in the span of an hour or two.

To that end, my objective is to pare down the options to as few things to track as possible, so that we can focus on moving, shooting attacking and charging, and some basic spellcasting. I want to play the smallest points I can manage without detracting from the fun, as well as playing in a simple battleplan or game format. But I want to stay within the advanced rules where I can, so that she is not learning to play on bad information.

But even so, the Meeting Engagement rules still require a bit of a force org breakup and deployment rules that would seem to me to make it more complicated than I should attempt for a first-time player.

Any suggestions on how to proceed? Thanks in advance!

Don't play proper games.

If you're going right in at the very basics put aside the game for now.


Scale things down to the extremes. So just 1 leader and 1 block of troops. No mages, just a regular close combat leader and a block of troops each.



That cuts out a lot of the game, but it sounds like you want to teach more than game at this stage. By removing a lot of choice you are able to focus on the mechanics of the rules and how to play. Don't worry about balance or anything, just focus on using it as a tool to teach with. With the bare basics you can teach the basic phases of the turns; the stages as units go through stuff etc...
Plus because there's no real choices to make it simplifies so that what you do "play" is just pure rules.



Then you can add a mage and explain how mages work in the game; then you can add two units of troops and some terrain - perhaps you're at 500 points. Sure its still not likely balanced well, but again you're not going for balance and who wins; you're more going for the turn sequence, the order of play etc... The nitty gritty mechanics of the game.



Do that for a short while and you'll soon find it much easier to introduce a "proper" game at 1K points with Meeting Engagement rules and larger numbers of models. IT should be easier to introduce multiple terrain features etc.... because now all you're doing is expanding on the core basics that you've already established.






Also even if she doesn't want to read the manual make sure its there. Even pros reference the rules all the time and it will help a lot as you go to both teach the rules, but also show here where they are in the book. That means when she comes to play in time she can not only play from memory, but if she forgets something (we ALL forget) she can more easily reference the rules to check.
Same goes for the battletome for her army. Leave the FAQ and Errata out (have them incase a question comes up that the FAQ answers) but otherwise leave them out for the early games. Same for things like Endless Spells and Realm abilities etc...- again these are all things you can slip in as the basics are built upon.



IT might sound like a lot, but it really shouldn't take long for you to reach the 1K game level whereby the teaching should have steadily shifted from how to play the rules of the game to how to play the game.

Alright, that sounds pretty good. I can do that. Thank you very much for the suggestions. I will get that done.

No warlord, command abilities, artifacts or spells.

Incidentally, does AoS still publish "skirmish" rules? Or has all of their kill-team-esque stuff gone to their boxed games?

The skirmish ruleset is very dated. And bad. Warcry I feel is its replacement.

The Skirmish Rules were updated earlier this year in White Dwarf. The rules and points are much better then their previous iteration. If you look for the January and February White Dwarf issue you can get all the rules there

Alternatively you can use the magical power of the internet it try and get a copy too. January issue has the main rules while the February one has the Mini Campaign "Tomb of the Arcallurgist" in it. I believe the rules for it were then publish in the 2019 Generals Handbook as well and the new point system for it was updated on the Warscroll builder on the Warhammer Community Site.

 auticus wrote:
The skirmish ruleset is very dated. And bad. Warcry I feel is its replacement.

Understood. I appreciate it!

Yeah if you want to cut right down I'd say go for Warcry - which also has some neat quick start options such as terrain objectives and twists all chosen through cards so you can random them an get a game started fast. The game works with small warbands but the rules are different to the core game.

That said the rules are tight and its fast to play and nice to get someone new eased into the idea of rolling and playing with miniatures.

There's a new book out that has a lot more army points in it for other regular armies and I believe there's some cards coming which might be next year along with a horse of new beasties

I think 1 hero and 1 unit is too few, it just turns into a game of whomever charges first wins. Multiple small units would at least prevent some of that.

 John Prins wrote:
I think 1 hero and 1 unit is too few, it just turns into a game of whomever charges first wins. Multiple small units would at least prevent some of that.

