WarHammer: Age of Sigmar Discussion Thread

[endur]

I've only played Warhammer Fantasy Battle a couple of times since the late 90s, and there is a new WarHammer store near me, so I thought I would try WarHammer: Age of Sigmar.

Things I noticed:

1) Quality and Range of the miniatures have improved significantly since the last time I collected warhammer miniatures.

2) The basic boxed set includes some great models (Chaos Warriors and Marauders that worship Khorne and an opposing force of Stormcast).

3) The rule book is much simpler and the unit's rules are much simpler. All the options that apply to a unit are listed on the war scroll. If they have a banner, the ability of the banner is listed with the unit.

4) The game plays very fast. We did a game with 4-6 units on a side in under an hour and a half.

5) No points system for purchasing troops or summoning reinforcements, so you either use a pre-written scenario, or a campaign system like the Chaos Path to Glory system, or create your own approach to deciding what armies to field.

6) Lots of great stuff and flavor for the followers of Khorne. Its not just a chaos lord who gets a special ability for following Khorne identical to the special ability every other follower of Khorne gets. Instead, each of the units and the many different heroes of Khorne have their own special abilities. The flavor for Khorne and Stormcast is great.


All in all, I really like the new system. Its motivating me to want to collect new armies.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

But my beautiful fantasy map is gone. 😕

[Grim Portent]

AoS has become pretty popular with my local gaming group. I've not gotten around to trying it yet though, even though I've got some chunks of armies I was working on during the End Times.

The minis are great and I've been using them for 40k conversions in my Chaos armies. The overall art trend reminds me of some 70s and 80s type space fantasy stuff. He-Man, Thundercats and the like, a mix of almost sci-fi and high fantasy, but with more of a lean towards the fantasy.

The lack of a points system actually kind of bugs me, since it makes it that much harder to work out if a skeleton is roughly equal to a chaos marauder or not.

Haven't looked into the setting itself yet, but from what little I've heard it doesn't sound bad.

[Thematthew]

Having looked over the rules, and a few of the armies, I must say I'm interested. I just need some time to let my bank account recover before falling into this one...

[Cheesegear]

Within the last month or so (since Christmas, I suppose), a bunch of guys in my meta have started playing Age of Sigmar, just, out of nowhere. We have the following rules;

Armies are based on number of Wounds in the army, not the number of models.
Sudden Death Mechanics don't exist.
Only 33% of your models may carry a ranged weapons with a range of more than 6".

Only 25% of your Wounds can be Heroes.
Only 25% of your Wounds can be War Machines.
Only 25% Monsters.
etc.

One of the things I will say, is that people who try and 'break' the game, just aren't welcome to play in my area. For better or worse.

[thethird]

I've given the game a couple of tries. And I personally enjoy the new range of miniatures. BUT the fact that there needs to be a strong interest on the part of the players to balance things irks me strongly. To me this feels like an open alpha, before any balancing attempts are done. That combined with the lack of new models for most armies (or new armies)* makes me take a wait and see stance.

*I enjoyed the old world, I knew the old world, there were many small pieces of the lore which I cherished. Trashing it is acceptable if it comes with a change. But as is I feel like I'm playing a new lore with the old minis. Seriously guys, the whole world was scrapped, everyone died. If I play with the same armies it's like nothing happened but everything happened at the same time.

[Erloas]

I missed this thread earlier.

You think a game of 4-6 units per side taking an hour and a half is fast? That doesn't sound any faster than the old game, as 4-6 units (especially if you count heroes as their own unit) is about 1000 points and those were pretty fast games. At least if you have lists ready to go and people know the rules, and waiting for people to write lists tended to take twice as long as playing the game itself.

As for the models, some are pretty good, while others seem to have jumped the shark. I personally hate the Stormcast, the demons are hit or miss, and almost everything else is just reboxing of old models (some a few years, some a decade+, so depends how long ago you played). The prices, especially on the new models, are as insane as ever for GW.
Not saying GW doesn't have good models, some are very good, but some get way too busy and way too over the top. There are a lot I like but they are no where near as good as their price suggests.

