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

[RuneBrush]

On 8/18/2018 at 5:56 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.  

Interesting to hear that.  One thing I'm hoping to try out at the local club is to work out a Vanguard Pitched Battle "mod" (if ever I get some free weekends).  Currently one thought is to limit armies to a 25% cap for each warscroll (possibly with no horde bonus either).  That would immediately cut out a number of the "big" Behemoths which can skew games and running lots of those supper tough models (Grimghast Reapers, Blight Kings).  I'm sure there will be other things that need to be tweaked/limited (e.g. Summoning may need some TLC and some allegiance abilities).  My feeling is that although this would be a bit like playing chess with some of the pieces missing (good analogy), both side are missing the same pieces - but perhaps just the Queen, Bishops and one Knight (with all the Pawns still there).

[JackStreicher]

On 7/6/2018 at 9:35 PM, 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!

The issue with games that use lower points than 2k is the named characters, they‘d be even more OP than they currently are, especially since every Tournament List seems to abuse them as much as possible.

i would not mind lower points if you‘d remove named characters (honestly battles are less epic if Nagash, Neferata or Morathi take part in every unimportant battle).

[themortalgod]

8 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

The issue with games that use lower points than 2k is the named characters, they‘d be even more OP than they currently are, especially since every Tournament List seems to abuse them as much as possible.

i would not mind lower points if you‘d remove named characters (honestly battles are less epic if Nagash, Neferata or Morathi take part in every unimportant battle).

Imo, if we got further expansion on options for non named heroes this would also address the problem. I remember back in the day I use to NEVER run named heroes. I felt that it was just being "lazy" not to design your own cool hero. (both in 40k and Fantasy) but that was back in the day when we had tons of options for magic items and other such abilities and could put two or three different items on a certain mightly lord to give that character a sense of identity (at a suitable pts cost, of course). 

AoS has improved but this whole one item per hero, few items per army thing really puts a halt to playing "RPG" with your heroes.

Some of my fondest hobby eras were when the Warhammer: Magic came out and also later when the 3.5 edition of the Chaos Space Marine codex came out n 40k. Both created situations that allowed me to spend hours pouring over literally thousands of potential combinations to design characters that were unique to my armies. I had so much fun creating the characters, designing backstories for them, then converting models to represent them. I feel that aspect of the game has been lost in the era of simplicity and wish it would return. 

[Cerlin]

This thread got necro'ed a bit, then I read it all. So I am going to put in mg 2c.

After playing 100+ games over 3 years, 2k feels like the natural balance point. It allows the most list diversity and counters. Once you get used to it, the games go pretty fast. 

The smallest I will go, even in teaching a new player, is 1500. Under that, you cannot make a mistake or have bad dice rolls and come back from the brink.  I have gotten 4 people into the game by running 1500 pnt demo games. It is all about how you explain it.

I do not begrudge people who want to play 1k games, a lot of the local FLGS people prefer that size. I just have less fun. Also those people are game hype hoppers and play many mini games, this is my only one. Are either of us wrong? Nope. We just have our preferences.

To address the OP tho, if I had time and if I were playing one of my fully built armies, I would like to play 2500 or 2250 more often.

[Captain Marius]

On 8/20/2018 at 6:43 PM, themortalgod said:

Imo, if we got further expansion on options for non named heroes this would also address the problem. I remember back in the day I use to NEVER run named heroes. I felt that it was just being "lazy" not to design your own cool hero. (both in 40k and Fantasy) but that was back in the day when we had tons of options for magic items and other such abilities and could put two or three different items on a certain mightly lord to give that character a sense of identity (at a suitable pts cost, of course). 

AoS has improved but this whole one item per hero, few items per army thing really puts a halt to playing "RPG" with your heroes.

I write a short write up of every battle i play, and ive found it to be fun coming up with new names for all the mortal heroes who are viciously butchered in various ways. My old Empire General has served as three or four different blokes since the Realmgate Wars. I hop around in the timeline too, so if a battle goes particularly well i might add it in to the history of a version of the hero ive developed a soft spot for. Conversely, all my immortal heroes eg vampires, daemons, stormies etc pop up again and again against all these different mortals, building an ongoing saga for many that goes right back to the old world.

On topic, i enjoy games of all sizes and ways to play, but 2k with allegiance abilities is the sweet spot if i cant be bothered to set up a narrative battle!

[Redmanphill]

2000 points is defintely the sweet spot for me.

[The World Tree]

On 8/20/2018 at 6:43 PM, themortalgod said:

Imo, if we got further expansion on options for non named heroes this would also address the problem. I remember back in the day I use to NEVER run named heroes. I felt that it was just being "lazy" not to design your own cool hero. (both in 40k and Fantasy) but that was back in the day when we had tons of options for magic items and other such abilities and could put two or three different items on a certain mightly lord to give that character a sense of identity (at a suitable pts cost, of course). 

