Warcry is Killteam/Mordheim... ?

[Yirazk]

I liked this review a lot.

For me negative reviews are always much more useful. If they confirm my worst fears, I can dodge that bullet. 

If I did not care about the “flaws”, then they are good news.  

In this case, they were expecting a game of named characters. Lot of character development and rich campaigns. Also with character equipment, customizable models and so on 

I wanted a fast paced game. With quick and gore Combat. I don’t have time for campaigns, but yes for some evening with 2 hours perfect for a couple of games. Having band customization is better for me that having a list of 3 items with one clearly superior.

In summary, they wanted an old fashion GW game. I only want something new. I could play Mordheim if I wanted

[Bjornas]

1 hour ago, Yirazk said:

 Having band customization is better for me that having a list of 3 items with one clearly superior.

This is a pretty good point. Even in AoS there's one particular unit loadout that you are gonna see 80% of the time. Most of the time, having weapon options is mostly about the idea of having a choice, if you know what I mean. 

My problem with this is the modelling aspect. While the models are gorgeous, it's not very fun seeing identical warbands all the time.

The review does have some interesting points about the campaign also. It doesn't sound super interesting. However I can see this game being very good for a one-day group campaign with 4-5 games.

Btw, regarding Mordheim, a group of scandinavian gamers recently set up some kind of Mordheim-weekend, with awesome models and terrain. I think John Blanche was involved too. Check out #mordheim2019 on instagram for pictures.

Edited July 21, 2019 by Bjornas

[soak314]

25 minutes ago, Yirazk said:

I liked this review a lot.

For me negative reviews are always much more useful. If they confirm my worst fears, I can dodge that bullet. 

If I did not care about the “flaws”, then they are good news.  

In this case, they were expecting a game of named characters. Lot of character development and rich campaigns. Also with character equipment, customizable models and so on 

I wanted a fast paced game. With quick and gore Combat. I don’t have time for campaigns, but yes for some evening with 2 hours perfect for a couple of games. Having band customization is better for me that having a list of 3 items with one clearly superior.

In summary, they wanted an old fashion GW game. I only want something new. I could play Mordheim if I wanted

Now I've never played Mordheim, but I have played a lot of modern Necromunda, and Gorkamorka. IMO those systems lean heavily on two things: progression, and  complexity. Basically they have *loads* of moving parts. These things give the player a metric **** tonne of agency, they're practically RPG's in a sense, ones so crunchy the crunch turns into a sort of weird, passive roleplaying!

But I didn't like Necromunda much, if at all (Gorkamorka's infinitely dumber, more of a spectacle you sort of direct, and then watch, utterly bewildered, therefore I like it more). I immediately recognized that the progression and mechanical fiddlyness was carrying them as systems, elevating an otherwise un-narrated narrative with little story beats filled in by the player.

"This guy knocked out a huge mutant ganger with this same gun he used to shoot down a chaos spawn with, it must be blessed/cursed"
"This big Goliath passed 3 agility checks in a row, he's got cat like reflexes!"
"Oh no, he couldn't pass the int check to open this box, he must be having a stroke!"

Etc, etc. You get the point!

But man, my personal biggest gripe with munda was that behind the bells and whistles, after the layers and layers of rolling, it just translated into a whole lot of making a gunline and shooting at each other. This really stood out to me because this is also the shy black haired fella in the GMG review's main criticism of Warcry.

Oh but I do largely agree about the campaign failings. When I eventually run one for my store I'm going to rehaul how it works, because there's a solid, snappy core there that is tremendously easy to build up on. Seriously, first thing that came into mind when I saw GW's structure for these campaigns was making my own. It's as if they were saying "look, here's a bunch of premades for you to work off, if you're so good at making good gaems go to bloody town".

 

[Acid_Nine]

@soak314 honestly, that does sound like a lot of what mordeheim was when I played it too, and the underlying narrative wasn't even that good for the group I was in. I would love to hear what you come up with on a campaign though!

