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So how does everyone feel about Age of Sigmar?


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I love Age of Sigmar - from my point of view I am probably what you might call a "beer and pretzels" gamer. I play my wargames casually - I don't try and optimise my lists, even my "matched play" armies lean towards narrative themes. From my point of view, Age of Sigmar has enough complexity and crunch to be engaging and varied, but simple enough that I can easily remember most things and it can be set up, picked up, and played fairly quickly.

The lore has come on leaps and bounds, and whilst it started off a little too sparse and... detached for my personal tastes, but in the last few years it has been really fleshed out - the details in the battletomes and the novels have begun to really build up the setting. The Realms are big enough for you to really tell your own story but also slowly becoming lived in and detailed enough to invest in,

For the Warhammer Fantasy Battle fix, I personally have been devouring every update about the Old World specialist game (a return to a mass-ranked game in the World-That-Was/old Warhammer World) and every WFRP4e book I can get my grubby mits on as they are released. In terms of actually playing a massed combat game, a lot of my friends appear to be really enjoying the Song of Ice and Fire miniature game, and we are considering giving Conquest: The Last Age of Kings a go, as it appears to be a nice balance complexity wise between modern wargames like Age of Sigmar and the old list granularity of Warhammer Fantasy. 

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I hated Warhammer Fantasy so much at the end... Really, what a horrible game experience.

BUT: I really love AOS! A beautiful game... Well, except the internal balancing of Battletomes.

Edited by rosa
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AoS is a game where the core mechanics are relatively simple, where complexity is introduced through objective based play and where you can leave the game for 6 months then come back and get straight back into it without any real barriers.

I think its a great game, backed up by a great community. Where I live (UK South Coast), there is always someone to arrange a game with and there are loads of clubs / stores that support it. That speaks volumes.

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There's certain things I miss about fantasy, challenges, combat resoloution and Vampire Lords being good. A lot of the background as well.

I remember when the end times Archaon book came out and the wild speculation of what would come next, bubble worlds (realms) and round bases both turned out to be true. Overall I quite like age of Sigmar and kind of agree it was better to blow the old world up entirely then just do a soft restart after Archaon killed Sigmar or however else they would have finished End TImes.

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Love it. In the beginning it was brilliant how easy you could get into the game and how much depth you would discover through playing. 

right now it's a bit harder to start but you can still layer the rules. 

The narrative is a bit different than the old world. It's less a story of an ending age and rather one of a starting one. Bit more hopeful while maintaining enough horror, doom and darkness and gritty fantasy. 

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The beginning of aos was pretty horrible, but as the lore unfolded, it got better.

with points being brought back and all available Old armies having gotten a battletome, the game has gotten much much better.

although there being or having been a few not so great  mechanics, that can make an army dominate everything, I’m pretty happy with the game.

 

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I started in 7th edition and pretty much got hooked on the World-that-was as i saw all these super grim over-the-top fantasy things like armies of daemons battling humans, knights burning bodies until it was night for a week straight with some super knights that could slay titans single-handed sand evil vikings with armor fused to their skin who slaughtered so many that they made rivers of blood so I grabbed every novel and armybook I could up to the End Times (including those side ones that went with the Age of Reckoning MMO).

However it was with 8th I saw two huge problems that deflated my interest in that world. One was the massive games, even smallish ones took hours so they were basically yearly affairs that I noticed the tiny fanbase could be barely mustered to finish. Then there was the hour to midnight setting that made Status Quo a God as literally every story had to set things back to normal and every novel was a self-contained void since the setting could never move forward.

So when Age of Sigmar arrived that not only gave me a banquet of the over-the-top elements I fell in love with, beautiful artwork of these fantasical realms and armies of the gods, but also a setting that actually kept moving forward and novels free of that void as numerous characters could run into eachother as gods, demi-gods and mortals all kept pushing these nobledark cosmic plots through the ages to control the wondrous realms with their endless potential.

Throw in that the game itself is super easy to get into with free rules, efficient warscrolls and tons of layers to add on for nuance or side game skirmishes & warband battles  and I never looked back since.

Out with the old and in with the new.

Long live the Mortal Realms and their glorious future ahead! :D

 

 

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I want to say that AoS is different than fantasy. 

From a Lore perspective, AoS has a bit of High and Low Fantasy. The Story-telling is done like traditional Mythos (Gods fighting Gods and just messing with everything around them), and the Lore behind all the armies are a bit more grounded (some are even close to their Fantasy origins). You can read books that have the same feeling of the Old World and others that are a bit more like:  "Sci-Fi meets Indiana Jones".

