Age of Sigmar: Second Edition

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, chord said:

Having started with GW at the beginning of AOS I see AOS 2.0 as a cash grab.  Compare the following :

To play Open/Narrative/Matched (including multiplayer, artifacts, etc)  in 2016 all you really needed was:

 Free Warscrolls, Free Rules and GHB 2016 (priced at $25 btw)

To Play Open/Narrative/Matched (including multiplayer, artifacts, etc) all you really need is:

Free Warscrolls, Free Rules, Core Rule book (for realm stuff, multiplayer),  Malign Sorcery, and GHB 2018 (no multiplayer)

Maybe this is normal for wargaming that things get more expensive as the version number goes up?  (not sure this is my first wargaming system)

I certainly don't see AoS 2 (I refuse to say '2.0' - it's not a piece of software for god's sake) as a cash grab - I think for the most part it's bringing a lot of great changes and additions to the game, many of which have been requested by the community for a long time, some of which are cool new shinies that we couldn't even have imagined we wanted. On the whole I, and it seems most other people, are pretty pleased with most things and downright excited about others.

Where I think your observations do have a kernel of truth is that the barriers to entry are undoubtedly creeping back up towards pre-AoS levels, which is a shame. For all its flaws at launch, one of the great successes of AoS was in positioning itself as a game with low barriers to entry - both financially and in terms of the volume of rules that needed to be memorised.

Even with free warscolls and core rules, I don't think we can honestly call AoS a low barrier to entry game any more. Whereas in AoS 1 the core rules and free warscrolls felt like you were getting the meat of the game for free (with the GHB and allegiance abilities as a compelling but ultimately optional extra for those who wanted more complexity), in AoS 2 the core rules and free warscrolls feel like the bare minimum that you need to experience what the game is intended to be. There are now so many layers of additional rules that you have to pay for and hold in your head, the majority of which are treated as default inclusions in most play settings, that the idea that you can get by without paying for these things rings hollow. It's also interesting to note that the relatively expensive Core Book, whilst being completely inessential in gameplay terms, will appear in the eyes of newcomers to be something that they need to own to play the game. It will be interesting to see whether the 'optional' endless spells become as entrenched as the 'optional' allegiance abilities.

So yeah, not a cash grab by any means, but certainly a more expensive game to get into than it was before - and certainly more expensive than it needs to be.

[Gecktron]

Just now, chord said:

No offense but that always gets said, but almost everyone wants allegiance abilities, artifacts etc.  So you need the GHB to play with others.  If you want to play battleplans, you need some battleplans.    If people want to use realm rules, you need to have it so you know what they are.  etc.

For pick up gaming (which is my area ), then you need to have the common things.

But thats just you. GW made it clear time and time again that these things are expansions. 
My local gaming group doesnt want to use all of these things. I didnt had to buy any of this stuff. 

I think its unfair to claim AoS 2.0 is a cash grab when GW did its best to make AoS more accessible. (shifting rules from the payed Handbook into the free core rules, putting all the rules a beginner need into one place, etc…)

Hell, even if you want to use all the stuff GW produces you could just make it so that only one person per game needs the expansion. This will drastically cut down the cost. 

[Nevvermore]

33 minutes ago, chord said:

No offense but that always gets said, but almost everyone wants allegiance abilities, artifacts etc.  So you need the GHB to play with others.  If you want to play battleplans, you need some battleplans.    If people want to use realm rules, you need to have it so you know what they are.  etc.

For pick up gaming (which is my area ), then you need to have the common things.

You really don’t need the Core Rules. You’ve got 12 Battleplans in the GHB already and everything else is just for Narrative/Open. I think the realm artefacts are in Malign Portents though so you would need that since those are for matched play. You obviously need the GHB for Battleplans etc. But unlike GHB you don’t need to rebuy Malign Portents every year, it’s a one-time thing. So as someone who will only be buying the Core Book later on, mainly for fluff, I don’t have a problem with the cost compared to 1.0.

[amysrevenge]

I suppose on the barrier to entry front, it doesn't really matter what us veterans on message boards figure out to be the minimum buy-in required.  It matters what the 13 year old and his mother are presented by the GW store staff - how likely are they to be told "nah, you don't need this"?

[Gecktron]

1 minute ago, amysrevenge said:

I suppose on the barrier to entry front, it doesn't really matter what us veterans on message boards figure out to be the minimum buy-in required.  It matters what the 13 year old and his mother are presented by the GW store staff - how likely are they to be told "nah, you don't need this"?

