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Overread

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Not so much why TGA forums nor why are you a wargamer, but why are you an Age of Sigmar Wargamer. What brought you to the vast untold realms of war and battle; what drew you to the lore, the miniatures and the game. What makes you come and keeps you coming. 

 

Myself I'd begun my wargaming on Epic and Titan Legions and only begrudgingly moved toward 40K because of the death of Epic 40K (and the fact that even before GW killed it, hardly anyone played it in my already very limited play opportunities). So toward 40K I came and stayed with the Tyranids. 

I was never a huge fan of some of the earlier fantasy models such as the serpentine dragons; which to me looked very odd with their high backed armchairs and oversized heads and talons. I didn't hate it, but I just didn't want to buy into it. However steadily the sculpts improved (in my view) and I eventually wanted to try my hand at some high elves. By then they had chariots pulled by lions and eagles whilst massive magical pheonix took to the skies. Lord of the Rings movies and some Total War (long before TW Warhammer) had also given me an increasing appreciation for the spearman. Once something I disliked (surely warriors all carry and use swords, who'd want a bit of wood with a pointy end). Steadily I'd come to realise the power in a rank and file company of spearmen staring down at the charging enemy.  Also whilst I'd had an eye for the skaven, back the you really did need masses of clan rats, only they weren't even clan rats they were even more weak and chaff and were skaven slaves! Even I knew that was just awy too many models for me, so Elves it was. 

Anyone who has kept a rough eye on the trading section might well guess that whilst I started that plan with great purchasing gusto, I never quite got very far with building before losing steam. I then mucked around a bit with some Slaanesh and got further, plus at the time I'd great plans to magnetize the bases so that I could run them for 40K and Old World. 

However that got kicked out from under me when GW started pushing the marketing for the End Times and then dropped AoS onto the market. To me it was like a lead brick. Even though the lore wasn't something I was invested into at the time (a shame because now I'm a big fan of it), the loss of so much - the rules, the structure, the game side of things that I was aspiring toward - was gone. I won't lament on those dark times. Instead I kept an eye on the game and, if not waited, at least put things aside and moved on.

 

Then this happened. 

 

 

AoS 2.0 was already starting to make some noise. There was big swings going on at the company level; 40K was seeing a huge revival and we were entering what I like to think of as a second Golden Age. Then BOOM. Metal music, winged harpies; snake women; a powerful sorceress and my gods that model at the end only eased. Some huge serpent with wings*! 

The game had rules now; it had improved closer to what I'd envisioned. Rank and file was gone, the armies are smaller (in comparison to model count in very general terms); the marketing was spot on and the creativity in those new sculpts was just fantastic! I was hooked and back and buying and building**. Since then I've remained hooked, even if not as much on the gaming side as I would like; certainly on the creativity and models of the game. 

My enthusiasm growing as not only did GW create the Daughters of Khaine; but they then started updating everything! Skaven I had a short adventure with, especially because I got worried many of their best looking sculpts were going to vanish (with great models that Id had my eye on for ages like the Ikit Claw model - now master Skyre warlork). Plus you no longer needed 200 slaves to just get an army going!
Then GW updated my beloved Slaanesh with insane fiends (a model I'd  really enjoyed in their former form enough to have hunted down 7 in metal rather than brave finecast); then months after the fiend leak we saw the huge striding majesty of the new Keeper. Yep times are good and I'm hooked.

 

 

So for me it was the game turning into what I see as a proper game; but coupled do that has been the massive expansion in the fantasy themes and dynamic and creative work. Whilst I've a healthy fondness now for the rank and file system of war. Of the epic nature of basic warriors charging and holding the line; I've also a love of epic and high fantasy. GW is delivering that in buckets, but alongside they are keeping true to many of their original design visions. Plus looking at models like the new melusai I see a lot that has a very strong 80-90s vibe (heck the Ossiarchs even have crystals on their bodies which help hold them together as a focus - much like the red gemstones from the old Skeleton Warriors TV cartoon). 

 

So that's a bit of me and my tale - what's yours?! 

 

 

*there is still a tiny bit of me sad that it wasn't a dragon

** we'll get to painting one day... one day..

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At the time, I wasn't looking to play another wargame.....I had too many.

The woman who would later be my wife, played Lizardmen. Our game group trades gifts for Xmas, and they all conspired to get me into AoS so me and 'that girl over there' would have a similar hobby and maybe start talking.

So they all got me Skaven. (IoB starter, 2 boxes of Clanrats, and a Doomwheel) 

 

I'm not sure why they chose Skaven, beyond no one else played it and I have a Skaven Bloodbowl team.

