Playing with Legends armies: why the hate?

[Lord Krungharr]

I've probed fellow gamers about playing with Legends armies and units (I'm an Azgorh player), and while many are happy with it, many others are quite disdainful of it...that is, they don't want to play against them.  All tournaments I've asked about it say no.  Why is this?  I mean, they're just different armies, and while underpowered, some of those Legends warscrolls are not push-overs by any means, and they can use generic GHB traits and enhancements and CAs, besides whatever else they have on the warscrolls.

Some Legends armies owners are old Fantasy players, so I get a sense of a little bitterness from those folks.  But the new young players are like 'Ewwww'.  I for one would love to see Tomb Kings across the table even when I'm using my Troggoths or Clan Skryre! 

And Azgorh isn't even that old, still having their own CTs and Artefacts.....they had a good army trait when FW still had them available, the Blackshard Armor was great, ignoring the 1st wound taken by each unit per phase, plus the flying enemies taking magma to the face if they fly over 6".  Then GW got rid of those when they went to Legends.  BUT THAT'S OKAY, we just want to use our cool old-ahzz models!

Any other ppl busting out the Legends here and there?  Why wait for the Old World?

Also Greasus Goldtooth has an AMAZING warscroll!  (sorry can't post pictures for some reason)  Eat this Belakor.....ENG_HEROES_OCTOBER.pdf (warhammer-community.com)

Go to the first warscroll

[EccentricCircle]

Legends are basically fine, but most of the online discourse around the game is dominated by the tiny majority of players who are into matched play, tournaments, and keeping up with the meta game.

GW sales vs tournament attendance numbers show that demographic to be small overall. However they are the folks who go out of their way to talk about the game , both online and at stores. They are also the ones most likely to want pick up games rather than playing with a small group of friends and not breaking out of that bubble. So they are the majority of this and every other forum, save a few narrative and old school communities perhaps.

To the tourney crows playing anything but the latest gw approved material is heresy, so being sent to legends is a death sentence. Really though, its fine, and as a casual player I'd rather play a single finished rules set where all the warscrolls are out, rather than try to keep up with an ever evolving slate. Its much easier to houserule the newest factions into legends than vis ersa after all!

[zilberfrid]

The attention given to Legends is minimal, so you have writing and balancing styles from 1st edition to now.

You do get fun stuff like the Hellcannon being allowed in Barak Thryng.

[Beliman]

6 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

You do get fun stuff like the Hellcannon being allowed in Barak Thryng.

Sadly, Barak Thryng from 2d KOs book only allows Fyreslayers or Cities of Sigmar Duardin. Not even Gotrek as Coalition...

[zilberfrid]

Oh yeah, I remember.

Sad times.

[Lord Krungharr]

Guess what I'll do is write some various lists from tomes that I could use my Legion of Azgorh as, and bring them with every time.  If people don't want to play Azgorh, they get to play the City of Azgorh, or Slaves to Azgorh.  Which means I'll have to make room for my Tree-Revenants, Treelord, and 3 Mutaliths in the travel case 😛

 

[Skreech Verminking]

On 12/31/2022 at 2:26 AM, Lord Krungharr said:

I've probed fellow gamers about playing with Legends armies and units (I'm an Azgorh player), and while many are happy with it, many others are quite disdainful of it...that is, they don't want to play against them.  All tournaments I've asked about it say no.  Why is this?  I mean, they're just different armies, and while underpowered, some of those Legends warscrolls are not push-overs by any means, and they can use generic GHB traits and enhancements and CAs, besides whatever else they have on the warscrolls.

Some Legends armies owners are old Fantasy players, so I get a sense of a little bitterness from those folks.  But the new young players are like 'Ewwww'.  I for one would love to see Tomb Kings across the table even when I'm using my Troggoths or Clan Skryre! 

And Azgorh isn't even that old, still having their own CTs and Artefacts.....they had a good army trait when FW still had them available, the Blackshard Armor was great, ignoring the 1st wound taken by each unit per phase, plus the flying enemies taking magma to the face if they fly over 6".  Then GW got rid of those when they went to Legends.  BUT THAT'S OKAY, we just want to use our cool old-ahzz models!

Any other ppl busting out the Legends here and there?  Why wait for the Old World?

Also Greasus Goldtooth has an AMAZING warscroll!  (sorry can't post pictures for some reason)  Eat this Belakor.....ENG_HEROES_OCTOBER.pdf (warhammer-community.com)

Go to the first warscroll

Finding a tournament that allows legend units or even armies will be extremely hard.

