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

[Qaz]

Ya. For me, having played AoS for over a year, I wouldn't mind larger games since I have the model count and "wanted to try this cool battalion" but I will say No to 2500 point tournaments or even as a standard. 

On the discussion of new players, I've  introduced AoS to a few players and recommending just a start collecting which puts most at 500 pts and just start from there. Although 1000 pts in my opinion, the sweet spot for new player and casual play. Take out the warscroll builder and use whatever allegiance you have access to and run one of the battleplans in corebook. 

[mDaro]

I prefer 1000 games. When i have time to play I’d rather play 2-3 games against different people or try a different scenario with the same army then play 1 three hour game. 

For me 1000pts on a 4x4 covered with scenery is my sweet spot. 

[Nin Win]

1000 points with loads of terrain is what I like for the full rules.  I do more skirmish though.

Pictures of big battles in White Dwarf or whatever always made me ask why not get four 1000 point armies intead of one 4000 point army?  I also like being able to provide both sides to a game if someone wants to check the game out, so having multiple 1000 point armies is where it's at for me-- though at the moment I only have 1000ish of Stormcast and Chaos and around 500 of Seraphon.

[Kugane]

20 hours ago, Mr. White said:

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!

You are right, and that does sound good :). I personally think if the standard game size was 1k, a lot more people would be willing to drop 100 euro on a starter army and play. The hobby has an extremely high entrance level, both financial and time-wise in the buying and preparation of models. I think it'll be nearly impossible to get local communities off the 2k mindset though.

If it were only 100 euro - the reality is that an army on average costs about 400 euro, you spend a good 100 to 200 euro on paints, brushes, washes, etc, and you need to drop another 30 to 100 euro on books, battletomes. Just to have an army ready to play. A lot of people will be scared off.

[Karol]

something cool would be a version of AoS that is played with 10-20 models, something like those WWII skirmish games or warmahordes. A lot of people feel super intimidated when they hear they have to get 9 boxs of vulkits, or that their KO has to start with a huge ship model and 9+ballon models.

In a way I feel thankful that while my army may have been a bit nerfed, but most of its models are cool and fun to use. Although the worse thing a new player gets to hear that the units they look like are at best used as counts as. We had a new player who wanted to start the new stormcast, but after he saw the leaked rules for the sigmar pope and some other models he wanted to buy , he just decided to play infinity.

[karch]

2K is already too big for my taste.

I wish there was a way to get people out of the "I need to bring all the toys" mindset. The game is so much better at smaller point levels.

[stratigo]

On 7/6/2018 at 4:58 PM, chord said:

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

 

This whole "Oh we have to trick new players by not telling them how to play the full game that people are using. They'll be too scared to start if we reveal all the rules" Is both condescending and dishonest.

[Wired4War]

As a new player, I've definitely found 1000pts on a 4x4 great for learning. I'm looking forward to trying a 2k game once I'm finished painting this next batch, but see 1000 continuing to be my go to. Watching Adepticon this year and hoping to participate next, the vanguard and team tournaments look the most fun (1000pts each).

[Dragobeth]

17 hours ago, Karol said:

something cool would be a version of AoS that is played with 10-20 models, something like those WWII skirmish games or warmahordes. A lot of people feel super intimidated when they hear they have to get 9 boxs of vulkits, or that their KO has to start with a huge ship model and 9+ballon models.

That version exist, it's called AoS Skirmish. It's a little book but it does his job untill they make a 2nd ed of it (I hope they make it soon, we need points for the new armies and some units that weren't included in the original) There was even boxes for that, at +- 45 € with enough minis for a warband (but it's seems that they discontinued those, sad) so the problem now is that if you want to start and (for example) have 2-3 liberators you have to buy the 10 minis box. But yes, there is a version/game mode of it, you usually start with 1 hero and 1-2 dudes.

Reading this topic I got the idea of starting a little league in my group using 500 (house rulling only 1 battleline)/1000 points (maybe 750) Since we all are used to play without points or with 2k points it's interesting to see how we build our lists in such a little games, great times!

 

[Nin Win]

Renown is equal to the cost of minimum sized unit divided by the number of models in minimum sized unit and then divide that by 5.  Round normally.

