Do the starter set contents and start collecting boxes work?

[Nin Win]

2 hours ago, Oppenheimer said:

However, your question about sameness really hit home. I am so sick of seeing the same units every time. Especially with Death. I'm a Death player from 8e. And at my local GW you never see anything but FEC, Deathrattle and Malignants. You never ever see deathwalker, morgasts, vampire lords on foot, bat swarms etc. It's just the same stuff over and over again. Whatever is in the starter sets.

Do you think your experience of repetitiveness comes from the fact that it is also your faction and you have experience with the full variety of it, so the constant appearance of the start collecting contents grates on you?  Do you have the same experience when you see the same units over again when it is a faction you don't play or are not super familiar with?

[Nin Win]

So friend lent me some magazines and I took a closer look at the Tale of Four Warlords series.  Wow they totally went off the rails.

It was all spelled out in the first month, but nope, they just loaded the units and models way beyond what was originally mandated.  To the point that it's actually a pretty meaningless indication of what being new to the game might be like.  The Ironjawz player kept to the brief the most, but the other guys added multiples of the required models to their forces.

"So far our four warlords have played a few games against each other, but now they’ve got sizeable forces, they want to play some bigger battles. Next month, they’re going to start a Ladder Campaign."

Yeah, they have sizeable forces and are now jumping right to bigger battles because they totally lost the plot.

"James’s contribution to his legions of Death this month is a whopping 42 Ghouls..."

Great.  

How about instead they add a single unit box, play a game and have a battle report about that.  Give a real indication of what building an army from the Star Collecting boxes onward is actually like.

Very disappointed with the series after the first month.  

[Galas]

What, building an army from the Start Collecting boxes onward its not just throw 400€ to the internet and end with 20 boxes of models at the same time?! I have been doing it wrong all this years!  

 

(It was a joke. I can recomend you a escalation league. Add 100-200 points every 1-2 weeks, so you have time to buy, paint and build your force. And as you start very small, you can stop if you don't like it at any step before commiting big sums of money to it)

[Nin Win]

LOL.  My guess is that article series might have been aimed at 40k players (who already see quickly getting large armies as the norm) in order to get them into Age of Sigmar as well.  As a new person on the outside looking in, the series was a total turn off.

I'm actually okay putting in much more than 400€ over time, but the rate at which they dumped models into their armies in that article series made it all just seem crazy.  For someone who is already very familiar with 40k or AoS, I imagine the prospect of making an army of that size in six months might seem normal.  To a new player, I think it looks just silly and unrealistic.  As the number of models they got and painted went up seemingly exponentially as the series went on, it just made the initial stages look pointless.

I'm putting my purchasing plan on hold until I can talk to some people locally who play.  That article series definitely makes me think that the designers might have made a game that only works with a bazillion miniatures.  I'm not really a fan of my miniatures being pointless wound counters.  I've played too many games where my army feels awesome and my miniatures matter to want to get in on one where miniatures are just lost in a sea of faces and only big masses of them and huge monsters actually matter.

[Galas]

Oh no, AoS really has a very good system that work with different points. It works well with 500, with 750, with 1k, and with 2k. Yeah, maybe the big boys like Archaon and Alarelle are a bit OP in low point games, but normally you can have the "real experience" with games in the 500-750 bracket with no problem. You can perfectly fit 1-2 heroes and 1-3 Infantry forces and even things like Cavalry, Chariots, a little monster, etc... to have variety.

And if you really want a very cheap experience, download Hinterlands in this very forum, and pam! Skirmish in Age of Sigmar! (I'm sorry if I'm very a little boring with this, but really, if you want begin in Age of Sigmar with low models and have a nice experience, its the best system out there!)

[swarmofseals]

35 minutes ago, Nin Win said:

I'm putting my purchasing plan on hold until I can talk to some people locally who play.  That article series definitely makes me think that the designers might have made a game that only works with a bazillion miniatures.  I'm not really a fan of my miniatures being pointless wound counters.  I've played too many games where my army feels awesome and my miniatures matter to want to get in on one where miniatures are just lost in a sea of faces and only big masses of them and huge monsters actually matter.

