The Future of AoS...

[wayniac]

From what I've seen in general from tournaments, it's the same type of things you see at the top tables.  That usually is "stale" to me, and because tournament things tend to trickle down, it affects people like me who don't usually play in tournaments because people see lists doing well, and bring them to casual games.

[Requizen]

I dunno man, at Adepticon (one of the biggest AoS gatherings in the world) there was a good mix of "netlists" and things you don't often see. And it wasn't only the meta armies on top tables.

Even looking at the recent Heat 2 results you see some variety in the top 10.

Coming from 40k, the variety and speed at which things change is way, way better in AoS.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

[discoking]

I think AoS has a bright future but myself and others are starting to get a little worried the Hero Phase is becoming way to complicated and turn length for some of armies is becoming just ridiculously long and tedious which can be a major problem in tournaments and strict time limits.

[Sleboda]

 In the future,  GW will hook up a shock device to the internet so that whenever people use the word "meta" to describe any aspect of this hobby, they will get a zap.

?

[wayniac]

13 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

 In the future,  GW will hook up a shock device to the internet so that whenever people use the word "meta" to describe any aspect of this hobby, they will get a zap.

?

Amusing, but the term "meta" has relevance to anything which is seen as competitive.  *gets zapped*

[VBS]

1 hour ago, discoking said:

I think AoS has a bright future but myself and others are starting to get a little worried the Hero Phase is becoming way to complicated and turn length for some of armies is becoming just ridiculously long and tedious which can be a major problem in tournaments and strict time limits.

This might be a bit pessimistic among all the brightness, but there is constant introduction of new mechanism and rules which might make games a bit clunky (certain Hero phases being an example).

The base game (4 pages + basic warscrolls) might be easy to grasp and low-entry-level, but the more armies get updated, the more rules, exceptions and time-consuming actions get introduced. It adds in complexity but also in tediousness, making it closer to other list-of-rules games. I remember AoS was praised precisely for not being like that. It will be interesting to see the state of the game in 3-4 years, and how much it changed compared to it's initial incarnation.    

Other than that, I think it will do great. Miniatures seem to please a lot of poeple, and the GW change of attitude was really positive deal.

[Galas]

This is a miniature game. Where changing your tools cost hundreds of money and time.

The idea of a changing "meta" At the speed it change in videogames is just absurd. A company can tweak half a game and players can adapt the next week, buying new champions, cards, etc...

A new GHB every year to tweak the strong things and the weak things seems a good rythm to me in a wargame

[Sleboda]

I know.  It's just a pet peeve of mine. I think 80% of the people who use it want to sound cool, are too lazy to actually describe what they are really tying to get at,  or don't know what it means.  Not saying you use it that way, @wayniac.  Nothing personal.

I also think the term adds to two problems:

1) It stymies more nuanced conversation among gamers by glossing over details. 

2) It falsley supports the misguided notion that the introduction of a new book somehow fixes supposed issues with another. It doesn't. 

New stuff is just shiny and cool.  People want to play with it.  Ppl get used to it. All returns to normal. 

If I play Sylvaneth and my opponent plays Ironjaws, the Overlords will do nothing to our "meta."

 

[KnightFire]

15 minutes ago, Galas said:

This is a miniature me. Where changing your tools cost hundreds of money and time.

The idea of a changing "meta" At the speed it change un videogames is justo absurd. A company van tweak half a game and players can adapt the next week, buying new champions, cards, etc...

 

You haven't played competitive MTG have you? It makes buying a new warhammer army every 3 months look like pocket change

 

The time aspect is valid, but GW aren't catering specifically to competitive players, in fact they are just trying to sell as many miniatures as fast as they can. AoS is good for that, because people can pick up a few miniatures they like and use those in a grand alliance army without having to buy the whole lot.

The metagame moving quickly isn't just a factor of new releases, it is also affected by trends and who is winning what. If a tournament one week has lots of stormcast, people will bring lists the next week aiming to beat stormcast, and the week after will be lists designed to beat the week 2 lists. Thats how a metagame works, irrespective of changes.

 

However I am 100% in favour of fast changes to the metagame that stop the game getting stale, its boring to play the same thing over and over, and it means it moves heavily towards a small number of netlists. A changing metagame makes it harder for people to settle on a small number of netlists, so there is more variety in what you see and play against.

 

[Furious]

I find Metagaming ruinous - now, that is how I perceive it. I know plenty of people love to metagame in tabletop, online gaming etc. but it detracts from the game for me. I want to run lists, characters, whatever I think is cool. If the game was balanced, it shouldn't matter. But I can get crushed by metagamers. Takes some fun away from it.