 

[Dragobeth]

4 hours ago, Nin Win said:

Renown is equal to the cost of minimum sized unit divided by the number of models in minimum sized unit and then divide that by 5.  Round normally.

 

Yes, but making a new skirmish book with points for every unit that exist right now could help a lot to that format (there is always some people that don't like things if you can find it on official books) But I can see GW "droping" Skirmish in favor of some "kill team like" for AoS if they think it coul sell well... or maybe they can call Skirmish 2nd ed to that "aos kill team". One just need a look to XWing sales some years ago to see that little and fast games can be very profitable and those are great to bring new players too.

The only problem that I could see is that "Kill Team AoS"/Skirmish could compete with Shadespire and that's why GW could drop Skirmish for a while but anything prevents you for playing anyway, it just use AoS rules with some little twist like the units with 1 model and all of that.

[TheOtherJosh]

13 minutes ago, Dragobeth said:

The only problem that I could see is that "Kill Team AoS"/Skirmish could compete with Shadespire

Shadespire is designed as a stand-alone competitive game, partially geared towards folks who wouldn’t be likely to play AoS... think “GW for the board game/x-wing crowd”

Skirmish and Kill-team are designed as an easier entry point for their primary table games, AoS and 40k ... and work as a good game in and of themselves.

[rokapoke]

10 hours ago, stratigo said:

 

This whole "Oh we have to trick new players by not telling them how to play the full game that people are using. They'll be too scared to start if we reveal all the rules" Is both condescending and dishonest.

By the same token, insisting on showing new players all the potential bells and whistles (since that's what the major tournaments encourage players to use) is like teaching a 16-year-old to drive in an F1 car. After all, that's the only way you'll be able to win the big races!

[amysrevenge]

13 hours ago, stratigo said:

 

This whole "Oh we have to trick new players by not telling them how to play the full game that people are using. They'll be too scared to start if we reveal all the rules" Is both condescending and dishonest.

Hahaha.  "Hi, welcome to your very first club visit.  I'm sure you'll find AoS very enjoyable and rewarding.  I'm all set up for our demo game, just get out all your things and...  oh...  wait... you don't already have your Battletome, the Core Rules, GH2018 and Malign Sorcery?  WRONG!  Those are mandatory at all times.  Kindly F off, noob."

[amysrevenge]

34 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

Hahaha.  "Hi, welcome to your very first club visit.  I'm sure you'll find AoS very enjoyable and rewarding.  I'm all set up for our demo game, just get out all your things and...  oh...  wait... you don't already have your Battletome, the Core Rules, GH2018 and Malign Sorcery?  WRONG!  Those are mandatory at all times.  Kindly F off, noob."

Upon half an hour's reflection - this is not meant as a direct slight at the quoted post.  More of a claim that the (fake) dialogue that I made up is an attitude that clearly exists (I've seen reports of behaviour not too far off from my fake dialogue), and is to be avoided.  It is already a very intimidating thing to try to elbow your way into a pre-existing friend group, with a set of pre-existing common knowledge that you are interested in but don't know much about yet.  We need to ensure that we are continually opening up our doors to newcomers, not closing them off behind layers of gatekeeping.

[Deja vu]

I am still working on my first army. I have played Skirmish and 1000 point games. I am not sure I am able to field more than 1200-1300 yet... give me a few months. 

I watched a 3000 point game at my local shop... I have to say it was much slower than I expected. 

To me what looks like fun is mutiplayer battles.  Our local table hosted a doubles competition and I watched for several hours. That looks like fun, 4 people to a table at 1500 points each.  8X4 table with lots of stuff on it., 

[amysrevenge]

3 minutes ago, Deja vu said:

To me what looks like fun is mutiplayer battles.  Our local table hosted a doubles competition and I watched for several hours. That looks like fun, 4 people to a table at 1500 points each.  8X4 table with lots of stuff on it., 

As far as a pure fun night out at the club goes, it's hard to beat a 2v2 1000 pts each doubles match.

[NulEnvoid]

With 2.0 summoning I’d prefer smaller games, depending on what factions are playing it can get ridiculous pretty fast with spam which slows the game down.

