Army Selection Flowchart

[Sleboda]

Is there a good one out there?

Imagine you are a brand new AoS gamer. You decide that Army X is for you, because it's clearly the one with the most whatever it is you like.

Is there a chart, for Matched Play, that walks that gamer through all (all!) of the sources he or she would need to check, in the proper order, to make sure they were building a legal army that was providing all possible options?

Before you answer with a baddaboom baddabing reply that glosses over all the things you may just inherently know because of years of experience, think like a programmer.

Assume nothing.

Step C follows Step B which follows Step A. You don't just wing it or assume your way to step C.

If such a flowchart does not exist, I suggest that it might be a great community project to put together a tight, flawless How To for this. 

Also, it should include a glossary and make no assumptions that players know the current in-community terminology. 

I bet this is much harder than it appears at first glance. I'd offer to start, but I genuinely an not sure I could get it right. I'm confused as hell building an Overlords list tonight.

[Skreech Verminking]

Only one answer I can give you:

380clanrats and 1Hero.

why you might ask? Well because there is nothing to worry about with this list.

with around 400meathsields, you’ll always have enough battleline to fulfill the match play restriction, and enough body’s to swarm the board.(joking)

as for the flowchart:

It really sounds interesting and might be an option to have in the community.

 

[Greyshadow]

I have thought about this as well! I guess all material would be available in the Core Book, General's Handbook, Battletomes,  Malign Sorcery, Compendiums and the Forge World downloads (whew!).

I did try and and make a list once of all the possible keywords you could choose to make an army and it was well over 30.

This is a bit of an issue when trying to rope in new players: "Okay, this looks cool - what armies can you play?" Me: "Ummm...". I suppose the alliance table in the General's Handbook might help as a list of all the matched play armies.

[amysrevenge]

I think if the goal is to "alone, without any help and without google, be able to build any possible legal army simply by following this one flowchart" I think it's a big reach.

You could probably do a more modest one that begins from "starting from a model that is not out of production and is currently available on the shelves" and it becomes much more reasonable. 

The main thing that is very difficult to determine (but not impossible) from the outside is knowing whether, for example, the Idoneth Deepkin book came before or after the GHB 2018.  Or knowing that the Stormcast Eternals battletome you picked up 3rd hand is actually 2 editions obsolete.

[Mutter]

I only started playing AoS 2.0 a couple of weeks ago, and it was such a pain finding all the information in all the various publications, and determine what works as allies and so on and so on - basically, what I'm saying is that such a resource would have been great back then!

So it's definitely something that new players could use ...

[Sleboda]

1 hour ago, Greyshadow said:

Core Book, General's Handbook, Battletomes,  Malign Sorcery, Compendiums and the Forge World downloads (whew!).

Don't forget the Errata and Designer's Commentary!

Plus any rules that exist only inside the boxes of models (store anniversary Nighthaunt).

And online Underworlds warband rules for AoS.

[Overread]

For a beginner? 

 

Battletome + Core Rules. 

 

That is really all they need to get started with a generic army. Now, of course AoS is a little more tricky and if we assume that they are not asking online then you can expand it to 

 

Battletome + Core Rules + Generals Handbook for the current year. 

 

That should give them the rules for their army, the points and the updated points for anything within their army as well as the core rules for the game to work with. As a beginner they shouldn't need much more. FAQ and Errata are additional documents, but they typically focus on wording and abilities rather than points. Furthermore as they are getting started it doesn't matter if there are minor imperfections since the overall theme and style of most armies (esp for someone new) is going to be functionally the same. It would be very abnormal for either an FAQ or Errata to change things so much that the core design of an army totally changed beyond recognition. 

 

Now AoS gets a little trickier because some armies have no battletome and their rules might be in a Generals Handbook or in a Grand Alliance book. Some might also be  basically useless as an army and are instead either going to be removed/combined/used as allies only. So that makes it harder to make a flowchart because currently not every army works the same. Now AoS doen't get away with this, you can easily see by looking at the local scene and at competitions, that armies which have no battletomes are rarer and many that play them are often playing them with old models that they've had before the change from Fantasy to AoS. 