[soak314]

42 minutes ago, Acid_Nine said:

@soak314 honestly, that does sound like a lot of what mordeheim was when I played it too, and the underlying narrative wasn't even that good for the group I was in. I would love to hear what you come up with on a campaign though!

IMO the trickiest thing with campaigns is the progression.

Progression gives campaigns their tremendous mystique, it's the siren's call that can pull even the stodgiest of tourney players into the wondrous realms of narrative play.

But it's also a campaign system's biggest failing. Progression will always result in someone snowballing, and the losing players carrying on losing. It's why you'll start a campaign with 23 people and end it with 8: statistically most of the participants are just gonna get shafted, left to lose interest and eventually wander off to other games.

The basic Warcry campaign hasn't dealt with how progression can hurt a campaign, but also hasn't given the players a progression toybox as seen in necromunda or mordheim.

I've got a few ideas for how to try and curb this, but nothing solid yet.

[fredster4050]

5 hours ago, soak314 said:

The basic Warcry campaign hasn't dealt with how progression can hurt a campaign, but also hasn't given the players a progression toybox as seen in necromunda or mordheim

That's not how Sam Pearson described it; the Convergence element is designed to prevent the rise of the Uber- Warband and bring balance back to the campaign. Warbands migrating to new areas have to start over reducing their supremacy and enabling less effective warbands to challenge them.

[Nin Win]

I've played hundreds and hundreds of bloodbowl games over the years (2 games a week for a decade) and I think I've experienced everything a campaign system where your guys earn experience points to learn new skills, get new stats, get injured and diminished, miss matches or even be killed has to offer.

I am so happy they are not going with something like that for Warcry.  I really like the faction specific campaign tracks.  And how it's all simpler and less involved.  And has a defined end point.

[tom_gore]

Aren't those the same guys who bashed AoS when it launched as too simple and not having longevity, too?

[tom_gore]

5 hours ago, soak314 said:

IMO the trickiest thing with campaigns is the progression.

Progression gives campaigns their tremendous mystique, it's the siren's call that can pull even the stodgiest of tourney players into the wondrous realms of narrative play.

But it's also a campaign system's biggest failing. Progression will always result in someone snowballing, and the losing players carrying on losing. It's why you'll start a campaign with 23 people and end it with 8: statistically most of the participants are just gonna get shafted, left to lose interest and eventually wander off to other games.

The basic Warcry campaign hasn't dealt with how progression can hurt a campaign, but also hasn't given the players a progression toybox as seen in necromunda or mordheim.

I've got a few ideas for how to try and curb this, but nothing solid yet.

This is exactly what I'm thinking too. GW clearly is trying to keep campaign games interesting for all players until the end. Mordheim and Necromunda are wonderful games, but I dare anyone to find a campaign where all players were still able to compete (or even playing at all) in the last games.

[soak314]

48 minutes ago, fredster4050 said:

That's not how Sam Pearson described it; the Convergence element is designed to prevent the rise of the Uber- Warband and bring balance back to the campaign. Warbands migrating to new areas have to start over reducing their supremacy and enabling less effective warbands to challenge them.

I don't quite get how it would though? The convergences, from what I've read, are just roadblocks on the narrative that require a win for you to advance it further. If anything it'd push the player gunning for a convergence to be a bit more tryhard for that game, possibly picking on a warband with less glory to get the win.

It does award the opponent for that convergence battle an extra lesser artefact though, but in the grand scheme of things I don't think that'll mean too much.

The primary issue I have with the campaign's progression as it stands is twofold:

First is the ability to grab territories, getting a higher point cap and the ability to field more bodies. Looking at the pic i snapped of the Gloomspite Gitz campaign rules, it maxes out at 300 additional points. This isn't limited anywhere by my convergence states, I could theoretically languish in the first convergence forever while farming up glory. If the gitz are anywhere near as cheap as the UB Plains Runners (and I bet they'll be even cheaper), that's 2-4 more bodies on the ground for one player. And as the GMG boys pointed out in their review, the game is one of action economy, where the player with more activations will have a direct advantage.

