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Hinterland or AoS Skirmish?


HMB

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Hi pals,

I'm here to find a solution for the upcoming campaign i want to run in my local club. And here's my doubt: better Hinterland system or the official Skirmish by GW in your opinion?

Regards

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Hinterlands if campaign, skirmish if one off battles for me. 

Hinterlands is better in every regard. Except that skirmish has less rules and is still a lot of fun for one off games. So just to make it more accessible I would go skirmish for those kind of battles. Otherwise always hinterlands. 

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the thing with hinterlands is that warbands can get pretty overpowered. The AoS Skirmish is a bit better balanced in my opinion. We had some warbands with a Stormcast Warband with a Knight Venator in.

The Knight Venator wasnt to catch and just played shoot-and-scoot. This was the point were we turned to AoS Skirmish.

I guess you should maybe combine both of them. Have the warband-building from AoS Skirmish and check out the campaign-battleplanning in Hinterlands.

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Skirmish is actively supported by GW.

The Malign Portents release received additional model support,  and specific rules/Artefacts for Skirmish.

I’d like to see points updates for Skirmish, with the addition of the new releases since the Skirmish release. (Especially for the Shadespire kits.)

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Skirmish is very simple but gets big pretty quickly, you might want to halve the renown gain after each match if you're running a campaign to avoid having 50 models on the field at once. Also i think usingt he skirmish rules and the hinterlands campaign system might be the way to go. 

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7 hours ago, Kaleun said:

the thing with hinterlands is that warbands can get pretty overpowered. The AoS Skirmish is a bit better balanced in my opinion. We had some warbands with a Stormcast Warband with a Knight Venator in.

The Knight Venator wasnt to catch and just played shoot-and-scoot. This was the point were we turned to AoS Skirmish.

I guess you should maybe combine both of them. Have the warband-building from AoS Skirmish and check out the campaign-battleplanning in Hinterlands.

I think there are arguments both ways. My least favourite thing about Hinterlands is actually the halving of wounds and cost on heroes. Feel it's a bandaid fix to try and get heroes down to a similar level as units, but doesn't really work out. On the flipside, Hinterlands has additional rules that actually prevent abuse of some types of abilities such as mortal wounds and the like.

Either way, in general an answer to shooting is just to fill the board with more terrain. I believe it was Hinterlands (Although, may be getting confused with the Warbands variant in development) also gave cover rules to scatter terrain as long as you were on the opposite side.

4 hours ago, TheOtherJosh said:

Skirmish is actively supported by GW.

The Malign Portents release received additional model support,  and specific rules/Artefacts for Skirmish.

I’d like to see points updates for Skirmish, with the addition of the new releases since the Skirmish release. (Especially for the Shadespire kits.)

I don't know if I'd call it actively supported. I mean, none of the battletomes since Skirmish came out have had renown points in them, something that could've easily been avoided if GW just used points in the first place.

Yes, it got some love in Malign Portents, but I think it just goes to show that GW definitely don't feel as strongly about Skirmish as they do about Path to Glory.

 

Anyway, as for the original question. Both have pros and cons. Skirmish is a simpler game, but it's hard to get in character with your warband when you know none of them are evolving or dying and ultimately it's just a mechanism to ramp up your collection of miniatures.

Hinterlands is unsupported by GW itself (so in theory, harder to find games) and is a little more complex, but does a much better job of trying to actually be a game about warbands clashing as your warband will fluctuate as models gain experience or die due to their injuries.

Given Hinterlands is dead (and removed), I'd probably suggest using the AOS 28 : Warbands which is basically Hinterlands expanded anyway.

 

To me, the actually Skirmish rules provided by GW make a much better 20-50 model game than it does a 5-20 model game. 

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The way I've always looked at it, was Hinterlands was designed to provide a Mordheim-esq ruleset for AoS.  GW ultimately decided to create Underworlds (Shadespire) for that niche and then Skirmish which was the precursor to Path to Glory, so very much an army building concept rather than anything else.

