Age of sigmar

[Banat]

Must admit i don't really agree on most although i do think the "if a summer dies his summoned units take a battleship test, say at half their bravery?" rule is nice and fluffy.

There's nothing to stop your enemy targeting your summoned anyway, a Nero only gets a lookout sir of 4+ and that's less.protection than it sounds like. A unit of massed archers and he's gone by turn 2. And now you're really screwed over that you didn't pull off summoning that unit of ten black knights on turn one without your stacking bonuses and the rest of your game you spend getting shot to pieces.

And if the counter argument is " yes well shooting needs teamed and debuffed too because its op" how about you debuff neither and leave them both as they are?

My suggested limitations on summoning:
Don't be a douchebag. If you've already got four units on the table and your opponent only has a measly block of empire seamen left... you don't NEED that unit of hexwraiths so debt summon it. Cast mystic shield on something instead etc.

 

[Banat]

teamed = tweaked. Summoned = summoner. phone isn't letting me edit...

 

[Tawg]

I think pre-selecting units for summon isn't the worst idea, it removes a bit of tactical flexibility, but lessens the impact of it over all, and at least the opponent would have prime targets for who needs to die most if they are summoning the worst (Or most perhaps) units onto the battle.

I disagree with anything that "leashes" the summoned units to the caster though, because that just creates burden on players to keep on their mind the whole game. Certainly at higher points cost it becomes even more of an issue if you have very much to keep track of, though if that solution is only implemented in smaller scale games it would make sense due to the issues inherent to smaller matches. Beyond the work load of remembering (Which may seem minor, but it's far better if we can deal with the problem without this), there is also the issue of "how to deal with zombies?" since they are the only unit I know of currently that can be summoned, and grouped together into a single unit. Once that happens you could propose a number of solutions, count dead models against the ones summoned then eliminate the rest, or the full unit takes the Bravery test, or remove the full amount from the unit. There are certainly ways to deal with it, but it is awful building new rules to handle situations and then further complicating the rules you wish to implement further with such one-of-a-kind situation. It's simply not elegant, and in design of rules I prefer elegance to comprehensiveness.

Perhaps the simplest method, which I can't for the life of me think of why this hasn't occurred to me before now, is for games where feasibly summoning will be an issue such as: small unit count/skirmish games; the opponent has no wizards not due to their choice, perhaps a new player who doesn't own a wizard at all yet; and perhaps other such situations I didn't think of off the top of my head.

In those cases, would it not be simple enough to say cut the casting dice down to a single die? Instead of hitting 5+ on 2d6, summoning zombies is actually a risk on 1d6, and you have no chance to inundate your foe accidentally if you are trying to use your rules while not overwhelming the opponent. This creates a natural drop-off of the power level that restricts people from simply summoning Terrorgiest or 20-stong units, and also means that the +1 bonuses from many sources will be worth while still in smaller point matches while not being over powered. Potentially it could even allow you to summon models that are summoned on 7+ with bonuses, and the lucky risk taken.

I like that. For games where everyone understands and agrees that summoning is going to cause problems, this is quite feasible and quite elegant. It requires no more extraneous work to continue play beyond the agreements to start a game we're already dealing with. When to do it though? Might be up for debate.

 

[Sception]

The thing is, i don'think the problem with summoning is so much dependent on game size as it is proportion. Necro plus corpse cart plus morghast does not strike me as less disruptive to a 20ish wound game than two necros plus corpse cart and morghast in a 40 wound game. The limit at later games is available models rather than anything inherent to the game size, imo, and that runs into 'pay to win' problems if you rely on it.

If memory is an issue, perhaps one unit reserved sideboard per summoning caster (or maybe one per spells castable by summoners per turn, so kemmler still allows more than a necromancer), and once they've all been summoned, that's it, out of corpses/death magic energy. Then you don't have to remember who's summoned what, but in general each summoner represents a single bonus unit, rather than one per turn.

 

[Tawg]

Yeah, that second idea you present is certainly easier to work with.

As for the Pay-to-win model presented by summoning, it certainly seems to be there. Because if you can summon infinity Skeletons/Terrorghiest/Black Knights, then why not do it? But just the same a player who already has all the models in the world would might beg the question "Why you harshin' my buzz?" if they really REALLY like the idea of summoning as a fun flavor to play. And that would be hard to object to perhaps, although easy enough to simply take the stance of "no I won't play with you" if they can't grasp balance issues.