Second is the lack of stakes. Death and injury in campaigns has always been fascinating a concept to me. Older systems tend to revel in it, newer ones tend to be much more shy about giving the players penalties. In warcry's case, all you effectively do is take away a fighter's destiny dot and artefacts. Your leader can't even die! Now I do understand where this is coming from, as character death can be mondo demoralizing and is often enough to make a person quit when it happens in a particularly bad fashion. But proper permadeath managed to make a game like No Man's Sky a riveting experience for me, and I think it'd work amazing for Warcry's grimdark chaos setting.

[Nin Win]

I think the GMG reviewer was just wrong.  That action economy won't be the thing that really wins out.  The main reason is that the chaff truly have low wounds and bad damage out put and if you take a look at the average damage they can take and inflict per point, they're not efficient.  Given GW's game designs over the last couple years, if I had to guess the real powerful thing will be synergy packages.  Where you make an already great thing or two amazing with the right support.  Sure you'll have a small group of basic grunts to hold objectives and do other things like that, but I think people are going to be very disappointed if they try to win by maximizing actions by taking the worst fighters.  You will want to keep the tactic of tying up great things with terrible grunts in mind, but it's not going to be some universal path to victory because of how fancy the words "action economy" sound when a reviewer says them.

Also, what happened when they actually tried to come up with some game breaking spam list?  It had only 12 models and they could not make the few good fighters they wanted fit with all the chaff.  The points just kept going over.  The guy had this idea he thought would break the game and they just couldn't even come up with a list that actually did  the basics of the idea.  12 models is not some great numbers advantage like you get in kill team when it's an ork swarm vs 2 custodes or whatever. The GMG review is based off of only three games played.   I also don't think they ever used any of the abilities to let a model attack multiple targets, so they made all these statements about the action economy without any first hand experience of just how vulnerable the grunt fighters really can be.

Citing the review as some sort of authority is probably a bad idea. 

Edited July 22, 2019 by Nin Win

[Nin Win]

1 hour ago, tom_gore said:

This is exactly what I'm thinking too. GW clearly is trying to keep campaign games interesting for all players until the end. Mordheim and Necromunda are wonderful games, but I dare anyone to find a campaign where all players were still able to compete (or even playing at all) in the last games.

My theory is that people have so much nostalgia for the 90s style campaign systems because they are only really remembering the times it went well.  They're probably not remembering the massive number of fizzled campaigns and dropped players.  Aborted Bloodbowl leagues abound and broken late campaign lists that made games a foregon conclusion were always a staple of Necromunda.

Whether it's the campaign in GHB19 that's only a few games long or the six games in the AoS:Skirmish supplement campaign or now this Warcry one, one major difference between GW's 90s campaign systems and now is that the more recent ones can actually be reliably played to completion and are fun throughout for everyone.

Edited July 22, 2019 by Nin Win

[soak314]

54 minutes ago, Nin Win said:

Citing the review as some sort of authority is probably a bad idea. 

I'm not! Their review was very rushed and not all that well thought out, as you've made clear. Just everyone's engaging with the current topic with their review context in mind, and the action economy fact is one of the things they actually got right!

And I don't think it'll matter that the chaff units are bad. Consider this: if I tie you up in melee in warcry, you have to take one of two actions.

a.) retreat, only up to 3 inches in most cases
b.) attack me

That means if I have six dudes, and you have four dudes, and i send in four of my dudes to do nothing but waste your four dudes turns by engaging them in melee, I'm already at a mathematical advantage because I have two dudes left to sit on points/murder you.

