Age of Sigmar: Second Edition

[stato]

3 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

Between battalions being a way to farm command points and the units to fill the battalions getting cheaper, it does feel like GW is making a push for battalions in  2e. It makes you wonder if maybe there's going to be some kind of big shake up in force organization. Some kind of generic battalions that only grant command points(like 40k detachments) instead of abilities or other buffs would be interesting, especially if having all battalions replaced battle line for matched play. The force organization with the conditional battle line for all the stub factions(mostly elves) has been one of my biggest issues with AoS matched play since it came out. I would live to see it addressed in some way.

Command point 'farming' isnt really happening, they have already revealed you get a single extra point with batallions, not multiple points.

[Changer]

5 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

Yeah, it looks like they updated it. The article went out early today, maybe it wasn't fully ready to go.

I think this proves once again that the rules images shown on the community pages aren't taken directly from any of the rules but created specifically for the articles.  It seems likely that they're not showing everything.

[Gecktron]

28 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

I have played single 2000 point match of AoS. It didn't add much to the 1000-1500 points we normally play, except time and amount of models to be hauled to the club.

Agreed! I near exclusively play 1000-1250 point games as I like how quick they are and that they can be played on smaller battlefields. 

[Jamopower]

6 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

True, objectives do play a big part, but at 1000 points, I rarely see the battle really spread out. 1500 points can go either way depending on objectives and army composition.

1000 needs bit of a gentleman's agreement on the players to keep the unit sizes small. With less than 200 point units and ~8 units on side it is much more interesting than putting all eggs into one basket (as that basket often wins). But this goes bit off the topic. 

[ageofpaddsmar]

1 hour ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

Why would they if heybjust got decreased..? While almost everything else in the book went up. And why would they need an increase?

Because they are ridiculous at 160 thats cheaper then brutes. I figured they made them cheaper to sell aload and then put the points up in the bew ghb.  

[Killax]

2 hours ago, Deadkitten said:

This will continue to be a problem with wargames in general until someone comes up with a meaning handicap mechanism.  I doubt that will be GW with AoS 2.0.

Yeah I feel we will see a lot of fun design but also think that this works well for Open and Narrative play but much less so for Matched/competitive play. However I fully am open to being wrong, I hope I am. Maby things are more restricted as they seem to be in the articles.

Maby we all will get up to that 10-15% free summonning units. At that point it could work out...

2 hours ago, CyderPirate said:

Perhaps 'hoops' wasn't the right term, but you're also conflating a few things there. Only the top 2 are what I meant by 'hoops' for summoning. The LoN one is your reward for getting through the hoop, and the Tzeentch one is just their alliegiance ability. 

With the cases we've seen, the armies present choices and challenges for the player and their opponent. 

I'll take the Khorne one as its an easy example to illustrate. As the Khorne player, you have the following choices with Blood Tithe Points (BTPs):

So whilst you get BTPs from doing what you were planning to anyway, your opponent has choices in how they interact with that rule, and you (as the Khorne player) have options in how you build and play your army to make use of the resource as you see fit. 

BTP as the prime example will come regardless because not attacking isn't really an option in Age of Sigmar. BTP are obtained by any unit's death and Khorne has the Prayer to generate more Blood Tithe points, without killing whole units.

This still doesn't remove the fact that going to 8 is guaranteed per game and if this means you can park a blob of say 30 Bloodletters/20 whatevers directly onto an objective turn 4-5 things still arn't 'more fun' as far as Im concerned.

Basically what I see as fun is the interaction between players, not guaranteed succes/guaranteed summonning/guaranteerd objectives claimed. 40K also eliminated this aspect from their deep strike/summon options for that reason. I don't see it here yet. 

[GeneralZero]

Do you really think that GW didn't think about that? Really? They are a >>$1 billion company now. They DID take it seriously as AoS did well the past 3 years. I am confident that the mecanism if not perfect will be nice and refreshing.

[The Wanderer]

47 minutes ago, Rogue Explorator said:

Can we please all remember that discussing mod decisions is off-topic, wether one agrees or disagrees with them?

I would hope they have learned from their mistakes.

