Do Age of Sigmar armies deserve better rules than leftover WHFB armies?

[Dead Scribe]

Yeah.  Again - no.  Very much no.  All armies should get equal treatment.  

[Gaz Taylor]

1 hour ago, Icegoat said:

I'm not sure how I can be called out for trolling when hollow hills is literally calling for peoples armies to be worse be cause they aren't fish aelves.

You got called out because you were trolling.
 

50 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

I want aos to be it's own game, with it's own lore and it's own identity. 

It is. GW are going to great lengths to promote this, for example yesterday’s announcement about the Warhammer Indent. As you’ve said, the issue you have is you don’t like that some of the stuff used to be in WFB and you just want a line to be drawn under that and everything to move on. I get that but also I understand that GW want to support players that have these models. They seem to be doing the right thing now by giving older ranges a book and not much else. This says to me they are gearing up for lots and lots of new stuff in the future 😉

[SwampHeart]

1 hour ago, HollowHills said:

I didn't like the rules of WHFB or how impenetrable / toxic the community became.

Doesn't like toxicity but encourages toxicity towards those who enjoy using older GW range models/the updated lore for those ranges. Ironic. 

[Beastmaster]

1 hour ago, Gaz Taylor said:

You got called out because you were trolling.
 

It is. GW are going to great lengths to promote this, for example yesterday’s announcement about the Warhammer Indent. As you’ve said, the issue you have is you don’t like that some of the stuff used to be in WFB and you just want a line to be drawn under that and everything to move on. I get that but also I understand that GW want to support players that have these models. They seem to be doing the right thing now by giving older ranges a book and not much else. This says to me they are gearing up for lots and lots of new stuff in the future 😉

Drawing that line too roughly would be a bad idea even from a pure marketing standpoint. I am quite sure that in the last few years the very popular PC games Vermintide and Total War: Warhammer may have drawn more new players into miniatures than all the Stormcast posters combined. Not that they all started older armies, but those who wanted to could.

I myself started looking into miniatures with the Mordheim pc game. 😅

Edited January 21, 2020 by Beastmaster

[Overread]

One of my armies is Daughters of Khaine - technically a new army, yet over half the army is Old World models. Where the heck would they stand in the system? A new army with better rules, an old army with worse rules - half and half so the only good rules would be on the new models? 

Honestly its just a bad idea. Plus we've seen what happens time and time again when armies get bad rules. Dark Eldar, Tomb Kings, Necrons, Sisters of Battle - old models and old, bad/out of date rules results in one thing - a dead army. Fans stop playing and new people are discouraged from starting them. The result is that either GW spends a fortune to bring them back or they drop them. Either way its a waste of resources and for years (perhaps 5 or more) whoever likes that army is left with stuff that isn't as fun to play with. 

And its not just a case that "oh they can get a new army". They like that army; they've spent money on that army. They have every much as "right" to a decent set of standard rules to play with as anyone who bought into a "new" army.

 

 

GW made their choice as to what remains and what has left AoS. They made it once when they started and once again when they updated to 2.0. From now on honestly the best thing is to move forwards. To stop drawing this imaginary battle line in the ground between "Old World" and "AoS". Because far as I can see some people have let behind the bitterness of the AoS launch and are instead embracing the clan element of fighting/arguing/disliking another group. Something that goes beyond the logic of the original reason for the disilke and goes into just a behaviour that perpetuates itself without logic. A cycle of negativity that deserves to be broken for people and the games to move on. 
You can dwell on the past but it won't change things and can only result in an increasingly bitter experience and increased alienation from the community at large. 

[Saturmorn Carvilli]

Pretty much what Overread said.  The OP is creating an artificial construct of what factions, and maybe which units/models, are Age of Sigmar and which ones are not based on a self-declared date.  Those factions/units/models before that date are classified as not 'real' Age of Sigmar stuff.  Those after are Age of Sigmar.  From there, the OP wants to make the 'real' Age of Sigmar stuff rules mechanically better.

First, I think the OP is going to have a very difficult time simply getting others to agree with their artificial, self-imposed construct of what is and isn't an Age of Sigmar  model/unit/faction/etc.  So post 2015 is Age of Sigmar?  What about Chaos Warriors and Knights?  They now have a model range that is the exact same unit on both sides the 2015 dividing line.  So OP, are they or are they not an Age of Sigmar model/unit?  Or are the old ones not but the new ones are?  This idea that pre-2015 stuff isn't inherently Age of Sigmar is going to unravel incredibly quickly.  I think you'll find most consider them ALL Age of Sigmar units and it doesn't matter if they made before or after.  Age of Sigmar was built, and will continued to be built, on those models so they are as much part of the Mortal Realms and anything that came afterward.