Not unlikely as GW itself published a handy graph about what you need when starting AoS. 

There is even one option for beginners with not much money that says: "Get the free warscrolls and core rules and start playing". 

[AverageBoss]

1 hour ago, chord said:

Having started with GW at the beginning of AOS I see AOS 2.0 as a cash grab.  Compare the following :

To play Open/Narrative/Matched (including multiplayer, artifacts, etc)  in 2016 all you really needed was:

 Free Warscrolls, Free Rules and GHB 2016 (priced at $25 btw)

To Play Open/Narrative/Matched (including multiplayer, artifacts, etc) all you really need is:

Free Warscrolls, Free Rules, Core Rule book (for realm stuff, multiplayer),  Malign Sorcery, and GHB 2018 (no multiplayer)

Maybe this is normal for wargaming that things get more expensive as the version number goes up?  (not sure this is my first wargaming system)

I would say the GHB is the only thing you need to purchase for casual matched play. If you are a competitive player, then you will want the rest. But simply getting your army up and running from last edition can be done through the free rules and GHB.

There are games that do cheaper edition changes (up to and including completely free), and there are others that are more expensive.

[amysrevenge]

1 minute ago, Gecktron said:

Not unlikely as GW itself published a handy graph about what you need when starting AoS. 

There is even one option for beginners with not much money that says: "Get the free warscrolls and core rules and start playing". 

Well then, there's the likeliest answer.  Barrier to entry - pretty low.  Barrier to move to the next level is where it starts to get expensive.  But theoretically you'd like to have them hooked by then.

[Tip4Tap]

1 hour ago, hughwyeth said:

I promise you a decent KO player will still do very well. The disparity between "best" and "worst" armies is not that great. I've seen mixed skaven and moonclan grots beat a load of "best" armies. If you got into KO because you like the models, you made the right decision. If you got them because they're powerful, every army's power will change +/- 5% every GH, so KO are still great. 

So I’ve just order an entire KO army just based on the models. In my opinion they are some of the best ever. 

However, please, please don’t  tell people they are ‘great’. After reading the FAQ and seeing the points (I know it’s early days but unless something changes) they are a low/mid tier army at best.

In the future once GW realises they made a huge mistakes with all these nerfs to the army, things will change and they will rise again. Just right now it’s fair to say they are a bench warmer at best.

[Sleboda]

9 hours ago, PlasticCraic said:

Yes Ben said that on Stormcast, but he was wrong. 

They really should have checked in preparation before the show / fact checked and edited before transmission, because I've heard a lot of people repeat that in confusion.  

This should be printed out, copied into a text doc, or whatever and reposted every time someone uses "but I talked to the GW guy and he said ..." as justification for a rules opinion.

They are people too. They have versions of rules floating around in their brains, not all of them current or accurate.

Wait for print, not just verbal.

[Sleboda]

9 hours ago, Killax said:

The crew who made these official base size documents and errata/designer notes splits seems to be completely new to AoS

Maybe it's like how Robin Cruddace made the last TK book - assigned to people with enthusiasm but no experience with the rules or understanding of what makes them work?

Hey, even GW rules people have to start somewhere, even if the result is very, very poor.

[michu]

1 minute ago, amysrevenge said:

Well then, there's the likeliest answer.  Barrier to entry - pretty low.  Barrier to move to the next level is where it starts to get expensive.  But theoretically you'd like to have them hooked by then.

Small steps, after learning how to play with free warscroll and core rules you should buy either Core book or GHB depending on your budget. GHB is cheaper so buy Core Book first only if you can afford it and want to learn fluff - it will stay longer, while GHB will change next year.

[Infeston]

6 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

I suppose on the barrier to entry front, it doesn't really matter what us veterans on message boards figure out to be the minimum buy-in required.  It matters what the 13 year old and his mother are presented by the GW store staff - how likely are they to be told "nah, you don't need this"?

As someone always trying to bring new people into the hobby I have to say that some newbies I wanted to bring into the game still struggled with the core rules. Most people aren't used to reading a 4-pager before they can start to play a game. Most of the time they want to start directly without having too read that much. 

The new "How to Play" videos are a blessing for people who want to explain the rules to new people, like me. 

But still, some of my friends had to watch the videos multiple times to understand the rules. And even after that they still couldn't remember every rule on the tabletop. 

Very often I have to use very easy battleplans and only the core rules + warscrolls. Most of the new "expanded rules" don't even come to use for new players. 

But I would say that the entry barrier for new players has increased with the new edition.

 

On the other hand I think that videos like the "How to Play" series can help to make it more accesible.