I remember looking into getting into WHFB during early 8th, seeing the model count in that system and immediatly closing the chapter. I think the escalating model count had a big part in killing WHFB, it is not just the monetary and time factor, but also that building and painting the same kits over-and-over-and-over again in itself is just a very disencouraging to large parts of the potential player base.

I think it would be hard to claim that AoS reguires a greater model count than WHFB 8th and the model count at least does not seem to have gone up from WH40k 7th to 8th.

At this point, it would not cause me personaly much heartbreak if the game got a greater model count, it would lower my interest in actually playing, but I am mostly here for the collecting and converting. Playing is just a fun bonus thing to do once enough miniatures have been finished.

But for the hobby overall, I think it would have a clearly detrimental effect, the disencouraging and raised access bar outstripping the profit any additional sales generated from people going along with such a move.

 

The move from 6th when a single infantry regiment box contained an infantry regiment to 8th when you needed 3-4 boxes per regiment was definitely devastating for the game.

Agreed AoS certainly has a lower model count than 8th but it's definitely ticked up since launch. Things like the discounts for max unit size and the way many formations are designed clearly encourages larger units so I think we're just going back that way.

[Killax]

1 minute ago, GeneralZero said:

Do you really think that GW didn't think about that? Really? They are a >>$1 billion company now. They DID take it seriously as AoS did well the past 3 years. I am confident that the mecanism if not perfect will be nice and refreshing.

Really.

- Last year Shadespire was announced to be the competitive GW game, or at least for Age of Sigmar. Now it has so many errata's and unclear wording that honestly I can't thake the game serious as a competitively designed game. 
- 40K 8th edition isn't even a year old yet and the prime Rulesbook has so many updates that currently buying the book will learn you incorrect rules.
- WFB's plug pulled without clear notice of what's to come next lead to a real dive for Age of Sigmar. This was only partially fixed by Generals Handbook.

With nearing 18 years of Games Workshop experiences I am never suprised at what they did, just more often confused as to be clear about what they want and how they communicate this to their customers.

I'm not negative about it, just honestly saying that free stuff in games so far has never panned out to be a good plan in my experience as a gamer. Not in AoS start, not in 40K, not in Warmachine, not in Magic the Gathering. It generally leads to a very clear advantagious path to follow. Not unlike what's going on with DoT or Seraphon now for example.

[Karol]

1 hour ago, Dragobeth said:

Some stores are fine with the pdf version or even the AoS app, others even have books so the players can use them. It changes from store to store I suppose.

Since the core rules are free, the AoS 2.0 book could be a lot of new fluff, the new core rules and some scenarios, that could let space for the GH 2018 to come with the new points for everyone, new main scenarios and all the stuff that GH used to come with.

Later comes the magic book with all the new spells and mechanics.

That is how I think it will be at least.

So soon I am going to have to buy, the big book, the general hand book and the magic book? That does cut in to my model money. I wish they kept khorn in the starter set, but with different models. Some new bloodletters, maybe some mid sized demon character that fits between a herald and a bloodthirster, would be cool. Instead they put undead in the box, but kept stormcasts. That does make me a bit salty.

Well I will wait for the designers write up about the  2.0 changes, the fan stuff on their page doesn't go much in depth in to the rules, aside for some blurbs here and there. Can't really get a proper idea about what the game is suppose to be without designers telling what they wanted to achive.

55 minutes ago, Rogue Explorator said:

At this point, it would not cause me personaly much heartbreak if the game got a greater model count, it would lower my interest in actually playing, but I am mostly here for the collecting and converting. Playing is just a fun bonus thing to do once enough miniatures have been finished. 

But you probablly already have an army. For someone like me who just started to play and has around 1200-1300pts, if they drop points of used units, make summoning obligatory to compete and nerf, I hope they won't, units I have, I may suddenly be looking in to having to buy 1000 or more points. And that is a lot of money, without a starter set and doesn't include all the new books we all need to play in the new edition.And if all of this pushs me more then 6 months, then I may not have a ready army before the general handbook drops, which may reset the list all over again.

[Richelieu]

53 minutes ago, stato said:

Was anyone expecting these units to drop?  