AoS has improved but this whole one item per hero, few items per army thing really puts a halt to playing "RPG" with your heroes.

Some of my fondest hobby eras were when the Warhammer: Magic came out and also later when the 3.5 edition of the Chaos Space Marine codex came out n 40k. Both created situations that allowed me to spend hours pouring over literally thousands of potential combinations to design characters that were unique to my armies. I had so much fun creating the characters, designing backstories for them, then converting models to represent them. I feel that aspect of the game has been lost in the era of simplicity and wish it would return. 

 

Completely disagree. I much prefer having one, maybe two items in a list. Otherwise it just bogs the game down. It also makes those single items appear more special and characterful. Very few of the old world magic items felt special because they were so rote. Having one item (let's say Ghyrstrike on Durthu) feels like it makes an impact and gives the special focus to that special hero. More dilutes that.

[themortalgod]

4 minutes ago, The World Tree said:

 

Completely disagree. I much prefer having one, maybe two items in a list. Otherwise it just bogs the game down. It also makes those single items appear more special and characterful. Very few of the old world magic items felt special because they were so rote. Having one item (let's say Ghyrstrike on Durthu) feels like it makes an impact and gives the special focus to that special hero. More dilutes that.

How does it bog the game down? It has such a tiny impact on game speed? I feel like we could just tone down re-rolling mechanics and instantly save 10x the amount of time that adding more items into the game would add in. 

[SuperHappyTime]

Quick call the Mods! There’s a Threadomancer on the loose!

What makes games longer than they should be is not having rules compacted and nearby for quick reference. This is a much bigger problem in 40K, where every model is holding something different. There isn’t much of a difference between 1000, 1500, or 2000 because I’m likely to take more of something instead of something else. What kills me is adding extra battlefield rules.

[themortalgod]

7 minutes ago, SuperHappyTime said:

Quick call the Mods! There’s a Threadomancer on the loose!

What makes games longer than they should be is not having rules compacted and nearby for quick reference. This is a much bigger problem in 40K, where every model is holding something different. There isn’t much of a difference between 1000, 1500, or 2000 because I’m likely to take more of something instead of something else. What kills me is adding extra battlefield rules.

Id agree, though I think that vastly diminishes as players learn their rules. You should really know almost all your rules without having to look them up. Looking up should be more for when there is a dispute or confusion. 

[amysrevenge]

I'll say this, just from personal anecdotal experience.

In the days before AoS, it was most typical for local (to me) players to accumulate large armies of a single faction, 5000+ points.  Some of the keenest of us did very large 10,000+ armies or 2-3 factions of 5000+ points.  But we were always adding to our preferred armies.

In the days since AoS, it is much more common for the sort of player who 5 years ago would just keep piling units on to the same army over and over to paint up smaller armies, say 2000 points plus a small-ish sideboard to swap elements in and out, and then move on to another one.  It is a strange thing these days (in my neighbourhood) to get to 5000 points of one faction, all painted (not legacy stuff rebased from the old days, but new stuff).  I've done a 4000-ish Slaves to Darkness army that's all new, but it's mostly units I bought back in the previous era - I certainly would not have purchased so many models new if I was doing it now; I just happened to already have them.  Even my Stormcast Eternals, where I'm going to end up over 4000 total points, are more like two distinct armies (from different stages of AoS, different chambers/stormhosts, and painted differently) rather than one big one.

[Luke82]

I’ve found building my Nurgle army has become much more fun since passing the 2,000 mark. I can spend more time converting and painting units I like rather than feeling like I need to get the army to a playable state.

EDIT; playable as in painted and at least half way decent.

[Brightstar]

I think everyone's answer will come down to playstyle and army choice.

I prefer smaller games. I play the same amount of time as a big game but find more memorable moments happen in the smaller game format. And I have more chances to do different things. Eventually a big game grinds into inevitability and we're just waiting to see if the dice actually roll out that way. The choices of gameplay are over.

Gw games are really skirmish games. They all work best at 500 -1250 range. After that spam starts happening and the power curves take over. 

[Brightstar]

Also for more me it is about model interaction. I don't want to paint the same model over and over. My 20 chainrasp are fine. Sure, I'd love to try more of them in lists, but I don't want to paint the same 10 models 4 times each. I'd rather paint something else or do something else with my hobby time - like game, build scenery, write rules, etc. 

If gw requires more models I would have to paint more I'd rather not.

The more I paint the same model the less cool it becomes. 

