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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    SamuraiGuy

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    Post Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    So I saw there wasn't an AoS thread. I know a lot of WHFB players are... let's say unhappy with AoS, but GW seems to have put a lot of effort into making it a bit more of a reasonable game now with the General's Handbook. Frontline Gaming has also been talking about how much they enjoy it and are starting a new podcast to coincide with the Handbook release and the leagues that are popping up. I was feeling pretty interested in starting a Seraphon army, and I realized there was nowhere on the board to discuss it.

    Has anyone been playing? How are you feeling about the Points? What is your meta like?

    General Discussion Thread!

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    Lizardfolk

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    I really don't care how well balanced the points are, and the army composition. The 4 page of base rules that exist are a bad joke, a affront to any sort of game design. It "might" get better after several editions, but that is a long way away.

    Biggest issues with the base rules are:
    • Who goes first in a given turn depends on the dice, so instead of IGOUGO, a player can act twice in a row, while the others dudes can't do anything.
    • Archers shooting from close combat.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Tehnar View Post
    I really don't care how well balanced the points are, and the army composition. The 4 page of base rules that exist are a bad joke, a affront to any sort of game design. It "might" get better after several editions, but that is a long way away.

    Biggest issues with the base rules are:
    • Who goes first in a given turn depends on the dice, so instead of IGOUGO, a player can act twice in a row, while the others dudes can't do anything.
    • Archers shooting from close combat.
    I wonder how the former is addressed at current tournaments, or if it's just considered an aspect of the game.

    I dunno, I've only given the rules a run through and haven't played any games yet. I think the turn order is sort of interesting - it forces you to play a little more cautiously in the event that your opponent gets a double turn, and changes tactics a bit.

    Of course, you can always just agree with your opponent to always use the same order as the first round, but then it really pushes small armies or armies with heavy reserves/summoning.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    I dunno, I've only given the rules a run through and haven't played any games yet. I think the turn order is sort of interesting - it forces you to play a little more cautiously in the event that your opponent gets a double turn, and changes tactics a bit.

    Of course, you can always just agree with your opponent to always use the same order as the first round, but then it really pushes small armies or armies with heavy reserves/summoning.
    Extra randomness encouraging caution/bet-hedging isn't exactly deep tactics though. And considering how stripped-down AoS's core rules are, in a lot of cases you will have very little input in how badly a double turn allows your opponent to stomp you. If a ranged unit can see you and you are in range, it can do its full damage output to you regardless of distance, cover, being in combat, or any other such factors that might introduce some tactics; the only thing on your side that matters is the saving throw of the unit on the receiving end. Combat is largely the same; your opponent does at least have to find a route to walk up to you before they can clobber you, but the movement rules are so quick and simple that it's trivial to go from the starting line to being in melee in two turns (or even one).

    Even with GW now providing points values, if you want to play AoS as a competitive game you have to houserule away several of the core rules - e.g. "measure from the model", which if played as written means that any model that isn't a perfect sphere ends up doing the MC Hammer slide around the battlefield, and that some models on flying bases can't attack or be attacked by most other models in the game (in fact even many models on foot will require you to overlap their bases to get within weapon reach of each other). It's a fundamentally half-arsed and broken rule set, and that's before you even mention the infamous joke rules that require you to do things like compare beards.

    If you're coming from 40K and looking for something fresh and interesting I can see the appeal but I would definitely recommend looking into any of the other games on the market (e.g. Malifaux, Warmahordes etc.) before touching the still-burning trainwreck of Age of Sigmar.
    Last edited by LCP; 2016-07-07 at 02:47 PM.
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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Our meta immediately made the following changes;

    No Triumphs. It's actually fairly easy to not even be able to make it to a points limit. Models are bought in blocks, and not individually, so that makes it hard to get exact points values, and all wargear is free, which means you can't 'hedge' your points with extra Melta Bombs and stuff. We found that we were routinely 40 or 60, sometimes 80 Points under what we'd agreed on, with no way to make up the points (we could, if we had different models). But, it soon turned into an arms race on how we could not spend 40 or 60, sometimes 80 Points, specifically in order to get the bonus. Basically, we told people to stop what they were doing, because no Triumphs.

    No Mysterious Terrain. It's dumb.

    No Initiative. It's dumb. If you have an explosive army, and you have the second and following third turns in a row...Boom city. Whoever goes first, goes first. "I go, you go."

    Stuff I learned like, immediately...

    You can shoot into combat, and you can shoot while in combat, and not even at the unit you're in combat with. With a good unit that rolls To Wound with a Rend or two, this is immensely strong. Especially 'cause you can also shoot at the unit you're in combat with, essentially giving you two phases of attacks.

    The Order Battle Trait is fairly bad compared to the others. Dwarfs (Dispossessed, not Fyreslayers) rarely take Battleshock tests, having a whole bunch of items that mitigate it, and Seraphon are all Bravery 10 (even the Skinks!), which means Battleshock against Seraphon basically never even happens. Making that particular Trait fairly pointless...At least for Dwarfs and Seraphon. I'm sure there's one or two Order lists that actually care about Battleshock. But not the ones I played with/saw.

    Ogres are stupid strong. Fortunately, in a few of the missions, you need five or more models on the Objective to score, and Ogres come in minimum units of three. lol. It was fun watching the Ogre player realise that he couldn't Score without holding back two units per Objective...Then he decided to table me...Which he then proceeded to do. Ogres are stupid strong... Although it's equally possible that I just had a bad army, and his was amazing.

    Games automatically end on Turn 5. No more endless games! Yay!
    Games have Objectives now. No more "Let's just kill each other." Yay!
    Each army can only cast each spell, once. Instead of once per Wizard. Yay!
    You have to pay for Summoned units. No more sitting in the back corner endlessly Summoning units. Yay! (I wonder if 40K will follow suit?)