I know you can't really prevent metagaming - it's the players who create it, exploiting the game structure. I just want less of a power creep and less of a power range. Hopefully frequent updates can get on top of that.

[KillagoreFaceslasha]

5 hours ago, Auticus said:

I've just discovered FFG's Runewars has become a giant hit with our tournament community and they are aggressively recruiting for it and that may take a toll on our fragile AOS community.

I'm not particularly worried about Runewars. Unless FFG does a shift of paradigm, which would be a welcome surprise, they'll drop it for dead almost all the time and abandon it in 2-3 years.

[chord]

1 hour ago, VBS said:

 

The base game (4 pages + basic warscrolls) might be easy to grasp and low-entry-level, but the more armies get updated, the more rules, exceptions and time-consuming actions get introduced. It adds in complexity but also in tediousness, making it closer to other list-of-rules games. I remember AoS was praised precisely for not being like that. It will be interesting to see the state of the game in 3-4 years, and how much it changed compared to it's initial incarnation.    

 

Agreed, allegiance abilities, artifacts of power, extra prayers, etc.   Taking the simple and making more complex. 

[BunkhouseBuster]

A couple months ago in my local area, there were no Age of Sigmar players meeting up.  Now, there are 5 regulars that show up week to week, and several others who I know are interested in trying the game.  The future of Age of Sigmar is bright in my eyes.  We are going to be starting up our own narrative campaign, putting something together for Coalescence, and moving forward.  For me and my main gaming buddy, we haven't been as excited about any tabletop game as much as we have for Age of Sigmar (at least in a long time!).

Regarding Runewars, it is getting looked at by some of the local tabletop gaming gurus in our area.  These same folks jumped on Dark Age and Dropfleet/Dropzone Commander, and play lots of board and card games.  If they pick it up, it will have a good local following for about 6 to 8 months and then take up space at our FLGS.

Regarding "meta", my only concern for meta is a good mix and representation of armies on the tabletop in our group.  We have a good collection of Chaos and Order represtented, so I am sticking with my Ironjawz to keep a good selection of opponents available for our group.  We aren't too worried about competition, and are just keeping focus on fun and narrative gaming.

[Captain Marius]

As a collector of the books that would drive me nuts! I see the value of tweaking the rules, but im happy with them doing it as books are updated, it feels more focused. A yearly points review in the GHB seems like a good way of giving the whole line a clean up for balance - the new releases seem to impact the meta significantly to keep things fresh.

Personally im champing at the bit for the next narrative series to kick off! With tzeentch in place as the big bad, sigmarines and khorne updated and a bunch of brand new factions on the way it should be an exciting time for the game!

[Sleboda]

1 hour ago, chord said:

Agreed, allegiance abilities, artifacts of power, extra prayers, etc.   Taking the simple and making more complex. 

It's starting to feel like X- wing on roids. I love x-wing, but not with a zillions pilots, guns, ship upgrades, etc. It gets too easy for the game to start playing you.  

One of the greatest appeals of AoS is/was its flexibility in tactics derived from use of 4 pages of simple and clear rules.

Now I feel like I need a flowchart just to build a list,  let alone play the game. 

At Adepticon my opponents would start to explain their lists and I glaze over and say "Dude, it's ok.  I won't remember half of that.  I trust you.  Just play it the way you do. "

[karch]

2 hours ago, KillagoreFaceslasha said:

I'm not particularly worried about Runewars. Unless FFG does a shift of paradigm, which would be a welcome surprise, they'll drop it for dead almost all the time and abandon it in 2-3 years.

No way. FFG are going all in with this after the xwing cash cow success.

This is the game they sacrificed their partnership with GW for so they will push it hard and for as long as it takes.

I won't touch it with a 10 foot pole because xwing is bad already with putting must have cards in ships from factions I don't play, though.

[Sleboda]

They are definitely invested. They gave it for free to thousands of Adepticon attendees. I have it.  Haven't touched it yet.

[Travis Baumann]

5 hours ago, VBS said:

The base game (4 pages + basic warscrolls) might be easy to grasp and low-entry-level, but the more armies get updated, the more rules, exceptions and time-consuming actions get introduced. It adds in complexity but also in tediousness, making it closer to other list-of-rules games. I remember AoS was praised precisely for not being like that. It will be interesting to see the state of the game in 3-4 years, and how much it changed compared to it's initial incarnation.    

