Should standard game size be larger than 2k in AoS 2.0

[Tasman]

I prefer 2k, but i've had a lot of fun 1k games. Anything bigger really seems to drag things out. At 2k you have a nice opportunity to include stuff like battalions, endless spells, etc, while at 1k I find that the challenge presented is more in the form of coming up with a strong, fun list. Yes, it can be done.

I've personally run several progressive type tournaments at the local store, starting at 1k, going to 1250, then 1500, or on other occasions, 1k 1500, 2k. All were well received.

[Karol]

2 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I think one is the subject of the other & visa-versa.  Because many tournaments run at 2000 points, those are the lists people post up.  That ultimately suggests to newer players that 2000 points is the "standard" size and we end up in a vicious circle

In truth, I'm a massive fan of the way 40k's army building set-up works.  You have a very granular matched play points system - you pay for individual models, specific pieces of equipment etc.  You then have the more casual Power Level system, where a unit is worth x PL for so many models.  It's super quick to work out a list and people play PL based games of all sorts of different sizes - "I've got 23 PL painted up - fancy a game?"  "Yup, I can do 24 PL if that's OK?".  Part of me hoped deep down that we'd see the same implemented in AoS for the new edition.  Yes, the Power Level system is flawed - you can "min-max" units, but most people are able to create pretty balanced lists without going silly and for quick games it's a really solid way of creating an army

hmm could be, though am not sure all lists posted are ment for tournaments. I don't know how the testing looks around the world, but in general most dudes here that want to end up on the top are super secretive about  their armies to a point, and am not claiming all do it, to hide an army they bought just to suprise people on the day of event .  I have no idea about how w40k is, I don't follow their forums, and they seem to dislike AoS player a lot. We do kind of a fight for the same tables and play time, plus from the smirky comments they throw around, they do not view AoS as a real game.

 

1 hour ago, Infeston said:

I also have to say that I never understood why the standard game size was 2000 points instead of 1000 points.  

Most optimal way to play tzeench in old edition. IMO the enviroments are shaped by veterans. They do the tournaments, they decide who they will play againsts AND they have the pool of models or money to actually buy stuff to a certain points level. If they suddenly decided to play 2250pts, even only because their armies now don't fit in to 2000pts, people like me who struggle with getting 2000pts could whine all they want.

[Mincemeat]

Depends on what army you and your opponent are playing. I generally prefer the 1500-2000 point mark but if I'm playing Bloodbound Id rather stick to 1500 so as to avoid hauling big hordes around the table, whereas with beastclaws i like to do around 2000 points so as to have more options and stuff to do in game. Vice versa with my opponent, I just think 2000 points is kind of a datum point that all armies work quite well around and normally takes up an evening nicely. 

Like everything in Aos, at the end of the day do whatever you and your oponent decide is fun is fun. 

[VBS]

Standard... according to who? People have very different gaming habits so it makes no sense to have a "standard". 

I suppose it might fit the competitive/tournament crowd that seem to focus on 2k lists or people that like to drag dozens of models for hours over the board. But other people enjoy smaller games, and make that their standard.

I have no problem fitting a monster, wizards, several units and even endless spells in a 1000-1250 point list, which should be enough to enjoy the full scope of AoS. It also makes the game short and fluid enough to keep my interest while not missing anything. I get people that want  big AoS games but it implies very off-putting aspects so I hope no one comes up with such "standard"becoming a trend (imho AoS shines more at a reduced size where the scale issues and rule cloggage aren't too present).

[SuperHappyTime]

10 hours ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

The only reason that people talk about 2000 points as if it's the best/normal/default option is because certain sections of the community have collectively told themselves that this is true even though really it's just an anachronistic and irrelevant hangover from WHFB and 40K.

The game works and is fun at any size. 2000 points of models is a lot for most people to buy, build, paint and keep track of in-game. 2000 point evangelists pushing the idea that the rest of us should accept 2000 points (or more, apparently!) as some kind of official standard need to reel it in.

There is no official standard points size. Any number you pick is arbitrary. The only time that a determination over points size is needed is between 2 people immediately prior to a game - and it should be a discussion, not a foregone conclusion.