[amysrevenge]

1 minute ago, Infeston said:

As someone always trying to bring new people into the hobby I have to say that some newbies I wanted to bring into the game still struggled with the core rules. Most people aren't used to reading a 4-pager before they can start to play a game. Most of the time they want to start directly without having too read that much. 

The new "How to Play" videos are a blessing for people who want to explain the rules to new people, like me. 

But still, some of my friends had to watch the videos multiple times to understand the rules. And even after that they still couldn't remember every rule on the tabletop. 

Very often I have to use very easy battleplans and only the core rules + warscrolls. Most of the new "expanded rules" don't even come to use for new players. 

But I would say that the entry barrier for new players has increased with the new edition.

 

On the other hand I think that videos like the "How to Play" series can help to make it more accesible.

This is fair - I was only considering the financial barrier, not the game mastery barrier.

[Infeston]

18 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

This is fair - I was only considering the financial barrier, not the game mastery barrier.

Oh jeah. If you look at it financially the barrier is very high. I lost many people to the hobby, because the products very just too expensive for them. I think the first entry barrier is the price of the models and the second would be a ruleset which is too complex.

I know many Warhammer Fantasy veterans complaining, because of the transition to AoS, Warhammer had lost its complexity. But for many players (even me) the amount of rules and pages to read before I could start a game or to understand what is going on in this game was simply too high. 

I always wanted to play more games in the Warhammer Fantasy area. But the first barrier for me was reading all the rules and the second barrier was finding a person to play with and then also explain them the rules, which I didn't really know. So I have to say that I am not a fan of too many new rules.

[chord]

5 minutes ago, Infeston said:

Oh jeah. If you look at it financially the barrier is very high. I lost many people to the hobby, because the products very just too expensive for them. I think the first entry barrier is the price of the models and the second would be a ruleset which is too complex.

I know many Warhammer Fantasy veterans complaining, because of the transition to AoS, Warhammer had lost its complexity. But for many players (even me) the amount of rules and pages to read before I could start a game or to understand what is going on in this game was simply too high. 

I always wanted to play more games in the Warhammer Fantasy area. But the first barrier for me was reading all the rules and the second barrier was finding a person to play with and then also explain them the rules, which I didn't really know. So I have to say that I am not a fun of too many new rules.

I agree with this.   I never played WHFB,  mostly due to the rules.  I was attracted to AOS because it was 4 pages of rules (sure warscrolls add complexity but you only need to know what you own).    As AoS has aged so has its complexity.   The rules barrier is getting high again.    And the older WHFB players who didn't transition initially to AoS were complaining only about the rules (they had the models).   

Maybe some players (not all) prefer playing the rules then playing the models?

[michu]

I don't really understand complaining about rule complexity in Age of Sigmar. Core rules have only 18 pages and they are mostly clarifications of old 4-page rules with small changes. It's incomparable with WFB. Allegiance abilities are just add-ons for simulating fighting style of particular factions and you can play without them. But if you want to play with them it's obvious you have to memorize and learn more things. Old 4-page rules were just a skeleton to build upon.  Old players complained about rules, but because they considered them too simple.

[Skabnoze]

10 minutes ago, michu said:

I don't really understand complaining about rule complexity in Age of Sigmar. Core rules have only 18 pages and they are mostly clarifications of old 4-page rules with small changes. It's incomparable with WFB. Allegiance abilities are just add-ons for simulating fighting style of particular factions and you can play without them. But if you want to play with them it's obvious you have to memorize and learn more things. Old 4-page rules were just a skeleton to build upon.  Old players complained about rules, but because they considered them too simple.

Exactly.  The core rules for the game are not really that much longer or complex than they were.  Age of Sigmar 1st edition had an errata/clarifications document that was way longer than the actual rules document.  That should tell you something about those 4 pages of rules.  They did add a bit of new stuff to the core rules, but most of the new edition is simply incorporating better explanation from the errata into the core rules text.  They also pulled in some stuff that was missing, like explanation of warscrolls, batallions, scenario scoring, etc - so that most of the game system is not as bolted-on and is integrated into the core rules.

[AlphaKennyThing]

If I was a brand new player for AoS and I bought the Soul Wars boxed set, I'd be ecstatic. Two really nice armies, a giant book with all the story fluff in it, and an introduction to the three ways to play. I can immediately play through battleplans of each different type and get a feel for the game. 