Is there a trend in the previews on what unit types are dropping?

(just for fun like, not interested in 'its broken' answers ?)

I was 100% expecting them to.  Kurnoths were hit with a giant nerf bat in GHB2017 while the rest of the field increased in power.  

[GeneralZero]

3 minutes ago, Killax said:

- Last year Shadespire was announced to be the competitive GW game, or at least for Age of Sigmar. Now it has so many errata's and unclear wording that honestly I can't thake the game serious as a competitively designed game. 

Shadespire is just an attempt the some  more casual/larger audience or eventually add-on to AoS. By no  mean it was a big development like the 2 main cash machines AoS/40K for which a player will spend a lot of money to build their armies (= GW core business )

6 minutes ago, Killax said:

- 40K 8th edition isn't even a year old yet and the prime Rulesbook has so many updates that currently buying the book will learn you incorrect rules.

But in the meantime, almost ALL 40K factions have their codex. 8th is not that bad. And for the rules, we are in 2018, read the pdf/Faq

So, honnestly, we are in the righ direction even if it is far from perfect. And the games are becoming more comunity friendly as GW seems to listen (a bit) his players...

[Gecktron]

1 minute ago, Karol said:

So soon I am going to have to buy, the big book, the general hand book and the magic book? That does cut in to my model money. I wish they kept khorn in the starter set, but with different models. Some new bloodletters, maybe some mid sized demon character that fits between a herald and a bloodthirster, would be cool. Instead they put undead in the box, but kept stormcasts. That does make me a bit salty.

No. The "big book" will be more like an introduction to the Mortal Realms. Lots of background, maps and reworked rules for Grand Alliances. So if you play a battletome army (as all Battletomes stay valid) and you are not interested in the background stuff you dont need to buy it. 
The Generals Handbook isn't necessary to keep playing as the updated point costs will be available on scrollbuilder.com as usual.

The only thing im not sure about is the magic expansion. Im sure it will be in one of the two books and not released alone. Maybe it will be tacked on to the Generals Handbook to keep the other book more focused on the introduction part?

Anyway, what I try to say is: you won't be forced to buy any of these books. You can keep playing with what you have if you want to. 

[Infeston]

I just want to mention something I recognized when reading the Sylvaneth article

Quote

Finally, if your Sylvaneth hail from Ghyran, you’ll be able to access a host of powerful artefacts. Our favourites are probably the Hypersnare Seeds – a great pick for a support character that can potentially spoil an enemy charge at a key moment – while the Entangling Blade can help you weaken a particularly deadly hero:

Previously we discussed how you get access to those abilities and artifacts previewed in the articles.

After reading this paragraph I have the feeling that you have to choose a realm your army originates from and depending on which realm you choose you get access to certain artifacts. 

Am I the only one getting this out of the paragraph or are the others agreeing on this?

So I don't think that you have to choose a realm at the beginning of the battle and then select which artifacts and spells to choose, but instead you have to think about which realm your army originates from even before the battle and choose spells and artifacts according to the realm they orignate from.

[GeneralZero]

About the books: as far as I am concerned, I love to have a great book in my hands. But time changes. Now, all things related to  rules (warscrolls, rules, erata, faq etc....)  are either unmaterial (pdf) or just printed. It is far cheaper, takes less place in my hobby and always upgradable

[Killax]

8 minutes ago, GeneralZero said:

Shadespire is just an attempt the some  more casual/larger audience or eventually add-on to AoS. By no  mean it was a big development like the 2 main cash machines AoS/40K for which a player will spend a lot of money to build their armies (= GW core business )

But in the meantime, almost ALL 40K factions have their codex. 8th is not that bad. And for the rules, we are in 2018, read the pdf/Faq

So, honnestly, we are in the righ direction even if it is far from perfect. And the games are becoming more comunity friendly as GW seems to listen (a bit) his players...

From the getgo they announced Shadespire was to be the competitive game. I can fetch you the videos about that if you want to. As I see it is was there to emulate a FFG sales design and see how much people went into it. I liked it at first but I do not understand how a game that is so simple in set up requires this many cards to be errata-ed. It's to the point of it becomming silly.

