Most Battleplans are rarely played?

[Warboss Gorbolg]

5 hours ago, wayniac said:

I have a very small AOS group and we rarely use any battleplans at all. It's too much hassle and 90% of the time people go straight to kill anyways, so they usually just say ****** it and play a kill points game. I've been trying to get people to use more plans and terrain rules (which everyone, including myself, often summarily forgets about once we start) to add variety.

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
 

I imagine that this really throws off the balance of the game.  I read battle reports all the time where the side that wins would have lost on straight kill points.  I believe the battleplans are a core part of the game and ignoring them will significantly disadvantage some factions.  Additionally, Even within a single faction, ignoring battleplans will also skew the "value" of units that better support objective play versus straight up killing opposing units.

I personally never would have picked AOS up if it devolved into just Battleline fights like WHFB.

[BunkhouseBuster]

8 minutes ago, Auticus said:

... nine out of ten players that I know couldn't tell you anything about the fluff, nor do they care about it.  They crack a book open to the statlines and pick armies based off of the statlines.

The older I get, the less I care to deal with these players.  I have the little wish that, in order after my familial issues get fixed and I win the lottery, these players would get out of Warhammer and go play some other game.  Warmahordes fits their mindset just perfectly, and encourages their "gamey" attitude.

Seriously though, I haven't had a chance to play any of other Battleplan aside from the Matched Play scenarios, but that was pretty much just because I was trying to learn the rules and game tactics before jumping into anything.  As a learning tool for new players, they work pretty well and help encourage the player to make a decision to hold the line or advance into enemy territory based on the scenario.

Next chance I get to play the game, I will see about using one of the other Battleplans from one of the books.  Now to be able to afford the books...

[Sleboda]

17 minutes ago, Trout said:

The fluff that we never read?

 

I highly doubt

It seeps in to all of it. Do you know the names and areas of influence of the chaos gods? Do you know what realm gates are and why they are important?  Do you know what color orruks are? How about a little understanding of why there are types of aelves and not just one army? Who created vampires and rules the undead? Why are fyreslayers so into gold? How do stormcasts "teleport" into battle?

The list goes on, and I'll wager you know the answers to all of the above without ever reading the fluff.

You may not read the fluff, but many, many ppl do and it pervaded our shared experience.  It generates enthusiasm,  inspires creativity, results in awesome themes for armies and battlefields, and generally defines The AoS Experience, making it distinct and compelling.

Strip all that away and leave just the rules and this whole hobby of ours would dry up and blow away overnight. 

[Trout]

4 hours ago, Sleboda said:

It seeps in to all of it. Do you know the names and areas of influence of the chaos gods? Do you know what realm gates are and why they are important?  Do you know what color orruks are? How about a little understanding of why there are types of aelves and not just one army? Who created vampires and rules the undead? Why are fyreslayers so into gold? How do stormcasts "teleport" into battle?

The list goes on, and I'll wager you know the answers to all of the above without ever reading the fluff.

You may not read the fluff, but many, many ppl do and it pervaded our shared experience.  It generates enthusiasm,  inspires creativity, results in awesome themes for armies and battlefields, and generally defines The AoS Experience, making it distinct and compelling.

Strip all that away and leave just the rules and this whole hobby of ours would dry up and blow away overnight. 

I don't actually know the answer to most of that. I know Orruks are typically painted green, although that's actually not true of every orruk army at my local store. I also know that Nagash is probably supposed to be the ruler of the undead. The rest of the stuff you mentioned...I have no clue. None of it matters to me because I like to create my own stories.

 

For example, my Beastclaw Raiders are not whatever the fluff says they are. My Beastclaw raiders are the descendants of a mighty tribe that was chosen by one of the gods to spread The Seeds of Plenty throughout the world, providing everlasting sustenance for all. But, driven by greed and gluttony they chose to plant the seeds in their own fields and build themselves a Kingdom instead. So, they grew fat with their unending supply of food and angered the god who had chosen them. Their god cursed their land and it began to freeze. They tried to ride out the winter, but it only became stronger until nothing would grow anymore. So, the tribe packed up and moved towards warmer climates. To their horror, they discovered that no matter how far they moved, the winter followed them. Now they wander across the land for ever, forced to kill and eat those they were once sent to help leaving a frozen wasteland wherever they go. Those once called upon to be the saviors of a world were now to be the instruments of a god's wrath, slowly turning the world to a desolate frozen wasteland as they roam.

 

I don't care what "the official" story might be. I like making up my own.

[Sleboda]

5 minutes ago, Trout said:

 

I don't care what "the official" story might be. I like making up my own.