 

[Somanlius]

Ive been playing AoS with my friends since it released, and I gotta say I wish more people assumed 1k was the standard. 1000 point games always seem tighter, faster, more exciting, and more enjoyable. I feel like 2k really bogs everything down and takes far too long. 1500 is a nice comfortable medium I guess. Even with Endless Spells and Battalions 1500 gets you almost everything you could want. 

[themortalgod]

2 hours ago, Somanlius said:

Ive been playing AoS with my friends since it released, and I gotta say I wish more people assumed 1k was the standard. 1000 point games always seem tighter, faster, more exciting, and more enjoyable. I feel like 2k really bogs everything down and takes far too long. 1500 is a nice comfortable medium I guess. Even with Endless Spells and Battalions 1500 gets you almost everything you could want. 

Thats interesting as for me it is the opposite. I find that if someone wants to play 1000pts, I kinda don't even really want to play AoS anymore. I'd rather play a skirmish game designed for smaller scale at that point. For myself, I find a big part of the interest lies in having a certain number of independent actors on the field that I can influence with decision making. At 1000pts, that number is very low and tends to feel constricting. Not to say each decision isn't important but I just find the game to be more interesting when I have a wide variety of decisions to make with an array of different units. In my mind, a 1k game would sorta be like playing chess with half the pieces already removed from the board before the game starts.  

Personally, my group has moved to 2500pts now for almost all games because we find even 2k seems really limiting under the new edition. For example, my 2k Tzeentch daemon army model count went down by like 40% in  AoS 2.0 (Not to argue against Tzeentch nerfs, it needed it, but I wish they had done it via nerfing warscrolls rather than skyrocketing points but thats a whole different discussion). Regardless, as a whole, every one of my armies feels very limited at 2k. In AoS 1.0 I found I could often fit all the interesting stuff in an army that I wanted to in order to achieve the theme I was going for. Now I feel like I am over pts and cutting units I really like in order to squeeze in at 2k. (though, one thing that has helped has been learning to avoid endless spells like the plague other than perhaps cogs for some armies)

[Jamopower]

Well it depends. When playing the pitched battle scenarios with smaller armies, it really promotes on going with smaller units to have more of them. At least I always feel that few extra units would be a good thing to have as we play almost exclusively 1500 points on 6x4 table. When the points limit go down, the table gets larger and the objectives harder to get.  I don't consider this as a downside. I have always felt, that having more room on the table makes the game bit more tactical as the movement is more important. And not just the movement stat, but the aspects of when you start moving and which direction.

Of course, on the other hand, in smaller games you have less room for combos and buffs, which of course are also a major part of the game. Also some stuff is way more powerful in the smaller games, mainly those rules that don't scale much, like Seraphon summoning or units which are strong without any extra synergies. But on the other hand, some stuff are worse, it's same as with every tweak to the "basic" set-up. That's why it's good to wary, play different size games, different scenarios, multiplayer games, etc.  

[Somanlius]

On 8/18/2018 at 12:56 AM, themortalgod said:

Thats interesting as for me it is the opposite. I find that if someone wants to play 1000pts, I kinda don't even really want to play AoS anymore. I'd rather play a skirmish game designed for smaller scale at that point. For myself, I find a big part of the interest lies in having a certain number of independent actors on the field that I can influence with decision making. At 1000pts, that number is very low and tends to feel constricting. Not to say each decision isn't important but I just find the game to be more interesting when I have a wide variety of decisions to make with an array of different units. In my mind, a 1k game would sorta be like playing chess with half the pieces already removed from the board before the game starts.  

Personally, my group has moved to 2500pts now for almost all games because we find even 2k seems really limiting under the new edition. For example, my 2k Tzeentch daemon army model count went down by like 40% in  AoS 2.0 (Not to argue against Tzeentch nerfs, it needed it, but I wish they had done it via nerfing warscrolls rather than skyrocketing points but thats a whole different discussion). Regardless, as a whole, every one of my armies feels very limited at 2k. In AoS 1.0 I found I could often fit all the interesting stuff in an army that I wanted to in order to achieve the theme I was going for. Now I feel like I am over pts and cutting units I really like in order to squeeze in at 2k. (though, one thing that has helped has been learning to avoid endless spells like the plague other than perhaps cogs for some armies)

I understand what you mean, 2k and above gives lots of interesting options. I just find that in 2.0 when using new rules 1k is just a tighter game. Between Malign Sorcery, Endless Spells, Battletomes, Realm of Battle rules, scenario objectives, battalions, and basic warscrolls the auxillary rules really pile up. I just find it easier to keep track of everything in 1k -1500 point games. I find that there are lots of times in games 2k and above where we realise something was forgotten in a previous phase, or my opponent or myself will spend ages in each phase making sure everything was remembered.

