AoS and the Death of Armies

[Alabaster427]

I have been thinking about AoS and some of the reasons the rules are free. Granted, they need a lot of support rather quickly, so they basically had to make the rules free, but something still didn't seem right. Then I downloaded the app and the format seemed strange but I couldn't put my finger on it. I remembered an argument that @najo had made about not having a points system for several reasons, one of them being that it's really discouraging to have a favorite model just to find out it sucks because of poor points cost.

This got me wondering: What would happen if I had two favorite models but they were from different armies. For instance, I got into Warhammer because of the Varghulf. It was the first model I had ever assembled and painted and was the centerpiece of my army for several months while I was collecting models. Some time later (many years) Wood Elves finally got an update and the Treeman Ancient looked fabulous. I had always liked Wood Elves, but didn't want to buy a model I couldn't use or invest in another army just to have the one model.

All this pondering made me realize that AoS doesn't require your army to be from the same army or even the same faction. Because of the warscrolls, I can now have the Treeman Ancient and the Varghulf, and basically any other models that I like in my army. For new players, this means only buying the models that they like regardless of what army they belong to, which I think is awesome for them. For veteran players, this means being able to mix their already vast collections in ways they never could before. For GW, this means more revenue because one customer isn't limited to the small selections that their stores have or what's in a specific army and people are buying because of aesthetics, not playability (which is genius). Since everything is free, I can buy a model or unit and instantly have the warscroll on the app and now be able to play it.

What does this mean for Warhammer? I think it means that eventually, there won't be any armies at all. All of the models will essentially just be part of one game. If GW were smart about it, they would put a code on the box to scan with their app for to see the warscroll instantly for that unit.

I understand some of you may have already realized this, but I haven't seen it anywhere.

 

[Dragonet]

They've already done this with 40K as well, except of course the rules aren't free. I reckon you're right, I only hope they implement bonuses for using armies and formations, to keep something of Warhammer alive.

 

[Cela Shyish]

I was actually planning to reply to this early but I got distracted. Well when you think of it, most gamers look either for power or themes. When you compare e.g. Lord Celestant on Dracoth, Zombies, High elf Dragon mage, Blood letters and Orc Boar boys. Individually they can be considered reasonably strong and have nice models to a lot of people but ultimately as one army they have so little synergy it would be painful to use. They also share no common theme so someone would more likely start a couple of armies or use one model as another. They would end up using only a couple of outside units in terms of rules.

So let's use M:tG as an example since so many people know it. There are no restrictions on themes and stuff other than colours and how they work together. I know a lot of people that used to use mono-coloured or dual-coloured decks of their favourite types that were based around a single strategy, which consequently made them use nearly tribal decks to use that style. In Innistrad Delver decks focussed on sorceries to summon ghosts and stuff to emphasise the delver. They had sooooo many options, even in just 2-colours but it was still a powerful themed deck. Zombie decks used things like forbidden alchemy, call to the kindred, etc to make them work and more thematic. Despite the lack of restrictions I know that most people I knew tried to find a way of making the deck suit their taste. I personally did love 5-colour decks and even then I loved centering my main deck around memories and tokens. So I used some flashback, things like Silent Departure, moan of the unhallowed, midnight haunting, doomed traveller and Druid's repository, plus burn spells to draw out until end game where I would use cards like Past in Flames (one of my favourites ever ♥) to bring out my final attack and I won more games than I lost by far.

But my point is that people tend to make themes and make them work. This means that the armies are likely to remain in existence, because it would make it easier to win battles and make it easier to set a theme. The armies work primarily because we want our army to have a theme, this is why most people here chose undead. We might take one or two things from other armies in AoS but ultimately we're still undead. We like to have an army that each time you kill it, comes back, an army that strikes fear in the hearts of our enemies, something we can't get from any other armies. That is why I believe the armies will stay.

P.s. sorry post is kinda juddering around randomly, really super sleepy, had a long day and was juggling a chat on facebook, a video, a chat with my brother and Carpe Noctem chat all together so if its a lil unclear then I'll try to clarify when I'm awake.

 

[Alabaster427]

I was actually planning to reply to this early but I got distracted. Well when you think of it, most gamers look either for power or themes. When you compare e.g. Lord Celestant on Dracoth, Zombies, High elf Dragon mage, Blood letters and Orc Boar boys. Individually they can be considered reasonably strong and have nice models to a lot of people but ultimately as one army they have so little synergy it would be painful to use. They also share no common theme so someone would more likely start a couple of armies or use one model as another. They would end up using only a couple of outside units in terms of rules.

So let's use M:tG as an example since so many people know it. There are no restrictions on themes and stuff other than colours and how they work together. I know a lot of people that used to use mono-coloured or dual-coloured decks of their favourite types that were based around a single strategy, which consequently made them use nearly tribal decks to use that style. In Innistrad Delver decks focussed on sorceries to summon ghosts and stuff to emphasise the delver. They had sooooo many options, even in just 2-colours but it was still a powerful themed deck. Zombie decks used things like forbidden alchemy, call to the kindred, etc to make them work and more thematic. Despite the lack of restrictions I know that most people I knew tried to find a way of making the deck suit their taste. I personally did love 5-colour decks and even then I loved centering my main deck around memories and tokens. So I used some flashback, things like Silent Departure, moan of the unhallowed, midnight haunting, doomed traveller and Druid's repository, plus burn spells to draw out until end game where I would use cards like Past in Flames (one of my favourites ever ♥) to bring out my final attack and I won more games than I lost by far.

But my point is that people tend to make themes and make them work. This means that the armies are likely to remain in existence, because it would make it easier to win battles and make it easier to set a theme. The armies work primarily because we want our army to have a theme, this is why most people here chose undead. We might take one or two things from other armies in AoS but ultimately we're still undead. We like to have an army that each time you kill it, comes back, an army that strikes fear in the hearts of our enemies, something we can't get from any other armies. That is why I believe the armies will stay.

P.s. sorry post is kinda juddering around randomly, really super sleepy, had a long day and was juggling a chat on facebook, a video, a chat with my brother and Carpe Noctem chat all together so if its a lil unclear then I'll try to clarify when I'm awake.

I glossed over the paragraph about MTG because I have never played it and didn't really understand what you were referencing. Anyways, I understand that the synergy between units in an army is going to be greater than just a bunch of random units in a battle, but that's not necessarily going to be the case 100%. Also, if you're trying to get new players and younger players to be interested, what better way? Veteran players may always hold onto it and new players may grow into it, but I don't know how much longer GW will support it.

 

[najo]

This is one of the features of AoS that I personally think is brilliant. If I was building a wargame from scratch, I would work something similar in.

What I'm having the most trouble with is points I've made about point values are 100% true, but point values seen the simplest way to encourage pick up games and offer some balance to armies. Also, organically adding to an army and swapping units in and out is awesome. Not sure the easiest way to do that with point values.

 

[Dragonet]

I reckon points and unbound lists are incompatible. With the freedom to pick from the entire range, you can't control the synergies between everything available. At least if the armies were internally balanced you could choose to have a competitive no allies game or a fun anything goes game, but I don't think even that's the case.

 

[The Sun King]

The beauty is that with their KEYWORD system AoS DOES control the synergies. The problem with 40k unbound (and battle brothers) was that everybody could get rerolls or whatever from spells cast by psychics. In AoS spells, command abilities and passive special rules will 90% of the time only apply to units with specific keywords. It is a really awesome mechanic.