AoSifying Wargames

[MaatithoftheBrand]

The other day I was flicking through some books and miniatures websites, vaguely planning purchases I need for running some D&D later in the year/pining after the ability to not be in lockdown/generally trying not to get too distracted looking forward to Stargrave, and it got me thinking.

Age of Sigmar is a large and expansive setting, and the battles that take place within it vary from small warbands of treasure hunters through to enormous battles with vast, neatly formed armies. And for the most part, there are ways to get something of a fix for each of those - Underworlds, Warcry, and Quest (as well as Soulbound and, to a lesser extend, the solo play games from the last full UK lockdown) offer a Warband feel, as (at least in theory) did/does Skirmish. Paths to Glory and the main game allow for small and medium clashes of warbands and armies in a more military context, and some of the campaigns and expansions such as Sieges allow for feelings of grandeur. 

However, there are a lot of other wargames on the market, and a lot of them do interesting things with their mechanics or designs. For example, the kingdom-building list creation/simplified ranked combat of Oathmark is something AoS simply cannot replicate with particular ease, and the feel of games such as Frostgrave are quite distinct. And that's leaving out all manner of other games - Kings of War, Runewars, Rangers of Shadowdeep, Mordheim, Gloomhaven, etc... 

So I thought I'd ask the community: which of these games would you like to adapt to be an AoS spin-off, and how would you do it? Or else what fluff or mechanics or general feel would you like to take from these games and add into AoS or an AoS spin-off game? 

[zilberfrid]

54 minutes ago, MaatithoftheBrand said:

The other day I was flicking through some books and miniatures websites, vaguely planning purchases I need for running some D&D later in the year/pining after the ability to not be in lockdown/generally trying not to get too distracted looking forward to Stargrave, and it got me thinking.

Age of Sigmar is a large and expansive setting, and the battles that take place within it vary from small warbands of treasure hunters through to enormous battles with vast, neatly formed armies. And for the most part, there are ways to get something of a fix for each of those - Underworlds, Warcry, and Quest (as well as Soulbound and, to a lesser extend, the solo play games from the last full UK lockdown) offer a Warband feel, as (at least in theory) did/does Skirmish. Paths to Glory and the main game allow for small and medium clashes of warbands and armies in a more military context, and some of the campaigns and expansions such as Sieges allow for feelings of grandeur. 

However, there are a lot of other wargames on the market, and a lot of them do interesting things with their mechanics or designs. For example, the kingdom-building list creation/simplified ranked combat of Oathmark is something AoS simply cannot replicate with particular ease, and the feel of games such as Frostgrave are quite distinct. And that's leaving out all manner of other games - Kings of War, Runewars, Rangers of Shadowdeep, Mordheim, Gloomhaven, etc... 

So I thought I'd ask the community: which of these games would you like to adapt to be an AoS spin-off, and how would you do it? Or else what fluff or mechanics or general feel would you like to take from these games and add into AoS or an AoS spin-off game? 

Frostgrave and Oathmark come to mind, maybe Rangers of Shadowdeep. All are mini agnostic.

Frostgrave is a Mordheim-like game that AoS just doesn't have, Rangers is its coop sibling.

Oathmark's kingdom building lends itself really well to grab a few good looking units without worrying how they perform in their BT. I really like their kingdom building, and how territories work.

Edited January 27, 2021 by zilberfrid

[Popisdead]

Post AoS Flames of War ended up mimicking the more modern approach to gaming AoS has.  FoW versions 1-3 were super details specific historical gaming.  Now they are moving to a plastic range, simplified army building, smaller tighter rules in lieu of exact rules to deal with obscure things that come up.  It fractured the game like AoS did but also for the better.  I don't care about having a staff team, and proper sgt for each pair of 155s,.. so having just the 4 bases of actual cannons is better.  

What AoS showed us a game is better, 20 years into the 21st century than some game written in the 1980s if you want longevity and sales.  

Having said that I'm glad there are old-man games like ancients, napoleonics, etc.  I'm happy to see diversity.  And the internet makes supporting those games a little easier for players.

[MaatithoftheBrand]

The Oathmark kingdom building is genuinely one of the most fun and innovative ways I've seen to reinvent/improve list building that I've seen in a long time - when I first saw them it was like I was a kid/teen again getting so excited to play around with lists! I think that the Oathmark "Terrain Lists" could be a fun alternative way to build/design Cities of Sigmar - you pick the "heart" of your city, and then different districts radiating out to decide which Order units you have access to. Though I imagine it would take someone with a better head for rules than me to come up with a way to satisfyingly add allegiance abilities on the top/into the mix, and whether that would replace warscroll battalions entirely.

With Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadowdeep, my big issues with adapting it for AoS would be deciding what the NPC/followers were - AoS is deliberately a much more Heroic setting, so deciding how to physrep the grubby and unimportant "thugs" and the like might be a tricky one.

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

I am not sure what games are out there as the historical siege games I played were all based on custom rules sets but that is what I would be most interested in trying to convert to AoS as it is an aspect where I feel the GW option is vastly undercooked but a style of play I loved.

I would love to find a way, for example, to reflect Stonehorns eating of rocks and metals as a way to breakdown castle walls, or Arachnarok Spiders scaling Castle walls.  I just haven't found a good historical siege game rule set to adapt nor have I had the time to customize my own. 

[Sance]

I think Warcry is the best skimirsh sized game and with the last Tome of Champions it does provide a better campaign experience than Mordheim.

I'm currently in a mordheim campaign, and this game is frustrating, the snowball effect is real. Mordheim is an amazing setting with bad rules. Just play Warcry if your like the AoS setting. Sor-Koroth the silent city is a cool place to have warbands hanging out and fight others for loots and territory.

But Frostgrave does magic better, i you want to play wizard in the AoS setting and with skirmish scale, yeah Frostgrave is pretty good. I think it needs a bit of adaptation to integrate the Endless Spells. We have tons of good miniatures for the spells, if someone can come up with an AoS version of Frostgrave it would be pretty cool.

 

Rangers of Shadowdeep is a good solo experience, and with this damn pandemic, it does provide a satisfying boardgame / rpg feel. I would really enjoy a Rangers of Shadowdeep campaign in the Sigmar setting.

Never tried Oathmark, kingdom building sounds pretty cool tho.

This post is sponsored by Joseph McCullough

Edited January 27, 2021 by Sance

[EccentricCircle]

I'm almost working on the opposite at the moment.

Half of the folks I game with aren't really interested in GW stuff, but are keen to play Osprey/McCullough style wargames. The other half are too deep in the GW hobby to care that anything else exists. (None of them really play AoS, its 40K with a bit of Warcry mostly, but that's another issue).

So what I'm trying to do is write a completely system agnostic campaign and game setting, where you can basically bring whatever models you have, and whatever system you have and we'll play which ever game suits them best or which the other player isn't allergic to.

So within the world there will be scope for armies to clash on the open field using Dragon Rampant, Kingdoms can be designed using Oathmark, people can bring old Warhammer fantasy armies, or play AoS.

For skirmish gaming, we can have wizards scouting into ruins using frostgrave, or crazy fanatics clashing with Warcry. All can feed into the same narrative campaign, and the influence the player's overall standing in the world, the size of their kingdom, which magical resources they have at their disposal and so on.

 

The challenge has been writing a setting that people's AoS armies can fit into and still feel like themselves, without a) just filing the serial numbers off, and b) not making it too "warhammery" for the AoS haters to want to have their Oathmark kingdoms or frostgrave warbands also fit into that world.

I write a lot of RPG settings. So am good at the craft. I know how I want it to look and feel. The question is whether others will buy into that.

Edited January 27, 2021 by EccentricCircle

[MaatithoftheBrand]

45 minutes ago, EccentricCircle said:

I'm almost working on the opposite at the moment.

Half of the folks I game with aren't really interested in GW stuff, but are keen to play Osprey/McCullough style wargames. The other half are too deep in the GW hobby to care that anything else exists. (None of them really play AoS, its 40K with a bit of Warcry mostly, but that's another issue).

So what I'm trying to do is write a completely system agnostic campaign and game setting, where you can basically bring whatever models you have, and whatever system you have and we'll play which ever game suits them best or which the other player isn't allergic to.

So within the world there will be scope for armies to clash on the open field using Dragon Rampant, Kingdoms can be designed using Oathmark, people can bring old Warhammer fantasy armies, or play AoS.

For skirmish gaming, we can have wizards scouting into ruins using frostgrave, or crazy fanatics clashing with Warcry. All can feed into the same narrative campaign, and the influence the player's overall standing in the world, the size of their kingdom, which magical resources they have at their disposal and so on.

 

The challenge has been writing a setting that people's AoS armies can fit into and still feel like themselves, without a) just filing the serial numbers off, and b) not making it too "warhammery" for the AoS haters to want to have their Oathmark kingdoms or frostgrave warbands also fit into that world.