That's awesome!  Really,  it is.  Story matters to you, as it does to so many others.  That's my main point - that this hobby is grounded in story, not rules. 

Not that this is possible,  of course, but if we could go back in time and erase all the story of Fantasy and 40K and just have GW release a black and white booklet entitled "Miniature Gaming Rules" it would be DOA. A few neckbeards in a dusty backroom would scoff at it, dismiss it, and get back to playing Star Fleet Battles and Advanced Squad Leader.

 

Edit: And Black Plague.  And Cards Against Humanity.

[Trout]

1 minute ago, Sleboda said:

That's awesome!  Really,  it is.  Story matters to you, as it does to so many others.  That's my main point - that this hobby is grounded in story, not rules. 

Not that this is possible,  of course, but if we could go back in time and erase all the story of Fantasy and 40K and just have GW release a black and white booklet entitled "Miniature Gaming Rules" it would be DOA. A few neckbeards in a dusty backroom would scoff at it, dismiss it, and get back to playing Star Fleet Battles and Advanced Squad Leader.

Oh! Yeah, now I get what you mean. I think you might have a point. But at the same time, I know that I would buy those books tomorrow if they eliminated all the art and fluff and sold them for half the price. At the current price, I'm not sure I can ever bring myself to buy them.

[Sleboda]

They're really, really good.  Git 'em! ?

[Trout]

2 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

They're really, really good.  Git 'em! ?

I may eventually wind up buying the app versions so I can have just what I want. I just have to train myself to use a tablet more.

[Kramer]

Except for gift of the heavens and some hinterlands/skirmish scenarios I have never played a scenario more than three times 

[EMMachine]

Okay, I'm quite impressed getting 40 posts in about 11 Hours, even a part of them only scratch the Background issue, not really the battleplans.

But I see the point, that many won't play them because they don't want to pay for the books. Even if you only buy the Battleplans with the app it will cost about 418,-€ (don't know how they are priced in Dollar), thats about 40-50% of the price in comparison to having all printed books (I know, if you want Warscroll Battalions and Allegiance abilities too, you will save some money in compare to buy every single article in the app, but I think you get what I mean).

If you make your own fluff, the offical fluff is only to see the points where you could get conflicts (but it's nice to see whats possible). But this is the good side of AoS, because you are able to create your own continents instead of having one fully discovered world.

I read the entire realmgate Wars campaign and really got some vibe that those Battleplans were really part of the story, and even could be used to write your own stories.

17 hours ago, Warboss Gorbolg said:

I imagine that this really throws off the balance of the game.  I read battle reports all the time where the side that wins would have lost on straight kill points.  I believe the battleplans are a core part of the game and ignoring them will significantly disadvantage some factions.  Additionally, Even within a single faction, ignoring battleplans will also skew the "value" of units that better support objective play versus straight up killing opposing units.

Yeah, thats the problem of, killpoint missions. If your only goal is to see, who kills the most models an elite army has a huge advantage to mass armies because the elite army and in case of sudden death, the meta-lists would have the upper hand in most cases.

[KillagoreFaceslasha]

GHB 2017 says that it will have new scenarios. My hope is that it will include either 18 to 36 scenarios (basically either roll a d3 or d6 and then do so again) and this will give us more variety. It's my hope!

22 minutes ago, Auticus said:

4) it makes logical sense since when people step up to a wargame they bring a lot of assumptions, and in war often the side that kills the most stuff wins.

This one bugs me the most. People just don't understand the difference between tactical victory and strategic victory.

[BunkhouseBuster]

1 hour ago, Auticus said:

3) its what people are used to if they've played warhammer for any length of time

Funny enough, the local guy who runs Warhammer Fantasy and 40K tournaments independent of the WAAC guys often picks the missions from the books for his tournaments, and plays them straight.  But he will add in his own separate secondary and tertiary objectives that can be achieved in the game.  So sure, your Bretonnian army defeated my Lizardmen by 260 points, but I defeated your General in a Challenge and did not lose a single model to Morale, so that is N points for me as well, and I had a unit in your deployment zone, for additional points.  The players who play in his tournaments have never complained about his extra little objectives, and I always like a fresh change on the old standard missions.

37 minutes ago, KillagoreFaceslasha said:

GHB 2017 says that it will have new scenarios. My hope is that it will include either 18 to 36 scenarios (basically either roll a d3 or d6 and then do so again) and this will give us more variety. It's my hope!

Indeed!  Not only will it give more variety to playstyles and game options (which is always a good thing), but it will also make it harder to make one list that will do good in all mission types.