Actually, a similar approach to what you've suggested with the "Unit reserves" that restricts summoning by setting aside exactly what will be summoned later, why wouldn't you just allocate a "wound" pool to the Summoning? Say in any given game you can summon at most half again the wounds you start with? But then you're just encouraging players to only summon the "best units per wounds" and it falls into that whole "min-maxing" dichotomy that really isn't the intention.

Alternatively you could count the available summons by simply warscrolls or any such you wanted, then follow that with granting Necros/Wizards a command (Or even just hero phase ability) that let's them "reclaim" a unit for summoning if they hit a 4+ when the unit is destroyed or something. Very reminiscent of the Endless Horde style Tyranids, which would be a cool solution potentially, allowing units to be re-summoned potentially indefinitely, but making that risk there to curb the over powering effect.

Re-reading your statement, I see what you mean by proportional issues though, and how 1d6 doesn't really solve that. Potential limits across the board could restrict the attempts per turn, as a set number of summoning attempts per turn (Say 2+, depends on the game size), then they are restricted and still risking failures potentially, but not being told they simply can not at a certain point.

I mean, some of that limiting is going to basic common sense. Obviously if someone has like 5+ Necros in any battle just summoning shit units to stop you from getting to them and hitting you with them wave after wave, you'll eventually die to a never ending tide (Assuming you don't have so much going on you can smash their units entirely without effort). So I mean, in cases where you can see it is clearly not working, it should be easy enough to say "uhh ok nevermind my bad." Like my first Undead fight I had where I summoned 10 Skeletons, then 20 Skeletons, then I opted to not summon anything anymore because I already was outnumbering my opponent far too much at that point. I didn't even get the 20-summoned-skeletons into any fights, because I already felt like I had out matched my opponent and adding more didn't seem fun to me or him.

Any way you look at it though, I think summoning is certainly one of the weakest rules in the new rule set. I just hope we can find a solution that isn't as complex as the game itself is on it's own, because that really destroys some of the draw to the game.

 

[Sir Geheimnisnacht]

@Sir Geheimnisnacht Dude, haven't seen you in forever! Wish it could be under calmer skies. Good to see you, homie.

I still lurk around from time to time, but, yeah, it's a bummer that it was something negative (to me anyway) that drew me back this time. Here's hoping Age of Sigmar turns into something cooler than it seems like it's going to.

 

[Menkeroth]

It will, I'm sure, and you have faith too. All comes in time. And I was quite surprised in the morning, when I found out they had released their AoS app - quite nice I'd say. Even without the enhanced edition for 59.99 dollars

 

[Oppenheimer]

It will, I'm sure, and you have faith too. All comes in time. And I was quite surprised in the morning, when I found out they had released their AoS app - quite nice I'd say. Even without the enhanced edition for 59.99 dollars

I only have android. What's in the app?

 

[Menkeroth]

It will be released for Android soon. Basically it's a databank of the warscrolls and all the information you need to play save for the miniatures.

 

[Archamedius]

It will be released for Android soon. Basically it's a databank of the warscrolls and all the information you need to play save for the miniatures.

It should be noted that the App has several things in it that are inaccurate. For instance, the Glotkin scroll is missing the page with his scaling stats on it. And Than'quol's damage and woulds page is for another unit entirely. Despite these errors, its a cute app that saves me from downloading PDFs to my phone when I am looking at scrolls at lunch.

 

[Menkeroth]

Aye, you're right, they do have some errors, but I'm sure they will fix it in future updates. It's done quite nicely and conveniently.

 

[Archamedius]

Since our Club went to Buckeye Battles the weekend Age of Sigmar released (and we sent Warhammer 8th off in style!!) this past weekend was our first chance to really get some games in with the new game. We played 6+ games across the day and amongst various opponents. We used the following guidelines for building your army:

No more than 60 wounds, Max 3 heroes and 2 monsters. A unit that is both a monster and a hero counts as both. We also had the gentleman's agreement that Nagash was banned. I almost took arkhan as I still have yet to play with that model, but decided against it.

We found the following "interesting" results"

Across 6 games, summoning won 3 of those games. In one game a demon player managed to summon in 2 Great Unclean Ones, and he started the game with one in. There was nothing his opponent could do against that, and it created a negative play experience. In another game which was closer, the game hung in balance until the death player got an 11 to summon in crypt horrors and got 6. That swung the game heavily in his favor and turned a very close game into an all out route. In the the third game a High Elf Mage on a dragon was murderering a death player until he managed to summon in 20 skeletons, buff them with Krell and then got a charge off on the dragon. She fell to that unit of skeletons 61 attacks and the game was over. Prior to that round the game was going in the order player's favor.

