Meeting engagements and other smaller ways to play

[EonChao]

With the prices increasing both for Warhammer and everything else one of the things that I'm looking at is doing things smaller. I have a healthy backlog to keep me entertained in terms of building and painting but I'm also thinking about how this can translate to playing at smaller scales too.

With that in mind I've been revisiting the ideas of Meeting Engagements from 2019, a format I didn't really get to do anything with but that seemed like a cool way to play the game on a budget. Certainly I have some random amounts of Sylvaneth, Blades of Khorne, Flesh-Eater Courts and Idoneth that I could see myself sticking to only 1000 point armies for.

But I'm also curious what smaller ways to play you might enjoy?

[Marcvs]

42 minutes ago, EonChao said:

With the prices increasing both for Warhammer and everything else one of the things that I'm looking at is doing things smaller. I have a healthy backlog to keep me entertained in terms of building and painting but I'm also thinking about how this can translate to playing at smaller scales too.

With that in mind I've been revisiting the ideas of Meeting Engagements from 2019, a format I didn't really get to do anything with but that seemed like a cool way to play the game on a budget. Certainly I have some random amounts of Sylvaneth, Blades of Khorne, Flesh-Eater Courts and Idoneth that I could see myself sticking to only 1000 point armies for.

But I'm also curious what smaller ways to play you might enjoy?

at my club I have experimented quite a lot with homebrew rules to make smaller games work. These days the effort is more into making things just easier and faster (so, taking rules away), but in the past we played 1000pts games a) on 4'*4' mats (if memory serves, it's the mats that ASOIAF, a game very popular in our club, uses); b) we generally reduced the number of objectives by 1 or 2 to a minimum of 3; c) we had some limitations to list building, like no single unit of 300+ points and no conditional battlelines (this can impact a lot certain armies, so YMMV).

 

EDIT: I feel I also have to add that, once you start tinkering a lot with the rules in order to make it work (because there's very little support from GW for smaller games atm), you also start wondering if it is worth at all to remain in the AoS rules system, and not just use the existing armies in miniature agnostic systems which offer a different experience, like SAGA Age of Magic or One Page Rules' Age of Fantasy.

Edited February 10, 2023 by Marcvs

[Skreech Verminking]

21 minutes ago, EonChao said:

With the prices increasing both for Warhammer and everything else one of the things that I'm looking at is doing things smaller. I have a healthy backlog to keep me entertained in terms of building and painting but I'm also thinking about how this can translate to playing at smaller scales too.

With that in mind I've been revisiting the ideas of Meeting Engagements from 2019, a format I didn't really get to do anything with but that seemed like a cool way to play the game on a budget. Certainly I have some random amounts of Sylvaneth, Blades of Khorne, Flesh-Eater Courts and Idoneth that I could see myself sticking to only 1000 point armies for.

But I'm also curious what smaller ways to play you might enjoy?

With the gw prices increasing, often games like 

path to glory can be also a very interesting option.

Starting an army at 600points does make the whole process much easier from a price point of view.

the army can then be slowly build up.

so adding new units at a later date us always possible.

What makes this system so interesting however is that the attempt of getting an army up to a certain standard can be determined by your own groups speed and interest.

a good example would be the path to glroy campaign in my club currently.

we are able to play 2-3 games per month that count towards the path to glory points gained by playing that game.

it allows us to have a certain time to build and paint models.

if your buying into the game and considering the cost, this could of course also be decreased to maybe a game per month and so on.

still.. the prices increase is making it harder to considerate buying models.

And when you’re playing an army like the skaven. Where half of your models look like monkeys  are made out of models, 3d printing gets interesting every time more and more 

[Chikout]

Warcry. I love that game and given the state of your collections, you already have several warbands ready to go. The core rules and all the cards for each warband are free on the GW website. You really don't have to use the official scenery to play, any skirmish friendly terrain will do. 

If you can find this box of battleplan cards, which is still perfectly playable with the second rules, you can get a lot of variety immediately.

 

There are new different cards for second edition but gw never released them individually so they might be difficult to get hold of without buying a big box. If you enjoy the gameplay enough you can buy the core book which adds a bunch of narrative options to the game. 

[EonChao]

8 hours ago, Marcvs said:

at my club I have experimented quite a lot with homebrew rules to make smaller games work. These days the effort is more into making things just easier and faster (so, taking rules away), but in the past we played 1000pts games a) on 4'*4' mats (if memory serves, it's the mats that ASOIAF, a game very popular in our club, uses); b) we generally reduced the number of objectives by 1 or 2 to a minimum of 3; c) we had some limitations to list building, like no single unit of 300+ points and no conditional battlelines (this can impact a lot certain armies, so YMMV).