Thankfully the internet, local store managers and club members often help introduce people into the game. If a person finds the game in reality chances are its in a game store where most good staff will know about the game enough to encourage people into it (heck its the managers job to know their product and how to advertise and market it to new gamers); clubs again ahve a vested interest introducing new people; and if they find it on the internet there are loads of forums, facebook pages and such to use to help them get started. 

 

 

Think of it like DnD - you don't start a beginner in that by throwing them 20 reference books. You break them in with perhaps just the core rules and one or two books. Once they get a handle on that the expanded content can be added a lot quicker in stages. (yes I'm aware modern day DnD isn't "quite as many" books as some older versions of it)

[Sleboda]

I get ya, but that's not the point of the exercise - that a beginner shouldn't need the extra stuff. Why should we tell any gamer what they should it shouldn't need?

The premise of the post is to find a tool for that gamer to know, with certainly, that they've had access to all available resources and built a legal list.

 

Also, in case it's not obvious, I need this help too, and I'm not a beginner by any stretch!

I just think it would be a useful reference for any AoS gamer, new and bright, or old and confused. 🙂

[amysrevenge]

Like I said, it would be hard for the same tool to provide useful output for a Legion of Azorgh army and a Idoneth Deepkin army.

 

Assuming you're willing to accept the handful of bugs and flaws in the app, the smartphone app with paid Azyr subscription would do basically all of it, wouldn't it?  If you want to be able to line-by-line verify the app then you're back where you started of course.  And you wouldn't get access to your allegiance abilities or battalions, but you don't need those to make a legal list, only to play it.

[Sleboda]

4 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

Like I said, it would be hard for the same tool to provide useful output for a Legion of Azorgh army and a Idoneth Deepkin army.

But it should be doable, right? It would not need to be faction specific. 

Start here (pick GA maybe?).

Select next thingie. Consult FAQ. If your thingie had option X, modify selection to match. And so on.

If there truly is no programmatic way to select any and all armies, then that's a problem. You have to learn different ways to make armies, not just different armies themselves? Yuck.

As to using Azyr and dismissing the allegiance or battalion stuff and still being legal, that misses the objective here again. 

It's not just that the army is legal, it's also knowing that you've availed yourself of all possible options.

Nothing stinks quite like talking a knife to a gun fight only to be told "Oh, well you also could have had a gun too if you had checked the FAQ, read Malign Sorcery, and brought in the right allies that have rules only in a corner of one website."

[amysrevenge]

It would be doable.  The "AoS army" section would be pretty small and simple.  The "legacy/GHB/GA/FW" section would represent 90% of the flowchart, for like 10% of the likely choices.

There's a difference between "make me a flowchart of everything you need to make a legal army" and "make me a flowchart of everything you need to make a legal and reasonably good army".  But even there just the app might be enough to work (again assuming you are willing to trust it and not insist on a line-by-line check for errors) - just the free app plus Azyr subscription can get you to the legal list, and then you can buy in-app whatever you click on that says you have to buy it to read it.

[amysrevenge]

The best flowchart (would be more of a database I suppose) would, I think, start from a single currently available box.  Input that box, and then get what you need as references to build an army around that box.  Would work for a hero, a unit, a battleforce, a start collecting - anything you could go into a GW store today and buy.

[Choombatta]

I know it is not what you are asking for, but I really think this is what the core box sets(for instance Blightwars) are for. To get new players started with just the basic rules, and then to expand from there.

It is way to much memory input, to want to start and play your first game with every option and rule available from the getgo. Mistakes will be made, and wrong habits could be developed.

As for the flowchart idea itself, this is in essence what the warscroll builder can do. You just need the relevant book reference to understand what those charts are telling you.

So, possibly just start with a breakdown on what warscroll builder does, just by each choice and explain that choice in detail.

[Overread]

It varies army to army, but if you just want a break down:

• Battletome (if it has one) otherwise Generals Handbook 2018 otherwise Grand Alliance Book [for core army rules]
• Core Rules
• Malign Sorcery Book*
• If not already in use then the Generals Handbook 2018
• Errata and QA document for each book listed above

And that's it. What makes it complicated is that not every army is the same for the first bulletpoint; some are in their own battletome; some are in the handbook and some are still in the early Grand Alliance Books (which are somewhat getting more and more out of date as they were very early in AoS life). 