37 minutes ago, KillagoreFaceslasha said:

This one bugs me the most. People just don't understand the difference between tactical victory and strategic victory.

Indeed.  The goal of warfare, in my view, isn't to kill all of the enemy, but make them stop fighting in one way or another.  Death is one way, but so is shattering their morale, cutting off supply lines, maintaining military superiority, or negotiations.

[Nin Win]

One of the problems is that larger goals require a larger context, so we're back at the background problem.  If people don't even care who their army *is* or who the enemy is, why should they care about why they are fighting beyond some sort of vague "age of endless war" notion?

I'll answer that question myself, I guess.  They should care about if all they care about it game play, the larger context can provide a greater array of game play situations and challenges.  

It's sort of funny, in a way, that by only caring about game play people can limit their game play.

[wayniac]

What I have found, as it was explained to me when I asked, is that scenarios are easy to forget, so even when using (read: forced to use) one people don't pay attention to the scenario anyways and just try to table each other anyways.  Same like how nobody remembers the mysterious terrain, so it never gets used; in 40k with the new rules, nobody rolls for the deployment zones it's always the lengthwise one, and we always use "lazy deployment zones" which means whatever side you are on is the one you pick so you don't have to move your things to the other side.  I find in general the people I play with don't care so much for doing things in any organized way, they just want to show up and throw some dice, so they do it in the most basic way possible and don't care if they get rules wrong; I often lament that my group could (and actually has been) get cheated by someone who made up a rule on the spot, and would be none the wiser.

[Criti]

47 minutes ago, wayniac said:

What I have found, as it was explained to me when I asked, is that scenarios are easy to forget, so even when using (read: forced to use) one people don't pay attention to the scenario anyways and just try to table each other anyways. 

That doesn't even remotely make sense.

TBGA has recently had a 9 year old "join" the group, and she can remember the scenario objectives no problem.

Mysterious terrain can be difficult to remember as a game gets intense...but little pieces of paper labeling the terrain solves that instantly. 

I'm going to invite you again to play with TBGA.  I know you thought us "too organized" previously, but it sounds like the disorganization is getting to you.  We can set up a day where 3 of us come up to the shop, you hop in and play with us for the day.  I promise you'll enjoy it more...or in the very least,  you'll get a day of actually playing with the rules.

You're always welcome to join the club.  You're about the only one in your group we don't want to hit with a 2x4,  and there is no requirement to leave your current group.  Just join us for whatever events you want to be a part of.

[Captain Marius]

For what its worth, ive played loads of aos games this year, mostly matched play, but my fave by far was the siege one from the mighty battles book, where a thunderhead brotherhood, hammerstrike force and three heroes went against a load of tzeentch slaves to darkness summoning daemon reinforcements, fighting over my scratch built dreadhold. The sigmarines won (tho in the story they get blown up my a megaspell anyway!) This is the only game ive played this year that actually feels like how i see the aos background. All those matched play games just felt like what happens when this list fights that list.

[EMMachine]

15 hours ago, Nin Win said:

One of the problems is that larger goals require a larger context, so we're back at the background problem.  If people don't even care who their army *is* or who the enemy is, why should they care about why they are fighting beyond some sort of vague "age of endless war" notion?

I'll answer that question myself, I guess.  They should care about if all they care about it game play, the larger context can provide a greater array of game play situations and challenges.  

It's sort of funny, in a way, that by only caring about game play people can limit their game play.

Yeah, thats what I meant with the anonymous win & lose counter. I also think, thats one of the points, where I think whats the point why those Metalists exist. I think, that many armies won't have the rescources to spam the the best units and the best wargear. Perhaps thats the point why Grundstok Thunderers have the mixed weapons in the first place + that most armies wouldn't have enought Aether-Khemists to put 6 in one army or that skyfires should be a rare unit too. And while a kunnin Rukk could be fluffy, I don't think that it would be build around a Block of 40 Arrowboys because of Savage Orruk Manners (only as examples for some of the shooting metalists.

15 hours ago, wayniac said:

What I have found, as it was explained to me when I asked, is that scenarios are easy to forget, so even when using (read: forced to use) one people don't pay attention to the scenario anyways and just try to table each other anyways.  Same like how nobody remembers the mysterious terrain, so it never gets used; in 40k with the new rules, nobody rolls for the deployment zones it's always the lengthwise one, and we always use "lazy deployment zones" which means whatever side you are on is the one you pick so you don't have to move your things to the other side.  I find in general the people I play with don't care so much for doing things in any organized way, they just want to show up and throw some dice, so they do it in the most basic way possible and don't care if they get rules wrong; I often lament that my group could (and actually has been) get cheated by someone who made up a rule on the spot, and would be none the wiser.