 

 

[MacDuff]

I like to collect and paint 3-4K in an army, and then play around with different 2K combinations. It lets me explore the rules while still having larger forces for rare mega-battles. It also gives me everything I need for Skirmish, Path to Glory, or SOH.

[AaronWilson]

2K for me sits just right, you get a healthy amount of units without it being too mind boggling, even at 2k there is a looot to remember. 

[chord]

I prefer 1K games,  they go much faster, plus I would rather collect several 1k armies than just 1-2 2k armies. 

[Dead Scribe]

1000 point games just never struck me as being a good game.  The game is not balanced at all at 1000 points.  There are units and heroes that wreck things at 1000 points that shouldn't be involved at that low level of a game.  The free summoning points also becomes a bigger unbalanced issue at 1000 points, particularly with armies like nurgle whose summoning simply does not scale well at all.

2000 points strikes me as being about right.  More than 2000 points takes too much time and I hope standard size never gets bigger than 2000 points.  

Tournaments would struggle higher than 2000 points getting full games in.

[SpleenThief]

I've found 2500 games go just as fast as 2000, they do take longer to start but once things start getting removed the game speeds up drastically.

Also if you find issues with 2k games taking too long its 100% the players fault, I know people who play 100+ model armies much faster than some players with elite armies after the initial setup.

[Johann]

1 hour ago, SpleenThief said:

Also if you find issues with 2k games taking too long its 100% the players fault, ....

it´s a game not a race...

For me some hobby talk, thinking /discussing possibilities and some drinks during the game is part of the hobby evening and not playing as fast as possible to have a bigger game size.

[Nin Win]

16 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

1000 point games just never struck me as being a good game.  The game is not balanced at all at 1000 points.  There are units and heroes that wreck things at 1000 points that shouldn't be involved at that low level of a game.  The free summoning points also becomes a bigger unbalanced issue at 1000 points, particularly with armies like nurgle whose summoning simply does not scale well at all.

When you have a game that can be scaled from skirmish through path to glory to 1000, 2000 and even giant apocalypse battles, the players really have to take responsibility for the balance.  This is even true at 2000 points where if one person wants to take the most proven efficient tournament list and another person wants to take a pile of models they think are cool and wanted to paint.

We might like to think that the game should just work at a given size without players talking about what they are taking and what the goal is for the game, but it doesn't.  I don't think it ever has.  Going all the way back to the 80s.  The reason the historical games on which Warhammer is based from the 60s and 70s had far less issues is that they had the same sort of stuff on both sides.  Both sides were basically playing the same army made up of say, infantry, cavalry and artillery.  And often in similar proportions as the nations in a given region often had the same climate, technology and economic factors.

Add in the shear number of variables and you pretty much need a method to make things line up.  For tournaments it's "take the strongest thing you possibly can."  For 1000 point games it might be better to talk to your opponent.  Maybe you both take a huge monster, maybe neither of you do.   We have a standing rule that if you include something with 8 or more wounds or if you plan on applying 2 or more buffs to a single target you let the opponent know in advance so they can bring comparable stuff.

[Dead Scribe]

I don't ever see players taking responsibility for balance.  Thats what we depend on the writers of the game to do.  Players are going to take what is powerful and what the rules allow for.  If the rules allow for the game to be broken, thats not on the players, thats on the designers for letting it happen in the first place.

[Nin Win]

When I say responsibility, I don't mean culpability or blame, but the actual ability to respond.  Response ability.

If someone's gaming isn't working out because of balance reasons, they can actually do something about it.

If you refuse to do something about it because it's not your job or it's on the game designer to get it right in the first place, then well, hopefully you never hit imbalance because you'll be refusing to do something about it when it is in your power to do so.

I think it's also important to remember that agreeing to play a stronger tournament level army is one way of taking responsibility for the lack of balance.  It's intentionally taking the smaller subset of units that are tournament viable, making sure you have the needed abilities, spells and so forth to have the synergy you need and making sure to leave any unit that doesn't perform on the shelf.  It is making a choice to take a subset of the available unit choices.

The problem is when your opponent is not on the same page.  So take ownership of the balance and talk to them in advance.  That way if you're about to play a game against someone who just wants to take what they thought was cool to paint, you won't waste your time with a foregone conclusion and they won't have the negative experience of struggling pointlessly against a totally different class of list.
 

[mikethefish]

To answer the OP's question:  hell to the no.

[themortalgod]

2 hours ago, mikethefish said:

To answer the OP's question:  hell to the no.

Your logic is infallible. Tbh as time goes forward I'm feeling more and more convinced that 2.5k is the new magic number. Especially when I compare it to 40k. A 2k AoS army is far smaller than most 2k 40k armies, yet it is the size of a 2k 40k army that I tend to enjoy most.