That's why I said that it wasn't about playing the game.
1 leader and 1 troop is about teaching the game at the mechanics level. Teaching someone how to deploy, move, shoot, assault etc.... How to use a command ability. All with very few units on the table. It keeps the game super simple because they are learning how to play. Far better than trying to teach them all that and how to work mages and leaders; how to work close combat and ranged; how to work skirmish and heavy infantry etc.... Basically you cut the "competitive" game out and simply focus on a few models to push around in a casual setting.


Once someone has a grip on the basics its much easier to then introduce modifications and more complexity because its just repeating what they've learned but with more models and a greater scale and range of choices.

 Overread wrote:
Yeah if you want to cut right down I'd say go for Warcry - which also has some neat quick start options such as terrain objectives and twists all chosen through cards so you can random them an get a game started fast. The game works with small warbands but the rules are different to the core game.

That said the rules are tight and its fast to play and nice to get someone new eased into the idea of rolling and playing with miniatures.

There's a new book out that has a lot more army points in it for other regular armies and I believe there's some cards coming which might be next year along with a horse of new beasties

If the point is to learn AoS, warcry won't help though.

Yeah Warcry is a board game masquerading as a wargame. Its fine for what it is but if you want to learn AoS the updated Skirmish rules are perfectly fine and you can mix and match individual models. Even just going out and getting a Easy Build kit or a Underworlds warband will give you all you need to start playing.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
Yeah Warcry is a board game masquerading as a wargame.

How so? Are skirmish games not wargames?

We have been playing a lot of WH:Underworlds together but I wanted to break out into AoS.

Honestly, I *really* like Underworlds' system for movement and attack/defense but the pace of managing all of the cards feel like it's Magic The Gathering all over again for me.

I have printed off two 425 point lists for AoS. For Ironjawz and Sylvaneth. Which is basically one giant dude and a minimum unit of little dudes. It's enough for us to roll some dice on a 2"x2" and get her familiar with the process so we can slowly ratchet up the complexity.

I can check out the new Skirmish rules. Tell me - in it, are there still anything like unit formations or is it all about the individual models?

All about individual models, and there are so many rules loopholes/exploits it renders Skirmish more or less a joke-game. To actually play a skirmish format AoS one would track down the Hinterlands rules.

Get the bottom level AoS starter. Storm Strike I think it is. It has 3 battle plans that only use the models in the box. The first one is literally 3 miniatures. One Sequitor and 2 Grimghasts. From there it goes up to 5 or 6 and then 10 or 11. It even comes with a little paper half mat and baby's first cardboard scenery to use in the battleplans

I bought one off of eBay for $26 + free shipping and it has spawned a whole new obsession with tabletop games for myself and my partner. Because he had a super low investment, super easy to understand format for which to be introduced to pushing little plastic toys around the table and I had a new reason to build and paint miniatures and teach him about this game and share this hobby that I have loved my whole life with someone that I love.

It won't be "the coolest stuff" but I couldn't get him even passingly interested into buying into an army and getting into the hobby and *eventually* the game, before sitting down and rolling some dice, even for just 3 miniatures.

Hope that helps!

 bocatt wrote:
Get the bottom level AoS starter. Storm Strike I think it is. It has 3 battle plans that only use the models in the box. The first one is literally 3 miniatures. One Sequitor and 2 Grimghasts. From there it goes up to 5 or 6 and then 10 or 11. It even comes with a little paper half mat and baby's first cardboard scenery to use in the battleplans

I bought one off of eBay for $26 + free shipping and it has spawned a whole new obsession with tabletop games for myself and my partner. Because he had a super low investment, super easy to understand format for which to be introduced to pushing little plastic toys around the table and I had a new reason to build and paint miniatures and teach him about this game and share this hobby that I have loved my whole life with someone that I love.

It won't be "the coolest stuff" but I couldn't get him even passingly interested into buying into an army and getting into the hobby and *eventually* the game, before sitting down and rolling some dice, even for just 3 miniatures.

Hope that helps!

Hrrrrrrm

I may have to do that. We have been playing Underworlds but I'm trying to get us to branch out. She's got the core rules down, but she's having a real hard time reading and understanding the English cards, which makes her customizing her own deck difficult. Yes, that's the plan. We're going to start with the simplest box set and go from there.

Seriously, I hadn't even thought of that. I've got my head so wrapped around the five or six $50 hardback books that I needed for AoS I forgot they even had a super pared-down box that did all that work for me. Cool deal. Thanks a ton!