Okay, no offense but that is a group that I wouldn't be a part of. I'm really wondering how they could remind about 100 sides of rules or more (the old 40k, whfb or other tabletops) when they have problems reminding 1-3 sides of scenario rules in a game with about 10 sides of rules. In my oppinion they should try to get a little more effort into the game instead of just bashing each other, because it sounds mostly lazy.

11 hours ago, Captain Marius said:

For what its worth, ive played loads of aos games this year, mostly matched play, but my fave by far was the siege one from the mighty battles book, where a thunderhead brotherhood, hammerstrike force and three heroes went against a load of tzeentch slaves to darkness summoning daemon reinforcements, fighting over my scratch built dreadhold. The sigmarines won (tho in the story they get blown up my a megaspell anyway!) This is the only game ive played this year that actually feels like how i see the aos background. All those matched play games just felt like what happens when this list fights that list.

You got the point. Those Battleplans feel like you are really playing some part of the AoS background. Thats the feeling I got, even I only read those battleplans and had never the chance to play them .

Thats also one of the mainpoints why I've gotten interest into the game (after hating at first what looks like a lazy attempt of GW when they brought out the game first, followed by suspicious opservating the following releases until I realized that some of the chances they made weren't that bad they looked first). The rules are feeling like they work better with the background than WHFB does (in the point how moral or retreating works so the game has many more posibilities that for scenariodesign than two armies moving up there blocks of infantry and clash in the middle) or trying to capture and hold some sorts of objectivemarkers until the end of the game (and whfb was never really good at that because of the movementrestrictions so whfb never really used it, but 9th age brings it in).

Sadly the last 'survivors' of my gaming group only have interest in 9th Age and denial to AoS since the game came first out (because they only want rank & file Fantasy,  but complaining about some balancing issues 9th Age still has ) and over half a year I played in a campaign where we only are three players (and both save some tournamentlike tendencies, with maxing out there characters), playing three player games with rotation which player gets points for destroying units of other players (player 1 gets points from player 2, he gets points from player 3 and he gets points from player 1), but the maingoal is to capture artefactmarkers which only where lost by the unit, if the unit is destroyed or breaking in close combat. I first got interested into campaign because of writing some narrative about what happened, but with that setting I got nothing in that halve year, what story that could be because the setups is just surreal for a story and I neither know how it should fit into the old worlds fluff nor in the 9th Age fluff because the world should be quite simular to the whfb but has less fluff at the moment stan a battletome in AoS, because its a game made by tournamentplayers (quite the same point Nin Win said). Thats actually my part of frustration here, also because I don't know how to find a fitting AoS group in my part of Germany and don't think that a store would be a good replacement to a real gaming group .

[Trout]

20 hours ago, Nin Win said:

One of the problems is that larger goals require a larger context, so we're back at the background problem.  If people don't even care who their army *is* or who the enemy is, why should they care about why they are fighting beyond some sort of vague "age of endless war" notion?

I'll answer that question myself, I guess.  They should care about if all they care about it game play, the larger context can provide a greater array of game play situations and challenges.  

It's sort of funny, in a way, that by only caring about game play people can limit their game play.

I disagree. I think the larger context limits your gameplay options. If you are free from the shackles of the backstory, you can paint your Stormcast army in Khorne colours, call them "The Fallen Legion" and use them alongside your Slaves to Darkness. If you are stuck with the backstory, this may not be possible at all (I'm not 100% sure it isn't, since I don't care for the backstory, but my impression is that Stormcasts are too loyal and/or lacking in free will to betray Sigmar).

 

Most of the battleplans are just that, plans for a specific battle. The context under which the battle is occurring don't really matter that much because the battle occurs at a tactical level, not a strategic one. All you need to know is "your forces were ambushed" or "you are searching for an artifact" or "you are attempting to gather the power from these places of power before your enemy can get it", etc... Since this a game about battles rather than entire military campaigns, the global context is largely irrelevant.

 

The exception, of course, is the global narrative campaigns. In those cases actually knowing the backstory may increase your enjoyment.

[Captain Marius]

Ive written a narrative timeline with a short summary for every battle ive played in wfb and AoS for almost a decade (it starts in the wh world). This has helped create a narrative context for my armies and battles. For narrative games the context tends to be created beforehand (eg a narrative battleplan). For matched play ill bolt something on afterwards to try and derive some narrative element from the game. It has worked pretty well for me, and is great fun to read through and be reminded of some truly awesome games!