For what it's worth, I like 1000 points games on a 4x4 table. I've played 1500 points and am working up to 2000, but I think smaller games will always be my preference. So far everyone in my group has always been happy to give me a game at 1000 points - even the tournament regulars who instinctively gravitate towards 2000 points.

That’s funny, because I remember a lot of other values like 2400, 2500, 1750, and the good ole 1850 points flung around too. And then there was the Swedish Comp (which tacked on another point system).

But it wasn’t the community, It was GW. See the 6th Edition Ravening Hordes, which literally has the line in the army creation section: “Most players find that 2,000 points is about right for a battle that will last an evening.”

So let’s backtrack. The goal wasn’t to fit an arbitrary number of points, but to place enough stuff for both sides on the table for the battle to last the evening (let’s say post-dinner up to bedtime, say 2.5-3.5 hours).  If we set our most basic unit (5 Liberators) to something standard (100 points), and assign everything else points based on that initial assignment (5 Libs = 100 pts), a 2,000 point battle probably lasts the timeframe.

That said, I prefer smaller games since we aren’t fantastic players and want them to go faster.

[Mr. White]

Local organizers recently ran a 2v2 tourney. Each member of a team brings 1K, so each side is 2K. Besides me being partial to 1K games, this seems like an ideal set-up. 

Epic 2K gaming. Lower barrier of entry. More gamers around the battlefield sharing the experience.

Winning all around.

[Kugane]

On 7/4/2018 at 8:28 PM, Galas said:

Fantasy did go that route, with 3k games being common. You dont want that. It will kill the flow of new players. 

I think that already happens with the current points. All of my friends seem to feel painting anything more than 5 models is a huge task they dont want to get into, as a result, none of them join warhammer. Even if I try to suggest 500 point games with low model count or shadespire, they avoid it like the plague because part of them knows they would need 2000 points eventually.

[Mr. White]

11 minutes ago, Kugane said:

I think that already happens with the current points. All of my friends seem to feel painting anything more than 5 models is a huge task they dont want to get into, as a result, none of them join warhammer. Even if I try to suggest 500 point games with low model count or shadespire, they avoid it like the plague because part of them knows they would need 2000 points eventually.

Yeah, I agree. A major part of the appeal to me of AoS was the ability to scale down to low model count games and it still be 'Warhammer' proper. If you keep the gaming at home and in the garages, you're good to go. I recognized that so built up my own table and terrain.

It's unfortunate organized play in stores is, for the most part, 2K. To the uneducated, or potential gamer, a game of AoS probably doesn't look that much different than a game of WFB 8th.

Shame that.

Wish there were a way to discourage 2k, but it's on local communities. Best you can do is convince your friends that within _your_ group you won't be ballooning up to 2k.

Good luck!

[Infeston]

I think AoS 2.0 created a bigger barrier of entry for new players, because of all the different supplements, all the FAQS, the battletomes, the huge money you need to invest to play and some other stuff.

If you compare AoS to other "competitive" games you often don't need that many resources to enter into competitive terrain. You might still be a noob and will still loose, but the barrier to enter competitive play is very low in many games. And if you have entered competitive terrain you can start to practice and loose a lot, until you will see progress. For players who play those games, this will be not much of a problem, because they didn't have to invest much money to get into competitve play. But in AoS you need to buy an army worth of 200-300 Euros (if you are from Europe ;-)) to even enter competitive terrain. And if you have invested this much time and money you may still loose and get beaten like a noob, which might be really harsh for some people, who have invested so much time and money into their army. I can understand people giving up on competitive play after something like that.

So I really don't think that increasing the standard game size will do any good. Like I mentioned before, we as a community should "embrace" smaller game sizes, because otherwise AoS might go the same route as Warhammer Fantasy. To keep this game alive and healthy we also need an influx of new players. 

I was never at a tournament so I don't know but I would guess that most of the players at tournaments also come from Warhammer Fantasy or they are coming from other tabletop games. I don't think you will see many new players at tournaments. 