Taking your custodes vs orks scenario: I'm an Ork player in KT. KT, especially arena, is also an action economy game. How does an ork...  hell let's step it up even further, how does an all GROT team beat a custodes one? You rush your grots into melee, one at a time, wasting the custodes' severely limited turns via the limitations of melee engagement (waste a turn whacking things or running away). This is the exact situation that Warcry is in at the moment!

KT curbs the horde advantage with the morale phase, but warcry doesn't have that at all! This is why the black haired boy from GMG was so worried about the action economy, because he'd seen how it could be gamed in a more complex system, and recognized the immediate flaws of a similar system with no shooting and no morale phase to curb a numbers advantage!

And once more, let me be perfectly clear, I am not citing GMG as a source, or as an authority, merely as an example of an opinion that in this instance, I happen to agree with.

[CJPT]

I came away with a good impression from the demo game I played in store this weekend. Figured it might be helpful to lay out some thoughts.

The core game has a lot of Jervis Johnson to it. It's very much about movement and dice maths, with most of the complexity/skill coming from being able to recognise and capitalise on opportunities within a limited number of activations. Other than that, it's relatively rules-light compared to Necromunda or even Kill Team.

It actually reminds me of Blood Bowl more than Mordheim in some ways. Warbands have particular tricks and strengths, but they all fit on a single card and they're fairly easy for both you and your opponent to wrap your head around. Very few 'actually,  I've got this special rule'-type surprises. The really important thing is understanding how to create an opening, exploit it, and defend your advantage - that might feel a little abstract, but fighting to claim and hold an objective in three turns of Warcry felt a lot like breaking open a defense and making a run to the endzone in BB.

The initiative dice system and the wild dice are the standout bits of design, for me. They introduce lots of mindgames and make rolling for initiative a really interactive moment where neither player really 'wins', just tries to build an advantage across a few different axes. You can cede the initiative but stock up on doubles/triples/quads for big ability combos. You can do the opposite and play for the first activation. Neither is abstractly better - it's all situational and a judgement call, which is great. Way better than 'going first is always best'.

A few other subtle rules are really important too - the 'disengage' action, for example, limits you to a 3" move ending more than 1" from any enemy models. This is a really big deal because it introduces the idea that all characters are equal when disengaging. It doesn't matter quite so much how speedy your Untamed Beasts are after I've tagged you with an Iron Legionnaire - I'm going to slow you down, at least for your first action in that activation. This encourages you to create traps and chokepoints, rather than just stand on the objective and wait for opponents to come piling in - again, similar to Blood Bowl.

The 'wait' action is also cool. You effectively give up an action, but being able to shunt a fighter to the end of the activation queue while leaving your other options open denies your opponent information and can lead to some tense moments.

One thing I'd add is that the various scenario generation cards and extra features seem absolutely essential. I suspect a lot of players will be tempted to ignore the terrain layout suggestions, weird deployment positions/timings, and Chaos Beasts - don't. The game seems to be at its best when there's a bunch of factors in play that neither player has total control over. My game involved deployment from every board edge, hidden objectives, including characters coming in later in the game, and a massive Raptoryx with 30 health rampaging around in the backfield. Extra mechanics like this are how you avoid the 'run into the middle and fight' issue. I suspect that some players will bore themselves by deciding to avoid what feel like 'optional' rules, but are actually essential.

I can't feed back on the campaign side, obviously, save to say that I kinda appreciate that they're not going too deep on gear or character progression. I definitely miss some of the sense of customisation that you get from Necromunda or Mordheim, but I suspect that Warcry has a stronger cure rules that work because listbuilding is less of a factor in who wins. Likewise, this is probably how you get a lot of people interested in playing skirmish games - it's way more accessible, the penalties for losing or falling behind are less severe, and you're not constantly having to add to or replace models as loadouts shift.

Sorry for the essay! Overall, a very positive first impression.

