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AoS factions gameplay


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Hello everyone,

I am more a tabletop game kind of guy than a wargame one. BUT, I must admit that the modernising of the games workshop fantasy line could make me drop some euros. Lots in fact.

 My problem is that, besides the designs and the fluff, I did not found a gameplay digest for each faction. Is there a brief description of each aos faction's gameplay as the links below concerning Warmachine/Hordes factions?

 

https://threediceoverload.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/starting-armies-how-do-the-factions-of-warmachine-play/

https://threediceoverload.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/how-do-the-factions-of-hordes-play/

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It's not as straightforward to create a guide like that for AoS because each of the Grand Alliances has so much variety and flexibility that you can pretty much build an army to match your preferred play style.

If you break the alliances down into sub-factions it's a slightly different story. Some sub-factions have very limited options and can only really be played one way, while others are hugely diverse and offer a lot of flexibility and scope for customisation. And there are so many if these sub-factions that a detailed gameplay guide for all of them would be quite an undertaking (the GW website lists 57 separate sub-factions in contrast to Warmahordes' 9).

It would be easier to work out your preferred play style first and then work out which of the various sub-factions (or combinations thereof) can accommodate it.

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I'm sure at some point one of us will write up some kind of summary for you.

Until then the best place to look is probably 1d4chan. (With a large grain of salt please - its a wiki so exaageration occurs.

I recommend browsing GW site and looking at the aesthetics of the 4 grand alliances.

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Category:Age_of_Sigmar/Tactics

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Warhammer

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I meant sub-factions and not what they call Grand Alliance. 
 
To clarify what I was looking for: I think that I am like most of the people who posted on the "Favorite faction" topic: I like quite all the designs and find all the backgrounds quite interresting, even if in both cases, all factions have not yet be revamped/AoSized. So choosing a first faction to collect is a little difficult. 
 
So I thought that maybe the gameplay could be a good discriminating criterion. 
 
The gameplay of some factions seems quite obvious: Khorne warriors is heavy on close combat and the kharadron overlords seems to be more efficient in range combat. But I am quite disapointed that I can't find a quick guide of every faction like the ones I posted for W/H or what you can find easily for Starcraft 2 for example (Terran => balanced units, Protoss => Elite units based, Zerg => unit swarming based). 
 
Concerning 1d4chan, I usually find that it's too detailed and not giving a relevant glimpse of all the factions. Concerning the GW site (that is basically more a eshop than anything else), I think that they could make it more efficient with a "choose your faction" page for each of their games with a quick digest of unit designs, background and gameplay. 

Anyway, thanks for your inputs

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Nearest thing they have is probably this: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Warhammer-Age-of-Sigmar-Factions-Guide

It doesn't really go in to much on their strategic styles, but you at least get a flavour, and a link to all their available units.

Perhaps one (or some) of our more experienced posters could knock a 'Intro to AoS Factions' post? I'm sure lots of others would find it useful (me too!) 

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24 minutes ago, Toddy said:

Nearest thing they have is probably this: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Warhammer-Age-of-Sigmar-Factions-Guide

It doesn't really go in to much on their strategic styles, but you at least get a flavour, and a link to all their available units.

Perhaps one (or some) of our more experienced posters could knock a 'Intro to AoS Factions' post? I'm sure lots of others would find it useful (me too!) 

It's difficult to do a post to say what faction does what as they can all do a bit of everything which is further muddied as you can cherry pick units and mix factions. Stormcast for example can fight and shoot and lists can be tailored to do either or a mixture. 

4 minutes ago, pseudonyme said:

That is what I Wars trying to say concerning the GW website: it is an eshop, it barely tries to "market" the brand.

Well, maybe they don't need to with all their established client base...

They tend to see it as they make the best models in the world and people will buy the models. Some will paint while others will play games with them. They also prefer people going into a GW store rather than just doing over web ;) 

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1 minute ago, Gaz Taylor said:

It's difficult to do a post to say what faction does what as they can all do a bit of everything which is further muddied as you can cherry pick units and mix factions. Stormcast for example can fight and shoot and lists can be tailored to do either or a mixture. 

To an extent, but surely something can be said as to each factions style? E.g. FEC and Khorne are combat based. Death tends towards masses of regenerating hordes. Stormcast are flexible, but tends towards small elite armies. 