I think because this forum is hosted by a tournament organizer (as far as I know) and therefore you will find more tournament people in here, people might get the impression that most of AoS gamers play the game like the competitive crowd plays the game. 

I for myself, share the same experience as @Kugane. It is really hard to get new players into this game. And it was also really hard before AoS 2.0. As I told my new player gaming group that they have to learn new rules again they rolled their eyes, because they haven't even incorporated all the old AoS 1.0 rules and warscrolls.

Especially, if you are a long-time Warhammer or tabletop player you might not realize how high the barrier for new players really is.

[Mr. White]

12 minutes ago, Infeston said:

I think AoS created a bigger barrier of entry for new players, because of all the different supplements, all the FAQS, the battletomes, the huge money you need to invest to play and some other stuff.

This is true to a point, but that point is only met if you plan to go far down the hobby road and plan to go big with your armies.

Not really clear to new gamers (unfortunately), but a lot of stuff sold is optional and totally unnecessary. Malign sorcery? not needed. Battletomes? Not needed. Etc. Again, to the perspective new player, the way AoS is usually played in stores via Matched Play appears to be a big money sink.

However...

Rules are free. Warscrolls are free. Skirmish book, with a full campaign, is about 12USD.

You could technically play Age of Sigmar with each player only fielding a Shadespire Warband or something as small. The actual barrier to play the game at home is low, low, low with the only cost being a handful of models...and maybe the Skirmish book to flesh out the games. If you played AoS with Shadespire warbands, you also have Shadespire to play. Good dollar to gaming value with those models as they serve double duty.

If one wanted to expand from there...pick up Silver Tower.  Adventure through Silver Tower with friends and if wanting to go back out to AoS one player can play all the Tzeentch models against the other players combining their shadespire warbands as an opposing force.

Stick with Open Play and AoS is cheap gaming.

[amysrevenge]

Part of the key to a public group is having leadership with the right attitude.  The right person in charge can make it work - it's not just about knowledge of the rules of the game, it's about personality and enthusiasm and flexibility and responsiveness.  The right person can make the game work for a group with nearly any background or finances or interests.  The game itself can be made to work in more than one way.

Without that leadership, it's an uphill struggle.

[Infeston]

14 minutes ago, Mr. White said:

Rules are free. Warscrolls are free. Skirmish book, with a full campaign, is about 12USD.

You could technically play Age of Sigmar with each player only fielding a Shadespire Warband or something as small. The actual barrier to play the game at home is low, low, low with the only cost being a handful of models...and maybe the Skirmish book to flesh out the games. If you played AoS with Shadespire warbands, you also have Shadespire to play. Good dollar to gaming value with those models as they serve double duty.

I agree with this to certain extent. 

Theoretically it is possible to play any size of game. But I would also guess that most of new gamers get pulled in by older gamers or people who are somewhat familiar with the game. Maybe they also get into a gaming group. 

The thing is, if the "standard" is 2000 points a lot of new players might get overwelmed or might get the feeling they will never reach the point which their friends already playing the game have reached.  Also their friends often have to scale down their battles to "cater" to the new player. So they also might get the feeling that they don't play the "real version" of the game.

I think this issue is more on the community side rather than on GWs side. I agree with you that there are options to cater to and pull in new players. But the community also needs to use and embrace these options and not stick to the established format everytime.

I think decreasing the standard game size would do a lot of good for new players. GW already provided options for this. But the community has to use those options. This could mean organizing more events or tournaments with smaller game sizes for example. This doesn't mean ALL events should be with small game sizes. But maybe some events can be for smaller sizes. We as a community have it in our hands to change things. 

I for myself also never had people to play Warhammer with and the time I visited a store I was also overwelmed and the players weren't interested in explaining things to me. Now after the start of AoS I started my own gaming group and we have a "save" environment to try everything out.  But I think this is a rare case, because not every gaming group is like this.   

[Guest]

2 hours ago, SuperHappyTime said:

That’s funny, because I remember a lot of other values like 2400, 2500, 1750, and the good ole 1850 points flung around too. And then there was the Swedish Comp (which tacked on another point system).