I can get a couple of extra easy build kits to expand my army. I can go to the local GW and get some casual games in using my newly painted Nighthaunt or Stormcast, and get some experience, maybe I'll get to have a go with some Endless Spells. After a few times going I may pick up the Battletome, and start pricing up my army points-wise, and then buy a box of models I like to add on. 

I'll get some more 1,000pt games in, and start really enjoying things, having a go with the Open War generator in the rulebook. Once I start getting better, I'd probably have a look on a forum and see what is best for my army competitively, as I may fancy going for a tournament. I'll pick up a General's Handbook and play through the latest battleplans with my friends, get more of a feel for it, and increase my fledgling force to 1,500pts and move to a 6x4 board. I'll look up what is best for my army, and eventually pick up the Malign Sorcery box so I don't have to share with a mate anymore.

After a few months, maybe even a year, I'll have a 2,000pt army and I'll be pretty good at the game. Then I may enter my first 2,000pt tournament and see how I get on, but I'll mainly be going for a laugh and to play some games. I may really like the competitive side of it, and decide I want to go to more. I'll tweak and balance my army, and like most players by this point, I'll probably want a second one! I'll continue playing casual games though with my pals.

This has all been a very long-winded way of saying that you do not need all of this stuff instantly to play a game with someone as a newplayer. You can do the whole thing with Soul Wars or less. The cost of entry to the game remains a handful of models, some downloaded warscrolls and the core rules. Everything else can be added on gradually.

There are very few hobbies in life where you buy the bare minimum and suddenly compete at a high level. You can't buy half a set of golf clubs and then complain to Callaway that you've not won the local club tournament, going competitive requires extra investment.

[stratigo]

5 hours ago, hughwyeth said:

I promise you a decent KO player will still do very well. The disparity between "best" and "worst" armies is not that great. I've seen mixed skaven and moonclan grots beat a load of "best" armies. If you got into KO because you like the models, you made the right decision. If you got them because they're powerful, every army's power will change +/- 5% every GH, so KO are still great. 

 

The best KO player just quit the army.

4 hours ago, amysrevenge said:

Well then, there's the likeliest answer.  Barrier to entry - pretty low.  Barrier to move to the next level is where it starts to get expensive.  But theoretically you'd like to have them hooked by then.

Depends. How long do you want them as a customer? A kid who comes in and gets beat every single game likely is gonna find his interest waning unless he got in for the hobbying (Rare for a 13 year old, but not unheard of). It would behoove a staffer to direct them to both a straightforward and good army. Stormcast are the design by committee gold standard, but nurgle or sylvaneth are both good armies that can be made without too much focus on wild synnergies.

 

GW isn't just trying to sell a plastic kit to a kid. If that's all they cared about, there wouldn't be a single GW shop open in the US, or many in the UK either. They're trying to foster a sense of attachment and investment into a hobby, whether you're attachment comes from the game or the artistic aspect, they want you to come back for years and years. Which is why everyone makes plastic crack jokes.

[Skabnoze]

24 minutes ago, stratigo said:

The best KO player just quit the army.

Highly competitive players will always army hop.

I'm not saying that is a bad thing.  They play the armies they do for a specific reason.  But if you play any GW game for long enough and stick with the same army then you are bound to end up on different areas of the power-spectrum at different times.  It's pretty much the nature of things.  

[ReynakZhen]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/06/28/28th-june-battletome-preview-stormhost-rulesgw-homepage-post-4/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=AoS&utm_content=AoSStormhostRulesPreviewJune28

A look at Stormcast rules

 

[Killax]

12 hours ago, Sleboda said:

Maybe it's like how Robin Cruddace made the last TK book - assigned to people with enthusiasm but no experience with the rules or understanding of what makes them work?

Hey, even GW rules people have to start somewhere, even if the result is very, very poor.

Its very possible that this is the case.

But whats funny/odd is that if they even went to the website themselves or called with someone from the production lines I'm sure they could have prefented these oddities. 

GWs website has it listed rather correctly, so what gives that they didnt even check that out first? Seems odd.

[Tip4Tap]

9 hours ago, Skabnoze said:

Highly competitive players will always army hop.

I'm not saying that is a bad thing.  They play the armies they do for a specific reason.  But if you play any GW game for long enough and stick with the same army then you are bound to end up on different areas of the power-spectrum at different times.  It's pretty much the nature of things.  

While I agree with you completely, having  been warhamming on and off for 13 years I know about the shifts in power armies the guy @stratigo quoted said that KO were ‘still great’ which just isn’t true. I know it’s early days and I don’t want to be negative but KO are no longer a competitive pick. 