[chord]

55 minutes ago, Trout said:

I disagree. I think the larger context limits your gameplay options. If you are free from the shackles of the backstory, you can paint your Stormcast army in Khorne colours, call them "The Fallen Legion" and use them alongside your Slaves to Darkness. If you are stuck with the backstory, this may not be possible at all (I'm not 100% sure it isn't, since I don't care for the backstory, but my impression is that Stormcasts are too loyal and/or lacking in free will to betray Sigmar).

I dunno about that. The mortal realms are so large you could do something like that.  Maybe in a pocket of <insert realm> the air is slightly tainted with khorne <something>,  which prevents sigmar from seeing into it , <yadda yadda> years later that army is now converted....

It's the great thing about the mortal realms, there are no limits.

[EMMachine]

1 hour ago, Trout said:

I disagree. I think the larger context limits your gameplay options. If you are free from the shackles of the backstory, you can paint your Stormcast army in Khorne colours, call them "The Fallen Legion" and use them alongside your Slaves to Darkness. If you are stuck with the backstory, this may not be possible at all (I'm not 100% sure it isn't, since I don't care for the backstory, but my impression is that Stormcasts are too loyal and/or lacking in free will to betray Sigmar).

 

Most of the battleplans are just that, plans for a specific battle. The context under which the battle is occurring don't really matter that much because the battle occurs at a tactical level, not a strategic one. All you need to know is "your forces were ambushed" or "you are searching for an artifact" or "you are attempting to gather the power from these places of power before your enemy can get it", etc... Since this a game about battles rather than entire military campaigns, the global context is largely irrelevant.

I think that the Matched Play Rules are preventing more than the Background (because you can't Mix grand Alliances). 

Most battleplans are written for some Part of the story but they aren't bound to that story. In most cases it could be your own story.

And it can make a huge difference if your goal is to kill the opponent general (and only that decides if you win or lose) or if you can get to a certain point to win instead of the usual "who kills more" or "who has the most points through holding objectives". You need different tactics to reach your goal.

[Trout]

Just now, EMMachine said:

I think that the Matched Play Rules are preventing more than the Background (because you can't Mix grand Alliances).

I definitely agree with you on that one. Matched Play limits your options far more than the background does. But I'm not talking about Matched Play.

 

[Nin Win]

The larger context of the battle giving more game play options doesn't really have anything to do with adherence to the larger body of fiction.  It's more about just being able to say enough about that particular battle to understand what is important so objectives can be set.  You don't really need too much in the way of in universe fiction to do this.

An excellent example of this are in the skirmish battle plans.  In one there's a vortex and a ritual is going on.  That's all the info you need to have additional possible objectives.  You don't even need the whole Shadespire thing at all for the situation to work.

That said, more info can give you additional opportunities to come up with objectives or guidance when selecting from existing battle plans.

The old who, what, when, where, why thing is often enough to add a sensical objective to an otherwise basic "line up and kill each other" game.  And even then only a few of the W's need to be addressed in a given scenario.

Why: capture an important point for the larger campaign to go forward

Where: the Gates of Azyr

That's enough to go on, but when you add a few more, the character of the scenario can be really changed

Who: A warrior chamber of the Stormcast fallen to Khorne

When: After the Realmgate Wars 

Now we've turned the expectations on their head.  No longer is this Vandas Hammerhand kicking off the Realmgate Wars, but Fallen Stormcast looking to reap skulls in the streets of Azyr.  The gates are not sealed at this point, so the battle plan should probably not be the same as the one from the first campaign book, but it probably should be some sort of attacker defender scenario.

Scoring line breaker once doesn't really capture this and it'd be far more interesting of a tactical puzzle if even more breakthrough is emphasized as a goal.

Now let's add another "who."

Who: Mixed death army lead by Nagash himself.

Now someone with some familiarity with the fiction can come up with a few different larger goals Nagash might have in this situation.  Does he too want into Azyr to break Sigmar's forge and finally reclaim the souls that have been denied him?  Does this fallen cohort of unfaithful Stormcast offer him a unique opportunity?  Depending on the answer, we may want to shift to something else other than attacker-defender or a breakthrough.

[wayniac]

I think a big part of it is that the matched play battleplans are just boring.  They are too abstract.  It's just two armies clashing, that's the issue.  I much prefer attacker/defender scenarios (like many of the non matched play battleplans) where each player has their own goal to accomplish, but those have the issue of not being seen as "fair" by most players.

[Johann]

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