 

This is exactly my concern as well.  I am just starting AoS after a very long hiatus from GW.  I still have WHFB and 40K armies lying around and got excited by new miniatures from 3rd parties as well as what GW has been doing.  I started hesitantly at first with free rules and the downloadable Warscrolls and while this was a simple entry point into the game, it was not what was being played at either the local GW in Glendale nor at the other two Indy Game stores I went to here in the Los Angeles area (which both heavily favor 40K and WMH).  I felt I was missing a lot of information.

I bought some new models and started painting them (Skyfires looked too cool not to buy) and got really excited for the newer things coming out so I began to investigate the world of AoS (both fluff and further rules) and ended up buying a lot of stuff already (Hard cover Age of Sigmar book to start with) but the first few things still did not tell me anything.  How to play with points, how to builds armies, etc.  I started playing with Scroll Builder and then the Azyr App that I subscribed to.  Now I have the access to points but no explanations for anything.  Where are the damn Command Traits?  Where are the Artefacts?  How do these Battalions work?

I went and bought the Chaos Grand Alliance book.  Now I have warscrolls for everything Chaos in paperback but still none of the things above.  Finally I picked up the Generals Handbook (even though it is only 2 months to 2.0 supposedly) - OK.  Now I see the Traits and Artefacts and Points.

So then I start looking on here, on other sites, reading up and everywhere there is talk of Battalions.  I have no idea how all of these battalions work and I still find it frustrating.

The rules bloat, arms race, Battalion one-up-manship, and newest flavor of the month seems to be beginning.  That is annoying and nearly put me off from rejoining the community.  The idea that I can pick any unit of set amount of points and have a chance against a similar pointed unit IF I use my brain and luck is with my dice roles were hugely attractive to me and other people I have talked to.

Just because you introduce fantastic new armies does not mean each one of them need to have 20 new rules/artefacts/abilities.  Their cool new weapons, spells, and abilities could easily fall into more standardized sections of the existing rules.  Making every new unit be an exception to an existing rule or to add new rules in and of themselves (and then to make those rules only accessible to those that put cash down) is exactly why 40K is in the state it is now.

My other major concern is the use of named characters.  They are great for fluff and also great as reference (not to mention their models looks awesome) but it really takes away the narrative building aspect of creating our own individual armies with generals that may or may not be avatarized representations of ourselves on the field.   Looking at LVO and other cons, you end up seeing a lot of Aillariels, Nagashs, Archaons, etc. on the tables sometimes even fighting themselves.  I am all for more "generic" or customizable leaders/figures.  Demon Princes/Princesses should all be completely individual for example and I have some pretty cool converted ones that I always go to as a General and build a retinue around them (although I am not sure if they have enough noticeable GW parts to work for some stores/tournaments as I had to go beyond just GW parts to really make them unique in my mind).

One last thing... I am disappointed by the Shadespire thing due to the "deck building" and "boardgame" tone of it (no to mention the easy assemble blue/red plastic miniatures).  AoS warband style ala Middenheim/Necromunda/SW Armageddon would be a great way to play smaller forces and avoid a lot of this stuff for some people and it doesn't even have to be a new set of rules or a box set... one simple section of the GHB 2.0 could take the Warband creation in GHB 1.0 and expand on it so it makes more balanced sense with point costs and things as opposed to rolling on charts (or choosing) which can offer hugely unbalancing units/monsters so that one Warband will annihilate all others.

 

Anyways, just my 2 cents as someone who is returning after nearly 20 years hiatus and loves what he sees on the table-top and for the most part, love everything about AoS except for the potential rules-bloat/battletome-power-creep that seems to be building.

 

[Galas]

Personally, I have 0 problems with the format of General Rulebook+ONE armybook. And with warscrols to introduce new units, etc... without needing a complete suplement that starts the rules bloat of 40k, where you need your Codex and 3-4 sumplements depending of the army you play.

 

You can have variation in two forms:

-Complete basic ruleset and simple rules for units and armies (This was how WHFB played)
-Simple basic ruleset with complicated rules for units and armies (This is how AoS is played)
 

And thats ok. The problem comes when you have Complicated basic rules + Complicated special rules for units and armies.

And it gets even worse if you have all of that distributed in a number of suplements, books, etc... thats how 40k is now.

 

EDIT: About Shadowspire. Thats own GW's X-wing. Has nothing to do with a skirmish-campaing based system as Mordheim. So don't think that because we will have Shadowspire we aren't gonna have a Mordheim for AoS.