    Units in Formations still count towards your Force Org limit. If I take three Cannons as part of my Dispossessed Artillery Battery, that means I've still taken three Artillery choices, and is illegal to do under 1000 Points (which is a good thing). But, yeah. Coming from 40K, that was...Different. You can't just have a Formation if it doesn't abide by the slots set out by the points. I know the Dark Elf Formation gives you 1<6 Dragons, take doesn't mean you can just take 6 Dragons, because that's 6 Behemoths and 6 Leaders straight off the bat. Anyway, it was a... Change.


    Sigmar isn't perfect. No Mysterious Terrain and No Triumphs feel like it should be a normal thing. But, I have a feeling 'No Initiative' might be a meta-centric thing, and could be very divisive in the player base. Whatever. The biggest...Accolade (?) I can give it, is that I no longer reject the game out of hand. If I see that a meta/tournament is using Initiative, I know how I could build around my opponent - or myself - having two turns in a row at least once in a game. If a meta/tournament doesn't use Initiative, I can build a list knowing that neither my opponent - nor myself - will ever get two turns in a row.
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  6. - Top - End - #6
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    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    I'm flipping through the General's Handbook right now (or what I have of it) and I'm fairly certain I'll be starting either Seraphon or Stormcast Eternals soon.

    Honestly, I like the simplified rules. It's stark contrast to the bloat of 40k and I really like the models. Maybe I'm a sucker for GW plastic, but that's a huge part of the hobby for me and I like their models the most out of any minis game I look at. Probably won't suddenly turn into an AoS tourney player, but some other people around me have expressed interest so maybe getting a small league together or narrative campaign going would be cool.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Requizen View Post
    I'm flipping through the General's Handbook right now (or what I have of it) and I'm fairly certain I'll be starting either Seraphon or Stormcast Eternals soon.
    I can't speak for the Eternals, but Seraphon are pretty good.

    As I mentioned, everything they own has Bravery 10, so your opponent has to kill five models per turn before you even remotely give a crap about Battleshock. From the games I played, Battleshock was the biggest killer. At the end of turn, lose two dudes, lose one dude, lose three dudes. I realised what was happening real fast. In my second game over the weekend, I reworked my list to basically never take Battleshock, giving myself re-rolls, only losing half models, not taking them at all, etc. and Dispossessed can do that, they have certain characters and items to mitigate Battleshock.

    Meanwhile, the Seraphon player at the next table, was pretending to play Space Marines and being like "What even is Battleshock?" and playing hilarious games of attrition with his opponent. Like I said, the lizards angels have to lose five models before they even need to roll. On their return, they kill three models, and then their opponents lose another two to Battleshock.

    Also; Chameleon Skinks can go die in a fire.

    Going forwards, I think one of the major shapers of the meta is how each army reacts to Battleshock. Personally, when I stopped taking Battleshock tests, I stopped losing. I was playing Dispossessed. Kind of like how two of the best rules in 40K are Fearless and ATSKNF.

    It's stark contrast to the bloat of 40k and I really like the models.
    The Allies system in AoS is insane. Take anything you want, as long as it's from the same Faction (Order, Chaos, Death, Destruction). I don't recall if there were any negatives to bringing models from different Factions, save that you simply would lose bonuses. The potential for bloat is crazy. Fortunately, since 'everyone' hates AoS, there aren't going to be a whole lot of net-lists running around, which means everyone will have to figure it out for themselves.
    (Although I do recall the infamous Skaven/Tzeentch combo where if you roll a '13' on 2D6, you win...I think it was supposed to be one of those 'joke rules' for Skaven [i.e; Rolling a 13 on 2D6 is impossible. Do you get the joke?]. But then somebody went and actually made it happen, using Tzeentch allies.)

    I'm considering bringing in a number of Aelf or Freeguild wizards to boost my Dispossessed. I wouldn't mind a Freeguild Griffon.

    EDIT:
    Yeah, I'm convinced. The Order Battle Trait is kind of amazing (no Battleshock), it's just that anecdotally, the two Order guys (myself and Seraphon) basically already had their Trait built in.
    Last edited by Cheesegear; 2016-07-07 at 10:01 PM.
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  8. - Top - End - #8
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    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    I can't speak for the Eternals, but Seraphon are pretty good.

    As I mentioned, everything they own has Bravery 10, so your opponent has to kill five models per turn before you even remotely give a crap about Battleshock. From the games I played, Battleshock was the biggest killer. At the end of turn, lose two dudes, lose one dude, lose three dudes. I realised what was happening real fast. In my second game over the weekend, I reworked my list to basically never take Battleshock, giving myself re-rolls, only losing half models, not taking them at all, etc. and Dispossessed can do that, they have certain characters and items to mitigate Battleshock.

    Meanwhile, the Seraphon player at the next table, was pretending to play Space Marines and being like "What even is Battleshock?" and playing hilarious games of attrition with his opponent. Like I said, the lizards angels have to lose five models before they even need to roll. On their return, they kill three models, and then their opponents lose another two to Battleshock.

    Also; Chameleon Skinks can go die in a fire.

    Going forwards, I think one of the major shapers of the meta is how each army reacts to Battleshock. Personally, when I stopped taking Battleshock tests, I stopped losing. I was playing Dispossessed. Kind of like how two of the best rules in 40K are Fearless and ATSKNF.
    Funny, I was thinking about how Chameleon Skinks were a really solid little unit and already figuring out how to get them :P
    Bravery 10 army feels like an obvious transition from my "literally everything is LD10 or Fearless" Necrons. And giant Dinosaurs are cool.