I personally started using those legend units in my conversion work or just plain started using them as proxies for something different. (Like for example the poisoned wind mortar team on a 32mm base as a warlock bombardier)

but as long as your playing anything but tournaments, shouldn’t really be a problem.

with maybe a few exceptions that only want to practice tournament games there shouldn’t be too many people out there not allowing units of the legend sort to be used in a game at least I haven’t met that many.

then again asking before hand is always a good option.

If there is a tournament you think might allow it ask the organizer if he is fine with that the other players can’t do really anything about that. And if they find it distasteful then they are probably those people who want all of the old world armies gone, not knowing that with maybe the stormcast and fish-things all of the armies are from the old world or were heavily inspired by the old world theme, such as fyreslayers which are nothing else then slayers dwarfs called different from the old world 

[Lord Krungharr]

Maybe if I can gather some local enthusiasts we can slap together a big enough crowd for a Legends tournament.  Would be awesome to have all the old Fantasy terrain too but WOW those kits are expensive now!  

[JackStreicher]

I allowed legend armies for my tournaments, however: No cherry picking of legends warscrolls since I know people will search and find some broken interaction with some old warscroll.

 

I‘d also never forbid a S2D player to bring a mammoth - heck I am one of those guys who paid a stack of money for mine just to be forced to beg being allowed to use it half if a year later. I paid money for my model, you did for yours, just use it.

Edited January 1, 2023 by JackStreicher

[Lord Krungharr]

Ooh a Mammoth!  Wish I had one of those...and that it was hollow so I could transport the rest of the army inside.

I think the keywords in most of the Legends scrolls would prohibit too much abuse, if any were even possible.  But happy to hear a TO is doing things right!

[Skreech Verminking]

12 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

I allowed legend armies for my tournaments, however: No cherry picking of legends warscrolls since I know people will search and find some broken interaction with some old warscroll.

 

I‘d also never forbid a S2D player to bring a mammoth - heck I am one of those guys who paid a stack of money for mine just to be forced to beg being allowed to use it half if a year later. I paid money for my model, you did for yours, just use it.

and as for legend units, I’ll be using one tomorrow in a 2000points game.

my opponent is fine with me using the clawlord on brood horror.

I’ll send some pics after the battle

Edited January 2, 2023 by Skreech Verminking

[Skreech Verminking]

So this is the clawlord on brood horror I converted.

lets see how well he will do in his campaign against the fish-things tomorrow.

yes-yes fish is back on the menu

[Gitzdee]

I think it is awesome that some players still invest in their Legends armies and i would gladly play them if i had the chance.

I look at the the Legends stuff more as a not-intended-for-matched-play-anymore thing or just no longer supported.

Edit: I also bought Qulathis the Exile to find out it was put in Legends, but still going to use to model.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Gitzdee

[wayfarer]

Haven't been to many events since before covid, but then I found smaller and one day events more likely to allow legends.  Once had a TO come and check out my Preytons as he didn't recognise the name. 

I have used and seen Legends used in events at WHW, Fimir often with troll support for example.

Once long ago I even managed to use a Great Spined Chaos Beast there, although it had to stand in as a Giant Spawn as the Beast never made it over from WFB.

[Lord Krungharr]

Oh yeah, I used to have the Spined Beast, that thing was cool!  The ginormous Spawn was also cool, but never could find a well-priced one.  Wish there was a Chaos faction that had 1) gigantic spawn 2) multiple various abilities to more regularly convert friends and foes into spawn 3) ways to make Spawn battleline and augment their performance.  Thankfully the Mutalith and Spawn are still in the StD tome, so at least I have something like that.  Guess the giant Spawn and Spined Beast could be Mutalith proxies, though they're not tentacly.  

 

[Fairbanks]

When WFB ended and Age of Sigmar started with the 1.0 rules, there was a small group of people who literally could not take any criticism of the AoS ruleset. None. Total “Your words are violence.” reactions, even to justifiable issues (1.0 Ruleset had a lot of good and a lot of really bad).

Since GW moved Brets, TKs, a lot of High Elves, and a number of metal models to the Legends section, these people are the first to gatekeep the legacy players from playing what they want. Even though with the exception of TKs in an early meta (which was then FAQ’d), most will not be competitive. Even those who have been here from the beginning, because how dare something remind them of the torment they went through at the beginning of the game.

[Skreech Verminking]

2 hours ago, Fairbanks said:

When WFB ended and Age of Sigmar started with the 1.0 rules, there was a small group of people who literally could not take any criticism of the AoS ruleset. None. Total “Your words are violence.” reactions, even to justifiable issues (1.0 Ruleset had a lot of good and a lot of really bad).

