Tips & Tricks for Playing Faster?

[Gitzdee]

My games tend to get a big long because i dont play many games. I know this is easily fixed by playing more games, but until then i am wondering how u prepare for a game to make games go faster. I tried making a cheat sheet so i didnt have to look up many things but while playing i noticed that i missed a few things and still had to look up a lot. I also used the app last time to look up the warscrolls faster but i found myself forgetting about some abilities because i cant see everything on a small screen. What do u use to play games faster? 

Edit: (I also dont get why the Allegiance Abilities and the Matched Play section has Path to Glory in between)  

Edited August 1, 2022 by Gitzdee

[El Syf]

It won't make it go any faster as such but if you can't remember special rules an attack might have (after to hit and wound rolls), I still find it best to roll the dice then worry about it. There's always a chance you or your opponent will fluff the roll, so reading what would have happened is rendered null and moot anyway.

[Dogmantra]

If you're using a generator like aosreminders to generate a cheat sheet, I suggest switching to making it yourself. The process of writing it out helps you to remember things and you may not need to reference it. Don't copy text directly from the books, summarise it in a way you can understand and read quickly. You can also customise what you put in based on what you find tricky to remember. I usually list out everything that I can do in the hero phase and all the attack profiles of my units, as well as any abilities that happen at the start of a phase. I break it down phase by phase.

Find a formula for telling your opponent what they need to roll clearly and succinctly, especially for saves. Mine is something along the lines of "three saves at minus one rend, two damage each". It nips any questions in the bud right there.

Similarly, if you're rolling attacks with a unit that has multiple profiles, combine as many as you can and use different coloured dice to differentiate. My general rule is that if they have the same hit and wound value, roll them all together and then worry about splitting them up when it comes to rolling saves. You can do this with effects like "on a 2+ the target suffers d3 MWs" where you specify one colour of die as the d3 and just roll damage at the same time. It doesn't sound like it would save much time, but it does add up.

Movement trays! If you're playing an army with a lot of units of 10 or more models, these will speed you up no end. If you have access to a 3d printer or know someone who does, there are loads of free designs on thingiverse.com. If you can't 3d print them, you can make pretty passable extremely cheap movement trays but cutting cardboard into the rough shape of the unit, covering the top in magnetic tape, then sticking a washer under each base.

And finally, use the time when your opponent is acting to think about what you're going to do and measure things. Look at the board state, work out what you need to achieve on your next turn. For example, while your opponent is moving, look for weak spots to see if you can achieve a battle tactic next turn. Even if things change and you see a better opportunity when it comes around to your turn, the time you spent evaluating the board and looking at your options will speed that decision up.

[RuneBrush]

A few that I use.

Build yourself up to 2k point games.  You wouldn't look to run the London Marathon without doing some half marathons first afterall!

Reduce the number of "bolt on" rules that have minimal impact on a game - scenery rules are a good example of something that's often forgotten after turn 1.  You can always add rules back in when the game becomes more natural.

Pre-count your dice in sets of ten - ideally if you have enough dice, have sets of ten of a specific colour.  This pays dividends if you need to roll vast quantities of dice - 44 dice is simply four sets of different colours plus four extra ones.

Have your spells, allegiance abilities etc on warscroll sized cards for quick reference.  Equally use tokens to remind you that units have specific buffs.

Stay hydrated and top up your glucose levels.  Gaming is surprisingly taxing on the old brain so it's really important to replace the fluids and glucose that you're using up!  I can easily get through a pint or two of water during a 2k AoS game.  Jelly Babies are great for a quick shot of sugar

[Maddpainting]

1) Have dice ready, multiple dice pools that are color coded and stick to this code, make sure to make wound dice different as well. 
2) Pick up misses, this way your opponent can see, it becomes much faster too with 2 people looking to double check and have a dice tray, this will help more than you think speed the game up
3) If you dont know your rules print a cheat sheet out, Its ok to have cheat sheets. Or even unit cards, Dry erase marker on chips or tokens as well can really speed up things, cast mystic shield add a blue token/chip with MS on it. 
4) Plan your moves during your opponents turns as much as you can, have a game plan, it can be tricky sometimes with redeploys and such, but the more you know what your plan is you can execute it much faster.
5) Movement can take a bit, there are a lot of ways to speed this up, measure front to front and back to back. If you dont know how far a unit can move always measure the farthest away model(s) instead of the front models. If your movements are small pick up the back models and move them in front instead of moving all the models this way you most likely dont even need to move your front row or even 2 rows of models (say dwarfs or zombies as an example with 4" move, even with a 2-3" run you dont always need to more the front line) NOTE: If you need a picture of this let me know and I can make one for you.
6) When making attacks, try to do the attacks that could kill the unit first and all other smaller attacks last, this could save your time rolling an extra set of dice which takes up time as well. 