Imho, Gameplay is where the game shines. It's really eazy to start, and the game has a lot of layers to use. More Layers= more complex the game becomes but you can stop at any point (Core Rules, Allegiance Rules, SubFaccion Rules-Realm Rules, Narrative/Matched Play/Open Play Rules, etc...). 
I really loved the customization that Fantasy had, but sadly, AoS has still not reach the same point as before. Btw, there is a new "Hero Builder" with some of the old feeling, but that's another story.

AoS is still really young and it has that feeling too. There are things that I don't like, but the whole game is nice and fun, and the community is really awesome. Btw, it seems that AoS can grow in any direction without too many problems and that's a plus for me.

Edited by Beliman
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I have always preferred Fantasy to Sci-Fi by default, but in recent years the biggest reason I have enjoyed the fantasy side of Warhammer more has come to be the culture of the game. Here in the US we have a very competitive culture, and in 40k it really shows. Even 'casual' leagues are overrun with optimization of GW's ever-frequent balancing errors and the idea of narrative or "just for fun" frequently plays second fiddle to winning. I have found people tend to take AoS less seriously and that makes for a better community. Narrative elements actually find support, there is less delusion that points justify the potency, and people care more about the game than the win/loss ratio. In my experience.

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2 hours ago, tripalreno4 said:

How does everyone feel about Age of Sigmar, and what do people play now for their Warhammer Fantasy fix?

I play AoS for my Warhammer fix 😉  It's a significantly less daunting game system to get into than fantasy battle, the community is great and the miniatures are amongst the best that GW have ever produced.

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So when AoS launched I was very unhappy.

GW had put a lot of effort into Old World and started releasing some outstanding big models and new sculpts. They were putting new energy into the line and things were on the up. Then in one deadly move they destroyed the old lore, destroyed the game and destroyed whole armies. It was a bad time. For me the lore wasn't the biggest loss*, for me the loss was armies and the game itself. AoS at launch had no rules save for joke rules; it also had no armies. It had subfaction, most of which were old armies shattered into tiny groups of models; lacking the military might of the old. Some had only one model to their name; other armies were outright removed models included and were gone. Heck prior to the fall High Elves and Wood Elves were two armies I had an interest in - both of which got decimated when AoS launched - High Elves lost a bunch of models and fell apart; whilst Wood Elves got splintered in half and the elf side was gutted. 

This was a scary time when GW was clearly toying with the idea that you'd collect a grand alliance not an army so GW could add new "armies" and remove them at a whim. It was also a kick in the teeth because the armies one had got all fired up for were gone; the game was gone. The structure (even with GW's wonky balance) was gone. In its place was mostly a boutique model line that had some new and outstanding sculpts, but wasn't much of a lore or game at that stage. 

 

Now not everyone hated it at that state, in fact those who make their own rules loved it as they found a ready and eager fan base. It wasn't all bad, but it was more bad than good. I recall regular arguments that the lack of points was a huge issue making pre-game a huge affair of debate so you could setup a game with at least some idea of coming to the table with the same intent as your opponent. Because "rules wise" nothing stopped them bringing 10 dragons. 

 

 

 

 

I kept out of AoS right up until 2.0 started becoming a thing; when GW had had not just a product change but a management change and AoS had totally changed course. Daughters of Khaine came out with outstanding models; winged harpies and snake women and then a giant snake woman harpy hybrid! The fantasy was back; there was more structure; more coordination; the armies were back; the factions, the lore was coming together and things were on the up! There was a game and 2.0 was that game. Age of Sigmar had matured, changed, mutated. In its place was now a game with better structure, indeed GW has really done well in respecting armies and the way alliances and allegiances work is fantastic. You've all the optional freedom to build how you want, but core armies remain the stronger in general terms. You don't have to soup together 5 different armies and aesthetics from your grand alliance to make a competitive or even decent army. 

Another aspect is the lore; gone is the idea that Stormcast would turn into the new Marines and whilst they dominated the early stories, AoS is steadily getting a wealth of stories about every faction. The Novella series were some outstanding stories; short and yet not too short giving flavour and life to the setting. 

GW went further and got Brian Blessed to voice Gotrek for a new Audio Drama (which prompted me to read all the old world stories of Gotrek and Felix). 

To me when AoS launched it didn't have passion behind it. It felt like someone in marketing and management's idea of how to make a product.** It lacked soul and heart; it lacked fire and passion. AoS 2.0 has it in buckets, you can feel the change in the stories and books being written and published by BL; you can see it in the way its marketed and shown off. 
AoS is very different to old world, in some ways better and some different and some not as good. But in general more on the positive side. I like that some of the shift away from rank and file has made smaller point value games more viable. I like that I don't have to build 10001 models to just get a basic army together. It is sad to lose some of the positioning aspects of the old rank and file and there are still some niggles like how musicians and champions are treated. At the same time we've got magical spells which are so powerful they have physical models. 
The game shifted from a "low magic Old World" to a "High Magic AoS" setting. 