The fact that the game is only balanced if you go out of your way to balance it yourself is the real death knell for me.

As it is AoS has got me to give up on GW completely. There are so many other game systems out there that have some new flavor to them and some amazing models, and they don't come with the extreme pricing of GW that I'm not going to go back to GW.

I've always wanted to do a nice show Brettonian army, but since they have been essentially killed off I went searching for good alternatives (so I could know whether or not I needed to buy some now before they get OOP) and found I could get as good or better models from many other companies for maybe half the price.

[Eldan]

Within the last month or so (since Christmas, I suppose), a bunch of guys in my meta have started playing Age of Sigmar, just, out of nowhere. We have the following rules;

Armies are based on number of Wounds in the army, not the number of models.
Sudden Death Mechanics don't exist.
Only 33% of your models may carry a ranged weapons with a range of more than 6".

Only 25% of your Wounds can be Heroes.
Only 25% of your Wounds can be War Machines.
Only 25% Monsters.
etc.

One of the things I will say, is that people who try and 'break' the game, just aren't welcome to play in my area. For better or worse.

Everyone switching to number of wounds as a balancing factor is what made me quit AoS. That, and the fluff. I play skaven horde armies. If I get the same number of skaven as the chaos player gets warriors, what's the point? I wouldn't even want to play that if they had the same stats.

[Drasius]

Our store (a GW) has a semi-official living document points list thing for tournaments that I could possibly get a hold of today.

The basics are;
-Each unit is assigned a points value generally ranging from 0.5 (gnoblars) to 10 (Nagash)
-The unit is always the base number of models, though by paying the points value again, you can add another base number of model to the unit (ie, chaos warriors are 1 point for 5 dudes, you can pay 2 points to take 10 in a unit instead though)
-Most battle scrolls/warscrolls/formations have a point cost associated with them in addition to the cost of the units
-Armies are intended to be built to 15 points
-Games are intended to be played at 10 points, with the other 5 acting as a sort of sideboard so you have some choice at deployment
-Your 5 point sideboard also acts as your summoning pool. If you get all your stuff killed, that's it, you're out of guys. To this end, each sorceror gets the summon [x] spell where x is whatever unit you have in reserve
-No more than 3 hero keyword units
-No more than 3 wizard/priest keyword units

The couple of games I've seen played have actually all been really close, so it might be worth giving it a try.

Edit: ...Aaaaaaaaand tomb kings are almost gone.

Virtually their entire range is now on the last chance to buy list, so if you want tomb kings, you've got about a week to buy them (assuming that they're not getting a resculpt), including the .pdf download for their AoS rules.

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-AU/...at440002a-flat

(don't get freaked out by the prices, it's in aussie dollars)

[Blackhawk748]

4) The game plays very fast. We did a game with 4-6 units on a side in under an hour and a half.

Ya, thats not fast. AoS plays similarly to Kings of War (yes i know its not exact but the combat resolution is close enough) and 4-6 units is about 1000 points, depending on your army. A game of that level should take about 45-60 minutes. A 2k points game should take about a hour and a half.

So while it may be fast for Warhammer, thats just saying how slow Warhammer was.

On another note, forcing me to balance their game out was what made me completely disinterested. Its extremely difficult to figure that out by looking.

[endur]

You think a game of 4-6 units per side taking an hour and a half is fast? That doesn't sound any faster than the old game, as 4-6 units (especially if you count heroes as their own unit) is about 1000 points and those were pretty fast games. At least if you have lists ready to go and people know the rules, and waiting for people to write lists tended to take twice as long as playing the game itself.
.

That's an hour and a half with two people who haven't seen the rules or the lists before.

I'm going to be playing in a Path to Glory Chaos Campaign where everyone starts with 5 to 7 units (4 to 6 units plus a chaos lord trying to become a Daemon Prince). I'll see how fast those games go.