Edited by bushman101
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I was on vacations and saw a GW store, walked in and saw that Age of Sigmar was a new Warhammer game. I had learned of Warhammer when I was in college but couldn't afford to buy in. The fact that AoS was new and I loved the look of the golden knight minis was enough to convince me to buy a 2 player starter set. I loved the game! Yes, I loved AoS even before the first Generals Handbook came out. Fact is I still use those original rules to introduce people to the game.

I've been obsessed with Wargaming and AoS specifically ever since. I read as much lore as I can, I have 6 AoS armies and 4 Warhammer 40k armies, though lately I've been playing Warcry and KillTeam more than the main game, just because of time. I do my best to spread the AoS love.

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I have been a GW fan for decades, and started 40K with the original Space Orks and first plastic Space Marines. During that time I created my initial fantasy armies from Ral Partha and Grenadier minis and wrote my own rule sets. I picked up occasional fantasy units in plastic - many for conversion to 40k - but the massed troop blocks stopped me from building legit armies, and it got crazy about the period when End Times dropped.

Then AOS appeared out of the rubble and I dug my odd assortments of fantasy figures out of storage, and learned to my delight that they were playable with free rules. Over the last few years I’ve rebased them, filled their ranks out, and made proper AOS armies. The fact that I could play small games meant I started out with several armies, and as the narrative emerged I got into other new ones.

I earlier spoke with the GW creative team when I designed the LOTR games for EA, and complimented Andy and others on how they maintained creative continuity on the Warhammer universe over the decades. Now I see that happening again with AOS, so I’m fascinated to go along on their creative journey.

Edited by MacDuff
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I am a fantasy/sci fi lover. I enjoyed WHFB, but due to time constraints as well as being tied to the public transport couldn't get into it. Anyway, then the WHFB was gone. It was a friend that later recommend AoS, gave it a try and found it a passable way to spend some time.

I'm currently building CoS and waiting for the Light Elves, playing Warcry and Underworlds in the meantime. I'd also like to have a go at Necromunda campaign. Although I'm involved with AoS I can say that the initial enjoyment has passed. The sides games are still fun, however the aura fiddling and the dull design of the factions in the main game is simply unappealing. It reminds me on video game elements that I've always disliked or tolerated but the market seemed to enjoy.  I'd like to finish certain projects and see what GW has planned for 2020, afterwards, I'll likely jump into KoW, maybe revisit Infinity after N4 is released.

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Exploding skaven brought me back to Warhammer.

Back in the day, I played WFB until life and career got in the way. My models were largely sold or traded away until I had but a shoe box of plastic and metal skaven and skeletons left gathering dust in the garage.

Fast forward to three years ago, and my eldest son - who was 7 at the time - and I were looking to an alternative to wargaming which at that time consisted of Black Powder and Dystopian Wars. I had an old set of Epic miniatures but that scale was too close to Dystopian Wars, so out came the shoe box.

After an hour or so of looking through AoS 1.0 rules and warscrolls, we set up opposing sides of skaven and skels from the late 1980s and played our first AoS game.
It was messy, we made some of it up, got plenty wrong, but it was damned fun. What sealed it was the kamikaze warpfire teams that had a tendency to explode which my eldest thought was highly amusing (I was the skaven player).
That sealed it, as did the flexibility of the rules, short playing time etc. But for me, AoS was more dynamic than I remembered WFB, which was more a game of attrition, for the army and the player (I thought it got dull rather quickly).

So almost 3 years later, and enough money splashed out that could buy a decent sized family car, we have five 2000 point armies, and four 1000 pt factions. And a tonne of good gaming memories!

Edited by Mcthew
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I returned to wargaming in general about 2 1/2 years ago. I´ve build up my 40k Necron army and started a second 40k army. In this time I had not much people to play with beside some folks at our local gw every two weeks or so. The community was cool, the manager too, and when they started a build up campaign for AoS I gave AoS a try. Thats how I ended with my first SC!-Slaves to Darkness. The campaign was fun but the fact that my Slaves couldn´t compete in any single game was really something that almost put me off. Them I found some cool allies from Khorne Alligience and started to understand that I can play my folks as another Aligience. That is how I slipped into Khorne, had some more successes with the game and decided to keep playing from time to time.

Eventually I got a friend of mine to start playing as he fell in love with IDK. His brother joined and we started a monthly gaming club in a local youth centre (is this a thing in english?). Not that the club is running for a year and became a huge success AoS has spread among many other friends. Althrough I for my own prefer 40k more as a cool and balanced system, AoS became the game of choice to play with freinds :)

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I had always been into rpg, so I knew the old world and Warhammer rpg for a long time. What got me into tabletop was actually the Mordheim PC game. I soon found the old Mordheim rulebook online and started building warbands. 