[VBS]

1 hour ago, Galas said:

You can have variation in two forms:

-Complete basic ruleset and simple rules for units and armies (This was how WHFB played)
-Simple basic ruleset with complicated rules for units and armies (This is how AoS is played)
 

And thats ok. The problem comes when you have Complicated basic rules + Complicated special rules for units and armies.

And it gets even worse if you have all of that distributed in a number of suplements, books, etc... thats how 40k is now.

Even if I agree with a lot of what Travis said, these two forms things is also quite true. I see it in a same way.

Except that I find the first type to be better. You just learn a bunch of rules and you are good to go. The games flow is stable and there isn't much back and forth for rules.

Having a very simple ruleset while complicating all the rest is meh. Sure the entry level is low, but the moment you do something more complexe or ambitious (anything above beer&pretzels games), it becomes irritating (for me!). Every single unit has 1, 2 or 3 special rules then add up to 4, 5 or 6 when you start synergising everything: +1 hit this, re-roll wound that, +1 hit again, 6s for extra whatever, within 8" range for that command thing.... ad nauseaaaam (this was an exaggerated case, but you get the idea). Makes it unnecessarily long and bores me quite a bit.  

So pyramid-rule-stacking à la AoS isn't great, imo. Bad thing for the future as it seems to be the trend. Good thing is that small games and skirmishes tone this down, so I just stick to that.

Agreed on how much worse it is with w40k, absolute cluster**** 

[BURF1]

On 3/31/2017 at 9:33 AM, Nico said:

I think a bit of both. DoT was absolutely massive as it revolutionised the previously third best Grand Alliance; made lots of older models relevant again (Slaves to Darkness); made certain new models relevant again (Archaon); and introduced a brand new sub-faction with sweet models and fluff (Tzeentch Arcanites).

Don't even, chaos has been the best overall alliance since the alliance system came out, order and destro had 4 monobuild lists (Grumpletusks, ruck, gnarlwood, warrior brotherhood) that were top tier whereas chaos could make pretty much any list a top ten contender just by throwing in Sayl the faithless.

[BURF1]

12 hours ago, Sleboda said:

It's starting to feel like X- wing on roids. I love x-wing, but not with a zillions pilots, guns, ship upgrades, etc. It gets too easy for the game to start playing you.  

One of the greatest appeals of AoS is/was its flexibility in tactics derived from use of 4 pages of simple and clear rules.

Now I feel like I need a flowchart just to build a list,  let alone play the game. 

At Adepticon my opponents would start to explain their lists and I glaze over and say "Dude, it's ok.  I won't remember half of that.  I trust you.  Just play it the way you do. "

That's a side affect of tournament play, not necessarily rules bloat. I guarantee you that that exact conversation has been happening since the very first comp pack got introduced. 

[Turragor]

36 minutes ago, BURF1 said:

That's a side affect of tournament play, not necessarily rules bloat. I guarantee you that that exact conversation has been happening since the very first comp pack got introduced. 

I think people are mixing up the simple open approach with matched and the complexity of (some) lists.

You don't need to worry about that starting.

Matched isn't really tailored to beginners - probably shouldn't be or those very beginners might be dissatisfied with it if they stay.

[Captain Marius]

I think a major benefit of AoS is it is up to the players how many layers of rules they want to use and thus how complicated they want to make their games.

You can start with Open play and just chuck down whatever you want - this is so straightforward it broke the brains of many an 8th ed player trying to understand it (myself included).

For something a bit more complex, the narrative battleplans add real flavour to a game, especially when using the various time of war sheets from the Realmgate Wars series.

The next level of complexity would be adding Allegiance abilities, all the traits and artefacts etc. These are completely optional and in my opinion unbalance matched play terribly, but they do scratch that list building itch when you find a particularly horrific combo.

Lastly there are points, which give you a rough measure of the size of game youll be playing but absolutely do not give you a balanced game.

You can combine these layers in many ways depending how complicated you want to make it. I enjoy a regular 2k matched play with allegiance abilities, but ive enjoyed playing through the Realmgate Wars games way more!

[Killax]

I think the best thing of it all is that it leaves the option to House-rule for TO's for as much as they see fit possible.
It's very easy to assume that scene X and Y are always competatively driven while in reality the oppossite can very much be the case.

House-rules such as SCGT's are a fantastic foundation to build upon if you want to incorpate a competative limitation that many from the highly competative scene seem to find making 'more sence'.

Personally I think that any idea can work, from generating Command Traits and Artefacts randomly for all (to further restrict the competative combinations) or instead have a massive Armageddon where everything stacks, goes and aims to create fun by rules mayhem.