[endur]

This is my Path to Glory list (general selected, units randomly rolled using Path to Glory tables):

Mighty Lord of Khorne
Exalted Death Bringer
Skull Grinder
Slaughter Priest
10 Blood Warriors (incl. champion, banner)
20 Blood Reavers (incl. champion, banner, musician)

I'm going to be playing in a Path to Glory Chaos Campaign where everyone starts with 5 to 7 units (4 to 6 units plus a chaos lord trying to become a Daemon Prince).

[Killer Angel]

I approve this thread.
Actually in my gaming group we play AoS 90% of fantasy battles.
All in all it's not bad, it's certainly quicker than 8th, and, under a certain pov, it requires more thoughs than WHFB.
We play mostly with Azyr comp system, that, even if far from perfect, resolves some of the issues of balanced armies (using points cost instead of wounds )

[endur]

The Path to Glory system is pretty good.

Our local Warhammer Store in Huntsville, AL in the USA is organizing a Path to Glory Campaign. The campaign is starting on Feb 21st. At least 8 or 9 people had built chaos warbands last time I looked.

https://www.facebook.com/events/213359622345420/

We rolled armies randomly using the tables in the Path to Glory book, so the vast majority of the troops that will be used will be brand new armies. Between painting the figures and playing games, the campaign should last several months. As I mentioned above, I rolled a Khorne army and am busy assembling and painting minis.

With regards to the Path to Glory book itself, there are actually two versions. A lower priced version that just has the Path to Glory rules, and a bundled version that also includes 5 painting guides (chaos warriors for the four greater powers and 1 terrain painting guide), 4 war plans, and 2 times of war for the blasted wastes.

I like the Path to Glory rules. I also like the war plans and the time of war for the blasted wastes (2 times of war). The painting guides are ok, but not as useful since I have other painting guides.

The Battle Plans: Lair of the Beast, the Monolith, and Rewards of Chaos are great. These three are a must for any Path to Glory campaign.

Trial of Champions is a four player battle, and also very iconic for a battle between chaos champions to see who can be the sole survivor. You could also easily modify this one for any number of players.

All four battle plans could be modified to be used for non-chaos players.

The times of war Blasted Wastes gives you rules for terrain heavily influenced by the four Chaos Gods. If you are a follower of Nurgle and fighting on Nurgle's terrain, it will increase your odds of victory. So I recommend dice rolling or another method to see who gets the favored terrain (i.e. roll dice and winner picks where the battle takes place, etc.). The times of war also includes triumph rules for the specific chaos gods (if you win in Nurgle's house, you might get a unit of lesser daemons in your next battle, etc.).

So I highly recommend the Path to Glory and associated battle plans and times of war.

I used to own the original chaos rules from the 1980's (Realm of Chaos, Slaves to Darkness). Those rules were a lot more random: lots more tentacles and bad things happened to your chaos champion and it was very rare that a champion could become a daemon prince and almost guaranteed you would become a chaos spawn. In the new rules, it is much more likely you will become a daemon prince and less likely that you will become a chaos spawn.

[GolemsVoice]

As somebody who hasn't played Fantasy for years, could anybody fill me in on just what exactly happened? The last thing I knew was Warhammer with all the factions I knew and loved, and suddenly there's Stormcast Eternals and Realmgates and stuff. What happened?

[The Glyphstone]

From what I remember, which is fragmentary, the End Times mega-arc basically involved the Warhammer apocalypse, shattering its single world/reality into an infinite number of 'bubble' realities that drift around in the infinite nothingness, with different inhabitants and occasionally different rules/physics. When they bump into each other, the inhabitants can do battle as their worlds temporarily merge.

Or something.

[Blackhawk748]

From what I remember, which is fragmentary, the End Times mega-arc basically involved the Warhammer apocalypse, shattering its single world/reality into an infinite number of 'bubble' realities that drift around in the infinite nothingness, with different inhabitants and occasionally different rules/physics. When they bump into each other, the inhabitants can do battle as their worlds temporarily merge.

Or something.