Edited July 22, 2019 by CJPT

[robinlvalentine]

Yeah exactly - no one's holding the GMG review up as gospel truth, and lots of their minus points are straight up dumb, but it does raise some points that seem valid and it's two very experienced wargamers offering their honest opinions on how the thing actually plays, which is valuable even if we end up disagreeing.

I also don't see how Warcry actually curbs the snowballing campaign problem? There are less different ways your warband can get stronger, but ultimately one player can still end up with up to 300 more points than their opponent - that's still a foregone conclusion of a match, especially in a game where simply having bodies on the table seems so important.

Simple and streamlined can be great - I love Warhammer Underworlds, for example, which is a far less complex game than AOS and has similarly pared down statlines. But done badly it can be boring, repetitive, and lacking in character. My worry is that, out of the box, Warcry may be the latter - which, given how long we've all been waiting for an AOS skirmish game, would be very disappointing. 

[CJPT]

24 minutes ago, soak314 said:

I'm not! Their review was very rushed and not all that well thought out, as you've made clear. Just everyone's engaging with the current topic with their review context in mind, and the action economy fact is one of the things they actually got right!

And I don't think it'll matter that the chaff units are bad. Consider this: if I tie you up in melee in warcry, you have to take one of two actions.

a.) retreat, only up to 3 inches in most cases
b.) attack me

That means if I have six dudes, and you have four dudes, and i send in four of my dudes to do nothing but waste your four dudes turns by engaging them in melee, I'm already at a mathematical advantage because I have two dudes left to sit on points/murder you.

I think this is mostly right, but there are a few things that aren't being factored in here:

• Characters act twice, and can perform actions in any order (i.e, everyone can effectively retreat and move/charge.)
• The initiative roll activates special abilities and lots of them are useful for opening up situations like this.

Some situational examples:

• You tie up my Golems with chaff. One of them is the chain whip person. I've been saving up my wild dice in case you tried to do this, give myself a quad 6, and do flat 6 damage to every enemy around the chain whip, wiping out the screen and getting ahead. You might see this coming, however, and try to force me to use my dice in other ways, refuse to engage the whip, etc. 
• You tie up my Untamed Beasts heavy-hitters with chaff. I disengage with the big cat and then use its leap ability to circumvent the blockers. Then the beastmaster character then gives it a bonus action, letting it do whatever it wants. The counterplay here would be to kill the beastmaster, but that means you're splitting your focus, etc, etc.

 

 

[soak314]

3 minutes ago, CJPT said:

I think this is mostly right, but there are a few things that aren't being factored in here:

• Characters act twice, and can perform actions in any order (i.e, everyone can effectively retreat and move/charge.)
• The initiative roll activates special abilities and lots of them are useful for opening up situations like this.

Some situational examples:

• You tie up my Golems with chaff. One of them is the chain whip person. I've been saving up my wild dice in case you tried to do this, give myself a quad 6, and do flat 6 damage to every enemy around the chain whip, wiping out the screen and getting ahead. You might see this coming, however, and try to force me to use my dice in other ways, refuse to engage the whip, etc. 
• You tie up my Untamed Beasts heavy-hitters with chaff. I disengage with the big cat and then use its leap ability to circumvent the blockers. Then the beastmaster character then gives it a bonus action, letting it do whatever it wants. The counterplay here would be to kill the beastmaster, but that means you're splitting your focus, etc, etc.

Great examples! And so far a really good demo of how the game is both deeper than it seems and, as you've said, spookily similar to bloodbowl.

The larger context of the numbers advantage being a big deal was in a campaign, since the game has still decided to let more successful players take on a bigger core warband, getting them bodies past the point limit. I'm of the opinion that this is a poor decision that can overall hurt a campaign experience,
 

14 minutes ago, robinlvalentine said:

Simple and streamlined can be great - I love Warhammer Underworlds, for example, which is a far less complex game than AOS and has similarly pared down statlines. But done badly it can be boring, repetitive, and lacking in character. My worry is that, out of the box, Warcry may be the latter - which, given how long we've all been waiting for an AOS skirmish game, would be very disappointing. 

