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so my buddy and I played a tiny AoS game the other night to test the rules. we agreed on a small army each, helped each other build the list and started playing when we were satisfied it would be fun. My ogres rolled through his army pretty hard; the bloodletters were cool (the rules for their sword are pretty gnarly) but holy crap, Ironguts are just a freighttrain of hurt.

so we decided to play a second game with all of the proper rules.

as we started deploying, he was putting out big monsters, i was countering with some heavy ogre units. we ended up with something like this

KHORNE
10 dogs
skull cannon
4 bloodcrushers
soul grinder
daemon prince of khorne
blood thirster with whip
blood thirster with great axe of khorne
fateweaver

OGRES
stone horn
tyrant
butcher
6 maneaters with pistols
4 leadbelchers
2 ironblasters
15 ironguts

I may have forgotten a unit but that's pretty close.
I kept thinking.. when is he going to put his bloodletters down?
once we had stopped deploying I decided to be friendly in the spirit of competition. i said "hey, i you should probably drop a big blob or two of bloodletters.. i mean.. you saw what the ironguts did last time. im going to crush you as it stands."
he said he was happy with how it was.

so we started the game. and he did a quick tally and decided that he was in a position to declare a sudden death victory. i foolishly made my gutstar so large that when he decided to opt out of bloodletters, i outnumbered him severely.
looking at the board, he nominated a terrain piece on the other side of the board from the gutstar. he was gambling on the fact that he could hold it til turn 4 or stall enough of my army that fateweaver could land behind it.

the fight went on, it was bloody. the stonehorn mashed things up pretty hard. the leadbelchers are super tough. the maneaters are very good. the ironblasters stunk. his skull cannon stunk. (i dont see cannons being all that great.. which makes me relieved. id much rather see big monsters tear it up. cannons seem decent but not overpowering. im happy with that.)

the meandering gutstar eventually caught up to a combat where they were able to fight both bloodthirsters at once. the stonehorn had hurt one of them. it was on its last legs and the stonehorn died but the gutstar just murdered the two thirsters.

but long story short, i lost.
by the top of turn 4, i knew it would take a miracle. i was too far out of position. this wasn't some objective i could contest. i had killed most of his army but fateweaver had created a couple of single spawn that continued to bog me down. another 1 or 2 turns and hed have been tabled but that wasnt the game. he outsmarted me from the first unit drop and it paid off.

we agreed afterwards that he probably would have had an easier time nominating an assassination and sending both thirsters at it but either way. good victory on his end.

and my perspective, it was a ton of fun! i havent had that much fun playing fantasy or 40k in a long time. i HATE having 6 stupid objectives and denying etc in 40k. it doesnt feel thematic OR realistic.
in this game i was picturing some portal opening on this ruin and his sole purpose was to get a model through it. all of the fighting was just a means to an end. the game was cinematic, competitive and vicious right to the end.

yes, the gutstar is super strong. yes, its weird not having points. but having knowledge of other armies is powerful. if i put it down, hell know how to counter it next time. or avoid it. or tie it up or get in its way.

being able to use your whole collection is great. being able to play a unit right out of the box is great. free rules are great.

the 3" bubble you cant move in is CRAZY. march blocking is alive and well, folks. sure i can charge but a single damn spawn creates a bubble 3" on all sides that i cant move past. so im going to waste a massive gutstar turn charging him just so i can get through? i love it. very tactical, opens up lots of ideas.

i am eager for scenarios. had we NOT had a sudden death condition it would have been rather dull but im sure missions will be out soon. and if not, screw it. we can create our own scenarios easily enough or adapt things from the starter box etc.

i love that every model on my shelf is usable now. that ghorgon? yep. my two giants? yep.
even core is good! normal archers will pepper something through attrition.
a big bloodthirster can tear things up. but if it charges into the thick of it it WILL eventually be brought down.

at no point through the game did i feel like things were unbalanced. (my opponent wasnt fond of the gutstar, but i know in the next game they wont be nearly as effective because he wont let them get anywhere near something that he isnt prepared to lose).


great game!

Was just looking at the ogre scrolls and realized how nasty a big irongut unit juiced up by the tyrant's command ability is. Possibly the most brutal thing I've seen in the game thus far, though I suppose taking a BIG unit of a number of monstrous infantry/cavalry units and synergizing them up against battleshock makes a variety of things pretty insane.

But the gutstar is a sort of 'stealth cheese' compared to all those greater daemons of his - and SD on top of it! Props to you for sticking it out and fighting on.

- Salvage

in all honesty, the daemons crumbled. fate weaver is gnarly with that spell. holy crap, he NEVER fails. its cool that he can just fly around bopping spells. i do wish he had another one or two.. the lack of variety is kinda bland. but in reality half of the spells in the old book did the same thing and just had different names anyways. his signature spawn spell is awesome.

the daemon prince was what undid me with it's wings. at the end, i wanted to use the gutstar to bubble wrap the terrain piece so he couldnt get within 3" of it but he kept dropping spawn in front of me and making me go the long way.

it doesnt help that the three times the gutstar ran, i rolled a 1 each time lol. their signature rule is pretty cool too but in reality, i dont think i had a single ogre flee the whole game. theyre so tough that even if you lose a model and have to test, your typically not going to be punished for it.

but yea, id pull off the tyrants main ability on the gutstar every time. even if one model takes 3 wounds, theyre still set for the whole game. and if they DID get smoked by a thirster and then rolled bad on battleshock it could be very, very painful.