Ya this is pretty much it. Chaos won and the universe exploded. So now every faction (or near enough) has its own small "bubble" which is a fragment of the Old World (i think) and occasionally they try to kill each other, except they cant because its near impossible to cause lasting changes.

[Eldan]

No, that was a rumour that went around, it's not actually that.

It started with Nagash waking up. At that point, everyone was into it. Sounded like a good campaign arc. Nagash unites the undead and starts doing bad stuff (tm). As expected. Then, things went weird. Basically, every apocalypse ever alluded to happened at once. Malekith becomes the new Phoenix King, as it turns out a true PHoenix King is supposed to burn by the flames. Nagash eats a bunch of gods. Archaon launches his invasion. The skaven crash the moon to the Earth and kill all Liazrdmen. Bretonnia is wiped out in a paragraph without even a blaze of glory. Every named character in the history of the game, basically, dies. Some hilariously, painfully, easily. Like, Felix (from Gotrek and Felix) suffocates. In the end, everyone dies except for Archaon and a returned Sigmar and the world ends.

If you want a longer version, https://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_End_Times 1d4chan's summary isn't bad. You should find your favourite character somewhere in there.

Then, they create a new world It's eight realms, one for reach wind of chaos, connected by star gates. Sigmar ruled them all with his friends (among them Gork and Mork, the dwarf gods, a few elven gods, Malekith and freaking Nagash.) Everything is fine and dandy for a while, then shock and surprise, Nagash betrays them. Then, chaos comes back and Sigmar goes to his realm of Azyr (the realm of heaven), to brood for a while. Chaos rules the other seven worlds. Then, an unspecified time later, Sigmar makes a comeback, which is where the game is set.

[Grim Portent]

Actually no, that stuff was just rumours and turned out to be wrong. Except sort of in the Lizardmen's case.

What wound up happening was that the planet was scoured down to it's metal core, which drifted through the void with Sigmar's soul clinging to it.

It was discovered by Dracothian, a mighty god from another world and placed in the heavens of that world. In thanks Sigmar gave him a necklace made of the metal from the old world's core.

The new world was formed of nine realms that each embodied one of the winds of magic. Various gods and a smattering of mortal champions from the old world had survived the apocalypse and managed to flee there, somehow, maybe through the warp. Gork and Mork, some of the elf gods, Nagash and a few others.

The Lizardmen made their way there in the space craft of the Old Ones and turned them into a series of floating islands which they used as their new kingdom in the skies above one of the realms.

All the disparate races of the realms fought for territory and to settle old grudges, until Chaos found the world. They destroyed the Lizardmen's new lands, killing all but the Slann, and swept through the realms conquering, corrupting and destroying all that they could. Sigmar sealed the realm of Azyr to prevent Chaos gaining a foothold there.

Sigmar spent the next [ambiguous time period] gathering mortal champions from the other realms and remaking them into Stormcast Eternals, warriors clad in the magical metal formed the core of the old world. The current time period of the setting is based around him unleashing them to strike back against Chaos and try to help the embattled realms.

EDIT: Ninja'd.

[Erloas]

As somebody who hasn't played Fantasy for years, could anybody fill me in on just what exactly happened? The last thing I knew was Warhammer with all the factions I knew and loved, and suddenly there's Stormcast Eternals and Realmgates and stuff. What happened?

If you want a more actual game version as well (since they covered the fluff as good as the writers did).

Although they did forget to mention that everything had a name change, in most cases to some randomly combined letters that mimic the names of the races in some other settings, so that GW can copyright the names. Except one, I forget which, but they went and named it the name of the race in some other language, albeit one much less common than English, so I think they'll find it hard to enforce that copyright.

You know that mass battle fantasy game, with ranks of models, and a system where the core of an army was made up of common troops and the rare parts of the army were less common? That is all gone, you now have a skirmish based game where you can take anything you want. There really is no balance at all to the system, unless you find one of the *many* comp systems various groups have written. (I believe many of the comp systems have put a significant amount more work into the system than GW did.)
The only official tournament/event set by GW that I saw had the rules of take 50 models and play. That was it, they could be from any army. You could have taken 40 bloodthristers, 5 giants, and then 5 named characters and could have faced anything from 50 goblins to a "normal" looking "dwarf" list.