But it wasn’t the community, It was GW. See the 6th Edition Ravening Hordes, which literally has the line in the army creation section: “Most players find that 2,000 points is about right for a battle that will last an evening.”

So let’s backtrack. The goal wasn’t to fit an arbitrary number of points, but to place enough stuff for both sides on the table for the battle to last the evening (let’s say post-dinner up to bedtime, say 2.5-3.5 hours).  If we set our most basic unit (5 Liberators) to something standard (100 points), and assign everything else points based on that initial assignment (5 Libs = 100 pts), a 2,000 point battle probably lasts the timeframe.

That said, I prefer smaller games since we aren’t fantastic players and want them to go faster.

I agree. This is exactly what I said. 2000 points as standard is a hangover from WHFB.

[chord]

I agree much larger barrier of entry with AoS 2.0.     I saw last weekend a veteran player explaining to a new one that they needed the core book, malign , and the GHB, plus a battletome....

 

[amysrevenge]

It's a larger barrier for veterans to overcome, when introducing new players to the game.  You can bet that I wouldn't even *mention* all those books until we had played a game first, let alone call them mandatory before even beginning.  Hahaha

[Infeston]

4 minutes ago, chord said:

I agree much larger barrier of entry with AoS 2.0.     I saw last weekend a veteran player explaining to a new one that they needed the core book, malign , and the GHB, plus a battletome....

 

The thing is and that is where I agree with @Mr. White they don't really need all of this! They really don't need those supplements to start the game. And that is also what I was going for. Veteran or old players dictating how the game is played "normally". 

The real problem is veteran players telling new players that you "need" all of this to start playing the game.  In theory you really don't need all of this. The only real thing you need to start playing the game is 1 unit for both sides (It could be 1 model, 3 models or 10 models). 

I think a good compromise would be scaling the "standard" match size down to 1000 points. 1000 is a level old players can reach, which isn't that far away for new players. But this is also just my opinion. Please feel free to disagree on this. 

It is just based on my personal experience with new players.

[amysrevenge]

I've been putting all the pressure on the veterans here, but there is some onus on newcomers to at least meet partway.  

"Why don't we play at 500 or 1000 points while we learn this game" is a very reasonable position to take, and one that the veterans should already be suggesting (shame on the veterans if they don't).  "I don't ever want to buy and/or paint enough models to get to 2000 points" is an argument that maybe AoS isn't the game for you - there are all sorts of gamers and all sorts of games, and not all gamers are right for all games.

"I don't want to have to get all these rules today" is perfectly fine for a newcomer, optimal even (and, again, the veterans should be leading this).  "I don't ever want to have to get these rules" is not reasonable.  Someday you're either going to shift from newcomer to veteran, or abandon the game (repeat my point above).

[Luke82]

There seems to be an undercurrent of resentment towards “bigger” 2000 point games going on, which I don’t really get. Who wasn’t lured into the hobby by seeing big armies clashing? I don’t think a few dozen models on the table can compare to the spectacle of big fights, and it’s spectacle that really gets the hooks into you for this hobby I reckon.

It’s worth explaining to newcomers that they don’t have to jump into 2,000 points or not bother, and there’s some good options for building forces slowly, but I don’t think shifting the scene to playing small games is going to do much long term good in getting people involved.

[chord]

16 minutes ago, Infeston said:

The thing is and that is where I agree with @Mr. White they don't really need all of this! They really don't need those supplements to start the game. And that is also what I was going for. Veteran or old players dictating how the game is played "normally". 

The real problem is veteran players telling new players that you "need" all of this to start playing the game.  In theory you really don't need all of this. The only real thing you need to start playing the game is 1 unit for both sides (It could be 1 model, 3 models or 10 models). 

I think a good compromise would be scaling the "standard" match size down to 1000 points. 1000 is a level old players can reach, which isn't that far away for new players. But this is also just my opinion. Please feel free to disagree on this. 

It is just based on my personal experience with new players.

I agree.  The veteran player did a disservice to the new player.