8th is allready nearing a trend AoS suffered from. A trend that leads to so many errata's you know their products arn't proof read. While some state it is playtested I doubt this is often the case still. Things like missing Keywords don't get unnoticed by a playing team. Having seen how potent the Balewind Vortex is only to remove all scenery from GH2017 except that one is just strage. 

I am very happy with how GW involves itself with the community these days for sure. But that isn't the same as saying 'it will be all fine, it's free afterall'. The start of Age of Sigmar had all units being free, it took over a year to 'rectify' that and make some sence of the game. As is there are many 'combo's' I see as loopholes to create some eyebrow raising situations. But perhaps I'm the only one who isn't a fan of 480 attacks comming from one unit that can be returned for free. To me that seems fun to one player, not both. 

4 minutes ago, Infeston said:

After reading this paragraph I have the feeling that you have to choose a realm your army originates from and depending on which realm you choose you get access to certain artifacts. 

Am I the only one getting this out of the paragraph or are the others agreeing on this?

That would be my thake on it also, it also would be the easiest to incorporate. Basically leading to:

1. You choose your Grand Allegiance (for allies and such)
2. You choose your Allegiance (for main specific army boosts)
3. You choose your Realm (for Magic spells and additional Artefacts) 

Wouldn't be suprised if we saw that Artefacts now went 1 per army. Plus maby more for CP1/3. Much like the 40K design. 

[Karol]

2 minutes ago, Gecktron said:

No. The "big book" will be more like an introduction to the Mortal Realms. Lots of background, maps and reworked rules for Grand Alliances. So if you play a battletome army (as all Battletomes stay valid) and you are not interested in the background stuff you dont need to buy it. 
The Generals Handbook isn't necessary to keep playing as the updated point costs will be available on scrollbuilder.com as usual.

The only thing im not sure about is the magic expansion. Im sure it will be in one of the two books and not released alone. Maybe it will be tacked on to the Generals Handbook to keep the other book more focused on the introduction part?

Anyway, what I try to say is: you won't be forced to buy any of these books. You can keep playing with what you have if you want to. 

yeah, but I worry that if I build an old battletome the rules in it either get changed soon or are wrong. I haven't bought the 2017 general book, because it is no longer sold at my store and they can't order it I wish GW gave some sort of plan what they are wanting to do for the next 6-12 months, so people wouldn't have to live in fear of suddenly their armies being totally different. But it is good to know that I won't have to buy the starter box, I don't play stormcasts and undead models are ugly to me.

[Rogue Explorator]

8 minutes ago, Karol said:

But you probablly already have an army. For someone like me who just started to play and has around 1200-1300pts, if they drop points of used units, make summoning obligatory to compete and nerf, I hope they won't, units I have, I may suddenly be looking in to having to buy 1000 or more points. And that is a lot of money, without a starter set and doesn't include all the new books we all need to play in the new edition.And if all of this pushs me more then 6 months, then I may not have a ready army before the general handbook drops, which may reset the list all over again.

Nope, I do not think I have an army, unless you count a completely unplanned jumble of halfway sculpted GA:Chaos units an army. In what could actually be played, you propably have more points than I do.

What I was saying was that if developements turn out to the worst, I would not be aiming at playing at all, but still be collecting and converting random models and enjoying the hobby on my own conditions.

Meanwhile, if the game looks worthy of the investment, I would instead fokus on getting a playable Nighthaunt force asap (as I will get the box no matter and already have some Nighthaunt on the side), while still tooling around with my jumble of Chaos on the side.

 

So I absolutely get your situation and agree that there is a point where the barrier to entry is just to high. I think the summoning changes edge dangerous closely to that point for many demographics for whom the hobby is currently still feasible and was trying to make the point that I would be the exception in not dropping the hobby entirely at that point.

[Karol]

1 minute ago, Killax said:

From the getgo they announced Shadespire was to be the competitive game. I can fetch you the videos about that if you want to. As I see it is was there to emulate a FFG sales design and see how much people went into it. I liked it at first but I do not understand how a game that is so simple in set up requires this many cards to be errata-ed. It's to the point of it becomming silly.