In other words, other than a few token names and the fact that they are still GW models, there is really nothing at all similar between Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar. The mechanics are all different, a goblin has the same chance of hitting and wounding a greater demon of nurgle as they do a zombie, and a bloodthrister will hit and wound a giant and a human at the exact same rate. It isn't a revision of Warhammer Fantasy, it is a complete and total change.

I personally hate the Stormcast Eternal, they are basically just Space Marines in fantasy with even less diversity and character.

Mantic's Kings of War and the community's 9th Age are picking up where GW killed fantasy.

[Tyndmyr]

So...does anyone actually play this? Because I have sold a whopping zero of them, ever, and fantasy basically just committed seppuku when this happened. Curious if this is widespread, or just my area, but I'm looking at that rack debating giving it more of a shot, or just dumping all of it now and saying good riddance.

[Erloas]

So...does anyone actually play this? Because I have sold a whopping zero of them, ever, and fantasy basically just committed seppuku when this happened. Curious if this is widespread, or just my area, but I'm looking at that rack debating giving it more of a shot, or just dumping all of it now and saying good riddance.

From what I've heard/read it seems to have spots of favorable response from players with huge wastelands of hate everywhere else. There is a very good chance that if you don't have a community of players in your area now then you probably never will. As for dumping it, I've heard a number of people wanting to finish off or pick up specific fantasy armies before they get discontinued by GW, but the new stuff, especially the starter box, I think most can be found at pretty good discounts online from people trying to unload what they have.

[endur]

So...does anyone actually play this? Because I have sold a whopping zero of them, ever, and fantasy basically just committed seppuku when this happened. Curious if this is widespread, or just my area, but I'm looking at that rack debating giving it more of a shot, or just dumping all of it now and saying good riddance.

Sure, people play Age of Sigmar.

However, it is a NEW game, so it will take time to grow.

When WHFB went from 2nd edition to 3rd edition (and on to 8th edition), you pretty much had a captive audience which stayed along from the ride. This is more like going from D&D 3.5/Pathfinder to D&D 5e, its a different game, and worse, the name has changed, its not Warhammer Fantasy Battle, its now Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

My personal opinion is that this game is back to basics, and that is a good thing. WHFB had become too complex over the years, and a simplified version is a good thing.

[LCP]

My personal opinion is that this game is back to basics, and that is a good thing. WHFB had become too complex over the years, and a simplified version is a good thing.

Maybe, but 100% of the babies got thrown out with that bathwater. AoS' rules are not a game; they are a sketch of a game scribbled on the back of a napkin.

[Blackhawk748]

Maybe, but 100% of the babies got thrown out with that bathwater. AoS' rules are not a game; they are a sketch of a game scribbled on the back of a napkin.

This is the largest opinion. I look at it and see a lousy Alpha test of Kings of War.

[Malistrae]

My personal problem with AoS is not related to its (lackluster) ruleset.

It's the fact that they murdered Warhammer Fantasy to make it. Sure, some major lore characters are the same. And the factions are roughly similar to the original ones, but the setting is gone. Over the decades, they had built up an impressive amount of story and lore about the various places, nations and histories of the WF world. And they just threw it all out. And replaced it with this german mythology rip-off setting. The original WF setting felt alive, vivid, with good-and-evil mixing around and danger lurking everywhere. This clearcut separation of realms in AoS is very different, and showcases a much simpler narrative.