Hoo hoo, man I would argue that Underworlds is roughly 4.2x the *tactical* complexity of a typical AoS game. For one, Underworlds can give me some severe decision paralysis (always a sign of great game design IMO), where in AoS I'm usually just going through the motions of sending my mangler squig murderball at [INSERT META UNIT HERE], making sure the other squigs are in his buff range, and hoping I get a double turn.

I do share the same qualms with Warcry, though. At a glance it seems almost too simple. But like most games I'm saving proper, proper judgement for after I've done two dozen games of it.

[CJPT]

10 minutes ago, robinlvalentine said:

I also don't see how Warcry actually curbs the snowballing campaign problem? There are less different ways your warband can get stronger, but ultimately one player can still end up with up to 300 more points than their opponent - that's still a foregone conclusion of a match, especially in a game where simply having bodies on the table seems so important.

What you're describing is precisely a 'curbing' of the campaign snowball problem, not an outright solution to it. A 30% points advantage (ish) is a vastly more even proposition than the power differentials that can arise in Kill Team, Necromunda, or even Blood Bowl. It's probably going to be tough to win if you're behind, but:

• If you're describing a situation where one player has 1300 points and the other has 1000, then we're probably talking about a campaign veteran vs. a campaign newcomer, which is only one situation out of many possible ones.
• The twists and other special rules throw up a lot of weird situations. If you have loads of extra models to activate, you might end up giving me the opportunity to activate loads more neutral chaos beasts. This won't come up in every match, but it'll come up eventually. Underworlds doesn't have wildcard factors like this.

Is it still uneven? Yes. But the potential for uneven matches is part of the appeal of a campaign format, rather than a tournament format. People like playing as the underdog sometimes, which is why Blood Bowl has halflings in it. Perfect balance is a quality that a game designer has the option to shoot for, but doesn't *have* to - it's not an absolute good. In fact, having a bit of measured imbalance is precisely how you avoid games becoming boring/repetitive.

[CJPT]

2 minutes ago, soak314 said:

Hoo hoo, man I would argue that Underworlds is roughly 4.2x the *tactical* complexity of a typical AoS game. For one, Underworlds can give me some severe decision paralysis (always a sign of great game design IMO), where in AoS I'm usually just going through the motions of sending my mangler squig murderball at [INSERT META UNIT HERE], making sure the other squigs are in his buff range, and hoping I get a double turn.

I agree with this assessment of Underworlds! Also, I would add that I had total tactical decision paralysis in my first game of Warcry in a way that happens a bunch in Underlords and doesn't happen as often in AoS.

[robinlvalentine]

6 minutes ago, soak314 said:

Hoo hoo, man I would argue that Underworlds is roughly 4.2x the *tactical* complexity of a typical AoS game. For one, Underworlds can give me some severe decision paralysis (always a sign of great game design IMO), where in AoS I'm usually just going through the motions of sending my mangler squig murderball at [INSERT META UNIT HERE], making sure the other squigs are in his buff range, and hoping I get a double turn.

I do share the same qualms with Warcry, though. At a glance it seems almost too simple. But like most games I'm saving proper, proper judgement for after I've done two dozen games of it.

Oh for sure - that's what's so great about Underworlds, the actual rules are very simple to learn and quick to play, but every game's full of really deep tactical complexities, and even better, every move you make feels really important and significant. For me that's the ideal - simple but tactical, easy to learn, hard to master.

@CJPT Great to get a different hands-on perspective, thanks for posting your thoughts! Definitely need to try a demo game for myself, really on the fence at the moment. 

