So, after much reading and pondering I finally managed to get the day off and go into GW and have some games of Age of Sigmar and as such I believe myself to be in a better position to pass judgement upon the subject. (This is a long post so sorry but I feel I need to type it!).

Firstly, Age of Sigmar is not a bad game. If you had never played any type of wargaming and someone came up to you with a set of AoS rules and the models from the boxset you could play a game and have fun. That is a good thing both from a business perspective for GW and for the hobby because as much as us gnarly veterans like to believe we are the lifeblood of GW and, like some Dwarven Longbeards, moan about how things are never as tough/detailed/difficult as the old days, fresh blood into the hobby can only be a good thing!

There is a certain logic to the system as well. Always hitting on a certain number and always wounding on a certain number might seem illogical to start with but we have to remember that any Wargame is meant to balance out the skill of the individuals in a unit and, in the madness of a melee, both sides are going to take casualties. It does mean that better troops are still going to win worse troops (on average) but it does at least allow those bad troops to bloody the enemy before they die.

I think this is a good thing as it is extremely unlikely that any combat unit goes into battle and comes out without casualties (wounded or dead). Even if you took an elite force such as the British SAS and deployed them against a barely trained militia it is likely that, despite the phenomenal casualties the militia wound take, the SAS would also incur wounds. From a gaming point of view it also means you get a chance to chop at the enemy and kill a few: which replaces the horrendous feeling of watching a unit achieve precisely nothing in a game.

Shooting when you are in a melee might seem odd but it does also make some logic as you don’t have stand and shoot anymore and having a loaded musket or crossbow would likely result in you shooting the enemy with it!

On the positives we have a reasonably quick game with a relatively simple ruleset and enjoyable feel about it so that you can place some units on the table and have a fight. I deeply wish that I could end writing there and be happy that GW had produced something magical. I can’t and it’s the next bits that wound me deeply.

Rolling for who goes first each turn is, in my experience, not a great idea. While I want to discuss the issue of balance later, if something is balanced and close then you need to know the order of events to properly plan around or counter. This is also linked into the combat initiative system so, if you went second and then wrestle initiative you can then attack again before your opponent, effectively attacking twice before your opponent can respond. This can swing a close game one way or another on pure luck rather than tactical skill or a player’s ability.

Movement HAS to be the big one. Without facing’s or any benefits as a result there is little incentive to do anything that recreate the charge of the Light Brigade time and again, throwing numbers forward in an effort that more of the enemy will die than you. Closely followed by this is the fact that once you are in melee you can exit (great) but can’t charge (fine) but if you go first this leaves you open to being attacked once more or if you go second it puts a lot of focus back on the “initiative” roll. I’m not a big fan of so much hinging on ONE roll!
The free movement ability (without form or facing) and lack of advantage to flanking also takes away the usefulness of some of the best units in the game: flyers. Being able to leap over the heads of the enemy and then fly around his back lines eating warmachines and wizards was a common and effective tactic that required countering with your own flyers, shooting and so forth. Now, simply leaping behind a foe allows that foe to charge you unless you have the distance to deny that (unlikely and can be robbed once more by the initiative roll).

Without units that can “breakthrough” (because you can’t really rout a unit in one turn) or fly over (because they can be countered with utter contempt) wizards can hide behind lines and, depending upon their abilities, reign down death without fear or risk. The same goes for War machines to a degree.

Magic can only be dispelled if you have a wizard within 18” of the CASTER (not the target) which means you have to throw your wizard forward and hope they don’t die while your other troops produce a hole for them to run through! This is further exemplified by casters such as Lord Kroak who just reduced my army to cinders over several turns while I was never going to be able to get to him and kill him or stop him casting.

But finally I come to the real issue, the thing that is underpinning the entire structure known as Age of Sigmar and that is BALANCE! Without any types of point system to bring similar armies to the field there is just no way of knowing, even with best intentions, how close those forces are in terms of balance. Lord Kroak cost over 1k points in 8th Edition but now he is simply a War Scroll and saying “5 War Scrolls” just isn’t sufficient: his ability to cast 4 spells per turn means that at least he should be the equivalent of 4 Damsels and that’s before we even start considering his awesome spells and abilities! On and on the list goes, and I won’t bore you here with the details, but trying to judge how hard thirty Warriors of Chaos are before they roll into your lines is difficult and then when you consider things like force multipliers and abilities, it becomes impossible.