I think what ultimately people seem to want is a skirmish/rpg type game like Mordheim was.  So your warband has a structure to it (so one or two reduced power heroes, a couple of "elite" options and a handful of rank and files), however you'd be looking at almost a brand new game system and a lot of the heroes would need tailoring to be less dominating in game, at which point they're no longer the same hero.  As an example in Mordheim you couldn't field a Vampire Lord - instead it was a Vampire Thrall

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3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

The way I've always looked at it, was Hinterlands was designed to provide a Mordheim-esq ruleset for AoS.  GW ultimately decided to create Underworlds (Shadespire) for that niche and then Skirmish which was the precursor to Path to Glory, so very much an army building concept rather than anything else.

I think what ultimately people seem to want is a skirmish/rpg type game like Mordheim was.  So your warband has a structure to it (so one or two reduced power heroes, a couple of "elite" options and a handful of rank and files), however you'd be looking at almost a brand new game system and a lot of the heroes would need tailoring to be less dominating in game, at which point they're no longer the same hero.  As an example in Mordheim you couldn't field a Vampire Lord - instead it was a Vampire Thrall

For the most part it depends on the grade of complexity that players want to have in their Skirmisher.
Mortheim is very complicated. While having great rules, the entrance to AoS Skirmish or Hinterlands is much easier. Also I guess the AoS Skirmish can be played quicker then Mortheim. If you do a campaign you dont want to aim to high as motivation is always high at the beginning, but significally drops after weeks or months.

The most tricky part is noch the choice of your playing/campaign system. It is more about constructing a good story for your participants.

Keep it simple, keep it interesting!

Make it an positive experience for your people, then  it will be a great campaign for you.

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One think not mentioned yet: Skrimish doesn't include points values for the full variety of models available by GW.  And in the book, models aren't given points in a way that there is a clear equation to figuring it out from the General's Handbook. It is obviously easy enough to decide on a points value for a model among close friends, but when playing in a wider group disagreements are more likely.

It may not be as balanced, but Hinterlands has a clear equation for point values for any models, encouraging a wider variety of warbands, and I like that.

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1 hour ago, Nevvermore said:

I'm pretty sure skirmish points are just GHB Points / 10. Or at least divided by some number.

There's a pattern for many of the models, yeah. But there's a good few outliers. Enough to cause confusion when trying to give points to models not listed.

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7 hours ago, Blish said:

There's a pattern for many of the models, yeah. But there's a good few outliers. Enough to cause confusion when trying to give points to models not listed.

The outliers are most likely caused by the fact GW probably based the renown on an earlier revision of the points that finally made it into the GHB.

An example I guess are everyones favourite Skyfires, who have their renown based on their old points rather than the new.

I guess GW basically don't care if they're out by 2-4 renown, as the game is just meant to quickly get you up to scratch to play AOS proper anyway. Just like Path to Glory has imbalances as well if you compare how much 1 glory should be in points (For an easy example, you can get 10 Orruks for the same glory as 10 Savage Orruks whom are 30 points more).

 

Anyway, neither Hinterlands nor Skirmish will truly be balanced. The warscrolls are not made with a Skirmish game in mind, so there'll always be something that pops out as broken.

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11 hours ago, Nevvermore said:

I'm pretty sure skirmish points are just GHB Points / 10. Or at least divided by some number.

They are ghb points divided by minimum unit size divided by 5

Eg knight questor 100 points

Divided by 1 (unit size) then divided by 5 = 20

Liberator unit = 100 points

divided by 5 (unit size) divided by 5 = 4

Theres a pinned thread with the full points

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21 hours ago, Blish said:

One think not mentioned yet: Skrimish doesn't include points values for the full variety of models available by GW.  And in the book, models aren't given points in a way that there is a clear equation to figuring it out from the General's Handbook. It is obviously easy enough to decide on a points value for a model among close friends, but when playing in a wider group disagreements are more likely.

It may not be as balanced, but Hinterlands has a clear equation for point values for any models, encouraging a wider variety of warbands, and I like that.

the reasons might be balancing issues. Ase being said, from my experience the Knight Venator is way overpowered in a skirmish game. So are several other units.

@Nevvermore

I think GW stopped Hinterlands by law-force. GW doesnt accept competition around their products. You see the same happening with fan-supported Necromunda and Blood Bowl.

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