Age of Sigmar House Rules

[vampirnata]

Hello all!

Here are the rules we've been using for the past 3 weeks. After 12 games of various tiers, we have not found too many problems with them. We are of course always open to tweaking and adjusting but all in all we are quite happy with them:

Army Composition Rules:

Tier 1
Warscrolls: 1-5
Heroes: 1
Monsters/Warmachines: 0-1
Max wounds per normal unit (Warscroll): 20
Max wounds for hero: 10

Tier 2
Warscrolls: 1-7
Heroes: 1-2
Monsters/Warmachines: 0-2
Max wounds per normal unit (Warscroll): 30
Max wounds for heroes combined: 20

Tier 3
Warscrolls: 1-9
Heroes: 1-3
Monsters/Warmachines: 0-3
Max wounds per normal unit (Warscroll): 60
Max wounds for heroes combined: 30

Tier 4
Warscrolls: 1-11
Heroes: 1-4
Monsters/Warmachines: 0-4
Max wounds per normal unit (Warscroll): 100
Max wounds for heroes combined: 40


Rules:
1) No duplicates of any named heroes
2) Measure from base, not model. We found that measuring from models can just be plain frustrating and sometime taking too long.

Clarifications:
1) Players can agree to play a Tier and then build on that army. You can still have Sudden Death because of the max wounds/models count.
2) 1 Hero at Tier 1 stops players from just taking 5 heroes and summoning too much turn 1.
3) Max wounds per unit stops players from taking 60 2 wound units, now it is much more balanced when there are units of 10 2-wound units instead at tier 1.
4) Max wounds for heroes stops playing for example Nagash at Tier 1.


Sidebar Idea: (we've not tried this yet, first game on Friday).

Every player may bring extra warscrolls to the battle as a sidebar:
Tier1: 2
Tier2: 3
Tier3: 4
Tier4: 5

When deploying your army, you may swap out one of your warscrolls for a sidebar to better react to your opponent's warscoll. Once you swap a warscroll with a warscroll from your sidebar, you cannot use the original warscroll.

 

[benaiah]

Quick question, what's the highest wound value on a hero. I'm not being sarcastic but I didn't think there were any that were above 20 unless maybe ogre kingdoms or a greater demon of nurgle?

 

[vampirnata]

Quick question, what's the highest wound value on a hero. I'm not being sarcastic but I didn't think there were any that were above 20 unless maybe ogre kingdoms or a greater demon of nurgle?

Sorry this is my mistake, I will edit the post. It is support to be "Max Wounds for Heroes:" not "per".

 

[GDD]

The system is very similar to the one supposedly proposed by gw to their store managers. It's cool to hear you haven't encountered any major issues with it! I was thinking about replacing "monsters" with "large targets" for example, but I guess "large targets" are no longer a thing.


Also with 12 games under your belt I dare say you already have more experience with the system then most of us. I am going to suspect that you have played 8th ed, so with that in mind your input would be greatly appreciated in the threads talking about AoS experiences. Just putting that out there

 

[Sception]

I would recommend a further limit to summoning (and other rules like the chaos one that bring units from reserve into play) - your army and your sideboard are treated as the entirety of the scrolls you have available, so your sideboard (plus any units from your main list that you choose not to deploy) are your reserve, and units can only be summoned from that. Casualties go into a deceased pile, and are not returned to reserves.

Summoning adds entire units to the table, and is only balanced in vanilla Age of Sigmar by the fact that every unit you summon you could have simply started with on the table instead. As such, any limit on units initially deployed should also apply to summoned units to preserve that balance. Obviously, having to succeed on casting rolls, and the chance of dispelling, and the delayed deployment and all make summoning less good than just deploying in most cases, so allowing summoning of a limited number of sideboarded units (notably without recycling of killed models) seems reasonable without going overboard.


Additionally, with the introduction of scenery, you might want to add additional scrolls of scenery to your system, rather than having scenery take up army scrolls. Some of the terrain stuff is cool, but glancing over it most of it isn't so cool that I'd drop a unit for it. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

Also, your game sizes per tier scale up too much, imo, what with both the number and the size of individual scrolls getting much larger in higher tiers. A smoother scaling, which scales one or the other but not both, or that limits maximum wounds of units and heroes total rather than max wounds per each unit or hero might be a better system. Unless that's what your system is supposed to be and I'm misunderstanding it?

 

[Tawg]

Interesting. Might be worth a go. Also it may be more clear if you put "Max wounds for heroes combined", but I figured it out since the scale jumped to 20 instantly and that's over any character I know of yet.

I think it would do well for limiting players at lower tiers, which is a good thing since most players are looking for the constraints to help them not just drop everything. And I don't know if it would be an issue, as @Malisteen suggested, or if it would matter at larger games. Because true things scale up quickly, but at the same time the larger the battle the more mitigated many problems are (I think).