Although summoning is OP currently (i think in large part due to the overall lethal nature of combat), there are other built in spells which can be equally amazing. For instance mystic shield on the Stormcast Hero can give him a 3+ rerolling 1s. That's very close to the 8th edition unkillable BSB from WoC. Vanhel's is absolute murder on skeletons or grave guard. Playing with Krell, Grave Guard and a necro, I was able to get a unit of 16 grave guard to put out close to 98 attacks in a single round of combat. I destroyed half an army with that. So there are definitely ways to force the pick up of entire units very quickly which makes the game go a lot faster. I think the draw back of this is it reduces the tension, and build up and devalues epic moments in the narrative of the game.

We found having a wizard or Karanak to be mandatory. The ability to unbind is crucial, but also not reliable. Magic as a whole is very powerful and the absence of the miscast table is somewhat disappointing from that regard. There is never a reason NOT to cast all possible spells (Karanak being the only exception).

We found that without a turn limit, if both sides have summoning, games could stretch for a very long time as both sides continue to summon units safely out of dispel range an then push them at the opponent. Keeping track of models killed was exceedingly tedious and drained the enjoyment from the game.

Perhaps our game size was not proper for summoning to be balanced correctly, it's not very clear. At least one of our players is playing the new Stormcast Eternals so we were somewhat limited by what he could field. He even made the comment at one point that if summoning were not nerfed in some fashion, then every order army in the game would be forced into Slaan+Army as the Slaan is the only way to summon in Seraphon. This leads to stale list design and stifles creativity in the army building process which is not healthy for the game at all.

I think most of us had fun playing in our games - win or lose. At least one of us took his games poorly, and the NPE from the triple GUO wasn't great but the hope is that we can come up with a way to balance out that summoning so it's not so difficult to deal with. It's just unfortunate that we as a community are being forced to do these sorts of things, and they are not built into the game.

 

[Xasz]

Hey,

I played a game of AoS yesterday, after not touching Fantasy since 7. Edition rolled out. (didn't like the bigger regiments and stuff)

It was a lot of fun, we played around 60 wounds with some restrictions and no summoning as we had a feeling that it could be somewhat troublesome.

We weren't sure if it was our matchup but the healing effects of our banners and the blood knights in general seemed a bit strong. Healing a whole model that has multiple wounds might be too much, especially with the blood knights which pack a lot of attacks with rend and 3 wounds. Five of them ate some barbarians, his chaos lord on a juggernaut and 5 chaos knights which also had 3 wounds over the course of the game. I ended the game with all of them alive with only one being temporarily dead.
This might be due to our lists, as we didn't have any monsters, warmachines or shooting at all. (He had, chaos lord on a juggernaut, 5 chaos knights, 5 barbarian riders, 7 chosen, 5 khorne hounds, I had, vampire lord on nightmare, 5 blood knights, 15 grave guards, 7 black knights and a varghulf) but it was a tad bit weird.

Other than that we felt the game was relatively balanced, simple and fun and we'll probably play more of it.

 

[The Sun King]

@Xasz Thanks for sharing and welcome to the forum! It is nice to see the beloved Blood Knights actually being able to do something!

 

[Menkeroth]

They always were a kind of close combat mass destruction weapon, which is quite logically. And they must be. Without the Blood Keep banner now one has to shoot them down rather than risk taking fight to them.

 

[Ghouly]

they killed Warhammer the bastards I'm going to be avoiding this shit like the plague

 

[The Sun King]

@Ghouly please refrain from spreading negativity like that. There is no need to go into a constructive thread and start flaming. No one benefits from such behavior.

 

[Ghouly]

I will flame all I want they killed the greatest fantasy setting ever, for shitty Spess morons, and if people keep supporting this shit GW will never bring Back Warhammer fantasy

 

[Archamedius]

Our group has been discussing Age of Sigmar more, and how to balance it. This was one guy's actual response. I wanted to share, I felt @najo and @The Sun King might get a kick out of it.

Just some musings I have had kicking around in my head.

Balance in Age of Sigmar


I think I have it figured out.

The age of making lists are gone. They 60 wound, 3 hero, 2 monsters, blah-blah-blah will not work.
The age of Swedish comp is gone.
And I also disagree with the idea that pick-up games will take hours of sorting out what the guidelines for the game are etc. I think in fact it will go much faster.