    I'm really going to play around with the points some over the next week or so. I don't want to end up with another 200 models and only use a fraction of them (hence why I sold my 40k Daemons), so I want to make sure I get a list down.
    The Allies system in AoS is insane. Take anything you want, as long as it's from the same Faction (Order, Chaos, Death, Destruction). I don't recall if there were any negatives to bringing models from different Factions, save that you simply would lose bonuses. The potential for bloat is crazy. Fortunately, since 'everyone' hates AoS, there aren't going to be a whole lot of net-lists running around, which means everyone will have to figure it out for themselves.
    (Although I do recall the infamous Skaven/Tzeentch combo where if you roll a '13' on 2D6, you win...I think it was supposed to be one of those 'joke rules' for Skaven [i.e; Rolling a 13 on 2D6 is impossible. Do you get the joke?]. But then somebody went and actually made it happen, using Tzeentch allies.)

    I'm considering bringing in a number of Aelf or Freeguild wizards to boost my Dispossessed. I wouldn't mind a Freeguild Griffon.
    I really meant bloat in the amount of rules. Hitting, wounding, casting - it's all very straightforward and I like that. No charts to memorize, no 50 pages of USRs to memorize, if you need to know someone's rules you just download the free rules and read them.

    I would call the combo/ally potential more closer to "depth" than bloat, even though it's not "deep" in the way more complex games are. It just means that there are a lot more options and you can easily fill out your shortcomings with a massive array of options. I like it quite a bit.

  9. - Top - End - #9
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    OldWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    The Allies system in AoS is insane. Take anything you want, as long as it's from the same Faction (Order, Chaos, Death, Destruction). I don't recall if there were any negatives to bringing models from different Factions, save that you simply would lose bonuses. The potential for bloat is crazy. Fortunately, since 'everyone' hates AoS, there aren't going to be a whole lot of net-lists running around, which means everyone will have to figure it out for themselves.
    (Although I do recall the infamous Skaven/Tzeentch combo where if you roll a '13' on 2D6, you win...I think it was supposed to be one of those 'joke rules' for Skaven [i.e; Rolling a 13 on 2D6 is impossible. Do you get the joke?]. But then somebody went and actually made it happen, using Tzeentch allies.)
    Fateweaver (why yes, he IS amazing in everything, why do you ask?) and the Screaming Bell. Roll 2 dice (note; not 2d6), look at the table of results from 2 - 13. Roll of a 13 means you win, match ends right there. Fateweavers special ability is to choose the value for a dice once per turn (note; not chose between 1 - 6). So you go, roll your dice, fateweaver picks a result of 7-12 for one of the dice (RAW legal, but clearly not RAI) and you won immediately. Or your opponent goes and because you've held them on the back edge of your board most thing were out of range and then you had your turn and won.

    Since it was only 2 models, it also meant they got sudden death against you every single time too. Good luck ever getting a game again though.

    Fun.

    IIRC, the new ally system just means you can't take certain things as troops if you take allies. Having said that, the 1 thing I liked from AoS 1.0 was the degrading monstrous creature profiles, I dearly hope 40k adopts this to weaken 40k MC's and GMC's for 8th. The limitations on leaders/behemoths and elites or whatever they're called is the 1 thing I like so far from AoS 2.0, but then I'd be happy if 40k went back to something like 3rd where there were actual restrictions on bring supposedly super rare stuff (ie. 0-1 Obliterators etc)

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Drasius View Post
    Fateweaver (why yes, he IS amazing in everything, why do you ask?) and the Screaming Bell. Roll 2 dice (note; not 2d6), look at the table of results from 2 - 13. Roll of a 13 means you win, match ends right there. Fateweavers special ability is to choose the value for a dice once per turn (note; not chose between 1 - 6). So you go, roll your dice, fateweaver picks a result of 7-12 for one of the dice (RAW legal, but clearly not RAI) and you won immediately. Or your opponent goes and because you've held them on the back edge of your board most thing were out of range and then you had your turn and won.
    I still don't know why people keep completely misquote the fateweaver rules and trying to cheat. It says you can change the results of a single dice roll tot he results of your choosing. There are only 6 results on each die, and therefore you can only choose 1-6 for each die, i.e.2-12 for the whole dice roll. The age of sigmar rules says the game uses six sided dice. You clearly can never get a result of 13, it was a joke!

    I don't know where this value garbage comes from.

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    OldWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Coyote81 View Post
    I still don't know why people keep completely misquote the fateweaver rules and trying to cheat. It says you can change the results of a single dice roll tot he results of your choosing. There are only 6 results on each die, and therefore you can only choose 1-6 for each die, i.e.2-12 for the whole dice roll. The age of sigmar rules says the game uses six sided dice. You clearly can never get a result of 13, it was a joke!

    I don't know where this value garbage comes from.
    RAW. I can change the result of 1 dice to a result of my choosing. No limitations on what number I choose, no restrictions on it being 1-6.

    Obviously any sane person wouldn't play with you ever again, and no TO would allow it in a tourney, but RAW, it's legit. Stupid and obviously not working as intended, but legit. Think of it as pun-pun for AoS, it's a thought excersise, not something to actually be used.

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    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Well obviously with a smaller, less robust ruleset there will be RAW things, but The Rules specifically state "Warhammer: Age of Sigmar uses six-sided dice (sometimes abbreviated to D6).", so I would argue that even RAW supports that not being the case.

    Anyone fooled around with points yet? It looks like at the very least the big scary things are appropriately costed (unlike a certain 40k model we all know and hate), though time will tell which units are standouts in the point-to-power system.



    So Seraphon drew me in with big dinosaurs but now I'm also sorta interested in the Stormcast Eternals, specifically trying to make a force that uses a lot of ranged options with the Knight-Venator, Javelin Prosecutors, and/or Judicators, obviously supported with some sort of strong frontline (maybe some Dracoth riders or buffed Liberators). I really want to run a small, elite army, and I think it could work really well in AoS (not so much now in 40k with the state of the game).

