An Age Of Sigmar masterclass with Paul Whitehead.

[Ben]

Who says there are no tactics in Age Of Sigmar. 

I just watched this at Alliance in table 2. Playing for the event win. 

Darran take turn 1 and tries to do damage to some monsters with stormfiends shooting. 

In his haste to knock wounds off the Thundertusk he loses the unit. 

On Pauls turn 1 he charges the clan rat line with 3 frost lords. 

 

Rats die, pile in and die some more. 

Paul measures for his pile in and Darran declares him out of 3". 

Paul shows Darran that you get to pile in if you are within 3" OR have charged. 

The frost Lord and Stonehorn both have 2" reach. 

Dead Lord of change that Darran assumed safe. 

Paul gets a double turn. I guess this is over in the next 30 mins. 

excellent play by Paul. 

Its easy to see a monster mash and assume it's being brainlessly pushed forwards. 

No tactics in this game....

[pforson]

There are tactics in AoS, don't get me wrong, but I fail to see how "knowing the rules better than the opponent" can be classed as good tactical play.

Or did I miss something?

[James McPherson]

Well if the Ogre player had attacked first with one of the 2 Stonehorns closest to the LOC first, then by the time the Skaven unit was dead, he wouldn't of been within attack range with the last dude closest to camera , so he chose the right models to attack. It was good tactical foresight to envisage that a gap would open and which Stonehorn to leave leftover with an attack still to make.

But its also poor play by the guy who left his LOC so close to them in the squishy shield wall in the first place.

Hope I get to fight against a Beastclaw Raiders army some time with my Pestilens, looks like fun, except the bit where you get charged by 3x Frostlords on turn 1!

[Nico]

This point comes up a lot with Vanhel's Danse Macabre or Varanguard - it's very useful to be able to smash a chaff line - pile in again and then catch another unit in range.

[Nico]

Then again Tzeentch have been hard nerfed and Ogre filth undercosted and massively buffed with new allegiance traits - either Destruction movement trait or Beastclaw one.

[pforson]

3 hours ago, James McPherson said:

Well if the Ogre player had attacked first with one of the 2 Stonehorns closest to the LOC first, then by the time the Skaven unit was dead, he wouldn't of been within attack range with the last dude closest to camera , so he chose the right models to attack.

That seems valid. If that's what was meant, then sure.

[someone2040]

4 hours ago, James McPherson said:

Well if the Ogre player had attacked first with one of the 2 Stonehorns closest to the LOC first, then by the time the Skaven unit was dead, he wouldn't of been within attack range with the last dude closest to camera , so he chose the right models to attack. It was good tactical foresight to envisage that a gap would open and which Stonehorn to leave leftover with an attack still to make.

But its also poor play by the guy who left his LOC so close to them in the squishy shield wall in the first place.

Hope I get to fight against a Beastclaw Raiders army some time with my Pestilens, looks like fun, except the bit where you get charged by 3x Frostlords on turn 1!

While this is true, it's not exactly very clearly pointed out in the OP.

As Pforsen said, an initial read of the OP would give you the impression that one player essentially catches another guy off guard with a slight nuance in the rules that doesn't come up very frequently (In fact, I'm sure a lot of players would never have even thought of this happening). It doesn't give the impression that the player used well thought out tactics to get the attacks on the Lord of Change.

 

If instead, it was clearly illustrated in the OP that the player very carefully selected which Stonehorns to attack with first (the ones not closest to the Lord of Change), and then finally got to pile in with his last Stonehorn into the Lord of Change (With a side note, that you can still pile-in even if you are outside 3" as long as you charged), it would illustrate the point a lot better.

[James McPherson]

Yeah I think thats whats going on, otherwise it wouldn't have made sense.

Ben was in the middle of organising an event with like 50 people all on his tod. So I would forgive him a slightly rushed post.

It looks like he has done an incredible job, thanks for sharing all these updates!

I have Facebook friends of friends and contacts coming up on my feed in NZ talking about how awesome all the armies look, how cool is that!? Got to love the social media! 

I want to know what those prizes were for and who won them!? Pretty sweet winning a set of Stormfiends!