Here is an example:

Player A, lets call him Rick the Dick, and Player B, let’s call him Awesome Kevin, completely random names grabbed out of the air.

Rick and Awesome Kevin decide they want to play a game of Age of Sigmar. They meet and find a table at their local game store, let’s call the game store the Art of War again completely random.


They both declare what armies they will be playing. Rick, being the dick he is declares “I am playing Death, because I like playing broken armies that don’t run away and can regrow units at will, and I have trouble satisfying women in bed.” Kevin, being awesome says “That is fine, I will play Order, because they have Lizardmen and because dinosaurs are awesome!” They set up terrain, as per the AoS 4 page rules. They roll a die to see who goes first...


Still no lists have been made. They just picked a table and opened up their respective battle foam/army boxes.


…Rick wins the roll and says “I will deploy this battle scroll that I have for 5 Black knights!” Rick deploys a unit of 5 Black Knights on his half of the table.

Kevin looks at his Battle Scrolls and into his box of models and decides a good counter unit for the Black Knights is a unit of Cav of his own.
“I choose to deploy a unit of 8 Cold One Cav to counter your Black Knights.” Says Kevin looking handsome as ever. “That guy must work out!” is overheard from a young an attractive soccer mom who happens to be in the store buying models for her kid that lives with his father most of the year.


Rick deploys a unit of Grave guard and Kevin counters with a unit of Temple Guard.

Rick – Terrorgesist
Kevin – Carnasaur
Rick – Black Coach
Kevin – Stegadon
Rick – Skeletons
Kevin- Saurus Warriors
Rick – Krell
Kevin – Slann

This goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until finally Kevin says “That is enough that is all I am placing”

Rick, being a dick as usual, places 2 more units of zombies.


Rick now has 1/3 more models than Kevin, so Kevin gets to choose a sudden death victory condition.


That is it.
That is the balance.
There is no more all-comers lists, because it is all All-Comers-Lists now.
Whatever you have in your battle foam box when you show up is your army.
You can play it all or just a couple units, it is ultimately up to you.

The balance comes from the guy across from you not bringing 200 models, but if he does you get the sudden death victory option. If he brings 10 Blood Thirsters then screw that guy he has more money than sense, and is a complete Rick!


In tournaments it is self-balancing, if players keep dropping units until they are out of models or out of space they would hamstring themselves. Victory conditions being the way they are in AoS is you pretty much have to wipe the other guy out or complete and objective. In your typical 2.5 - 3 hour tournament round that would be impossible if the field is littered with units, it would just take entirely too long to actually finish the game.


So what have we learned here?

Don’t be a Rick.


All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. J

 

[Skittelz1981]

just to be clear @Ghouly, fantasy sales were only 15% of total revenue. GW was selling and earning more on paint and tools than selling fantasy. From this you can conclude that fantasy was actually costing money instead of earning.
I played AoS recently and i was charmed by the freedom of movement, what GW basically did: they gave us free set of rules which can be modded freely, thats gamers heaven. 8h ed. was already being heavily curbed in tournaments to 'optimize' balance and still failed at it. im pretty confident that the minimalistic ruleset of AoS is actually an improvememt on balance and makes it also way easier for modding that actually really improves even more balancing instead of just trying like 8th ed comprules or swedishcomp.

Fluffwise? someone like me doesnt give a shit, fluff has always been inconsistent and completely random, AoS doesnt differ from that.

AoS is still fun, and no one stops you from continuing to play 8th, 7th, 6th etc.

 

[Banat]

Our group has been discussing Age of Sigmar more, and how to balance it. This was one guy's actual response. I wanted to share, I felt @najo and @The Sun King might get a kick out of it.

Just some musings I have had kicking around in my head.

Balance in Age of Sigmar


I think I have it figured out.

The age of making lists are gone. They 60 wound, 3 hero, 2 monsters, blah-blah-blah will not work.
The age of Swedish comp is gone.
And I also disagree with the idea that pick-up games will take hours of sorting out what the guidelines for the game are etc. I think in fact it will go much faster.


Here is an example:

Player A, lets call him Rick the Dick, and Player B, let’s call him Awesome Kevin, completely random names grabbed out of the air.

Rick and Awesome Kevin decide they want to play a game of Age of Sigmar. They meet and find a table at their local game store, let’s call the game store the Art of War again completely random.