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Requizen View Post
    Anyone fooled around with points yet?
    Of course. Everything seems fairly fine. Although, like you said, it'll take a while before the points-to-power is looked at in any sort of depth - and you know I will be! Primarily because the book isn't even out yet. I feel like paying 180 Points for a Cannon is a bit much. But, a significant chunk of that feeling is because I'm not yet playing at a high enough points level where I can do anything I want. I feel that once my meta has a handle on things, we'll be playing 1500 or 2000 Points. By the time the book comes out in two weeks, I'll have a much stronger feel for the game and how things work, and I'll be hitting the ground running - I hope.

    Magic heavy armies have been hit severely with the nerf bat. But, I wouldn't know, since I play Dwarfs and don't go in for fancy magic... Although I'll probably end up doing so, because of how Allies work.

    Quote Originally Posted by Requizen View Post
    I really want to run a small, elite army, and I think it could work really well in AoS...
    I tentatively disagree. Many of the Missions require five models within 3" to count the Objective as 'Scored'. Units with small numbers of models, can't really score in more than one Mission. If you've got five models on an Objective, and one of them dies - taking you down to 4 models - you're no longer Scoring. Ouch!
    Last edited by Cheesegear; 2016-07-08 at 10:34 AM.
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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Magic heavy armies have been hit severely with the nerf bat. But, I wouldn't know, since I play Dwarfs and don't go in for fancy magic... Although I'll probably end up doing so, because of how Allies work.
    Why is that, just because of the Rule of One? I guess it depends on how good your specific, non-baseline spells are. I think armies that bring multiple different Wizards will be fine, but no spamming of the best one in your book (which seems ok to me).
    I tentatively disagree. Many of the Missions require five models within 3" to count the Objective as 'Scored'. Units with small numbers of models, can't really score in more than one Mission. If you've got five models on an Objective, and one of them dies - taking you down to 4 models - you're no longer Scoring. Ouch!
    Oof, I didn't know that. That changes list building quite a bit, but I still want to use at least one or two big "power units" like Heroes or big Dinos in my armies, I just really like that aesthetic.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    I still find it rather amusing that any discussion about AoS starts with several pages of house rules to make up for the complete and total lack of real rules in the 4 page rulebook. Personally with the huge variety of amazing games out there I don't see why I should play one that the developers hardly even tried on and the models cost a lot more than most other companies charge. And that would be true even if they hadn't destroyed a decent game and a great setting in the process.
    Though I'll leave it at that, because that general discussion has been beat.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Requizen View Post
    Oof, I didn't know that.
    ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Ogres are stupid strong. Fortunately, in a few of the missions, you need five or more models on the Objective to score, and Ogres come in minimum units of three. lol. It was fun watching the Ogre player realise that he couldn't Score without holding back two units per Objective...Then he decided to table me...Which he then proceeded to do. Ogres are stupid strong...
    It's certainly possible to have a unit of three on an Objective...Provided you have another two models from somewhere else, also within 3" of the Objective.

    Remember, only some Missions require five models to Score, and also remember that '5 models' means literally any five models, not just five models from the same unit.
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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    I still find it rather amusing that any discussion about AoS starts with several pages of house rules to make up for the complete and total lack of real rules in the 4 page rulebook. Personally with the huge variety of amazing games out there I don't see why I should play one that the developers hardly even tried on and the models cost a lot more than most other companies charge. And that would be true even if they hadn't destroyed a decent game and a great setting in the process.
    Though I'll leave it at that, because that general discussion has been beat.
    I think it's because the core game works fine. It's simplified and the game seems to play really smoothly from what I've watched and read. And at least a few of those needed houserules will be rolled up into the General's Handbook, because GW actually realized they made a mistake.

    I feel like every tabletop game I play uses houserules. All of my different 40k groups sure do - tournaments have their changes, our local group establishes limits as to what we use and only use unbound at the opponent's agreement, etc. D&D has houserules - in fact, I don't remember the last pen and paper RPG I played where they didn't houserule at least a few things (generally minor, but still there). It's not surprising that AoS has them too - people just like to harp on them more because of the severely broken base that the initial launch made.
    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    ...

    It's certainly possible to have a unit of three on an Objective...Provided you have another two models from somewhere else, also within 3" of the Objective.

    Remember, only some Missions require five models to Score, and also remember that '5 models' means literally any five models, not just five models from the same unit.
    Bleh I totally missed that. I wonder if that'll push more MSU style, 3-10 man units but never maxing and just holding each objective with a couple dudes.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Requizen View Post
    I think it's because the core game works fine. It's simplified and the game seems to play really smoothly from what I've watched and read.
    People keep complaining about 'Only 4 Pages', like...As if that's some kind of detriment to the game. That's it's selling point!
    The three house rules that I mentioned, remove rules (Triumphs, Mysterious Terrain and Initiative), meaning that there's even less rules in the game, which makes it better.

    More rules != More better.
    Complex rules != More better.

    Good rules, are good rules, and bad rules, are bad rules. Age of Sigmar does not have bad rules...Anymore.

    because GW actually realized they made a mistake.
    It makes more sense when you tell yourself that everything up until The General's Handbook has been a beta test, and now everything is fine.

    Bleh I totally missed that. I wonder if that'll push more MSU style, 3-10 man units but never maxing and just holding each objective with a couple dudes.
    Nobody I've played with in the last week has taken any more than 10 models per unit...However, you spam that unit like all get out. Instead of 30 Thunderers, I have 3 units of ten. Same number of models, more ability to Score Objectives. But, you play Maelstrom, you know how this works.
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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    I feel like every tabletop game I play uses houserules.
    There's a difference between needing house rules to make the game most enjoyable for you, and needing house rules to make the game remotely playable. If you take this argument to its extreme a blank sheet of paper is a great game system, you just need a few house rules to make it work.

    Age of Sigmar does not have bad rules...Anymore.
    Shooting out of combat, into combat. Still there.

    Measuring from the model, not the base. Still there. This one can't be stressed enough - the difference between whether your Chaos Warrior can reach the Ogre Bull he's in base contact with is whether you've modelled him with his sword outstretched - but if you have, congratulations, it now costs him a lot more movement to turn. Not that that matters because he can just moonwalk into combat!

