AoS scenery selection and rules lacking?

[Sception]

Is it just me, or has the selection and rules for Age of Sigmar scenery gotten kind of bad and bland lately?  It seems several fantastic and impressive old kits like the Watchtower, Ruined Tower, Warscryer Citadel, and other buildings are completely gone.  As are a number of simpler, more accessible kits like the Citadel Woods and Arcane Ruins, and even some of the more interesting earlier Age of Sigmar pieces.  In their place, it seems like all that's left is kind of generic ruined walls or random platforms that not only don't really look like anything, they don't really look like they're the ruins of anything either.  Like they're simultaneously too specific but don't actually represent anything coherent.  And then there's Warcry Terrain that's just /so/ bland and minimal.  Not counting the faction specific stuff, the one good hold over imo is the Mausoleum, and I wouldn't be at all shocked to see that one gone next year if the current pattern, unless a revised LoN book comes out and retroactively makes it their official faction terrain.  And the Realmgates, too, I guess.  Those are pretty cool, and still available.

The rules for the official matched play stuff also feels so stripped down as to hardly even be there in the first place.  Like, any old stuff loses all of its old rules (does it even count as an obstacle anymore?) for a random result from a chart too big to matter, but even that's more than some of the warcry whatevers terrain with rules like 'obstacle' and nothing else.  And even among these uninspired leftovers, some things can't even be acquired anymore?  Like one of the official terrain pieces for matched play is 'Warcry Statue Head', and while I can find pictures of the thing online, from what I can tell it isn't available for purchase in any product games workshop still sells, including online only stuff.

40k has a variety of building kits to create imposing, multi-tier ruined cityscapes with impressive verticality, and the 9e rules seem to encourage and reward building and playing on the sorts of dramatic scenery that makes for visually engaging, exciting, narrative games.  When did AoS's official scenery get so mundane and understated and honestly kind of shabby by comparison?  Why do the GHB 2020 scenery rules for matched play seem to be moving in exactly the opposite direction?  "Use only these kits, built in only this way, and even then expect the rules for interacting with that terrain to be largely unengaging unless you happen to play in a realm where the default terrain rule actually does something."  I was so excited when the Ossiarch Bonereaper promotional videos and images were first coming out and it looked like there might be some sort of new bone fortress walls & gate set coming with them, like finally an interesting new replacement for the Dreadhold, but then nothing materialized and it turned out to just be a studio display piece, not an actual product, and I was so disappointed.

The setting has all these exciting over-the-top Mythic Fantasy elements - flying cities, soaring towers, magical fortresses, living continents, floating pyramids, giant primeval woods, etc.  But the actual tables GW seems to want us to play on are less dramatic and fantastical than they were back in 8th ed fantasy battles, with most of the terrain looking like it belongs with some other smaller scale & lower fantasy game.   Like I know, "build it yourself" that's fine and good, but it only goes so far when the official range doesn't support it and the official rules don't promote it.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Sception

[Greyshadow]

No, it's not just you. I feel that compact single drop features are lacking and these pieces are what we need for the clash of entire armies. Dragonfate Dias, Warscryer Citadel and Witchfate Tor are great examples of terrain suited to an army game. 'Here is a hill, over here is a dark forest and here is an imposing fortress' is the kind of thing you what to be saying when you are setting up an interesting battle field. The problem is all the previous examples and many other examples of this sort of terrain is out of print.

We do have some very nice and suitable faction terrain though, (I am a massive fan of the Gloomtide Shipwreck scenery piece) but I agree that a few more pieces would be nice.

I do love the Warcry terrain, the new ziggurat sets and even the older Azyrite Ruins but I feel these are more useful as skirmish scenery where we zoom in on a small area rather than survey an entire battle field.

As for the rules, well I feel they are vastly improved. I like my terrain rules lean and easy to remember to keep the focus on the toy soldiers but that is my personal taste.

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Greyshadow

[Baron Klatz]

Yeah, I mean i'd love and pre-order on the spot more fantastical terrain like floating islands and living landmasses that suit the lore of the Mortal Realms but not only would those over complicate things in an average battle but the added random elements would be a bigger Matched Play turn off.

I mean it's at a whopping 42 scenery warscrolls now. Cuts have to be made to keep the game on track.

That said I feel they've done a great job of balancing the streamline nature of AoS while keeping it feeling very mythical with the Scenery they have kept from the beginning, magical faction focused scenery, the newer fantastical Forbidden Power terrain, Endless Spells adding their own thematic flavor and now standardized realmscapes to keep it interesting even for plainer battlefields.

Certainly the AoS battlefields are as epic and versatile as they've ever been for players, if not more so.