[chord]

5 minutes ago, Luke82 said:

There seems to be an undercurrent of resentment towards “bigger” 2000 point games going on, which I don’t really get. Who wasn’t lured into the hobby by seeing big armies clashing? I don’t think a few dozen models on the table can compare to the spectacle of big fights, and it’s spectacle that really gets the hooks into you for this hobby I reckon.

It’s worth explaining to newcomers that they don’t have to jump into 2,000 points or not bother, and there’s some good options for building forces slowly, but I don’t think shifting the scene to playing small games is going to do much long term good in getting people involved.

I wasn't..   I saw the original AoS starter set demo at the GW store.  That was not a massive battle.

[Luke82]

6 minutes ago, chord said:

I wasn't..   I saw the original AoS starter set demo at the GW store.  That was not a massive battle.

Ok I stand corrected, not everyone was wowed by large battles.

[Infeston]

2 hours ago, Luke82 said:

Ok I stand corrected, not everyone was wowed by large battles.

I also didn't get into the hobby this way. I got lured into the hobby through the Lord of the Rings strategy game magazines. Those were magazines which had one miniature and paints as contents. After I collected a few of those magazines I found out that I can also buy miniatures from Gws site and found out that there also other game systems. This was the first time I found out about Warhammer. My very first miniature was the Nurgle Chaos hero with the horns who was on the horse.

This one:

 

I got into the hobby, because I liked the design of this miniature and the painting aspect and not because of big battles. And I also still enjoy the game, because of its miniature design. I  also have to say that I was very sad as I found out that I couldn't play with only this model alone and that I had to buy a lot of other models (some which I didn't like design-wise) to play a normal game. 

It is a huge turnoff if you buy a model you really like the look of and another person tells you that you cannot play with this model, unless you buy a bunch of other models, which are necessary and in the end you might also not like. I really liked the initial design of AoS when there were only Grand Alliances and no such things as battleline requirements.

In reality I have also never seen a big and huge battle. Also in most of the stores that I visited, they often played smaller games.  

But maybe I am also an exception. The people I know got pulled into this hobby by a group of friends most of the time. And also some of the competitive people I know didn't buy they own armies, but got old armies from other people who quit the game or bought stuff from ebay. Because if you want to start the hobby and directly get into competitive play you often need to search for cheap alternatives.

My current gaming group is different, because we all started fresh. Most of the people in my group don't have even 1000 points painted. They still need to learn how to paint the models and so on.

[KillagoreFaceslasha]

On 7/4/2018 at 7:56 PM, themortalgod said:

So I have been playing with lists from a variety of my armies and list building is feeling pretty tight now thanks to so many things going up in pts cost along with needing to find space for endless spells and bonus CP. I just feel like all my armies are leaving so many more models at home than they have in the past. I'm wondering if it might be worth considering a standard game size of more like 2250 or even 2500 now to provide the feeling of a full size army again. Thoughts?

No.

The game scale is already slightly bigger with the point cuts and the summoning tweaks, there's no need to up it further and run into a situation where the barrier of entry becomes too great, that's a primary factor of WHFB's death.

[SuperHappyTime]

On the topic at hand, look at what you have to spend for the lower points level:

500 Points: Its a Start Collecting Box, about $85. Technically, youre probably still short a Battleline (since you’re supposed to have two unless you houserule it.

1000 Points: When it’s not two Collecting, it’s probably ~$150-300, depending on whether you spring for a larger behemoth, or can get a Battleforce or deal on SCs.

Lets not forget gluing and painting costs, and time to do both.

Quick Counter: Other Hobbies are just as bad if not worse for cost. The biggest expense for Warhammer is time. It takes a while to paint well.

[Skabnoze]

6 hours ago, amysrevenge said:

Part of the key to a public group is having leadership with the right attitude.  The right person in charge can make it work - it's not just about knowledge of the rules of the game, it's about personality and enthusiasm and flexibility and responsiveness.  The right person can make the game work for a group with nearly any background or finances or interests.  The game itself can be made to work in more than one way.

Without that leadership, it's an uphill struggle.

I was always surprised when GW cancelled their Outrider program many many moons ago.  It has always been a good strategy for miniature game companies to cultivate their own network of local game advocates.