[yukishiro1]

Most of the time in a game of AOS is in moving, thinking about what you're going to do, and rolling dice. 

Time spent moving models is the hardest thing to reduce, though you can use things like movement trays to reduce the early game time you need to spend. When moving units with a lot of models, unless it's going to matter a lot or you play with people who are super sticklers, a lot of time can be saved by only measuring the model closest to your opponent carefully and then just moving up the rest of them in the same formation they were in before. Sometimes movement matters and you have to carefully measure every model but in a lot of cases it really doesn't matter and all that matters is that closest model since that's what is determining what your charge is going to be. 

Time spent thinking is the thing that benefits most from playing lots of games. But you can also address it by running through turn simulations on your own - just walk through a turn on your own. It works better if you have an actual board/table/mat to put your models on as if it was a real game, but even if you don't, you can just walk through stuff like your hero phase even without the models out. The other big thing you can do is start planning out your turn on your opponent's turn. 

Dice rolling is the easiest thing to cut down time on. Organize your dice in groups of 5 or 10 (I like 5, some people like 10) and have them there on the side of the board to be easily picked up in the amounts you need without having to count out each time. Use a dice tray to roll in. Picking out failures then rerolling successes its usually faster than the opposite. Learn your attack profiles for your main fighting units by memory so you don't have to look them up. 

[Gitzdee]

17 hours ago, Dogmantra said:

 I suggest switching to making it yourself.

I'll do this and share what i came up with.

[Gitzdee]

Put this together. Did i miss anything that is easy to forget?

AoS summary.docx

Edited August 2, 2022 by Gitzdee

[Dogmantra]

That's a great core template - I would move the heroic actions and rally before spellcasting because they happen at the start of the phase, so you can just read things in order. As you learn bits of the game, start deleting parts of the cheat sheet that you don't need. After a game, look through the sheet and think about what you didn't need last time and consider if you really won't remember that rule. One prime candidate here is the miscast rule. After a couple of miscasts you should easily remember that it's d3 mortal wounds and no more spellcasting on a double 1 to cast. Once you are confident that you do, delete it from the sheet. The idea is that if there's too much information it can slow you down just as much as you try to find the bits you need. Cutting it down to just the stuff you know you'll need to reference really helps.

I say that works as a core template because I would highly recommend customising it to each list you play. What I do before a game with a new list (usually the day before) is go through my list with the book to hand and break down all the models by phase. I find that splitting up my models' rules by phase is much better for actually playing than having them split up by model as in the book because during the hero phase you only care about the options you have in the hero phase, you don't care that, say, Lady Olynder does mortal wounds in the shooting phase, but you have to look at that info anyway to find what her spell does.

So I would go further and where you have the generic spells listed, also put down everyone's spell choices and warscroll spells, I like to break it down by character, so my hero phase section has bits that look like this:

Guardian of Souls
Spectral Lure - CV6, wholly within 24". Heal summonable d6, or return d6 wounds of models
Seal of Shyish - CV5, wholly within 12". Friendly unit has 5+ ward until next hero phase.

I also find it helpful to just write out the entire combat stats for each unit I've brought in the combat phase section, like so:

Chainrasps
Weapons 1"	2/4+/4+/-/1
+1 attack for leader. 6s to hit auto-wound.

But yeah, I suppose the overall thing I'm saying is to treat your cheat sheet as a living document, update it often to keep it useful, otherwise you'll start to ignore it.

[Gitzdee]

Thanks for the feedback. I usually type out the spells and artifacts i chose on the page i put my army list on. 

[Baron Klatz]

There’s some pretty nifty beginner cheat sheets and Core Rules pamphlets out there too you can keep on the side.

Otherwise just don’t sweat forgetting a few things. Even long time battle reporters like MWG Studios on YouTube miss a few rules or misinterpret something in almost every battle report and that’s 100’s now.

Just make like dice and roll with it.  

[Beliman]

I've made some "quickplay" sheets for Age of Sigmar and a resume of Beasts of Chaos and Kharadron Overlords (with FAQs and White Dwarf rules in it).

They are made to be printed in A4 and plasticized, but they are in spanish. Not sure if it will help.

Beasts_Chaos_ESP.pdf Fases 3.0_GHB2022.pdf Kharadron_Overlords_3.0_GHB2022.pdf

Edited August 4, 2022 by Beliman