The other part is the Errata/QA documents, which sound like a lot, but really for every book in print there's two documents, community questions and Errata/ 

 

*also comes with the warscrolls for the endless spells and the endless spells themselves, at least for all generic ones. 

[Sleboda]

Thanks for the thoughts so far. Even the ones that don't match the objective are useful for spurring ideas.

I think I need to clarify/focus a bit.

Yes, it's sort of easy to compile a simple list of resources that influence your building of an army list. I think we've done that here, but just to be sure, I'll list them here:

• Core Rules
• Grand Alliance books
• Battletomes
• Compendium
• Current GHB (any need for previous ones?)
• Errata
• Designer's Commentaries
• Malign Sorcery book
• Firestorm supplement *
• Rules on assembly instructions inside certain model kits
• Online site (where?) that has the rules for the Underworlds warbands to be used in AoS
• Others? (Where is the updated Thunderers warscroll printed?)

I think that is the straightforward, lengthy, and complete list of all places where you could find current, legal rules that are or can be used in the building of an army list.

That's one part of the quest, such as this seems it may be.

The other part is really a two-part thing in my mind, but the distinction is less important that the overall goal. Or that was my thinking, anyway.  What folks have said about helpful teachers, new people learning on a curve, and so on is true, but I'm trying to avoid applying a (likely personalized) motivation for there being a flow chart. That can be distracting, as it has been with the focus of some posts (again, thankful for them!) looking past the goal and addressing a particular person's perceived need (as in the case of new gamers).

If the tool is done without a focus on a motivation or a specific player type, and instead is done with the goal in mind, I think it becomes pretty clear that building an army list that is both legal and nigh-perfectly informed is not a simple task as all, and even for those who do find it to be simple, such a tool could help catch the occasional slip up or missed opportunity.

Look, I have my own reasons for wanting this tool.  Not gonna lie. I, personally, feel so confused when making a list.  I feel like I've missed out on something or, worse, inadvertently cheated. I just want to get it right, not miss anything, and know I've put together a list that was well-considered and legal.

Frankly, as helpful as people in stores and so on can be, I don't trust them to get it right. Even store managers.  Heck, back in the day, we (when I worked for GW) used to train store managers in the Three Fs and the Rule of 4. Games were to be Fast, Fun, and Furious, and everything hit and wounded on 4+. We were intentionally teaching the wrong rules to get new kids into the game, figuring they would get it right down the line.  I don't want to derail this effort, but that example teaches me that I can't really rely on supposed SMEs to teach me the right stuff.  I want and need a source I can reference to walk me through all the options.

A glossary is also very important.  We have Command Traits, Battle Traits, Command Abilities, Abilities, Allegiance Abilities, etc. We have Allegiance that matters when selecting your army, but then means something else when playing your army.  Same term, different applications. Wading through all of that is confusing! And I'm (braggin' a bit I suppose - sorry) really well educated on words 'n stuff. Sure, I can figure it out, but 4 months to 6 months later when I play my next game, I have zero confidence that I will remember everything correctly, so I need to go back and take a refresher course. Honestly, it puts me off playing, so I paint and maybe play Underworlds or Arcadia Quest instead.

It just shouldn't be this complicated to make a legal, well-informed list.

 

* Edit: Added this one as we were looking at the Adepticon Team Tournament rules and it pointed out that this will be in use, reminding us of its existence. 

[Greyshadow]

I think breaking this task up is the way to go. The flow chart could be quite overwhelming. The best way, in my humble opinion, to select a new army is what looks cool to you. Presenting a list of armies to choose from would be a better I think. The group the armies into those with similar needs. You can then leave a general comment about allies, errata, designers notes and the free rules set. Technically some battle tomes can build multiple armies, I'd simplify this to naming the army after the Battletome. Something like:

Current season Battletome armies: Beasts of Chaos

Need: Battletome

Older Battletome armies: Legions of Nagash, Indoneth Deepkin, (etc)

Need: Battletome + General's Handbook

 

[Sleboda]

48 minutes ago, Greyshadow said:

The best way, in my humble opinion, to select a new army is what looks cool to you.

That really might be the best Step 1.

Pick a few kits that look cool to you.

Once you have a box, a blister, or both ... then what?

Start there and then let the flowchart guide you in a journey of exploration.