This is coming from a guy who has just purchased an entire KO army, I didn’t do it for the tournament scene, I did it because the models rock. I know eventually GW will realise they’ve over nerfed KO and they will rise again in power which is why I’m not at all worried about my purchase. When I go to tournaments I’ll take one of my four other competitive armies.

[Bellfree]

14 hours ago, hughwyeth said:

I promise you a decent KO player will still do very well. The disparity between "best" and "worst" armies is not that great. I've seen mixed skaven and moonclan grots beat a load of "best" armies. If you got into KO because you like the models, you made the right decision. If you got them because they're powerful, every army's power will change +/- 5% every GH, so KO are still great. 

This is mostly nonsense. The difference between the best and worst armies in the game aren't always as big as people tend to think, sure(provided you are ONLY talking about battletome armies, mixed order, or mixed chaos) but it's still incredibly significant. You'd have a better shot at winning the lottery than taking a large tournament with FEC or Beastclaws, but Nurgle and Tzeentch wouldn't even be a surprise.

You can absolutely see mixed skaven and moonclan grots beat 'best armies', far crazier things have happened. I've seen it snow during a lightning storm on a 70 degree Fahrenheit(22 degree Celsius) day before. That doesn't mean it's something that's going to happen a lot. And that's the thing people tend to miss about powerful armies. It's not being totally unbeatable that makes armies powerful, it's having a far higher chance of winning that makes an army powerful. A Tzeentch army in the past has had something like an 70% chance to beat a Kharadron army piloted by a player of equal skill. Moonclan grots and Skaven will lose probably 80-90% of the time.

Also remember that not all lists are created equal, even within an otherwise powerful army. Vanguard WING and Vanguard CHAMBER are at VERY different powerlevels. Your buddy that really loves arcanites ain't taking any podiums any time soon, even playing tzeentch. Someone trying to play a Kharadron list OTHER than clown car will struggle with flesh-eater courts.

For examples of this, take Russ Veal. One of the best Sigmar players out there, he took pure beastclaw raiders to a large event and took 37th place. They then added up his finishes at his previous 13 major events and found out that adding all those placings up(2 for 2nd, 4 for 4th, etc) totaled up to less than 37. That's an absolutely massive difference that is contributed almost entirely to the army being far, far weaker than what he was playing before.

 

[Tip4Tap]

11 minutes ago, Bellfree said:

This is mostly nonsense. The difference between the best and worst armies in the game aren't always as big as people tend to think, sure(provided you are ONLY talking about battletome armies, mixed order, or mixed chaos) but it's still incredibly significant. You'd have a better shot at winning the lottery than taking a large tournament with FEC or Beastclaws, but Nurgle and Tzeentch wouldn't even be a surprise.

You can absolutely see mixed skaven and moonclan grots beat 'best armies', far crazier things have happened. I've seen it snow during a lightning storm on a 70 degree Fahrenheit(22 degree Celsius) day before. That doesn't mean it's something that's going to happen a lot. And that's the thing people tend to miss about powerful armies. It's not being totally unbeatable that makes armies powerful, it's having a far higher chance of winning that makes an army powerful. A Tzeentch army in the past has had something like an 70% chance to beat a Kharadron army piloted by a player of equal skill. Moonclan grots and Skaven will lose probably 80-90% of the time.

Also remember that not all lists are created equal, even within an otherwise powerful army. Vanguard WING and Vanguard CHAMBER are at VERY different powerlevels. Your buddy that really loves arcanites ain't taking any podiums any time soon, even playing tzeentch. Someone trying to play a Kharadron list OTHER than clown car will struggle with flesh-eater courts.

For examples of this, take Russ Veal. One of the best Sigmar players out there, he took pure beastclaw raiders to a large event and took 37th place. They then added up his finishes at his previous 13 major events and found out that adding all those placings up(2 for 2nd, 4 for 4th, etc) totaled up to less than 37. That's an absolutely massive difference that is contributed almost entirely to the army being far, far weaker than what he was playing before.

 

Most of what you say I completely agree with the only thing I will say is that at the height of its power, clown car was as close to a direct counter to Tzeentch as you could get. Due to the way shooting used to work KO could easily pick off those very important characters/heroes/models and they were a rather mobile little army. So actually two equal players it’s not 70-30 in favour on tzeentch. It’s more like 60-40 in favour of KO. (All based on KO playing clown car, two players being equal, and playing AoS1 rules). 

However, going into AoS2 that has completely changed.

Tzeentch is an extremely popular army so we will still see it at tournaments, dunno how well it’ll do though. Whereas KO I’d be surprised if we see them at all.