I was shocked when the Old World was destroyed, but soon found out that Warhammer Fantasy got a lot more skirmishy with AoS. So I built up one of my Mordheim Warbands to 1500p AoS-size, and here I am. 😄

I have to say, what really helped me getting into it was the material that you can find online for free: Basic rules, warscroll builder... Easy to look into it and see how it works before investing into something you may not like. Well done, GW 😎

Edited by Beastmaster
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I used to play WHFB back in the days but took a break from warhammer because WHFB 8e wasn't to my groups liking, GW introducing fine ****** and the FLGS owner being a ****** so we lost our place to meet and hobby too. Picked up 40k after a few years with a new group, after a while realised that even though I love 40k too the pure fantasy setting is more my thing and the AoS models are beautiful while 40k is only just ever so slowly getting updated models.

Plus I have no hope that GW can ever reign in the rampant ranged damage output in 40k without at least half of the community starting a ****** that would make them go back on it and I'm pretty sick of a big part of my army being gone turn 1 regardless of terrain (more LoS blocking terrain helps but it's not enough tbh) and thus having to plan to bring multiples of a unit I like just to have a chance of using it in a game at all.

 

 

Edited by Overread
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I sued to be hardcore against AoS (I am an old Fantasy Player and I stuck to 9th age at the time).

A few weeks before this Video came out I had soem test games with my gf and found that AoS can actually be really fun. After this Video it was clear that I'd expand my Dark Elves into a DoK Army (I love the snakes)

 

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This is a bit of a Saga, but here goes!


In the beginning I just liked making stuff up. I can pretty much trace all of my current hobbies back to a childhood love of fantasy and science fiction, whether expressed through playground games, building LEGO castles (still do that!) or everything in between. As I've gotten older those games and stories have gotten somewhat more sophisticated, but in retrospect I think my younger self was doing pretty well on the sophisticated worldbuilding front, and many of his ideas are still in use today. These days I'm primarily a roleplaying gamer, however I'd actually been dabbling in Warhammer for about a year or so before getting hooked on Fighting Fantasy and D&D.

Warhammer entered the scene around the turn of the millennium, when I was eleven or twelve. One of my friends often came around, and we'd play Stargate SG-1 using our little green army men. He got into 40K first, and then one day he very graciously gave me a couple of his old plastic Gretchins, who I thought were great! I'd always loved goblins, and their spiky helmets were so cool! I'm uncertain how long it took for me to actually decide to build an army, but it must have been around 2002, because the Lord of the Rings game was out by then. That was a better fit for me than 40K, but at the time I didn't dive in to it for a number of reasons.

Firstly none of my friends played it, so I knew that if I wanted to actually play the game then 40K was the way to go. I was also familiar with the more anarchic, hyper macho, and somewhat punkish style of my friend's warhammer armies, I thus wasn't entirely convinced that the GW studio would do a good job representing an IP I loved as much as the Lord of the Rings. In fact there was no reason to worry, but I didn't know that yet.

In any event I decided to get some friends for my little squad of Gretchin, and began building an Ork army. My friend had switched to playingTau by this point, so I became the Ork player in our little group. It wasn't long after that that the Battle Games in Middle Earth magazine started coming out, and I started getting that, and getting into Lord of the Rings models, just as a painting hobby. The way the magazine gave you a variety of things suited that approach. I wasn't going to be able to play the game, so didn't need to worry about collecting any one army. Instead I got a wide mix of stuff, which I could use in D&D and eventually other minis games.

I'd naturally been aware of Warhammer Fantasy throughout this whole process, and while I loved some of the models, it just wasn't practical to get into it while I was spending my limited resources on Lord of the Rings, and still getting the occasional Space Ork. I considered getting a Dwarf army, or maybe Goblins, since then I could have a force made up entirely of my beloved Gretchin! I loved the look of the Tomb Kings too, but I stuck with Lord of the Rings.

My wargaming slowed down substantially when I went away to uni. I was heavily into RPGs by that point, so there was only so much time to go around. Plus I'd moved to a town which didn't have a GW or stockist until much later, and in student digs I didn't have space for a dedicated painting table, so that killed the momentum on the projects I was working on. That said I had now met people who played Lord of the Rings, and actually got in a few games of that!