 

EDIT: I feel I also have to add that, once you start tinkering a lot with the rules in order to make it work (because there's very little support from GW for smaller games atm), you also start wondering if it is worth at all to remain in the AoS rules system, and not just use the existing armies in miniature agnostic systems which offer a different experience, like SAGA Age of Magic or One Page Rules' Age of Fantasy.

Honestly this is a good idea for those who have the time to compartmentalise two systems. Probably cheaper too, you'd only pick up AoS books when you need them for an actual game.

8 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

With the gw prices increasing, often games like 

path to glory can be also a very interesting option.

Starting an army at 600points does make the whole process much easier from a price point of view.

the army can then be slowly build up.

so adding new units at a later date us always possible.

What makes this system so interesting however is that the attempt of getting an army up to a certain standard can be determined by your own groups speed and interest.

a good example would be the path to glroy campaign in my club currently.

we are able to play 2-3 games per month that count towards the path to glory points gained by playing that game.

it allows us to have a certain time to build and paint models.

if your buying into the game and considering the cost, this could of course also be decreased to maybe a game per month and so on.

still.. the prices increase is making it harder to considerate buying models.

And when you’re playing an army like the skaven. Where half of your models look like monkeys  are made out of models, 3d printing gets interesting every time more and more 

600 points is an interesting starting point, I'd have guessed that it'd be 500, but definitely an option to try.

5 hours ago, Chikout said:

Warcry. I love that game and given the state of your collections, you already have several warbands ready to go. The core rules and all the cards for each warband are free on the GW website. You really don't have to use the official scenery to play, any skirmish friendly terrain will do. 

If you can find this box of battleplan cards, which is still perfectly playable with the second rules, you can get a lot of variety immediately. 

 

There are new different cards for second edition but gw never released them individually so they might be difficult to get hold of without buying a big box. If you enjoy the gameplay enough you can buy the core book which adds a bunch of narrative options to the game. 

Warcry was actually my response to moving to a smaller place, gives me a good variety of options with free rules from my AoS collection plus the warbands are all pretty cool for painting. I've resisted this season but plan to get the next one, wherever we go with that.

[Gitzdee]

6 hours ago, Chikout said:

Warcry. I love that game and given the state of your collections, you already have several warbands ready to go. The core rules and all the cards for each warband are free on the GW website. You really don't have to use the official scenery to play, any skirmish friendly terrain will do. 

If you can find this box of battleplan cards, which is still perfectly playable with the second rules, you can get a lot of variety immediately.

 

There are new different cards for second edition but gw never released them individually so they might be difficult to get hold of without buying a big box. If you enjoy the gameplay enough you can buy the core book which adds a bunch of narrative options to the game. 

This.

Warcry is a great game and the 2nd edition rules are free and so are all the warscrolls. 

I slowly start to invest more in this game as i get to collect a bit from everything GW has to offer and get to skip the huge 100+ euro models.

I also started playing 1000/ 750 point games instead of 2000 points as time is a luxury is dont have lately.

[NinthMusketeer]

Road to Renown (link in my sig), Warcry. My community made several honest attempts to get the new Path to Glory to work but it always ended up being decidedly 'meh' at best, though definitely a case where YMMV.

Meeting engagements... I would recommend against. Despite there being massive appeal to smaller game sizes it was only in two GHBs before being cut, and there's good reason for that.

[SerialMoM]

I loved the Meeting Engagement rules and played them quite a lot in our club.

These rules have weaknesses but to combine them with Path to glory will be a lot of fun, especially if you are not playing competitively.

[JackStreicher]

One could copy and paste boarding actions to AoS.

Possible environments:

- Dungeons

- Mines

- Sewers

- The inside of a giant Fish/Whale

- The inside if a (Sky-) Ship

- Any kind of big Building (a castle with courtyard and all)

Simple rule changes:

750 Points (since AoS units cost more points in general)

No Battalions, grand Strategies and Strategems, Command Traits and Artifacts.

Only visible models can be killed (melee, range and magic)

vision is blocked by models from other units

everything (auras as well) need vision to units that are supposed to be affected.

Only three generic command abilities:

- Run 6“, All out Attack, Pass morale check for 2CP

- No monsters, no mounted units, no Units of the size of a Troll or larger. No flying units.

- Copy paste the actions rule to AoS for opening doors

maximum of 7 units overall. Units can’t be larger than 10 Models (unless the starting size is larger). During set up such units have to be split into 2x5. (Or 2x10)

 

 

Now get crazy with creating cool missions and you’ll have a blast!