    Flat damage output, leading to a 1D scale of unit power. Still there.

    No core mechanism for dealing damage, leading to every damage-dealing effect that can't be put into a weapon profile ending up as some variation on "1D6 mortal wounds". Still there.

    Massive proliferation of differing special rules for the same damn thing (i.e. shields) due to the lack of any kind of centralised standard. Your skeletons have shields... are those the shields that let you reroll ones to save, or that boost your save by one, or that do both those things but only if you do a spooky dance? Still there.

    Equipment choices which are probabilistically identical (e.g. hit on 2+/wound on 3+ or hit on 3+/wound on 2+! which will you choose??!!!!!) or else where one choice is strictly superior to the other for zero cost. Still there.

    Those are just some of the actively bad things in the rules that are still there. Rules can be bad for many reasons, and one of the reasons can be that they're shallow. There are games with deep gameplay whose rules you can fit on 4 pages (e.g. chess) and there are games with terrible gameplay that have huge rulebooks. But simultaneously there are games with shallow gameplay whose rules you can fit on 4 pages (e.g. tic tac toe, Battleship) and AoS is one of them. Movement is uniform and isotropic, damage is one-dimensional, morale is just a subsystem of damage, and inside this extremely stripped-down framework they have somehow still managed to include a number of game-breaking bugs.

    I shouldn't keep banging this drum, but I'd still say - Requizen, if the reason you want to play this game is because you like GW plastics, use GW plastics to play another game. No other company is as weird about third party miniatures as GW are. And if the miniatures you like are Lizardmen, just play 9th Age - it's inherited the WFB tournament scene, it's much better-balanced than any GW offering, and those are the miniatures it was originally intended for.
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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    What LCP said.

    I've played and really enjoy plenty of games with simple rules, but those rules work very well together, are very precise, and are well balanced. AoS's rules are none of those things.

    @Requizen As for house rules, I would say much of what you refereed to is more of "local meta" rather than real house rules. The biggest problem with AoS's house rules is that there are a dozen different versions that people use and all have drastic, and often completely different, styles of play that they lead to. You can't take your army when you travel and play games at other local shops and know what you have will work (in a "legal" or gameplay sense).
    It is one thing for a local meta to say "we don't like using super big units in small games" or "we don't like playing gunline lists, they are stale and boring" and something completely different to say "we're re-writing this core rule of the game that changes how the game works in a rather fundamental way"

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by LCP View Post
    There's a difference between needing house rules to make the game most enjoyable for you, and needing house rules to make the game remotely playable. If you take this argument to its extreme a blank sheet of paper is a great game system, you just need a few house rules to make it work.
    The game is for sure playable without the houserules. The ones that CG listed, they were just removing random things that people disliked. People play with those random things in place and enjoy it, and GW said specifically that you should feel free to use or not use things you don't like.
    Shooting out of combat, into combat. Still there.
    I don't mind that so much. It's different from 40k, but different is ok. It speeds up the game a bit and makes shooting units both powerful (in that they can shoot things no matter what) but also vulnerable (once they get into assault they're screwed usually).
    Measuring from the model, not the base. Still there. This one can't be stressed enough - the difference between whether your Chaos Warrior can reach the Ogre Bull he's in base contact with is whether you've modelled him with his sword outstretched - but if you have, congratulations, it now costs him a lot more movement to turn. Not that that matters because he can just moonwalk into combat!
    Fair - though, not to take the wind out of your sails, but the General's Handbook says specifically you can measure base to base if you and your opponent want to. Another thing they actually listened about.
    Flat damage output, leading to a 1D scale of unit power. Still there.
    Eh, I don't really know how badly I feel about this one. Tough things are extremely tough (16 freaking wounds with saves and sometimes healing and special saves!) and the damage dealers vary in their use. Of course, with a system like this there may be units that are too good for what they do and will end up being the default damage dealer for their army, but that's the same as it is in every other wargame out there, no matter the system they use.
    No core mechanism for dealing damage, leading to every damage-dealing effect that can't be put into a weapon profile ending up as some variation on "1D6 mortal wounds". Still there.
    I don't know why this is bad. You don't need a complicated system for dealing damage. Wounds can take saves. Mortal Wounds cannot take saves. Streamlined is not bad, simple isn't bad.
    Massive proliferation of differing special rules for the same damn thing (i.e. shields) due to the lack of any kind of centralised standard. Your skeletons have shields... are those the shields that let you reroll ones to save, or that boost your save by one, or that do both those things but only if you do a spooky dance? Still there.
    Honestly? This is a good thing. I'd rather not have a massive index of rules that I have to reference to know what a unit does. Even if it's reprinted on multiple Warscrolls, the fact that you can just look down and see exactly what all their rules are is nice.

    "Can I Fleet Consolidation rolls?" Answered this a bunch of times. If fleet was right there on the page and not having to go to a different book into a large appendix, it'd be faster. Print out the ~10 Warscrolls you need, or have them on your phone, and that's it.
    Equipment choices which are probabilistically identical (e.g. hit on 2+/wound on 3+ or hit on 3+/wound on 2+! which will you choose??!!!!!) or else where one choice is strictly superior to the other for zero cost. Still there.
    I've not looked at all the options in all armies, but just looking at Seraphon and Stormcast, most different options have cases that make them better or worse, or for ranged at the very least you have to decide between shorter ranged but stronger vs longer range and safer, but less powerful. That's a fine decision, is it not?