I write a lot of RPG settings. So am good at the craft. I know how I want it to look and feel. The question is whether others will buy into that.

I'd be interested in finding out more about this setting!

[Cronotekk]

The Oathmark kingdom building mechanic would have been amazing back when there were no battletomes and it was just the grand alliance books. I could imagine stuff like you'd pick your "capital" faction which gave you that micro-faction's allegiance ability. Then you'd expand with stuff like "sylvaneth glade" or "swifthawk agent spire" and it would expand your roster pool.

[zilberfrid]

10 minutes ago, Cronotekk said:

The Oathmark kingdom building mechanic would have been amazing back when there were no battletomes and it was just the grand alliance books. I could imagine stuff like you'd pick your "capital" faction which gave you that micro-faction's allegiance ability. Then you'd expand with stuff like "sylvaneth glade" or "swifthawk agent spire" and it would expand your roster pool.

The old City builder from Warhammer Community would fit that so incredibly well.

It was the first thing I thought when I read Oathmark's description.

Glad it is received well, it did not pick the right year to get launched.

Edited January 27, 2021 by zilberfrid

[Cronotekk]

Just now, zilberfrid said:

The old City builder from Warhammer Community would fit that so incredibly well.

A real shame they didn't carry that forward to Cities of Sigmar. I would love to make some Aztec themed freeguild with a Seraphon enclave

[Clan's Cynic]

2 hours ago, Popisdead said:

Post AoS Flames of War ended up mimicking the more modern approach to gaming AoS has.  FoW versions 1-3 were super details specific historical gaming.  Now they are moving to a plastic range, simplified army building, smaller tighter rules in lieu of exact rules to deal with obscure things that come up.  It fractured the game like AoS did but also for the better.  I don't care about having a staff team, and proper sgt for each pair of 155s,.. so having just the 4 bases of actual cannons is better.  

I don't know. I enjoy FoW but it's been haemorrhaging players to Bolt Action for a long time as of v4 and most of the time it's cited as because of the v4 choices, whilst former-40k players just like it because it's 3rd edition 40k but with a WW2 skin. I've been getting into Battlegroup because it scratches the itch of being less 'Hollywood' than Flames of War and it's horrific looking parking lots, especially in Team Yankee.

To me A Song of Ice & Fire is a fantastic rank-and-file system and really everything a rank-and-file AoS/TOW should be. The core rules are simple, the games are fast and brutal, it has alternating activations, it does away with 'clunky' things like measuring-pivoting by just giving you a free pivot when you start a movement/end a charge, your Commander choice can have a dramatic effect on how the same army plays, it's relatively well balanced (with a few notable exceptions) and avoids things like massive blobbed units by having a static unit number (IE if that unit has 12 men, it has 12 men, you can't buy 12 more and bring it to 24). 

It's also cheap to get into for a typical rank-and-file game (your average 40pt army is around £150, less if you play a more elite army like Night's Watch), but we all know that'd never happen with GW.

Edited January 27, 2021 by Clan's Cynic

[EccentricCircle]

3 hours ago, MaatithoftheBrand said:

I'd be interested in finding out more about this setting!

I'll post a more detailed explanation tomorrow, but basically its Fantasy Mercury, where the day lasts for years, and nomadic tribes of different fantasy races constantly migrate sunwards to avoid the freezing advance of night, and the murderous Nighthaunt that come with it. The plan is to make an "alternate" warhammer setting which all the factions (or at least those my friends and I play) fit, but with a different mythos to AoS. Ironically none of us actually play Beastclaw, so while they'd fit perfectly the fall of night evolved separately from stuff in our D&D campaign, and wasn't particularly inspired by the everwinter.

[Popisdead]

22 hours ago, Clan's Cynic said:

I don't know. I enjoy FoW but it's been haemorrhaging players to Bolt Action for a long time as of v4 and most of the time it's cited as because of the v4 choices, whilst former-40k players just like it because it's 3rd edition 40k but with a WW2 skin. I've been getting into Battlegroup because it scratches the itch of being less 'Hollywood' than Flames of War and it's horrific looking parking lots, especially in Team Yankee.

I think BA got popular because of 6th and 7th ed 40k (the Kirby era).  The other thing is it's more relatable to get into BA because it's a 28 mm infantry game.  People have a hard time getting into 15 mm.  I've tried both and stuck with FoW.  I think grumblers cite V4 because they are old man gamers.  The younger FoW players loved V4 for the faster more enjoyable game.