Since GW moved Brets, TKs, a lot of High Elves, and a number of metal models to the Legends section, these people are the first to gatekeep the legacy players from playing what they want. Even though with the exception of TKs in an early meta (which was then FAQ’d), most will not be competitive. Even those who have been here from the beginning, because how dare something remind them of the torment they went through at the beginning of the game.

Don’t worry the highelves still see a good amount of games.

with the release of lumineth there seem to have been a countless amount of people playing them with their old higelve models

[Beliman]

TO here allow to play with them, so having a Legends army seems to be something to be proud of.
There are only a few people playing them and they have really bad rules (not even enjoyable), but people love them no matter what.

[Skreech Verminking]

1 hour ago, Beliman said:

TO here allow to play with them, so having a Legends army seems to be something to be proud of.
There are only a few people playing them and they have really bad rules (not even enjoyable), but people love them no matter what.

Yeah they really are amazing.

I have a friend who owns the tomb kings (in my opinion the more interesting dead army then whatever bonereapers are meant to be)

and he went to every tournament no matter how good or bad they were.

sadly recently since the whole legend stuff. It seems like mang tos are currently banning armies that aren’t supported anymore even if  they still have rules. 
not something I’m fond of.

in my area this seems more and more frequent.

Personally I kinda find this stupid bit at least most people in my area are fond at playing against any army as long as it is fun to play the game.

 

 

 

[Gitzdee]

As long as this game still uses dice rolls every army always has a chance of competing against another army. And if someone loves to take the risk of using an outdated army with slightly worse rules they should be allowed to. Some of the best looking armies i have ever seen are whfb ones and i would be glad to play those. But i am no TO XD. 

[Gitzdee]

Double

Edited January 3, 2023 by Gitzdee

[Beliman]

4 hours ago, Gitzdee said:

As long as this game still uses dice rolls every army always has a chance of competing against another army.

From my POV, people that have a Legends armies stop playing them because they are not good enough and they have something better to play that has better chance to win a game.

Our TOW wants to have a bigger community with tournaments every few weeks. Banning other's people toys because they are old is not something to worry about.

Edited January 3, 2023 by Beliman

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Personally, I can really see both perpectives here. I can see why people with legends armies would want to play them at tournaments. They are definitely not overpowered (although they are ocasionally pretty janky) and for most people they are real labours of love.

But on the other hand, it feels like people who really want to take the competitive side of the game seriously should also be entitled to a space of their own. And where can they go if not to tournaments? I have played some games pretty competitively (although not AoS), and I can understand being disappointed when you go to a tournament to be a Serious Competitior Person, but end up having to play what is essentially a janky joke list that never had any real chance of winning.

I'm all for making the miniature game hobby more accessible (although let's be real, most people with legends armies are not new players). I think it is good to actively put work into ensuring that there is space in the hobby for new players. Both on a personal and club or store level. I strongly dislike the elitism and in-group mentality that I have personally experienced from tabletop gamers in the past.

But at the same time, there have to be some spaces in which people who want certain experiences out of the game can get those experiences without the expectation of having to settle for less. That is why I think it is fair to exclude joke lists from games that are about playing lore-accurate campaigns. Or to exclude unpainted armies from games where the spectacle is the big draw. Or indeed to exclude non-competitive options from competitive games.

It is a separate question to what that means in practice, of course. Because fostering both an open community atmosphere and protecting the special interest of certain play groups is definitely a tight rope walk.

Edited January 3, 2023 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Gitzdee]

I still feel like it is not up to other players to decide if a legend player isnt good enough of a player to compete with a lesser army. I dont think playing Gitz with the current tome is any different from playing a legend army. 

I also think AoS or tabletop wargaming in general is big enough or the kind of hobby at all to prevent people from joining in on the fun. People spend way to much time and money on their armies not to be allowed to compete with those models.

A healthy tournament scene comes from having a variety of players rather than only catering to self proclaimed elite gamers imho. I also think this game isnt balanced enough to ban anything at all. Just my opinion on this matter XD. 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Gitzdee

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I get the desire. Of course, it would be insane to claim that it is somehow wrong to allow legends warscrolls/armies at a tournament. But I also think it's wrong to accuse tournaments that disallow them to be catering to elitists.

But I think there is a difference between being elitist and just wanting to enjoy the game in a certain way that requires some effort not everyone is willing to put in. Competitive players want to really go for rules mastery. That is only really possible with a shared understanding of the rules from which a stable metagame can grow. And the least contentious sharde set of rules to build on is probably "all and only current publications, rules as written". I don't think playing in this way, or even having tournaments only for people who want to play in this way, is an illegitimate desire.

Of course, if your store or club only has 5 people who play AoS, and only two of them want to play competitive, maybe think again about what kind of event you should run.