 

 

Is it fair to say Pile in moves are to AOS what charge re-directors were to 8th Ed? Feels like the positioning and mechanics are so important to get right, you can have all the hitting power in the world but if you don't pile in right you can't get into combat and meet your full potential.

 

[PJetski]

That's really cool, I never knew that you could still pile in if you charged even if an enemy was out of range.

I'll be sure to keep this in mind going forward

[StoneMonk]

So shifts the paradigm that removing wounds to pull another unit out of combat, only works if they didn't charge this turn. 

[Nico]

Quote

So shifts the paradigm that removing wounds to pull another unit out of combat, only works if they didn't charge this turn. 

Up to a point, often selective casualty removal can keep some models out of range (backranks) even with the pile in. It does add value to the 2 inch and 3 inch range weapons.

[mmimzie]

1 hour ago, Nico said:

Up to a point, often selective casualty removal can keep some models out of range (backranks) even with the pile in. It does add value to the 2 inch and 3 inch range weapons.

You can also use your casualty removal to manipulate "closest model" for pile in purposes. 

[Ben]

On 7 August 2016 at 7:10 PM, pforson said:

There are tactics in AoS, don't get me wrong, but I fail to see how "knowing the rules better than the opponent" can be classed as good tactical play.

Or did I miss something?

Knowing the rules better than your opponent is the whole point!  

You make your game plan and choose how to use your units, but if an opponent makes a mistake (in Darran's case, missing that the frost lord could pile in and attack if the clan rats were cleared) then you need to be able to capitalise on that.  

This was great play using a solid tactic (remove a screening unit then pile in behind with long reach).  Pauls list strategy (alpha strike with monster mash) relies on these tactics (or i suppose you could call them rules) to win games.  

Knowing the rules, creating tactics from them and putting that together in an overall strategy is all part of being a good player and it was an excellent demonstration of this in a top table game.  

Paul saw that the LoC was outside of 3" of the clan rats but still close enough o get the 'charge pile in'.  He also made sure to attack in the right order so the right Frostlord was last to pile in.  

Most of the skaven army was behind a claret shield and paul could have chosen to attack anywhere in the army, he chose to hit all 3 Stonehorns into that combo charge rather than trying to hit all the army.  

 

[StoneMonk]

Yeah, it doesn't seem like anything is just point and shoot and win. Plenty of room to get it wrong and when an army banks on having multiple units in combat, they need to get it right otherwise the countercharge will be brutal.

While this army is super brand new, and its bound to catch folks off guard, the rule outlined here is from the core set and is one of many rules that some of us blew by without understanding the nuance. 

[daedalus81]

I feel like that LoC was waaaay too close to the front line.  He is not a combat monster like he used to be.

[SuperHappyTime]

On 8/7/2016 at 10:22 AM, Ben said:

I'll give benefit of the doubt because the pictures don't have real dimensions here, but really I want to counter Paul's rules lawyering with rules lawyering. It looks like the Top-most Stonehorn, the one that eventually makes the charge on the LoC, failed his charge. He must finish within 1/2" of an enemy model and it looks like he's roughly 1" away.

ETA: And it may have mattered, since it could have put the LoC within 3" as well. 

[James McPherson]

But the pic above is the 2nd pic in the sequence though? Are you looking at the wrong photo dude?

[BaldoBeardo]

Whilst I get the argument on semantics around better knowledge of rules =/= tactics, I think there is a point around understanding the rules better than your opponent.

One of the things I've found amusing with AoS is that a lot of the people I've seen claiming AoS was a child's game with the big scrum in the middle also say that manoeuvring was where WFB was won or lost.

I'd argue manoeuvring/positioning is even more vital in AoS because you have to plan better due to the way you lose control of your models within that 3" bubble, and your opponent can take steps to dictate that.

In that sense, (and I'm not claiming it's equivalent!) AoS is a lot closer to Warmachine than WFB - in my experience, considered positioning and order of activation are often the difference between winning and losing.

Certainly in WFB I never found myself counting units already in combat or how many "iffy" combats I'm already involved in before adding more units into a charge.

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