Fundamentally the game strikes me as something that hasn’t been play tested other than a few beers with friends. It is an enjoyable game, that much I can agree on and I might play it on occasion but it is a far cry from the tactically rewarding and somewhat demanding game that 8th edition had been. It is a game that requires you to have a HUGE model collection, with the idea being that your opponent deploys something and you deploy its counter: no longer does a clever general accept that his troops are weaker but can execute a brilliant strategy and carry the day. If your opponent has a higher net count or significantly better troops he WILL win: there is little you can do to prevent that.

The game favours a mass brawl, it is a game where casualties rack up very quickly from totally unpreventable sources. There seems to be little incentive to hold troops back for that pivotal moment, to line your men up behind walls and all the things you did in Warhammer 8th Edition.

I hope you can see how things can come together to make things problematic: no ONE thing stands out as wrong with the game, no ONE thing seems broken and no ONE thing seems to shine. Instead dozens of tiny details roll together to create what I can only describe as an AWFUL mess upon the table top in any terms of decent strategic gameplay.

I will play AoS: when I see my friends and we have beer and catch up. I will play AoS: when I have an afternoon where no one else is free and I pop into a GW with my models for a chat and game. But I WONT pretend that AoS is a gift from GW, I won’t pretend it is a good game that inspires you to buy models to wage wars.

I fully accept now that AoS is a “game” that serves no other purpose than to get to you buy as many models as humanly possible to constantly counter things, that new models and armies will have definitive counter units released around the same time.

I would have preferred GW to be honest. Just turn around and say “We want to make models” or release “Warhammer 8.5”: a Skirmish based game in the front with free rules online and an edited version of the 8th Edition rules (that could be used alongside The End Times etc).

As it is, we have got good models and bad rules and no matter how good the new models are (they are nice) I will find it VERY hard to justify purchasing them if I have no desire to field them.

Thanks for the write up, Wolfe. A lot to chew on. So far I find myself thinking along the same lines as you, but I'm glad to get the perspective of someone who has played with the rules.

Thx for the nice write up.


Taking a closer at the models I dont really find them all that cool.

The choas marines i mean warrior are covered in eye candy with more eye candy on top of eye candy. There is over kill on the eye candy. Its not detail... Its symbols, objects, things.... too much.

They big chaos guy with the whips is really a Ogre in choas mask. I recognize that ass with the cloth stitching, and fat roles anytime. Painted dozens of those.

Sigmarines are what GW wished the space marines looked like. Beware 40K'rs. But models are kinda cool looking.


The choas warriors looks like they are all wearing Mark V elite space marine armor.

That is first glance. I'm sure they look better in person. Kinda like the Beastman Minotaurs on steriods. Sorta look better in person with the right paint scheme.

Models are subjective at the end of day! I quite like the style of some of the Sigmarites (blokes with 2 handed hammers, the Lord) but they are detailed.

I hope the level of detail is carried across to new models, preferably Bretonnians who are fantastically powerful and own all 9 realms!

Ok, I dropped into my own little world there a moment!

Kr

Wolf

An excellent write up, honorable Viscount, I'm glad you gave the game a chance before passing judgment upon it.

It certainly could use some work upon it's structure but many reports say that GW is preparing to expand upon it, hopefully that'll address some of the issues you pointed out.

I'm certainly hopeful we may see new Bretonnians in the future (despite what was written on the BoLS article, apparently GW is sending out responses that he was dishonest and they are going forward with the current warscrolls). Though I doubt we'll own any of the realms as your dreams of grandeur foretold.

(Though I'm hoping we might see knights for each realm, a knight of fire, metal, etc.)

Taking a closer at the models I dont really find them all that cool.

I finally saw them in person. They're.. Okay. I really like mortal humans. I think they'd make great Marauders

Fundamentally the game strikes me as something that hasn’t been play tested other than a few beers with friends. It is an enjoyable game, that much I can agree on and I might play it on occasion but it is a far cry from the tactically rewarding and somewhat demanding game that 8th edition had been. It is a game that requires you to have a HUGE model collection, with the idea being that your opponent deploys something and you deploy its counter: no longer does a clever general accept that his troops are weaker but can execute a brilliant strategy and carry the day. If your opponent has a higher net count or significantly better troops he WILL win: there is little you can do to prevent that.