    And 2+/3+ vs 3+/2+ seems identical until you start picking them based on the rest of the army. You have something that boosts your hit rolls? B is better. Different weapons for different army choices.
    Those are just some of the actively bad things in the rules that are still there. Rules can be bad for many reasons, and one of the reasons can be that they're shallow. There are games with deep gameplay whose rules you can fit on 4 pages (e.g. chess) and there are games with terrible gameplay that have huge rulebooks. But simultaneously there are games with shallow gameplay whose rules you can fit on 4 pages (e.g. tic tac toe, Battleship) and AoS is one of them. Movement is uniform and isotropic, damage is one-dimensional, morale is just a subsystem of damage, and inside this extremely stripped-down framework they have somehow still managed to include a number of game-breaking bugs.

    I shouldn't keep banging this drum, but I'd still say - Requizen, if the reason you want to play this game is because you like GW plastics, use GW plastics to play another game. No other company is as weird about third party miniatures as GW are. And if the miniatures you like are Lizardmen, just play 9th Age - it's inherited the WFB tournament scene, it's much better-balanced than any GW offering, and those are the miniatures it was originally intended for.
    I understand your criticisms, and I can see why you may not enjoy it. But I honestly have been reading through things for about a week now and I feel like the rules are at the very least workable and the games have been very fun to watch. I'm still having fun with 40k, but sometimes I want to take a break from Deathstars and Superheavies without having to go to ultra casual mode.

    I have no desire to play 9th Age. I never was interested in the rank-and-file style of WHFB, I like AoS because it's more skirmish-flavored. I've looked into Warmahordes, Infinity, and Malifaux, but they don't do anything for me. DZC is the only one I'm vaguely interested in, but there's no scene around here for it and I couldn't see myself enjoying it for too long. I do appreciate your concern in the matter, but I rarely go into a purchase of this size blindly and I know what the game's about and the competitor's offerings. There's a lot of merit in your stance, but I do also think that for your criticisms, there's a reason that AoS is suddenly growing and it's not because nobody knows about other mini games.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    What LCP said.

    I've played and really enjoy plenty of games with simple rules, but those rules work very well together, are very precise, and are well balanced. AoS's rules are none of those things.

    @Requizen As for house rules, I would say much of what you refereed to is more of "local meta" rather than real house rules. The biggest problem with AoS's house rules is that there are a dozen different versions that people use and all have drastic, and often completely different, styles of play that they lead to. You can't take your army when you travel and play games at other local shops and know what you have will work (in a "legal" or gameplay sense).
    It is one thing for a local meta to say "we don't like using super big units in small games" or "we don't like playing gunline lists, they are stale and boring" and something completely different to say "we're re-writing this core rule of the game that changes how the game works in a rather fundamental way"
    Well, you can now. That's what this new book is, rules that you can walk into a store and say "hey I've got 1000 points of Chaos, let's play Pitched". I'm not saying that AoS on release was a great game, but this changes things quite a bit.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Fair 'nuff. You sound like you've thought it through, and certainly it's not my place to tell you whether to enjoy a game or not. I could go on for days about what I see as the problems in AoS' game design but that is ultimately subjective.

    (because I can't resist, I will point out that this:
    Fair - though, not to take the wind out of your sails, but the General's Handbook says specifically you can measure base to base if you and your opponent want to. Another thing they actually listened about.
    is a classic example of the "blank sheet of paper" problem. Any problem can be resolved if you and your opponent both agree on a solution; getting permission from GW to change their rules without them actually issuing a correction is about as relevant as getting permission from the Queen!)

    You say AoS is undergoing a lot of growth where you are? I've fallen completely out of touch with my gaming circle since I moved country so I have no sense for that ATM - would be curious to know if true. Considering the reception of its launch it has a lot of ground to make up.
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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by LCP View Post
    Fair 'nuff. You sound like you've thought it through, and certainly it's not my place to tell you whether to enjoy a game or not. I could go on for days about what I see as the problems in AoS' game design but that is ultimately subjective.

    (because I can't resist, I will point out that this:

    is a classic example of the "blank sheet of paper" problem. Any problem can be resolved if you and your opponent both agree on a solution; getting permission from GW to change their rules without them actually issuing a correction is about as relevant as getting permission from the Queen!)

    You say AoS is undergoing a lot of growth where you are? I've fallen completely out of touch with my gaming circle since I moved country so I have no sense for that ATM - would be curious to know if true. Considering the reception of its launch it has a lot of ground to make up.
    Good to see that we can always agree to disagree Wish more people on the 'net were as understanding.

    I first got interested in AoS when Frontline Gaming started putting out more out reports and articles on it, and people started posting about how much they were enjoying it since playing by some of the big GT rules (SCGT being the most popular from what I've seen). I asked my 40k group if they were interested at all, and a good majority said yes, including a lot of high-level 40k tourney players. We're going to try a 1000 point event once people get some armies together, though I'll be practicing smaller stuff as I go.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    I've heard from here and there that the General's Handbook is in part based on conversations GW had with the creators of some of the more widely-used comp systems. I don't know whether I'd expect GW's approach would be better or worse; on the one hand I trust their expertise less, but on the other hand they won't have been hemmed in by the comp-writers' need for minimalism. If/when you get your hands on it I'd be interested to hear the exact changes.
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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by LCP View Post
    You say AoS is undergoing a lot of growth where you are? I've fallen completely out of touch with my gaming circle since I moved country so I have no sense for that ATM - would be curious to know if true. Considering the reception of its launch it has a lot of ground to make up.
    Up here it's kinda weird, we've got one of the smaller player bases of the Australian GW's, yet our store was ranked 3rd in how well AoS did/sold, to the point where (from my understanding), we're one of the few places to have an open copy of every AoS book (whereas there's no open copy of any 40k 'dexes since Necrons). AoS has been the dominant game for the last ~6 months here and it's only gotten stronger since the Generals handbook was announced, then again once the manager came back from the workshop where they rolled out the book to staff, and then again now that we've got an open copy. We've already had 2 store AoS campaigns and now quite a few people have started new AoS armies for the realm war or whatever the global campaign is.