And thats not even including the time it takes in the movement phase! I guess that could be more of a problem in our specific group where 2 people play Death horde armies, one guy plays Fyreslayers, I play Khorne with lots of marauders and reavers, and another peoson plays Darkling covens. In 2k + the movement phase really takes forever and people always get bored and start checking their phones or whatever as the other guy is moving models. That problem could probably be solved by more elite armies, but its also solved by 1k games.

[themortalgod]

52 minutes ago, Somanlius said:

I understand what you mean, 2k and above gives lots of interesting options. I just find that in 2.0 when using new rules 1k is just a tighter game. Between Malign Sorcery, Endless Spells, Battletomes, Realm of Battle rules, scenario objectives, battalions, and basic warscrolls the auxillary rules really pile up. I just find it easier to keep track of everything in 1k -1500 point games. I find that there are lots of times in games 2k and above where we realise something was forgotten in a previous phase, or my opponent or myself will spend ages in each phase making sure everything was remembered.

And thats not even including the time it takes in the movement phase! I guess that could be more of a problem in our specific group where 2 people play Death horde armies, one guy plays Fyreslayers, I play Khorne with lots of marauders and reavers, and another peoson plays Darkling covens. In 2k + the movement phase really takes forever and people always get bored and start checking their phones or whatever as the other guy is moving models. That problem could probably be solved by more elite armies, but its also solved by 1k games.

Fair, though we have looked to other tools to address the speed problem. The GW dice app and movement trays, in particular, speed up a game tremendously when hordes are involved.

I think the other big factor for me is that big armies simply feel "epic" The reason GW original drew and kept my attention above and beyond all the other fantasy mini-games on the market is the scale. Skirmish can be certainly fun, but I get excited about armies clashing and even though ~100 models per side still is a small skirmish in the sense of what a real battle would be it still feels far more epic and grand than 20-25 models going at it. 

[Somanlius]

39 minutes ago, themortalgod said:

Fair, though we have looked to other tools to address the speed problem. The GW dice app and movement trays, in particular, speed up a game tremendously when hordes are involved.

I think the other big factor for me is that big armies simply feel "epic" The reason GW original drew and kept my attention above and beyond all the other fantasy mini-games on the market is the scale. Skirmish can be certainly fun, but I get excited about armies clashing and even though ~100 models per side still is a small skirmish in the sense of what a real battle would be it still feels far more epic and grand than 20-25 models going at it. 

Oh absolutly. Nothing cooler than those 3-5k games where Archaon and Nagash are staring each other down over a mass of dozens and dozens of units, spells going off and liquifying everything in range, masses of bodies littering the battlefield.

We looked into movement trays but no one has pulled the trigger yet. They will probably help for sure. Donno about the dice app, but for me personally I love rolling dice haha.

[themortalgod]

27 minutes ago, Somanlius said:

Oh absolutly. Nothing cooler than those 3-5k games where Archaon and Nagash are staring each other down over a mass of dozens and dozens of units, spells going off and liquifying everything in range, masses of bodies littering the battlefield.

We looked into movement trays but no one has pulled the trigger yet. They will probably help for sure. Donno about the dice app, but for me personally I love rolling dice haha.

Ah, for me, dice are a necessary evil of the game to introduce randomization but I don't particularly enjoy rolling dice, in general, and when it involves huge numbers of them I find it exhausting. The dice app solves that problem pretty cleanly. I got into using it when I was rocking TKs super skeletons that could put out hundreds of attacks in a single turn. It would turn 5-10min of rolling and counting into 30seconds. 

I actually really look forward to a day when AR reaches a point where the dice rolling aspect of the game can be handled automatically by software and the game is entirely about pushing plastic around based on tactical/narrative decisions.