The game favours a mass brawl, it is a game where casualties rack up very quickly from totally unpreventable sources. There seems to be little incentive to hold troops back for that pivotal moment, to line your men up behind walls and all the things you did in Warhammer 8th Edition.

Actually, I find some of the tactics quite entertaining. But only a few. I find the walls of infantry backed by lines of artillery makes it miserable for your opponents that want to charge in and kill. Trebuchet's can hit anything, anywhere, without line of sight. It's ridiculous, but if you want to troll people, just line up your defensive infantry and shoot all day. Thats my favorite tactic so far.

Thanks for writing this up. It seems to be in line with what I've been hearing from our shop's players, battle reports, and my own thoughts. I'm sure it'll be a fun game occasionally for me, and much of the time for many. I am very excited about the new people it will bring to the hobby. Invariably, some of those new players will be left wanting more in terms of strategy and tactics, and will migrate to other games available.

But in the end, it's just a beer-and-pretzels game. Of your criticisms, there are two that I consider game breaking: no points or balance (regardless if the BoLS article is true or not, this seems to be the future without a points cost for any models), as there simply cannot be a game without at least an attempt at balance; and the movement of a primarily skirmish-based game. That won't scratch my itch for a tactically demanding mass-battle game.

Still left to see is whether Bretonnians will fade away as a faction, but that would be the third game-breaking factor. If after a few campaigns we are not introduced as our own faction, or even an alternative army list for some human-based faction, I can't even justify the occasional game for giggles. I played without love from GW for 10 years; there's no reason to do it again when our models work so well with other systems.

I like the way you put it, Wiegraf - "I really like mortal humans." I, too, prefer my humans with some vulnerability!

If you check GW I believe all chaos is now "mortal".. at least the humans, anyways.

I agree on the mortal part. Part of the attraction to fantasy is MORTAL humans surviving in a world full of monsters.

So, its a nearly 3 months since i first threw myself into the world of AoS with hope in a heart that was already steeled for disappointment. Now with a house move, new job, new year of study and the like i probably haven't played it as much as i used to and certainly the painting of my army has slowed down significantly.

Yet, now the great rift that split the WHFB community apart has started to heal i thought it only time to revisit the scene of the crime.

Do I think AoS is a bad game? No. Is it a good game? Yes. Is it WHFB? Not even close!

If anything, i think the great plan that GW had, namely to be able to play whatever models you want in whatever order and just go for it has actually made many players more isolated in regards to their armies. Let me eleborate:

Under 8th Edition our realm could boast reasonable cavarly and numerous but weak infantry/range. What did this mean? Well we were good on the charge but if we failed to break hard units we would struggle. Many a time i looked on enviously in my gaming group as someone buffed a unit of Imperial Greatswords with Wyssans wildform and watched as their strength 6 attacks turned most things into offal. Equally, i longed for the ability to clip the wings of annoying flyers with the impunity that massed ranks of Goblin spear chukka's could or the ease with which a cannon could take the head off a giant.

Yet it was these strengths and weaknesses that made an army individual: no army was perfect and it was by exploiting these weaknesses that you could achieve victory over the foe.

Now, with stationary values, and by that i mean you always hitting or wounding on a set number, there is no "need" to look outside your own army list. While i think this is a good thing, even though i did take allies, the idea that you simply can buy the models you like and play them seems to have backfired somewhat. With nothing lacking in your army list anymore, with no need to take unit X or unit Y to solve the problem of unit Z, its simply a matter of fielding models!

Loaded onto the top of this is the utter lack of any narrative behind anything. As a Breton i get the feeling that we are kind of there just to keep us quiet: am i defending my realm? taking the fight to chaos?

AoS would have, in my opinion, been better named. "Age of Sigmar: Sigmar vs Khorne", because so far that is all it is. It's like turning up for a great battle and being told that you are being left to look after the women and children while your superiors go off to win glory.

Tactically, i find the game as bland as ever. Given that i recently got my Mounted Yeoman together, i feel that if i only played AoS (thank god i dont) that what used to be a tactically involving unit that excelled at a number of light combat roles would now be nothing more than a sub par unit that served no purpose in games that inevitably came down to a bit of a mindless melee in the middle.