They both declare what armies they will be playing. Rick, being the dick he is declares “I am playing Death, because I like playing broken armies that don’t run away and can regrow units at will, and I have trouble satisfying women in bed.” Kevin, being awesome says “That is fine, I will play Order, because they have Lizardmen and because dinosaurs are awesome!” They set up terrain, as per the AoS 4 page rules. They roll a die to see who goes first...


Still no lists have been made. They just picked a table and opened up their respective battle foam/army boxes.


…Rick wins the roll and says “I will deploy this battle scroll that I have for 5 Black knights!” Rick deploys a unit of 5 Black Knights on his half of the table.

Kevin looks at his Battle Scrolls and into his box of models and decides a good counter unit for the Black Knights is a unit of Cav of his own.
“I choose to deploy a unit of 8 Cold One Cav to counter your Black Knights.” Says Kevin looking handsome as ever. “That guy must work out!” is overheard from a young an attractive soccer mom who happens to be in the store buying models for her kid that lives with his father most of the year.


Rick deploys a unit of Grave guard and Kevin counters with a unit of Temple Guard.

Rick – Terrorgesist
Kevin – Carnasaur
Rick – Black Coach
Kevin – Stegadon
Rick – Skeletons
Kevin- Saurus Warriors
Rick – Krell
Kevin – Slann

This goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until finally Kevin says “That is enough that is all I am placing”

Rick, being a dick as usual, places 2 more units of zombies.


Rick now has 1/3 more models than Kevin, so Kevin gets to choose a sudden death victory condition.


That is it.
That is the balance.
There is no more all-comers lists, because it is all All-Comers-Lists now.
Whatever you have in your battle foam box when you show up is your army.
You can play it all or just a couple units, it is ultimately up to you.

The balance comes from the guy across from you not bringing 200 models, but if he does you get the sudden death victory option. If he brings 10 Blood Thirsters then screw that guy he has more money than sense, and is a complete Rick!


In tournaments it is self-balancing, if players keep dropping units until they are out of models or out of space they would hamstring themselves. Victory conditions being the way they are in AoS is you pretty much have to wipe the other guy out or complete and objective. In your typical 2.5 - 3 hour tournament round that would be impossible if the field is littered with units, it would just take entirely too long to actually finish the game.


So what have we learned here?

Don’t be a Rick.


All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. J

I want to hear more about that soccer mom...

 

[Demian]

Our group has been discussing Age of Sigmar more, and how to balance it. This was one guy's actual response. I wanted to share, I felt @najo and @The Sun King might get a kick out of it.

Just some musings I have had kicking around in my head.

Balance in Age of Sigmar


I think I have it figured out.

The age of making lists are gone. They 60 wound, 3 hero, 2 monsters, blah-blah-blah will not work.
The age of Swedish comp is gone.
And I also disagree with the idea that pick-up games will take hours of sorting out what the guidelines for the game are etc. I think in fact it will go much faster.


Here is an example:

Player A, lets call him Rick the Dick, and Player B, let’s call him Awesome Kevin, completely random names grabbed out of the air.

Rick and Awesome Kevin decide they want to play a game of Age of Sigmar. They meet and find a table at their local game store, let’s call the game store the Art of War again completely random.


They both declare what armies they will be playing. Rick, being the dick he is declares “I am playing Death, because I like playing broken armies that don’t run away and can regrow units at will, and I have trouble satisfying women in bed.” Kevin, being awesome says “That is fine, I will play Order, because they have Lizardmen and because dinosaurs are awesome!” They set up terrain, as per the AoS 4 page rules. They roll a die to see who goes first...


Still no lists have been made. They just picked a table and opened up their respective battle foam/army boxes.


…Rick wins the roll and says “I will deploy this battle scroll that I have for 5 Black knights!” Rick deploys a unit of 5 Black Knights on his half of the table.

Kevin looks at his Battle Scrolls and into his box of models and decides a good counter unit for the Black Knights is a unit of Cav of his own.
“I choose to deploy a unit of 8 Cold One Cav to counter your Black Knights.” Says Kevin looking handsome as ever. “That guy must work out!” is overheard from a young an attractive soccer mom who happens to be in the store buying models for her kid that lives with his father most of the year.


Rick deploys a unit of Grave guard and Kevin counters with a unit of Temple Guard.

Rick – Terrorgesist
Kevin – Carnasaur
Rick – Black Coach
Kevin – Stegadon
Rick – Skeletons
Kevin- Saurus Warriors
Rick – Krell
Kevin – Slann

This goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until finally Kevin says “That is enough that is all I am placing”

Rick, being a dick as usual, places 2 more units of zombies.