 

Lots of great stuff on the board these days to accommodate all the huge fights, crazy magical mash ups and small skirmishes in an AoS battle.

 

However if you're a fellow Narrative nut that really needs that epic fantasy fix that standard gaming can't cater to (like an authentic Aether Sky War) then look up Dark Fantastic Mills. Gorgeous  over-the-top terrain that's perfect for Open and Narrative play in the Mortal Realms.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/Dark_Fantastic/status/1286242258472271872

[Greyshadow]

You have reminded me at @Baron Klatz just how good the faction terrrain is. I need to put in an order and get myself the Seraphon, Beastmen and Osiarch terrain at least before they are eventually retired because they are awesome.

[Fairbanks]

There are probably a few things missing from GW's terrain line, but the biggest has to be actual an living cityscape. Ruins are okay, although I never feel like the one kit is enough, nor is there enough interesting 2nd and third story terrain. The Warcry Starter set was as close as they've gotten, but I never got the feeling like anyone currently lived in those buildings. The Industrial and Necromunda/Zone Mortalis scenery checks every box but the big one; it isn't something that makes sense for AoS.

I mean, who doesn't want to fight a inner city battle between the City's Guard and Stormcast stationed there, the Fyreslayers whom they paid as mercs, the Cult of Disciples trying to rise up, the undead raised by a Necromancer, the Ironjawz trying to siege the city gates, and the Skaven that tunneled into the city on a whim.

[EccentricCircle]

I would love them to bring back the dragonfate dais. It is such a cool model, and seems perfect for high fantasy AoS type scenarios.

I'll have to check out the Dark Fantastic Mills, the picture posted above looks great.

I think one of the main reasons we haven't gotten a functional city terrain for AoS is probably because GW do actually make live-inable houses for their Lord of the Rings line. Technically they're a different scale, but its close enough that no one actually cares. The lake town kit is really versatile, and it looks as though the new Rohirrim houses are a similar idea. They've let LoTR carry the more mundane stuff like houses and jetties, while focusing on higher fantasy stuff and ruins for AoS. (They don't actually sell their older middle earth ruins any more, despite those sets being fantastic.)

Still, at least with terrain, there are so many third party options that we almost don't need games workshop to do anything. Its not like the models, where every unit is super specific. A house or a tree are a house or a tree, regardless of who makes them.

[Sception]

I guess I just feel like houses shouldn't just be houses in AoS.  WHFB structures were larger and more visually interesting & stylistically distinct than most 3rd party or LotR houses or huts, or honestly any of the 'Azyrite' stuff from warcry that makes up an unacceptably large portion of the pitched battle scenery rules this year.  Not that stuff like "Azyrite Townscape" should even count as rules, imo.  Like seriously, "obstacles" and nothing else?  not even a roll on the table?  It would literally have been a more interesting pile of little terrain pieces if it's warscroll didn't exist, at least then it would get a roll on the random scenery rule table.  A warscroll that is somehow less mechanically interesting than /no warscroll/ is kind of a feat, and contributed a fair bit to the frustration that prompted the original post.

I guess mostly I just really don't like the warcry terrain for AoS tables, both as models and as rules.  As such, I'm unhappy at the extent to which it's taken over base matched play table scenery (as opposed to the faction terrain, which I do mostly like), seemingly pushing out some imo better, more interesting terrain kits.

I also don't like the conceptual over-emphasis on pre-age-of-chaos azyrite civilization ruins in the AoS terrain line in general.  Natural terrain - forests and hills and such - are one thing, though IMO those could also do with an extra injection of mythic fantasy for AoS.  But when it comes to structures in 2e, the interesting and important battles aren't being waged over the blasted ruins of millenia past, they're being fought over the recently constructed cities & fortifications of living civilizations of Chaos Worshippers, New-Azyrites, Ossiarchs, and so on.  Having so much of the scenery of AoS revolve around ancient azyrite ruins is like having a Napoleonic War game where where most of the terrain consisted of ancient greek & roman ruins.

[Clan's Cynic]

Back in my day we didn't have all this fancy, overpriced, plastic terrain. We made our own cardboard, cartons, plaster and mammoth tusk. 

[EccentricCircle]

3 hours ago, Clan's Cynic said:

Back in my day we didn't have all this fancy, overpriced, plastic terrain. We made our own cardboard, cartons, plaster and mammoth tusk. 

Cartons and plaster? You were lucky! There was none of this newfangled "papier mache" in my day! I made my first warhammer hills out of unfired clay and bits of rock from the garden! And I liked it!

Edited August 14, 2020 by EccentricCircle