A bigger concern for me is that while it restricts heroes/monsters or what have you, it doesn't really present a compelling reason to use "weak" units beyond.. wanting to hinder yourself. Skaven I feel present the strongest argument for this, because Clanrats, Slaves and Storm Vermin are all identical when counting Warscrolls and Wounds, but they are vastly different from each other in power level. Why not take the best and leave behind the trash all together? Bringing Slaves does nothing to help you, and only provides your opponent with the (Much stronger) potentially for sudden death. So how does one deal with that issue? I don't think your suggestion fixes that, although I do like the general idea.

 

[vampirnata]

Thank you all for the comments.

We played a Tier 3 battle again on Friday Chaos vs Death. Massive battle that took 5 hours.

Death:
Zombie Dragon with Vampire Lord
Count Mannfred on Nightmare
Heinrich Kemmler
15 Blood Knights
Mortis Engine
60 Skeleton Warriors
45 Grave Guard
6 Crypt Horrors
10 Hex Wraiths

Chaos:
Kairos Fateweaver
BALEWIND VORTEX (Scenery, counted as Warscroll)
Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury
Daemon Prince of Korne
20 Flesh Hounds of Korne
30 Plaguebearers of Nurgle
6 Plague Drones of Nurgle
10 Pink Horrors
3 Exalted Flamers

With our system, even though the army composition was kept within the rules, Chaos had more than 1/3 less models than Death. The Chaos player took the Endure Sudden Death victory condition.

Kairos on top of a Balewind Vortex was brutal for this matchup. You cannot charge him, or move within 3". The only way I could wound him was with shooting (which my Undead did not have much of) or by having an attack that has 3" reach. Normally I believe you cannot attack if you didn't charge but luckily he had another unit close enough to Kairos (3") that was I able to pile in my Zombie Dragon to within 3" of Kairos and attack him).

The Chaos player was using his Pink Horrors and Kairos to summon more Hounds/Horrors each turn but it was not enough. I was ignoring the summoned units and focusing on killing the units he started with so that he didn't get his victory condition. Using the Skeletons and graveguard I was able to protect my heavy hitters from his summons.

I must say that 30+ skeletons are damn tough. They are supposed to be one of the weaker units but because I was able to take 60, they held their own and I didn't feel I would have been better off using another stronger 1 wound unit. If you compare them to Grave Guard, they have weaker stats but because there are so many (60), they have 3 attacks each. 1 normal and 2 extra for 30+ models. To hit/wound is 3+/4+ if a hero is there, which I will always have.

Blood Knights on the charge are incredible, they took out 5 of the 6 Plague Drones first combat.

I lost my General (Zombie Dragon + Lord) quite quickly but I rushed him in to get some good hits on key units. I then managed to summon a Zombie Dragon back.

In the end I was able to kill Kairos (the last of his units that started the game) round 5. We then called the game, he still had 2 units of 10 Summoned Hounds and 1 Unit of 10 Summoned Pink Horrors on the field, but I had more than enough to deal with them.

All in all I think the system worked again, I might have a look at streamlining the unit compositions at higher Tiers though, as this game took a little too long. Of course you are more than welcome to edit the rules that work best for your group.

 

[Demian]

Apologies, not wanting to pry or anything =)

but I believe you CAN charge a Balewind Vortex, with anything actually. Models cannot Move within 3'' of it, this meaning during the movement phase (as per the MOVING rule in the 4-page ruleset).

When it is first set up, it sends models away from it, but once that is over, you just can't move within 3'' of that scenery piece, but you can end up in Close Combat with the wizard above if you either charge or pile-in.

Could be wrong though, but nothing say's you can't D:

 

[vampirnata]

Apologies, not wanting to pry or anything =)

but I believe you CAN charge a Balewind Vortex, with anything actually. Models cannot Move within 3'' of it, this meaning during the movement phase (as per the MOVING rule in the 4-page ruleset).

When it is first set up, it sends models away from it, but once that is over, you just can't move within 3'' of that scenery piece, but you can end up in Close Combat with the wizard above if you either charge or pile-in.

Could be wrong though, but nothing say's you can't D:

We were not sure about the rules regarding it so we played it as if you couldn't as charging towards is technically moving... not sure on this one to be honest. Maybe an official FAQ would help here.

 

[Nicreap]

I would assume the balewind vortex follows all the rules for buildings, where the building becomes the footprint for the model, so you can't move within 3'' of the vortex, but you can charge it, and you are only measuring to the base of the vortex and not his guy on top.

 

[Demian]

Yep! I don't think it is meant to be a scenery that makes models on top of it immune to combat.

Even so, Arcane Bolts are always useable by our wizards =D