I'm not really sure where you are getting your information from, but over the course of the thread it really seems like you are getting some confusing information. You seem to be worried about whether or not you can get the full experience of the game with a relatively small force.  You mentioned that you are used to games where $100 gets you 60% of the way toward what you need for the full experience. So lets set a rough budget of $160-170 to get started. I'm kinda assuming you are talking about this being your own budget and not a budget shared between two people who are both getting started.

Assuming you are using the official ruleset and not a specialized custom system, most of the variability in the game comes from two sources: the warscrolls that make up your army and the battleplan that you are using. There are loads and loads of both of these.

For your estimated starting budget, you can afford two Start Collecting boxes or one Start Collecting plus approximately two other boxes (or maybe one box and a couple of hero models). You can get significantly more than this if you are willing to buy models secondhand, but let's just go based on MSRP or easily gettable discounts. That means you are probably putting 5-6 units on the table at the start of the game.

Some battleplans will work really well with this sized force while others will work less well. You should still be able to find a solid variety of functional battleplans. I also think that you can expect to make relatively meaningful decisions in most of the phases in the turn where important decisions are made (hero, movement, shooting, and combat). It's possible that, depending on the choices that you make in list construction, you won't have much to do in one of these phases. That can also be true with much larger armies.

The main difference between this sized game is mostly one of scale -- you'll have more decisions to make in a larger game. In a smaller game, the decisions that you make will be individually more important.

A strong argument could be made that large model counts actually make AoS a worse game as the game will bog down a lot more with large numbers of models to move and large numbers of dice to roll.

Depending on the battleplan, you may sometimes feel like some of your models are chaff while others are more important. This will vary by battleplan. If you take an army with one hero and are playing a battleplan where only heroes can hold objectives, then your one hero will feel damn important relative to everything else. Similarly, if you have a squad of monsters and heroes and only a few cheap chaff units, but the battleplan calls for numbers of troops to capture objectives then you will feel very differently about that chaff.

Hopefully this is helpful, and if you have specific questions please feel free to ask! 

 

[Nin Win]

5 hours ago, Galas said:

Oh no, AoS really has a very good system that work with different points. It works well with 500, with 750, with 1k, and with 2k. Yeah, maybe the big boys like Archaon and Alarelle are a bit OP in low point games, but normally you can have the "real experience" with games in the 500-750 bracket with no problem. You can perfectly fit 1-2 heroes and 1-3 Infantry forces and even things like Cavalry, Chariots, a little monster, etc... to have variety.

... download Hinterlands ...

It's good to hear it works at different game sizes.  I'm hearing and reading conflicting things on this front, but am beginning to see that it might be the result of model choices not matching the game size.

I downloaded Hinterlands.  It might be the perfect thing for getting a section me warband so I can interest others in trying the game out by supplying both sides.   Though I do still like the idea of smaller normal rules games as well.

[Nin Win]

6 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

I'm not really sure where you are getting your information from, but over the course of the thread it really seems like you are getting some confusing information.

Their own article series about building a new army was a mad rush to a large model count.  And I'm seeing things like "if this unit contains 20 or more models" or "If successfully cast, you can set up a unit of up to 10" or "If the result of the casting roll was 11 or more, set up a unit of up to 20 instead."  It seems to me that if you can just suddenly add a unit of 10 demons to an army then the game needs to be of sufficient size that doing so wouldn't make things collapse.

Quote

You seem worried about whether or not you can get the full experience of the game with a relatively small force.  

Yes.  I'm looking for a game where things scale well.  Where there won't be periods of time where me and my opponent end up playing a shadow of what the game will be at higher model counts.  Where you still have real decisions to make and the models feel like they matter, even if the game takes less time.  Idealiy Age of Sigmar should be within a bounded range of depth at all game sizes with time spent being what you add or subtract rather than the experience becoming either too shallow at the small end or bogged down at the larger end.  Where, if there is a sweet spot, the difference between it and other game sizes is not night and day.  That said, larger than normal is not nearly as important to me as if I build an army over time, that's a long ways off.
 

Quote

A strong argument could be made that large model counts actually make AoS a worse game as the game will bog down a lot more with large numbers of models to move and large numbers of dice to roll

So how does that mesh with having a chaos sorcerer rolling two dice and getting 10 daemons every time they roll over 6 and are not beaten by an opponent's roll (assuming there even is an enemy wizard within 18")?  Or the rules that seem to encourage 20+ strong units?  It's totally possible that the designers set out to make a game that plays well with a huge amount of models, but actually plays better with a smaller amount?