[Paniere]

I'm in the wargaming world for so long but my local friends are more into boardgames and rpgs. I know they'd fancy try this new (for them) world out, but they are held back by the entry costs. I find this game perfect for whoever wants to drag more people in wargaming. This is the main reason I will buy it and it's not a point that the 2 guys at GMG even considered because they are after the perfect skirmish game, comparing this one with more complex and refined engines but surely less friendly to newbies

[soak314]

1 minute ago, Paniere said:

I'm in the wargaming world for so long but my local friends are more into boardgames and rpgs. I know they'd fancy try this new (for them) world out, but they are held back by the entry costs. I find this game perfect for whoever wants to drag more people in wargaming. This is the main reason I will buy it and it's not a point that the 2 guys at GMG even considered because they are after the perfect skirmish game, comparing this one with more complex and refined engines but surely less friendly to newbies 

If cost is truly an issue, even after splitting the monetary and hobby loads between yourselves, consider the non-chaos factions coming out in two weeks time. You can lend them models if you happen to own any of the supported armies, and some of the other factions have some very cost efficient kits for building a warband with (Bonesplitterz and their savage orruk box is bar none the best for this).

Once models are sorted, it's just a matter of terrain and the rules, faction, and battleplan cards. You can buy all of those just once, since it's something easily shared.

Gauge your options and suss out which will be the optimum choice for your group!

[robinlvalentine]

5 minutes ago, Paniere said:

I'm in the wargaming world for so long but my local friends are more into boardgames and rpgs. I know they'd fancy try this new (for them) world out, but they are held back by the entry costs. I find this game perfect for whoever wants to drag more people in wargaming. This is the main reason I will buy it and it's not a point that the 2 guys at GMG even considered because they are after the perfect skirmish game, comparing this one with more complex and refined engines but surely less friendly to newbies

 I don't think it's completely unreasonable for people to have high or specific expectations for this game.

GW has specifically said this is AOS' answer to Kill Team i.e. the definitive skirmish game for AOS.

Members of the design team have also talked excitedly about how great it is for narrative campaigns.

It hasn't been sold as a simple board game, one-off bit of fun, or just an entry point for newcomers - it's been hyped as a full skirmish experience for everyone who's into AOS, something players have wanted for a long time. 

Again I don't think the GMG review is especially good or comprehensive, and there's certainly some harping on things that the game was never trying to be. But at the same time I don't think it's fair to write off people's expectations, or their nostalgia for past skirmish games. This was never going to be Mordheim (or rather the magical, perfect version of Mordheim that people hold in their heads), but GW have very much been playing on the idea that it'd scratch a similar itch. 

[Stealth_Hobo]

1 hour ago, robinlvalentine said:

 I don't think it's completely unreasonable for people to have high or specific expectations for this game.

GW has specifically said this is AOS' answer to Kill Team i.e. the definitive skirmish game for AOS.

Members of the design team have also talked excitedly about how great it is for narrative campaigns.

It hasn't been sold as a simple board game, one-off bit of fun, or just an entry point for newcomers - it's been hyped as a full skirmish experience for everyone who's into AOS, something players have wanted for a long time. 

Again I don't think the GMG review is especially good or comprehensive, and there's certainly some harping on things that the game was never trying to be. But at the same time I don't think it's fair to write off people's expectations, or their nostalgia for past skirmish games. This was never going to be Mordheim (or rather the magical, perfect version of Mordheim that people hold in their heads), but GW have very much been playing on the idea that it'd scratch a similar itch. 

So, basically what you are saying is that GW's marketing has an effect on some people.

[Jefferson Skarsnik]

Is shooting actually a thing in this game?

Obviously there's no dedicated shooting phase but will the missile-armed Stormcast and Idoneth models just have weapon options with higher range that they use in the combat phase?

I wonder how effectively it will fit in if so, obviously it's a melee combat focused game but I'd like there to be a role for sneaky snipers given all the cool terrain options available

I also kind of want to explore a proxied Deepkin warband using Wildwood Rangers, Glade Guard and hawk riders (if I can find any) instead of Namarti and eels. Have em be really grizzled, battle-scarred elf guerillas like the Scoia'tel in the Witcher