Rick now has 1/3 more models than Kevin, so Kevin gets to choose a sudden death victory condition.


That is it.
That is the balance.
There is no more all-comers lists, because it is all All-Comers-Lists now.
Whatever you have in your battle foam box when you show up is your army.
You can play it all or just a couple units, it is ultimately up to you.

The balance comes from the guy across from you not bringing 200 models, but if he does you get the sudden death victory option. If he brings 10 Blood Thirsters then screw that guy he has more money than sense, and is a complete Rick!


In tournaments it is self-balancing, if players keep dropping units until they are out of models or out of space they would hamstring themselves. Victory conditions being the way they are in AoS is you pretty much have to wipe the other guy out or complete and objective. In your typical 2.5 - 3 hour tournament round that would be impossible if the field is littered with units, it would just take entirely too long to actually finish the game.


So what have we learned here?

Don’t be a Rick.


All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. J

I'd like to hear the story about the inspiration from the "he must work out" by the soccer mom... =D

EDIT: Banat! yesh! !

Now back to the thread:

You make a good point here!

Learning how to maximize your efficiency by deploying a solid strategy that needs as few models as possible, and then executing such strategy to have a win would be quite awesome to witness in a tournament, against people who bring their entire collection of models and lose in such a manner (by the way, dividing the field in "L"s actually reduces a bit of space on the table... as far as I can tell, would need to test this).

I wouldn't say that list building is over, but I'd change it to Strategy Building now. You have a core function of your army, something that you know is dependable, and that Hard counters will not diminish its efficiency too much.

then, you cover your worst weaknesses, with an assortment of options. These options will depend on your opponent's army, sure.

Last, you'll wonder if you have enough x or y of certain type of unit to deal with problems / with your Sudden Death objective (be it whether if you get to choose it, or it was your opponent who stopped deploying stuff. It works both ways!)

That's how you build an army now in AoS

 

[Pirate Robot Ninja of Death]

[...snip...]

The balance comes from the guy across from you not bringing 200 models, but if he does you get the sudden death victory option. If he brings 10 Blood Thirsters then screw that guy he has more money than sense, and is a complete Rick!


In tournaments it is self-balancing, if players keep dropping units until they are out of models or out of space they would hamstring themselves. Victory conditions being the way they are in AoS is you pretty much have to wipe the other guy out or complete and objective. In your typical 2.5 - 3 hour tournament round that would be impossible if the field is littered with units, it would just take entirely too long to actually finish the game.


So what have we learned here?

Don’t be a Rick.


All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. J

You can't balance a tournament that way. "Don't be a Rick" is a way to balance garage gaming, not tournament play. What do you do...ban the guy who brings 20 Bloodthirsters? What about the guy who brings 19? 18? 17? At what point is it acceptable?

What about the guy who brings 20 black coaches. Or nothing but chaos knights. Or nothing but vampire lords?

At what point does "efficiency" become "being a Rick"? At what point does it matter that armies don't look like armies, but just a collection of monsters and characters?




Just to be absolutely clear, Age of Sigmar as released by GW is not a complete game. It's just rules for pushing miniatures at each other. It's like if Casinos just supplied a card dealer and dealt everyone as many cards as they asked for. That's not a game. You can MAKE that a game, but it's not a game.

People aren't trying to "Comp" Age of Sigmar. This isn't just writing the next Swedish pack. This is taking rules for grinding models together, and turning that into some kind of competitive tabletop game.

 

[Tawg]

You can't balance a tournament that way. "Don't be a Rick" is a way to balance garage gaming, not tournament play. What do you do...ban the guy who brings 20 Bloodthirsters? What about the guy who brings 19? 18? 17? At what point is it acceptable?

What about the guy who brings 20 black coaches. Or nothing but chaos knights. Or nothing but vampire lords?

At what point does "efficiency" become "being a Rick"? At what point does it matter that armies don't look like armies, but just a collection of monsters and characters?

Just to be absolutely clear, Age of Sigmar as released by GW is not a complete game. It's just rules for pushing miniatures at each other. It's like if Casinos just supplied a card dealer and dealt everyone as many cards as they asked for. That's not a game. You can MAKE that a game, but it's not a game.

People aren't trying to "Comp" Age of Sigmar. This isn't just writing the next Swedish pack. This is taking rules for grinding models together, and turning that into some kind of competitive tabletop game.