From what I have seen it follows the X-wing sells method at least. You get a capital ship, or a fighter with some rules and can techniclly play with that, but to make a normal fleet or squadron you are required to buy 5-8 expansions sometimes to get just a single card. Although I don't think GW went that far, it still is more or less obligatory to have all the the expansions, if someone wants to build most decks, specially the best ones. At  least that is what I have been told by people that play it here.

 

Am actually scared that they may do something like that for AoS. Here are your blades of khorn battle tome, here is the general hand book with their points and if you want to use your totem or priest guys, you need to buy this book, and your characters are in another heros/villians of AoS book etc.

[bsharitt]

8 minutes ago, Infeston said:

I just want to mention something I recognized when reading the Sylvaneth article

Previously we discussed how you get access to those abilities and artifacts previewed in the articles.

After reading this paragraph I have the feeling that you have to choose a realm your army originates from and depending on which realm you choose you get access to certain artifacts. 

Am I the only one getting this out of the paragraph or are the others agreeing on this?

That's what I was thinking too when I read that. Sort of making the skyport/city/tribe/legion membership in the battletomes generic and granting something for it. Could be interesting if that's the way it's going. Hard to see them doing that will being able to buy artifacts though.

[Karol]

4 minutes ago, Rogue Explorator said:

Nope, I do not think I have an army, unless you count a completely unplanned jumble of halfway sculpted GA:Chaos units an army. In what could actually be played, you propably have more points than I do.

We probablly have a different definition what an army is. For me an army is a 2000pts finished list, where you don't have to buy more to play. From my perspective your probablly have mulitpple armies, and fromn yourse you may have 0 armies.  Does not change the fact that if someone needed 800pts to play, and suddenly would need 1200, and I hope it won't be the case, it is a bit a of a problem. At least in my eyes.

 

7 minutes ago, Rogue Explorator said:

So I absolutely get your situation and agree that there is a point where the barrier to entry is just to high.

I think I know what you mean, two guys at my store wanted to start to play. One got in to stormcasts, and got ton of free models from people ?at the store, the other saw how much an dwarven overlord army costs, and started to play invinity.

[Aeryenn]

Couldn't be happier with Sylvaneth. Great changes GW. I will expand my forces surely. And yeah, I think that we will choose what realm do we come from. 

[bsharitt]

7 minutes ago, Killax said:

8th is allready nearing a trend AoS suffered from. A trend that leads to so many errata's you know their products arn't proof read. While some state it is playtested I doubt this is often the case still. Things like missing Keywords don't get unnoticed by a playing team. Having seen how potent the Balewind Vortex is only to remove all scenery from GH2017 except that one is just strage. 

I agree that GW is playing fast and loose with the completness and proofreading of the rules, but I do in general like how they're doing frequent FAQ, errata, yearly supplement and Big FAQ wrap up. Yes, it makes the paper books outdated pretty fast, but I do like the idea of a more living rule set and while I'm generally loath to require digital products at the tabletop, I wouldn't mind seeing them do some sort of always updating digital rulebook that constantly updates based on errata and faq. I thought GW might be moving towards a more version-less ruleset. So while I'm not surprised at the actual changes that GW is doing for 2e, I'm surprised they are promoting it as a whole new edition.

[LLV]

The only real issue I have with how summoning is panning out, more so after reading today’s article, is it’s very much the ‘get people to buy more models they already own’ rule that massive regiments was in ghb17. That worries me for the balance as when a rule has another intention than to make the game smoother (ie buy models) it’s rarely going to be balanced in and across the system. Still looking forward to AoS 2 Though and I’m pretty sure unless the tourney is #pleasantforplastic most of this will be comped anyway.

[bsharitt]

7 minutes ago, LLV said:

The only real issue I have with how summoning is panning out, more so after reading today’s article, is it’s very much the ‘get people to buy more models they already own’ rule that massive regiments was in ghb17.

They've got me there. Summoning being useful has gotten me wanting to buy more mortals for my Nurgle army so I can summon in all the daemons. Of course they've conversely kept me from buying a cr*p load of trees now.