Open War Cards - Your Thoughts?

[Mr. White]

I don't think I've seen too much around here about these, but they seem essential for Open Play gamers with their Ruse and Sudden Death cards.

Any Open Play gamers using these? Are they as good as they appear?

[Killax]

Picked them up this week and I don't even play Open Play  

I think the Open War cards are ideal because they remove time and discussion in generating a game. There is really no reason to only use it with Open Play but I will say you'll typically enjoy these randomly generated games more within a store or smaller event where all players have acces to said cards. (Alternatively a TO could use a projector to reveal the randomly generated Deployment, Objectives, Twists, Ruses etc. 

All in all I think they are an excellent addition to any home, club and store play, which are the mayority of my games.
- We do however keep at least 12" apart from our models still despite the Open War rules not enforcing it during Deployment. 
- We use 40mm bases for Objective markers.
- We typically don't use the Rules and Sudden Death decks unless a player would specifically want to restrict himself in points instead of wounds.

With the above three small additions they are very cool to use for any Matched Play games aswell. 

[polarbear]

Had a lot of fun with these. We used matched play points and rules but the cards for deployment/objective/twist. It's fun to change it up and you get some weird deployment layouts in there. Keeps the game fresh.

[Toddy]

Same here. We pick armies using match play rules, but use the cards to generate deployment, objectives etc.

Adds a welcome splash of randomness!

[BunkhouseBuster]

I like them!  I've only played a few games with them, but they are fun so far.  And considering that I prefer the GH2016 missions to the GH2017 ones, I think the Open War cards are the way to go, especially for pickup games.

I highly recommend them.  For a minimal investment, you get a large amount of variety for your games.

[Killax]

Yeah for me the key reason to get it is to have all the relevant information in split up parts (cards).

A very similar system is used in Malifaux which I love to generate random scenarios aswell. As mentioned it adds a massive pool of variety for Age of Sigmar games, much more as either GH2016 or GH2017 offer. In addition, like with 40K, I like the fact that Objective play is essential. It often means that certain uber powerful units dedicate the game less because just destroying big units doesn't mean you win the game. 

Where I see myself using the Firestorm rules for example less (thakes up a load of time) I do see my self using Open War cards a lot, again the prime advantage is that it drastically cuts time required to either generate a scenario or make one up. 

[Trout]

1 hour ago, Mr. White said:

I don't think I've seen too much around here about these, but they seem essential for Open Play gamers with their Ruse and Sudden Death cards.

Any Open Play gamers using these? Are they as good as they appear?

 

I have never liked the idea of Sudden Death. I would rather just ensure that games are never so lopsided that you need to use these. I think the battleplans from the various books are far superior to what you could get out of these cards. But where they really shine is with the ruses; I love the ruse cards.

[wayniac]

I tried them a few times before AOS dried up in my area (sad times), I love them.  What I did was I drew a random deployment, random objective (I dabbled with having each player draw one so they each had their own, but decided against it), ignored Sudden Death but drew a Twist and let each player draw a Ruse as a sort of one-time special trick (similar to Feats in Warmachine/Hordes).  It worked out really well.  I think they're great ideas if you want to have a casual game with some interesting, non-symmetrical structure.  I played my FEC against a Freeguild list and we drew the deployment that had one force in the middle and the opposing force split between two sides, and our objective was "The Messenger", so we whipped up a quick narrative that my ghouls had ambushed a freeguild force "tresspassing" in their kingdom (a force of brigands looking to pillage, no doubt!), and the freeguild needed to have a messenger escape (luckily, the foul brigand was struck down by my noble winged knights before he could escape!).  

[Sheriff]

These sound great, have just ordered them along with firestorm (and a ton of beautiful spiders)

[Carnelian]

They work really well with firestorm because you can get imbalances in points in firestorm 

[hellalugosi]

i use them for path to glory. this really evens the odds since we get ruses AND sudden deaths. i also heavily use time of war rules from Ghb2017 AND firestorm for max fun.

[MacDuff]

I got them and they look great in making no two games the same. I'm excited to try them out this weekend, but now I think I need more (and more interesting) objective markers. Are AOS hero bases the way to go?