That's true, and false. It's certainly true that the current rules released by GW does not promote, or perhaps even allow, tournament play. And while there are a fair number of ways to generally come to agreeable matches with opponents (Which by the way, @Archamedius 's statement said for pick-up-games, he did not declare Tournaments entirely viable), there is not the system in place that many people believe needed to "play fair".

So you're right. The game is not made "complete" if you believe that "You must be able to play in tournaments to have a game that is viable and complete." BUT, and I believe this, there is a game and it is entirely playable. To call it "incompletely" because it does not support tournaments is not true. It's a complete game in the respect that plenty of fully functional and rational humans have been able to play Age of Sigmar. And they didn't even have to make up rules to do so. The game is Complete.

What it is not, is what you want. And whether or not it is GW's job to deliver on your desires is debatable. Certainly WHFB was a game in the vein that you are looking for, where as AoS is no where near, but I don't remember signing a contract with GW that demanded they continue to support my every whim. And I won't pretend to know the reasons behind the drastic shift, but it doesn't matter. That the game changed is all that is relevant, and it is not nearly so clear cut as you say that it is about it being a change for the worse. Because worse is a matter of opinion, and for all players who were not into GW solely based on their already faulty and poor game design? Well we're along for the ride, and some of us might actually enjoy it. But to decry GW as a villainous monster for supplanting their already faulty design choices, that supported strict adherence to rules and systems, with an arguably more faulty system that supports a freedom that many players may enjoy or find encouraging is viewing the world though rose tinted glasses.

And yes, I also believe that any system designed to reign in control of players choices to create an "equal" playing field is basically the same, as the Swedish Comp for 8th or any new "comp" that comes out for AoS that may enjoy success. Comp is short for Composition after all, and they were just as "artificial" and "user labored" as anything for AoS. You act like the people who made Swedish Comp did not have to put in any effort because GW simply laid ground work? No, they had nearly just as much to go by then as they do now. Units relative strengths and weaknesses, and valuations of their abilities. Just because there is no points cost does not mean you have lost the ability to evaluate units, it simply removed the defaulted to assessment (Which I will note can just as often be flawed). Any of the comp systems presented thus far for AoS are fair for people to say they could work; Heck, while I personally dislike the freedom offered by @najo 's comp he presented, I believe that is almost entirely in line with the mentality of building a functional tournament system. I think it's a poor system in that it creates restrictions that needn't be placed (Like denying you the ability to out number your opponent by more than "1 Warscroll" at most) but I don't think his idea is meant for extremely casual play.

But I do believe there is strength to this system, in offering people more of a choice than they every had before. The freedom of not being burdened by a flawed rule set (That GW surely has always known they design flawed, because they sure aren't very good at it), and allowing players to take a step back and try to find what they are actually looking for themselves. And some players, like you, may be extremely off put by this, let's call it introspection, that each player is now being given the chance to take. But being able to reflect on the game and why we play games, and what makes it worth our time, is a worthwhile reflection. And it's entirely worthwhile to allow everyone the chance to see possibilities beyond such "tournament standards", players who may be into the game but only exposed to such scenes, because they tend to dominate and stifle the creativity of more free play.

Because they say "If you don't have a list, we can't play because there is no way to know we're even playing Fair".

Because they think that given the chance, players will field only monsters and characters.

Because they think that other players aren't out there to have fun, only to win.

And sure, it doesn't support the exact style of a tournament, but it could, with work. But the problem anyone who demands a tournament is going to have is they think first and foremost winning needs to be rewarded. And when winning is the only fun you think you're having, then you're probably not having much fun at all.

Consider this:

It's entirely possible that a player may not feel that they are being unfair, or the shame, from fielding 30 Bloodthirsters, but when put to a crowd where everyone can see what they are doing? What defense would they have if people could simply nominate them as non-viable for winning an event? Or if event coordinators had to check list before they were admitted to play (Because gods know no tournament ever required that before), and they would be allowed to simply reject non-compliant or radically unfair list.

Let me be clear when I say that Point Costs are simply a crutch. And while some people need crutches, they aren't there to make things right, and even when you're using them, you can tell when things are wrong. No amount of points would ever make Nagash OK to play. And tournaments previous disallowed certain Special Characters for similar reasons. The points could never be justified when trying to make the game balanced. And just because most other units were generally accepted as cost, it didn't make it correct or fair, it simply made it what we agreed, which was handed down to us by GW. If anything, shouldn't we be overjoyed by having the freedom to determine what is fair, and set the scene as we want it (Which will most likely be a bent mishap of min-maxing, like tournaments typically end up).