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13 minutes ago, pseudonyme said:

That is what I Wars trying to say concerning the GW website: it is an eshop, it barely tries to "market" the brand.

Well, maybe they don't need to with all their established client base...

I do agree about this, try the warhammer community website which, while I don't think will give you what you're looking for in this case, does give more news and communitybfocussed stuff

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25 minutes ago, Toddy said:

To an extent, but surely something can be said as to each factions style? E.g. FEC and Khorne are combat based. Death tends towards masses of regenerating hordes. Stormcast are flexible, but tends towards small elite armies. 

Exactly, and this is not only a matter of close or range combat, you have lots of criteria like mobility, resistance, buffs/maledictions, versatililty...

But I must admit, even If the gameplay is an important part of faction choice, I know that I will end buying an undead army at one point :)

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42 minutes ago, pseudonyme said:

But I must admit, even If the gameplay is an important part of faction choice, I know that I will end buying an undead army at one point :)

That's the answer to all complex questions. In Warhammer AoS there is no such thing to consider too seriously whan talking abiut competitive play. With the marketing and releasing schedule, there is not much balance (if at all) among factions. I.e. newer release will always beat older one.

So the best thing that one can describe a faction is only that this faction is shooty, that faction is attack a lot, for example. If you dig deeper beyond that you will find a lot of factors that make a few factions completely superior than the others.

Eventually you will care no more about competitiveness and choose a faction you just like because to you they look cool, period. (Or give up this game altogether and go back to play WM/H, Malifaux, King of War, etc, of which designed with competitiveness not fluff or model appearance).

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I'm not interrested in competitive play (too old?) and the faction efficiency, but more on the global gameplay or feeling of the faction.

I guess that both Demons and Death factions are heavy invocation based, but the overall feeling must be différent isn't it?

I guess that ultimately what I'd like is a digest of each faction that have a start collecting box (ie currently supported faction by GW).

 

I understand that they positionned themselves as a miniatures making company but don't understand why they have not a page to really present their games.

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50 minutes ago, pseudonyme said:

I guess that both Demons and Death factions are heavy invocation based, but the overall feeling must be différent isn't it?

You can choose units and abilities that support a summoning-focused play style, but within Death and Daemons there are a wide range of units and sub-factions so you can build an army that don't rely on summoning at all and plays completely differently. You can have a Daemon army that's focused on close combat, shooting, mobility, tricksy magic effects or any combination thereof. You can play Death as a small army of elites or a vast horde army.

If the play style of your army is important to you then I'm guessing you must have at least a rough idea of what play style you'd prefer? Or that you can at least rule some play styles out? It would be much easier and more fruitful for you to share this info so that you can be directed towards the factions that will support that play style, rather than hoping that someone down-thread is going to prepare a tactical summary for the 57 existing sub-factions.

 

50 minutes ago, pseudonyme said:

I guess that ultimately what I'd like is a digest of each faction that have a start collecting box (ie currently supported faction by GW).

If you're genuinely not leaning towards one play style or another, the best option is probably to read each unit's warscroll. The Start Collecting boxes each contain 3-4 different units so that's not too much reading. You can download the Age of Sigmar app to access the warscrolls for free (or find them as PDFs on the GW website). This will tell you exactly what each unit in the Start Collecting box is capable of and will give you some indication of how their faction plays. But like I've said, you could add units to any of the Start Collecting boxes that would shift your army towards a different play style.

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This is primarily they're a slow turning behemoth who are still tied to their ideal of selling you on the lore and aesthetics of each army. Their foregrounding of Three Ways To Play, two of which are not constrained by tournament play, chimes with that. 

This guide is a fairly decent introduction, but it's nearly a year out of date. 

http://www.thediceabide.com/2016/08/age-of-sigmar-what-army-is-for-you/

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47 minutes ago, Gaz Taylor said:

I've just made a quick round up, which I've pinned to the top of this forum. Hopefully this will help as a starting point ;) 

That's it!!! Thanks a lot. I still can't believe that I never found this kind of short présentation.

The only remark I could do to make it more readable by separating with paragraph/bullet points/highlight/bolding the fluff, the pros and cons of each faction.

Besides that tiny formating remark, I think it's perfect. Nice job!

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