    It's doubly strange since this place normally goes in cycles of 40k for ~6-8 months then Fantasy for 4-6 months but lately it's been all AoS all the time with 40k very much on the backburner. Out of the last 4 tournies for 40k, 2 have been cancelled from lack of interest, 1 delayed due to lack of interest/poor timing and 1 run with a low player-count. In fact, there's now not a single person up here without some sort of AoS/Fantasy army (though there's a couple of us who don't play AoS) where there are at least 2 people without any 40k.

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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    Quote Originally Posted by LCP View Post
    Shooting out of combat, into combat. Still there.
    Now that I know that it's part of the game, I can work around it. I'm fine with it.

    Measuring from the model, not the base.
    General's Handbook makes the change...If you want. I actually happen to live in a meta where if you're a douche, you wont get games. If it is known that someone is modelling for advantage, or making 'stupid' models clearly designed to abuse the rules...That person doesn't get games anymore.

    So, again. I know that measuring from the model is a thing. Except it probably wont be. Because General's Handbook. But it's the same thing that I said before regarding Initiative. If I know that a meta/tournament measures from the model, then Spears suddenly get real good. If the meta measures from the base, then Spears don't really matter.

    I know these rules exist, therefore I can adapt.

    Flat damage output, leading to a 1D scale of unit power. Still there.
    I don't even understand the problem, here.

    No core mechanism for dealing damage, leading to every damage-dealing effect that can't be put into a weapon profile ending up as some variation on "1D6 mortal wounds". Still there.
    I don't even understand the problem, here.

    Massive proliferation of differing special rules for the same damn thing (i.e. shields) due to the lack of any kind of centralised standard.
    My 8th Ed. Fantasy rulebook is 150 pages long. I was expected to memorise roughly 90% of it if I wanted to play games in any serious fashion.
    My AoS rulebook is only 4 pages long, and the only rules I need to know at the table are those that directly relate to the army I'm playing. I do not need to learn rules for a model's Shields that I don't have.

    Since my worklife basically revolves around Excel, I made myself a Summary Sheet for all the units in my army. Easy. Anyone can do it (although it may be easier for me than most, since, you know, Excel is basically my job). OpenOffice is free, if you don't want to give Microsoft money or you just can't afford real Office. I used OpenOffice all through my University days. It was free, and did the same job.

    My point is, if you've been memorising 150 page rulebooks up until now, memorising a handful of Warscrolls (even if some of them are different for no reason), should be easy. If you can't, there's always making spreadsheets.

    And if the miniatures you like are Lizardmen, just play 9th Age - it's inherited the WFB tournament scene, it's much better-balanced than any GW offering, and those are the miniatures it was originally intended for.
    But that's the thing; I didn't like WHFB. I don't like 9th Age. But I like AoS (now).
    Why? Because I like 40K, and AoS is more like 40K? Maybe. In fact almost definitely. But there it is.

    AoS is nothing like WHFB. For better or worse. I completely understand why some ex-WHFB players feel boxed out, and have moved to 9th Age, and AoS is terrible and the worst. In my case, though, AoS is better than WHFB.

    Quote Originally Posted by Drasius View Post
    Up here it's kinda weird, we've got one of the smaller player bases of the Australian GW's, yet our store was ranked 3rd in how well AoS did/sold, to the point where (from my understanding), we're one of the few places to have an open copy of every AoS book (whereas there's no open copy of any 40k 'dexes since Necrons). AoS has been the dominant game for the last ~6 months here and it's only gotten stronger since the Generals handbook was announced, then again once the manager came back from the workshop where they rolled out the book to staff, and then again now that we've got an open copy. We've already had 2 store AoS campaigns and now quite a few people have started new AoS armies for the realm war or whatever the global campaign is.
    AoS has always fell flat, everyone in my meta hated AoS. We made jokes about how terrible it was.
    Since we got our Open Copy of TGH, AoS has been going on in the store non-stop, on nearly all tables. All of the unemployed guys came out of their holes and stopped playing Overwatch for five seconds and came into the store to play AoS, and then they came in the next day, and the next day. Games Night (Thursday) was everyone playing AoS, non-stop from midday to 8pm, people couldn't get games because the store only had three tables. And we were only playing 1000 Points to speed things along, and people still had to line up for the tables. We've had our TGH for five days, and it's already basically ruined.

    I haven't seen this much excitement in store. In like, ever.
    I watched someone snap all the square bases off his models and put them on round bases. I did the same thing. It's not new. But the kicker is, the guy I watched actually plays 9th Age.

    In fact, there's now not a single person up here without some sort of AoS/Fantasy army...
    A week ago, I would've said that nobody in my area has an AoS army. Turns out, I'm completely wrong. Everyone has an AoS army sitting on their shelf just waiting for something exactly like TGH to come along.
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    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    I don't even understand the problem, here.
    I feel like this could be a derail of Requizen's thread so I'll put it in spoilers, but this is one of the big problems I have with the game's design so I want to talk about it.

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    WFB and 40K are both built off the same engine. When units fight, you get three rolls: to hit, to wound, to save. Those are three dimensions in which you can play for an advantage - both at the list-building stage and by the tactical positioning of unit vs unit once play begins. This is one of the core pillars of both systems and generates a sliding scale of soft counters that pretty much defines how those games play. You can mitigate being easy to wound by being hard to hit, or vice versa, and the same goes for going on the offense. How you play those numbers comes down to which unit you put up against which unit, and particularly in the case of WFB shooting, how those units manoeuvre (tactical positioning gives lots of ways to rack up penalties to the to-hit roll).