I will say however it is a great bit more complicated that simply the removal of point costs, with magic (Summoning in particular) seeming rather off currently. But in previous iterations of WHFB did we not see full units swallowed to Pit of Shades, Purple Sun, Dwellers? So it's not like WHFB was without flaw, and again, comp systems tried to reign in things that are considered more dangerous to the "fairness" of the game, just like they potentially will with AoS.

All I'm saying is, you make fair points. But you are trying to assert that your points apply to every aspect of the game because you choose to believe that the points you are highlighting are the only points that matter. And that simply is not the case. Your points are true, but they are a lot more limited in scope than you make it sound like. And I can't force you to have fun playing AoS, by any means, but if you truly see no worth in any aspect of the game because a few of the points you enjoyed (Perhaps even most, although you have "admitted" to enjoying other aspects) were shifted dramatically? Then you're just making a mountain of a mound.

 

[najo]

Our group has been discussing Age of Sigmar more, and how to balance it. This was one guy's actual response. I wanted to share, I felt @najo and @The Sun King might get a kick out of it.

Just some musings I have had kicking around in my head.

Balance in Age of Sigmar


I think I have it figured out.

The age of making lists are gone. They 60 wound, 3 hero, 2 monsters, blah-blah-blah will not work.
The age of Swedish comp is gone.
And I also disagree with the idea that pick-up games will take hours of sorting out what the guidelines for the game are etc. I think in fact it will go much faster.


Here is an example:

Player A, lets call him Rick the Dick, and Player B, let’s call him Awesome Kevin, completely random names grabbed out of the air.

Rick and Awesome Kevin decide they want to play a game of Age of Sigmar. They meet and find a table at their local game store, let’s call the game store the Art of War again completely random.


They both declare what armies they will be playing. Rick, being the dick he is declares “I am playing Death, because I like playing broken armies that don’t run away and can regrow units at will, and I have trouble satisfying women in bed.” Kevin, being awesome says “That is fine, I will play Order, because they have Lizardmen and because dinosaurs are awesome!” They set up terrain, as per the AoS 4 page rules. They roll a die to see who goes first...


Still no lists have been made. They just picked a table and opened up their respective battle foam/army boxes.


…Rick wins the roll and says “I will deploy this battle scroll that I have for 5 Black knights!” Rick deploys a unit of 5 Black Knights on his half of the table.

Kevin looks at his Battle Scrolls and into his box of models and decides a good counter unit for the Black Knights is a unit of Cav of his own.
“I choose to deploy a unit of 8 Cold One Cav to counter your Black Knights.” Says Kevin looking handsome as ever. “That guy must work out!” is overheard from a young an attractive soccer mom who happens to be in the store buying models for her kid that lives with his father most of the year.


Rick deploys a unit of Grave guard and Kevin counters with a unit of Temple Guard.

Rick – Terrorgesist
Kevin – Carnasaur
Rick – Black Coach
Kevin – Stegadon
Rick – Skeletons
Kevin- Saurus Warriors
Rick – Krell
Kevin – Slann

This goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until finally Kevin says “That is enough that is all I am placing”

Rick, being a dick as usual, places 2 more units of zombies.


Rick now has 1/3 more models than Kevin, so Kevin gets to choose a sudden death victory condition.


That is it.
That is the balance.
There is no more all-comers lists, because it is all All-Comers-Lists now.
Whatever you have in your battle foam box when you show up is your army.
You can play it all or just a couple units, it is ultimately up to you.

The balance comes from the guy across from you not bringing 200 models, but if he does you get the sudden death victory option. If he brings 10 Blood Thirsters then screw that guy he has more money than sense, and is a complete Rick!


In tournaments it is self-balancing, if players keep dropping units until they are out of models or out of space they would hamstring themselves. Victory conditions being the way they are in AoS is you pretty much have to wipe the other guy out or complete and objective. In your typical 2.5 - 3 hour tournament round that would be impossible if the field is littered with units, it would just take entirely too long to actually finish the game.


So what have we learned here?

Don’t be a Rick.


All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. J

I agree that this is the intended army comp within the game. Now if we can merge that with some kind of planning and structure, that includes limited deployment so that we get online list sharing (which is important for community building) and the sideboard effect, then we've nailed it.