Cut forwards to about 2010. I needed some lizardmen for D&D, and couldn't make them from Lego, and of course there weren't any in the Lord of the Rings range. So I actually took a look at the warhammer section for what must have been the first time in years! Within a few months of building that first box of Saurus I was hooked again, and went from almost being out of the hobby to being back with a vengeance! It helped that I was living in a shared house by this point, and so had more space for painting and gaming.

I wasn't keen on the prices of the newer Lord of the Rings stuff by that point, so Warhamme was a cheaper and more engaging option. Suddenly I was casting my mind back to all those plans I'd had as a teenager. Once my Lizardmen were done, maybe I should get the Dwarves, or Goblins, or Tomb Kings I'd spent all that time dreaming about!

I fairly rapidly had TK and Dwarf armies on the go too, but my initial flurry of activity fizzled out again when PhD studies got more intense. After submitting my thesis, I took stock and decided to finish the three half painted armies I had on the go. I was solidly burned out with writing and study, so it was a really relaxing hobby to sit and paint while I prepared for my Viva.

I still hadn't actually played WFB at this point. I knew a few people who played, but they were all busy with their studies too. I'd acquired the big red rulebook, and tried to learn the rules a few times, but found it a bit off putting. It didn't help that I was burned out at that point.

I actually finished my backlog around the end of the 2015, and began buying models again, but it wasn't too long before I started hearing rumours of an impending apocalypse. The End Times were upon us, and I wasn't engaged with the community enough to be sure what that presaged. I finished my Lizardmen and Dwarf armies to my satisfaction, and dug in to expanding my undead.

It all came to a head when the GW shopkeeper showed me a new boxed set, of what looked to me like Chaos Warriors vs some garishly painted Empire guys. "Looks cool, I said, but I'm a Tomb King player!"

Turned out that those shiny knights were the first Stormcast... The World had ended, and my relaxed Undead painting project became a mad scramble to complete my Tomb Kings army before they all vanished from the shelves. I'd already been getting a few of the older Lizardmen sculpts second hand to expand my army, and now those ebay skills proved vital to getting the last few Tomb King kits I needed. I didn't even think about trying AoS at that point. I was annoyed with GW for squatting one of my favourite armies, so I wasn't keen on giving them any money directly for a while.

I did want a new army project though, so I decided to see if I could get a retro Chaos Dwarves army. I reckoned I could do it for no more than the cost of buying into Stormcast would be, and it turned out that I was largely right. By the time I'd finished that army project I had largely forgiven GW, and the Legion of Azgorh model range tempted me back to getting models from them directly.

I was intrigued when I heard that AoS was a much simpler game, and so checked out the free online rules. It actually looked like a system that would be fun to play, even if I wasn't sold on the setting yet.

By that time AoS 2e was coming out, I was starting to get a few AoS faction models, as well as building Old World style armies, and the lore was gradually growing on me. I think Malign Portents was what really made me decide that the new setting had potential, and that coupled with accessible rules soon got me hooked. That led me inexorably to the forums.

As a final coda to this wall of text, this year I finally started the goblin army of my dreams, having been considering them pretty much since the very start of my wargaming career. Full circle indeed...

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For me, AoS is my first Games Workshop Wargame. Originally my dad introduced me to the hobby and got me into Warmachine and Hordes, but when they updated the game and completely ruined the competitive balance we ended up quitting. We also played with an Iron Kingdoms RPG group, and one night decided to grab some cool miniatures we saw on the shelves (the storm strike Khorne v. Stormcast box) which lead to us getting hooked. That was pre-generals handbook and since then I have got around Stormcast, Dispossessed, and Gloomspite, as well as a bunch of Warcry stuff. 

The funny part is that the stuff I love about AoS is stuff I never did/had the opportunity to do in Warmahordes. I love the narrative gaming side of the hobby and painting which I never enjoyed, but has now become my favorite part of the hobby. 

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Prosecutors got me. At the time I was just a modeller, focusing on Gunpla, and went to my LGS to pick up some paints, and the owner saw me looking at a SCE skirmish box and offered it to me at cost. I wanted to paint some prosecutors so I took it. It's been almost 3 years an now I have some 4k+ points of SCE, 3k+ of Cities of Sigmar, and 1000 points of Deamons of Tzeentch.

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From looking at the recent poll regarding what age you started wargaming it seems I had a longer journey to get here than most of you.

My gaming background is initially role playing games, 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons to be precise and mainly the Forgotten Realms setting. I spent a few years playing that pretty religiously in the early 90s and still have most of the books and boxes that were released back then.