Second, having intentionally tiered factions for a game that cost hundreds of dollars and hours to prep and still takes some amount of effort to meet and opponent to play for a few hours is an incredibly bad idea.  This isn't a cheap, easy-to-setup board game that takes half-an-hour to play, only one person had to spend $60 and no one really cares who wins and who loses.  With few exceptions, even the most casual of players in these games want the idea that their army hasn't competely lost before it was put on the table.  Sadly, even without GW (giving them the benefit of the doubt) knowingly  sabotaging their rules this still happens... a lot. 

Part of the reason I even gave Age of Sigmar a chance was Warhammer 40k is going back to its roots of having far more games where the winner is known before putting a model on the table than not, and I was told Age of Sigmar is a little better on that.  And to be fair, AoS currently is, but it is still a pretty shallow GW game for on tough decision points made at the table. Players can only do so much to raise or lower their success on the table compared to the army list they bring.  That is just how GW games do.  Yet their are still match ups where one army (talking decently constructed, well-rounded armies) is going effortless crush the other so long as the good army plays at least okay and/or doesn't have absolutely abysmal luck.  I am talking about winning 75% to 90% of their games.  And this done under the assumption that GW is doing their best to make sure everything IS balanced.  With GW actively trying to make the new factions inherently better, that means they will be the only ones that will win games as GW is not great at balancing.  Which at that point, Age of Sigmar isn't so much a game but an activity since the outcome is already decided.

Again, Warhammer 40k has had these issues in its past.  Not on a faction wide basis (not counting Grey Knights or 3.5 Chaos Space Marines), but in previous editions it was pretty clear they wanted to sell the new hotness models and gave them inherently better rules.  During 6th and 7th edition it was a golden age.... 

...for other miniatures games.  Despite tabletop games experiencing exponential growth including miniatures war games Games Workshop was floundering and even cut Warhammer Fantasy Battles during that time.  Which allowed other miniatures war gaming companies to flourish as players still wanted to play 'alive' games and left the walled garden of the GW hhhobby.  Many for the first time to see what existed beyond.  That is incredibly dangerous for GW as arguably the biggest draw their games have is they are head, shoulders and chests above the next miniatures war gaming company in terms of popularity.  If they lose popularity,  their rules are not going to keep them a float and they could see a rapid decline in revenue.  Warhammer 40k 7th edition also proved that the player base can only be pushed so far with poor rules balance before they will leave.  I sure something in GW's hubris, didn't really think could happen as much as it did.  You intention cripple factions like that, you might as well not sell them as you are generating ill-will for your game.  Players with old armies are likely to quit or find different games instead being a punching bag for the 'new hotness'.  All those things are not healthy for a game like Age of Sigmar.  An unhealthy game doesn't get new factions to replace the old.  It gets cut from the product line.

TL;DR version:  OP you need to demonstrate and get people to even agree that post 2015 models are Age of Sigmar and pre-2015 are not.  Good luck, but I don't think you are going to find much traction here.  Only after you have convinced people that some factions/units/models/etc. aren't really Age of Sigmar stuff, then a discussion can be had on whether or not they should have inherently weaker rules.  Which also, good luck since I don't see anyway that intentionally creating faction tiers in a game like AoS could be anything but a bad thing.

[Shearl]

If a brand new player starts the game with no experience in AoS or Whfb, and chooses an army they ascetically prefer why should they be punished with intentionally sub-par rules simply because they chose an army that existed pre-Aos? 

If I purchase miniatures in a box that says "Age of Sigmar" on it, and play with those miniatures using an army book that says "Age of Sigmar" which said rules were designed specifically for AoS, how is this not an AoS army?

People have different tastes, why should they be punished because they like one army over an other?

[Kadeton]

16 hours ago, HollowHills said:

Is it really good for the game that a new player to aos who picks up either Nighthaunt or Stormcast will soon discover they are far worse than ancient WHFB armies like cities of sigmar or skaven? 

This is the core flaw in your position, IMO.

Cities of Sigmar and Skaven aren't "ancient WHFB armies" any more. They're now AoS armies - they have proper battletomes, which update their lore for the Mortal Realms and bring them fully into the Age of Sigmar. The fact that they also existed when WHFB was around is no longer relevant, because GW made the choice to recreate them as a proper AoS faction.

The "ancient WHFB armies" would be, for example, a force of Duardin using the unit profiles from Grand Alliance: Order. The forces available to anyone using the Grand Alliance battletomes are pretty much universally weaker than any force using a battletome for a proper AoS army, so WHFB armies are already on a lower tier than all the proper AoS armies. You just need to shift your perception of what an AoS army is, because you're drawing an arbitrary distinction that's not supported by GW.