 

Is AoS perfect, nope. Is it vastly better than at launch yes. Is it better than Old World, no, nor is it worse it is simply a different beast with its own charms. To me its a little like comparing a shift from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack - glorious traditional orchestral scores and fantasy - into a fast beat heavy metal soundtrack of wild fantasy insane spells and worlds. Indeed there's a powerful 80s style vibe that runs through things and visually if you can imagine the high fantasy arts that came on some old musical sleeves then I think that gives an idea of the mad fantasy world of the Realms. 

 

 

*I like the old lore, but was never heavily invested into it. In fact since picking up AoS I've read more old world lore than ever before. 

** interestingly a few interviews have come out since which reveal AoS did have formal rules and a very different launch originally planned. Odd choices were made to appease middle managers and with GW of that era having more of a disconnect at the top end between its managers and its fanbase, this no doubt contributed to the very strange slew of choices that resulted.

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I loved 8th Edition and was initially sad that it came to an end. Then, it hit me like a thunder bolt from Azyr. This new game is absolutely, utterly flipping brilliant. You can’t get more Warhammer than this.

Honestly, grab your your dirigible suit, star soul mace and your Mawcrusher and get on board.

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4 minutes ago, Greyshadow said:

Honestly, grab your your dirigible suit, star soul mace and your Mawcrusher and get on board.

In the interests of everyone arriving alive at the other end of the journey - please don't bring your Mawcrushers onto the airship. It's all fun and games until it gets a bit irate and smashes a hole in the hull or gets panicked and tears up the rigging with its wings. You do not transport dragons/wyverns and associated breeds by airship. 

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I had not checked out GW for many years and was completely unaware of the system change. Initially I was a little displeased with the change particularly the lose of regiments. Then I watched a few Battle-reports and immediately saw how improved the system was over Fantasy. I also have never liked the focus on shooting that is so pernicious in 40k, so AOS appeals much more to me personally and it is also much more streamlined. 

As for the lore side of things, I found it a touch confusing at first but was instantly enamoured by the open nature of the mortal realms. I realized that the Old World could even hypothetically exist within one of the realms. I constantly see people want the realms mapped out but I enjoy creating maps within my own narrative and like to imagine which realm they would belong to. 

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Gamewise it blows WFB out of the water. The old rules were so clunky and bloated that it took 3+ hours to play a big game even with veteran players.

Lorewise it doesn’t have near the detail yet, but it’s still only five years old. Helpful entirely that if I want my old world fix, Blood Bowl II and Total War Warhammer are there for the PC.

Edited by Fairbanks
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19 minutes ago, Overread said:

In the interests of everyone arriving alive at the other end of the journey - please don't bring your Mawcrushers onto the airship. It's all fun and games until it gets a bit irate and smashes a hole in the hull or gets panicked and tears up the rigging with its wings. You do not transport dragons/wyverns and associated breeds by airship. 

Though the daring may wish to transport their airship via Mawcrusha.

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I only played 40k before AoS - (a stint of WFB when I was a youngster but never really properly)

I love AoS - the game, the models and lore are all top notch

I'm v sad to not be playing it much right now but equally v excited that I have a gardenhammer date set up for later this week! 

 

 

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I played 40k when I was 15 (16 years ago) and at the time I always wanted to play fantasy but it was just too confusing and convoluted. AOS seems like a much simpler and vastly superior gaming system for most which you can see in the way it is growing. As for the lore, it is getting better all the time! I do love the Old World setting a lot but for me AOS lore is becoming awesome. I try to read novels for the armies I collect (Deepkin and Kharadron Overlords) and that gets me pumped to play and collect. 

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Love it, personally. I wish there was more quality fiction in the setting to supplement the tabletop experience (compared to 40K it’s pretty sparse) and there’s certainly some rules that maybe need to be revisited such as how easily some newer factions can just shoot your heros off the board, but in general AoS is a great play experience with interesting tactical decisions, great models and solid rules. 

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4 hours ago, tripalreno4 said:

 what do people play now for their Warhammer Fantasy fix?

If  you mean playing a rank&file wargames , I'm currently into Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings. Game system is very solid, miniatures and lore gorgeous. I still have the option of KoW and WHFB 6th, both are fairly active (depends on where you are of course) and always great fun. As for AoS, I dropped it since finishing my army. It was enjoyable at first, for what it was, but I can't find a reason to return despite trying. I have yet to read an enticing book, the game has evolved too much into ccg-combo/roll buckets of dice for my taste, and the miniature design in the last couple of years has been less and less appealing to me. I am aware this is an AoS forum but I hope a non 100% pro-aos opinion is acceptable. I wouldn't mind dusting off the models if things became more interesting in the future or if I could find a like-minded gaming group (more creative, less competitive).       

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