I always played computer games on the side, mostly FPS or RTS and went pretty deep in on the competitive side in the early days of Counter-Strike. When I discovered Dark Age of Camelot I was seriously hooked, and since then my computer gaming has been mostly covered by MMORPGs (and probably 90% of that being WoW), although much more casual now for many years than at times in the past. I haven't played WoW for around a year now though, so maybe I've managed to shake that addiction finally! :)

I was always aware of Warhammer, back when I was buying my AD&D books I would see the Warhammer guys with those massive and pretty damn cool armies in my then LGS but I always told myself that the effort to get to a big army like that was crazy and that I couldn't paint anyway so I never really gave that a proper consideration as a hobby to get into.

Fast forward a whole lot of years. Just over two years ago (at 44 years of age at that point) I was in Gothenburg with my wife for a weekend when we happened to walk past a Warhammer store. We went inside out of curiosity as I wanted to see what had changed since the early 90s. Turns out it was a lot! We were both amazed by the looks of the AoS miniatures and even if we didn't buy anything that day we talked about getting a box or two and trying out this painting thing.

After much thought and many visits to the GW webstore we ended up picking our factions. My wife went for Slaanesh (and has since expanded into Tzeentch) and I, against my own expectations, ended up with Stormcast. I really liked the models but the gold wasn't really doing it for me and I was kinda leaning towards some chaos or death. Eventually I found pics of silver armored Stormcast and that was it, I was sold.

So just over two years later we have 6000+ points of various Chaos and 13000+ of Stormcast and no end in sight.
 

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Why am i playing AOS.  Mostly because gw keeps changeing the rules of their systems drastically.  I started out whit fantasy back in 4th edition and played that for almost  5 years before dipping into 40k  because it was populair  at the local store.  Then i played then both until mid 8th edition Fantasy.  I did not like that large  monsters where basicly takeing over the meta and leaving  infantry in the dust.   So i swiched to 40k exlusivly.  When AOS came out i tried it for a bit and hated it .  The lack of points really annoyed me it felt like gw was not even bothering to try and balance the game any more.   Then 8th edition 40k turned around and that was not my cup of tea.  So when gloomspite gitz came out i unpacked my old greenskin army added  few  more squigs and have been playing AOS since then .

Despite my initial hatred for AOS I do like the game a lot these days. Much more then 40k.  AOS is much les lethal and allows for more intresting movment. I like that. 

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AoS got me back into it. Complex rules in 40k and WHFB put me off (as did my perception of the player base). AoS' simple rules were really attractive, and the AoS 1.0 thing of big models on a table with simple rules was exactly what I wanted. Plus the AoS player base (in London at least) is fantastic- loads of interesting and nice people!

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I started when WHFB 8E, when the game and GW was very, very different, as was the community around it. The store I played at was full of salty, cynical players who ran meta-competitive lists, along with some older players who were very pleasant. GW was unwilling to engage the community and, as far as I could tell, published rules to drive sales of models, with little care for updating factions to work with new rules or anything of that sort. The community being so sour about their relationship with the game they played really didn't create a good environment.

I bought the models I liked - Wood Elves. For every aspect other than modeling and kitbashing, this was a mistake, as they were very weak and had almost no chance against most armies. Still, I enjoyed collecting and building, and playing against friends and others with my army helped me develop tactical skills.

I hadn't played in over a year before the Old World blew up, and between the (honestly hilarious) send-off rules for old models, the simplified game rules, and the Stormcast models being extremely different in tone than WHF, the entire community drowned in salt.  By that point, my life situation had changed and I was moving, so my collection ended up in storage for many years. 

It took me years to find a new place to play AoS near my new home. The game had interested me even from it's beginning, since it played much faster and, honestly, much more in line with the way I had originally thought Warhammer worked, in terms of hero strength, model count, movement rules and the like. With the release of the GHB allowing me to play my Wood Elves as Wanderers, and the Slvaneth book giving me a new model range to collect, combined with finally having disposable income to speak of, it was an easy choice for me to start playing again.

The local community here is welcoming and positive, and tend to make strong but not overly meta lists, and tends to focus on cool giant models, monsters, and well-painted armies, which really helped me re-invest in the game.

Also, the level of communication, openness and effort by GW to create a positive game community, update all of the rules for their model ranges, and generally treat their players and collectors well is worlds different than the attitudes of the company when I first started the hobby 15 or so years ago. It's given me a lot more faith in the longevity of the game and GW's dedication to the community it's helped to foster.

I'm very happy with the way things have shaken out, and I'm glad I kept my old Wood Elves - they've gotten a new lease on life with the new CoS book, and Sylvaneth are a great fun to play for me as a former WE player. It's a good time to be playing this game, I think.

edit- Thank you for reading my Livejournal.

Edited by overtninja
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