[DatHomieSilverSurfer]

18 hours ago, HollowHills said:

I'm not saying WHFB models should have rules so bad they are a total joke. 

More like if you have two equal skilled players and one is playing an old WHFB army and the other an army made for aos then the aos army should be better on paper. 

Is it really good for the game that a new player to aos who picks up either Nighthaunt or Stormcast will soon discover they are far worse than ancient WHFB armies like cities of sigmar or skaven? 

it sounds to me like you are new(ish) to the hobby and don't quite understand the appeal/ethos behind miniature wargames... were you, perchance, a magic/ccg player beforehand? Because your ideas wouldn't be out of place in such an environment, but are utterly ridiculous here.

[Macha]

4 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Is it really good for the game that a new player to aos who picks up either Nighthaunt or Stormcast will soon discover they are far worse than ancient WHFB armies like cities of sigmar or skaven? 

Examine it from the other angle.

I'm a brand new (or rather returning - I had some Sororitas like 20 years ago). I picked Cities of Sigmar, because I liked the stuff I saw. Who doesn't like Javelin-throwing ladies on deer accompanied by steam helicopters and some silly astronomical observatory on wheels? The faction looked cool, and sounded like a good faction alongside wacky ghost hordes, silly bikini elves and treefolk.

Is it really good for the game for a new player like me to soon discover that I paid quite a good amount of time and cash (My ~1000 points sure didn't assemble themselves, nor did they land on my doorstep for free, the kits were bought like any other at my local hobby store) just to play something that's intentionally designed to be far worse than other armies people buy for the same prices at the same store using the same ruleset?

Even demanding that seems very toxic to me. You're trying to create a second-tier group of players just to make the group you're in more special. That's really not cool.   I sure hope this kind of attitude isn't very common in this hobby. It's very, very unwelcoming.

[zilberfrid]

12 minutes ago, Macha said:

Examine it from the other angle.

I'm a brand new (or rather returning - I had some Sororitas like 20 years ago). I picked Cities of Sigmar, because I liked the stuff I saw. Who doesn't like Javelin-throwing ladies on deer accompanied by steam helicopters and some silly astronomical observatory on wheels? The faction looked cool, and sounded like a good faction alongside wacky ghost hordes, silly bikini elves and treefolk.

Is it really good for the game for a new player like me to soon discover that I paid quite a good amount of time and cash (My ~1000 points sure didn't assemble themselves, nor did they land on my doorstep for free, the kits were bought like any other at my local hobby store) just to play something that's intentionally designed to be far worse than other armies people buy for the same prices at the same store using the same ruleset?

Even demanding that seems very toxic to me. You're trying to create a second-tier group of players just to make the group you're in more special. That's really not cool.   I sure hope this kind of attitude isn't very common in this hobby. It's very, very unwelcoming.

There are some people that don't like anything in the old world, just like there are people that don'tlike anything in the new world. They are a minority though, and as a whole, I found the community welcoming

[Kadeton]

@Macha I think your quote should be attributed to @HollowHills, not to me.

[dekay]

Age of Sigmar has, as of now, 22 factions if I count correctly. Out of all those, only 4 were created specifically for AoS. Stormcast Eternals, Fyreslayers, Kharadron Overlords, Idoneth Deepkin. In addition to that, Nighthaunt and Ossiarch Bonereapers use MOSTLY new AoS models, but still parts of their range are what might be called 'leftover WFB models'. Sooo is this question basically, should 4 factions be arbitrarily more powerful than 18 others?

I don't really get the 'Cities of Sigmar/Legions of Nagash/Whatever models don't fit AoS style'... Because what makes them different from, say,  Vampire Counts Ghouls? Or Black Orcs? Oh, and I'd gladly hear why Dark Elf Doomfire Warlocks fit AoS theme while Dark Riders (coming from the same exact kit, mind you!) don't!

Everything that's currently in AoS battletomes fits AoS theme because AoS creators said so. Some models are older than others. In all likeness, they'll be resculpted at some point (like, say, Black Coach, Squig Hoppers or recently Chaos Warriors were - same idea, same theme, newer, prettier model).

So no, factions with newer models deserve exact same rules quality as factions with old models (mind you, I didn't call them 'old factions' and 'new factions' because by that nomenclature, CoS are way newer than Idoneth - they didn't exist as a faction at all up until few months ago!). And every single faction deserves a quality ruleset and pretty models. Some older models need to be remade in time (those poor Skaven) because since they were made, technology allowed GW to up their quality significantly.

[Overread]

And I think its time to close this idea up and move on now as we are mostly just sending the same replies around now with no new ground to cover. 

 

This is not a ban on the topic if the OP or any other wishes to really take it further, but based on the resounding replies by the community I don't see much potential for this topic to go anywhere new.