The art is now increasingly bland: look at the Age of Sigmar art and it is inevitably a Sigmarine fighting a Khorne bloke, maybe a few on each side, trading blows to no real effect! Where is the dark, gritty wars that saw men being dragged to the front lines to defend their homes? I'm going to post a few pieces at the bottom, all common pieces, that show why WHFB was popular and special to me. It represented a very "human" element to the game where as now the fights and to some degress are almost futuristic, clean and surgical. I don't want to use the word "childish" nor do i want to say they are "bad" (because i cant draw at all) but they lack the deep emotion of older pieces.

The game itself plays quick and again using a word i don't want to use, pointless. It plays like a dumbed down version of 40k and the BIGGEST problem is that none of your moves have any weight about them. A loose formation with 360 degree line of sight means that at no point do you ever feel exposed, can punish an opponents mistake or take the tactical advantage. This is further confounded by the changing initative: some people like this, i dont because its a tactical game, it has to have a set turn rather to allow the setting up of set piece attacks.

Magic is odd. It seems to be either irrelevant or massively overpowered: my first game i got battered because Lord Kroak, who under 8th would have cost more than my fielded force, was able to drop rocks on ALL my units every turn and i couldn't even dispel these because i couldn't get my wizard close enough to the caster, rather than the target. I miss mid ground magic, investing a few points into a few wizards than can work well, give buffs etc but your entire plan doesnt revolve around.

Finally its worth noting that all units play like Space Marines. What do i mean by that? Well they are all good at everything: i personnaly don't feel that any unit really deserves the title ELITE apart from a very, very few. Phoenix Guard with their 4+ (ward) save is one for example. Most units are more than capable of winning against anything else in sufficient numbers: i'm not even talking several hundred vs a few dozen, which would be "realistic". This goes back to an earlier point where i mentioned that your army didn't lack anything and its true. I often daydreamed about the day that Bretonnians got some Monstrous Cavalry like Demigrpyh Knights but now we don't need them because they are statistically similar to most other knightly units (few more wounds i agree).

No elites, no sub par units, just everything merges in a very beige-mediocrity. It makes me sad!

I won't talk about the models other than to say i like some and not others but i don't like the direction they are going. Others do, so that's that!





The two pieces of art i chose show what i mean: The large battle is fantastic in that it shows the devestation of a charge, the deaths of the recently risen dead and in the background you can see PK's, longbow men and trebuchets. This is a massive battle, likely pivotal to the survival of a city or the end of a Vampiric campaign!

The second is just a Knight but it conveys emotion, a sign of fatigue but steely determination, recent combat but i would not say victory. It is a very personnel imagine but it is so much more involving that the seemingly endless pictures of a Khornate warrior clashing axes against a Sigmarite shield.

If you don't believe me go and look: very few art pieces show any emotion or individuality, bring any sense of immediate death or survival to the field.

It might seem a minor point and in the grander scheme of things it probably is but for me it summarises a LOT of what AoS is about:

A quick, shallow and tactically unrewarding game that is good to pass an hour or so if your bored but fundamentally lacking in any significance. I enjoyed creating a story around my army: where my Keep was, where my Knights came from, what type of Lord my General was and so on. Nothing I have seen in AoS makes me feel anything like that!

Please bear in mind these are my opinions! I don't want to offend anyone who likes AoS or thinks its better than 8th. I would be interested to hear what your thoughts are on it though if you do.

Kindest Regards

Viscount Wolf

I agree completely with your latest observations. While AoS is an okay game its really not what whfb was or will ever be.

I too feel its more like Sigmar VS khorne too , but theyll update other stuff later. Im sure all armies will get upgrades or change or heck, even get some units squatted. But with their current lore and anything goes i see no weaknesses. I see no strategy. Bretonnian knights excelled in cavalry. But now our cavalry give us movement and a whole wound. Charge bonuses are there but theyre strange. Theres not even a real armor count for models anymore. We cant even use the lance to protect the damsels!

AoS lets too much happen as well. Empire gunners. Move. Shoot. Charge. Fight.. all in one turn! Who cares what melee they have, i can load each turn and shoot point blank!

I no longer collect minis with an army mindset. Now its Mordheim warband thinking or whatever looks cool. Times have changed indeed.

Indeed, I felt the exact same way. I haven't played it since my first foray. Every time I see the artwork, I just think ultramarines with hammers vs Khorne Berserkers with Axes. It's Kak.