    AoS keeps the shell of that system but absolutely guts what makes it work. The only thing that is still cross-referenced between units is saving throw vs. the Rend value of the incoming attacks. Otherwise, everything else is inherent to the attacker. To hit is fixed, to wound is fixed, so there is no longer any reason for these two things to be separate rolls. The probability of a wounding hit is the product of the two probabilities on the sheet, you might as well just roll once against that probability and be done with it. As Requizen points out there are combos and abilities that give you bonuses or penalties to one half of the calculation or the other, but the distinction is meaningless - you might as well work out the overall contribution from that ability and add it to the single roll. You do get a slightly finer gradation of probabilities by chaining dice rolls than by rolling a single die, but only if you insist on sticking to rolling 1D6 at a time, which there's absolutely no reason to do - you could switch to 1d10, or 2d6, or anything else you pleased to get the same effect without the partitioning. I don't believe for one moment this is why GW stuck with that system; I think it's cargo cult game design where they are reappropriating what they know with no understanding of what makes it tick.

    The end result is that there's now only one dimension along which units are compared - save vs. rend. Everything else is flat. This unit is going to do [so many] wounds to anything it targets, modified by saves; hope your unit has enough wounds. That makes the calculation of a unit's value really simplistic, and not in a good way - where previously you were thinking in three dimensions about your ability to deal and tank wounds, now you're thinking in one - no rock-paper-scissors, just rock/bigger rock. Add to that that you've also lost Initiative (the stat), that morale has become just another way of dealing damage, and that it's become a hell of a lot harder to block or control the opponent's means of dealing damage to you (e.g. 360 LOS, shoot whoever you want whenever you want with no penalties) and a huge portion of the game just collapses down to a one-dimensional DPS calculation. Only target priority and positioning remain as genuinely tactical choices - but let's be honest, anyone can write "you have models, they can move N" a turn". You need to build something more interesting from that for the gameplay to be good. Objectives are a good start, but without decent unit-on-unit combat, movement + objectives really gives you a Monopoly-esque board game, not a wargame.

    When I look at the rules for AoS, that's my biggest complaint. It's not that it's a skirmish game, or that it's too simple, or that it's not WFB. It's that its core engine looks like it was written by people who didn't understand what they were writing - in fact, in places even look like they were innumerate. All those problems are fixable, but I'd say if you fix them all - and you need to fix them all - you don't have AoS, you have a new game. It's like giving someone a brain transplant - you haven't saved the original person, you've just salvaged some usable parts.


    On measuring from the model - that's not a question of "being a douche", that's a question of the base game being at all playable as written. Get a HE phoenix and build it out of the box exactly as the instructions say. Put it in base to base contact with one of your dwarfs. Measure the distance between the models. Are either of them allowed to fight each other? Take a chariot model and put it exactly within charge range of a unit at ninety degrees to the left or right. Which move will get it into combat - turning to face them before moving, the way any sane person would expect, or doing an impossible sideways slide into the target unit?

    Yes the General's Handbook says you can ignore this rule and replace it with your own. To borrow a phrase of yours, pro tip: you could already do that. That's like a car manufacturer saying hey, if you don't like these triangular wheels, feel free to go find some round ones. The minimum expectation from a pricey game produced by a supposedly market-leading company should be that it doesn't have such abjectly broken rules in it in the first place.




    All the above is just me venting my opinion - like I said, there's no sense in me telling people who enjoy a game not to do so, and that's not what I'm aiming to do. It's also true that I do miss WFB and my opinion of AoS will always be coloured by the way GW handled that transition. Still, if this General's Handbook stuff can do something to bail out the sinking ship of the old WFB tourney community, that's in my interests socially, even if it was AoS that put the hole in the hull in the first place. I'd be interested to hear exactly what it fixes.
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    Dark Heresy 1E - Wake of the Byzantium
    Episodes: I, II, III, IV, V

    WFRP 2E - The Bloody Crown
    Threads: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X

  29. - Top - End - #29
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    BlueKnightGuy

    Join Date
    Aug 2015

    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    While I certainly miss the old WHFB system. Especially miss the old storyline and my woodelves. I became a big fan of 40k during the dying days of WHFB and was honestly interested in a 40k styled WHFB. The implementation was really bad. No points, vague rules. No force org chart (Which I thought was superior to fantasy's organization system). And the most godawful summoning system I could imagine.

    Having read the general's handbook and the recently released sylvaneth battletome (For an idea of the direction the game is going) I'm interested again.

    -A force org chart
    -bonuses for using faction specific lists, but still open for those who want to mix and match
    -fixed summoning system
    -and they just about got the objective system right (I really think battleline units should be the only ones to hold objectives, this is one of the most important parts of 40k imo)

    I think the new matched system could lead to very fun games, much like 40k, as long as good amount of terrain is used to prevent shooting from dominating the format much like has happened in 40k.

  30. - Top - End - #30
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Closet_Skeleton's Avatar

    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Ēast Seaxna rīc
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Age of Sigmar: Points and Handbooks

    I signed up for a nearby-ish GW's AoS campaign. No idea how long I'll bother with it since the GH's campaign rules so clearly screw over subfactions that don't have a battle tome. So if I want to play beastmen I can't have a beastman hero for some stupid reason and if I want to use Death I can choose between having synergies or not being Flesh Eater Court.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    The Allies system in AoS is insane. Take anything you want, as long as it's from the same Faction (Order, Chaos, Death, Destruction). I don't recall if there were any negatives to bringing models from different Factions, save that you simply would lose bonuses. The potential for bloat is crazy.
    The 'balancing' system is how most of the buffs are key word specific and the stat lines are so flat that many units are interchangeable.

    The problem is that the few units who have wider key-words on their buff abilities (like 'any order') are basically must haves in mixed armies while other ones (like 'within tiny Aelf subfaction only') are worthless outside of spam lists.

    Then you have nonsense like how the non-hero version of the Warsphinx has the deathrattle keyword due to the tomb guard in its howdah and therefore is the only monster that can take advantage of really powerful buffs and extra action powers that are only supposed to work on massed fodder.
    Last edited by Closet_Skeleton; 2016-07-09 at 11:27 AM.
    "that nighted, penguin-fringed abyss" - At The Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft

    When a man decides another's future behind his back, it is a conspiracy. When a god does it, it's destiny.


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