And don't get me started about Slaanesh. Sure, I love the Skaven. I was happy about the Horned Rat finally getting somewhere. But they canned one of the cornerstones of Warhammer by removing the Dark Prince. Sure, their forces still exist and are playable. But it's a massive humiliation and a vast undermining of the god's power and mystique, that some elves managed to capture them. Slaanesh was always my second favorite after Tzeentch, and the ridiculuos way GW treated the Lord of Excess is just so utterly annoying. And I don't even get the reasoning behind it. Sure, at first glance, removing Slaanesh was obviously to prevent Moral Guardian Parents complaining about Lil' Timmy getting exposed to something. But Slaaneshi forces are still extant and playable! So, Lil' Timmy will still be exposed to the glory of the Dark Prince. It just doesn't make sense.

[Grim Portent]

And don't get me started about Slaanesh. Sure, I love the Skaven. I was happy about the Horned Rat finally getting somewhere. But they canned one of the cornerstones of Warhammer by removing the Dark Prince. Sure, their forces still exist and are playable. But it's a massive humiliation and a vast undermining of the god's power and mystique, that some elves managed to capture them. Slaanesh was always my second favorite after Tzeentch, and the ridiculuos way GW treated the Lord of Excess is just so utterly annoying. And I don't even get the reasoning behind it. Sure, at first glance, removing Slaanesh was obviously to prevent Moral Guardian Parents complaining about Lil' Timmy getting exposed to something. But Slaaneshi forces are still extant and playable! So, Lil' Timmy will still be exposed to the glory of the Dark Prince. It just doesn't make sense.

My theory on that is they wanted to make the Horned Rat more important while maintaining the general rule of four with the big gods of Chaos (they did kill all the others in the End Times or had gradually retconned them away over the years, four gods works well in 40k, so why not try it elsewhere?) so one of the others needed to get sidelined, for whatever reason they picked Slaanesh to be removed as a major force but still kept him around because he has miniatures.

I assume they picked Slaanesh because his minis don't sell well compared to the others.

[Killer Angel]

Maybe, but 100% of the babies got thrown out with that bathwater.

This is true. I won't forgive 'em for this, NEVER.

AoS' rules are not a game; they are a sketch of a game scribbled on the back of a napkin.

This, I don't agree with. While true at a first glance, the game has far more depth than this.
For some things, it even requires more skills than FHFB. There's no more that single spell that win the game by itself alone. You have no more your single buffed hero that kills by himself whole infantry units: if you do it in AoS, the hero is dead. The game is all about synergies within units and staking bonuses: you must develope them, picking the right ones. Heroes are almost only the support to troops, and are far more important the abilities they can bring on the table.

AoS is a totally different game than FHFB, and it has its own merits.... the wrong thing was to erase WHFB.

[Erloas]

To be fair, there was nothing inherient in the rules that made characters or spells super powerful, that was entirely poor balance in the writing of the books. In the various editions spells went from very powerful to mediocre and back to very powerful. And actually much the same with characters.

The problem with fantasy was never that there were large blocks of infantry and powerful individuals, it was finding the balance between them and that is something GW failed to get right time and again.
I think the main problem is that GW has no sense at all of subtlety, this can be seen from their models to their rules. Rather than dialing something back a bit they gut it, and then it is too weak so they make it super powerful again. The funny thing is that GW can never see this but the community does within days (or sometimes hours) of seeing the rules.
I think the only advantage AoS has in that regard is that GW has said (at least in design) up front that they are making no attempt at keeping things balanced. So it is up to the community to do the hard work of balancing things (writing a basic set of rules is *easy*, writing everything so it is balanced is the hard part), so if GW releases a very lack-luster model the community can find the right balance point for it and if they write some overpowered monstrosity the community will find the way to balance it too.

Especially after reading many of the "behind the scenes" sorts of things about GW, the fact that sales and marketing make all of the decisions and game design and balance is at least 3rd down on the priority list, has made me give up on GW completely. The show bretonnian style army I was thinking about making will go to several other companies that make models at least as good as GW and about half the price. And on the gaming side I'm going with a company where the game is still first.

[LeSwordfish]

I played a game of AoS the other day and didn't despise the rules. I just wish GW hadn't quite so wholeheartedly thrown away the old warhammer. AoS would make for a great specialist/sideline game for kids.