But what really made me just loose all faith and interest in the game was when I fired 25 Empire Bowmen at my opponent, hitting on 4's, re-rolling 1's and 2's. Then being informed I could charge if I wanted. My response was, why wouldn't anyone just bring multiple units of bowmen or other missile troops. The other stuff is useless in comparison. The next turn after shooting 2 units of 25 bowmen and re-rolling (I must have spent 5 minutes just rolling dice and keeping count), I said OK, I give up you win. I don't want to play anymore. My opponents and team mate agreed. That was turn 2.

No one at the club has played it since.

Yeah the game could be good for someone, and it seems that most of you have embraced it and are lapping up the sluice that the mighty GeeDub pump out from the abattoir pits, but for me this was the nail that was bludgeoned into the coffin. Thankfully Mantic have spotted the car crash and have sent paramedics to assist.

I also wish anyone who is playing AoS the best. I also hope that those who have the desire to carry on with 8th, or 9th or what ever form WHFB can be propped up with the best, but for me, I'm done with GeeDub and WHFB.

When I look at the models that other companies make, and the prices they charge I wince at the GeeDub comparable. When I look at the alternative rules systems, I can't believe it took me something like this to wake up and see just how bad WHFB 8th was. When I see the community involvement in the development of the games, I'm shocked that we just took the proverbial bend over and close your eyes approach from GeeDub all those years.

I saw it with WHFB and now I see it in 40k, they are basically making each new army soooo good, you have to buy them. It is a great rape of the customers wallet.

It is truly sad, that the Mighty GeeDub destroyed all that history. development and value in the product they had, but hey this could be the greatest marketing move of all time. It doesn't seem like it at the moment, but time will tell.

Wiegraf: I completely agree. With a few exceptions (Dwarf Rangers spring to mind), there should be a clear divide between ranged troops and dedicated melee units. Not being able to use units to protect wizards seems painfully gimped, considering how useless most wizards are except the very powerful ones such as Lord Kroak etc.

Doc Rot: Again I cant agree more. 8th edition wasn't perfect but it was a good game that rewarded tactical acumen. Arrowstorm for example sounds great but throwing a bucket of dice is dull and boring. Want to give me a bonus to my archers, give them a +2 to hit once per game to represent a massive storm of arrows as i can then throw 30 dice still, rather than 120!

40k has seen a massive jump in the new army, must buy strategy. I understand a slight power creep, in an effort to lure customers to new models. Yet Necrons at one point could simply field so many flyers that unless you were playing an Imperial Guard flakk company (yeah, because EVERYONE has those in their cupboard!), you simply couldn't compete.

AoS has gone away from that in a terrible way. In no way do i see Sigmarines as a small elite force, because although they hit and wound easier, so does everyone.

Don't get me wrong, some things are good. I like the idea of monsters being easier to wound and having massive wound pool: too many games i have seen won or lost because a large unit of infantry couldn't finish off a giant on a single wound because they failed to roll a 6!

I was thinking about this last night and the reason i am failing to gain traction with AoS is not only the rules and flimsiness of strategy but the lack of depth.

I chose Bretonnia for the following reasons:

Models looked awesome.
I'm a historian, with a fondness for Arthurian legends pre-firearm military action.
I like armies that have lots of low level infantry and hard hitting knights (i love Imperial Guard in 40k which are similar in that their knights are tanks!).
The opportunity to be a Lord, in charge of my own retinue and castle, which means my games had a narrative regardless if they were 500 point per side to 50,000 points per side (Border skirmish, full blown invasion).
I like the character of the Bretonni - living in the moment and being as good as you can. This is highlighted more in the RPG than the book but a sword-smith will produce a single sword that is better than an Imperial sword because the Imperial merchant can make and sell 6 in the same time. This puts out tech as older than the Empire but better craftsmanship, yet still significantly less than the Dwarves or Elves.
Piety - having a semi-religious force always adds more flavor. I play Paladins in WoW and D&D because you have a character that is torn between commitment to the job at hand and the church.

So, that left me with only one realistic choice as who to play and i've never looked back!

However, NONE of the factions now have any depth to them. Sigmarines are the closest and they are bland, unappealing Space Marine clones with as much body as a frog in a blender.

Where is the narrative? Where is the old grudges between nations or races or resentments? I don't buy into this "make your own" nonsense that people talk about. You had to make your own in the old world but it was in a context of the Old world, set against the backdrop of all that history and lore.

Now its just a case of "I'm fighting you because i own these models and you own those!" WOW! That's really involving.

KR

Viscount Wolf