Do players have to compensate for things like that by agreeing not to daemon summon?  Or is it super easy to get wizards within 18" of a summoner?
 

Quote

Depending on the battleplan, you may sometimes feel like some of your models are chaff while others are more important. This will vary by battleplan. If you take an army with one hero and are playing a battleplan where only heroes can hold objectives, then your one hero will feel damn important relative to everything else. Similarly, if you have a squad of monsters and heroes and only a few cheap chaff units, but the battleplan calls for numbers of troops to capture objectives then you will feel very differently about that chaff.

That's cool.

My main concern is that if I spend the time to do scale figure oil painting techniques on every surface of every miniature will I ever get to the full game or will I be playing a shadow of the real thing?  And just how much do things break down when you have rules that are geared at large games with big units but you don't play that way?  Do these start collecting forces fade into irrelevancy because of the sheer model number the full game needs?  Did they choose the models with the simplest rules for the start collecting forces?  When I read the warscolls for some of the units in the start collecting box and some of the units not in those boxes, I honestly can't tell if they selected the models with the simplest rules for the most newb friendly game possible.  I hope they didn't, but I don't know the game well enough to say.

Sorry if people find I'm being too thorough or if my standards are too high, but there are just so many gaming options for me to choose from.  I've been enjoying the AoS audio books and like what I've read so far, but there are things I just can't know as someone who is new.  I would be very disappointed to spend the time on painting all my miniatures for them to feel pointless on the table top.  Like where the front rank of an old WHFB mattered but the rest could have been replaced by a wound counter or spin down d20 to count unit strength.  Or where parts of the old battleforce boxes for 40k would just sit on people's shelves.

[Nick in York]

I find that each model can matter more in AoS but it depends on which faction you start collecting. I got the Sylvaneth Getting Started box - gave me 18 models, not many at all. It also contained a good variety - sure 16 were dryads but there are so many builable and posable options with them. Then there's the large treelord and the branchwych (tree wizard with a millipede thingy).

I was able to pick up another set of treelord sprues cheaply from ebay.

My first game was a lot of fun and used just those models. None of them have the ability to raise more units so that wasn't an issue.

My second game was 500 points - less models than my first! And I found that more tactically as we were playing a scenario from the General's Handbook.

I'm now working towards a larger army but I don't have much money and I paint slowly. I generally buy and then completely build and paint one box at a time. I am currently the 3 Kurnoth Hunters on my desk away from having a 1000 point army fully painted. This is in about 9 months and I have been able to play games along the way.

I'd suggest looking at factions with lower model counts such as some Sylvaneth lists or Beastclaw Raiders. I think the Start Collecting boxes are a great way to get the foundation of an army. For some, like mine, they give you around 50-60% of, say, a 1000 point force.

[Ratamaplata]

Never seen so much over analysing of a toy game.

Just buy models you like and paint them to the standard you want to. When you've got a few heros and units try a game. If you like it keep playing, otherwise just paint models you like.

[Nin Win]

Why should I settle for part of the hobby?  Build and paint models but then not play with them because the rules don't work for me?  I'd also be missing out of the social part of playing the game.  That sounds like a really crappy end result.

[Ratamaplata]

Just have fun. Don't stress about stuff so much. You seem way too concerned about how the rules work. It's just a game. Get cool models, paint them and play.

[DynamicCalories]

It's worth noting @Nin Win that if you're using the Matched Play point rules then you can't just keep summoning free units of daemons - they have to be accounted for with reserved points.

Certain units, like my Plageubearers, definitely encourage building up to 20/30 models (they make the opponent receive a negative 1 to hit at 20+) and they benefit from taking multiple battleshock tests so they can reinforce, but that doesn't mean they don't work at 10 strong. Just because I've never rolled a 1 for battleshock in a 10 strong unit doesn't mean I would have rolled that 1 at 20/30 strong.

I think you're best off investigating the generals handbook for how armies are built, and then reading up on some army lists in the various allegiance sub-forums here. No one can really give you a definitive answer on the complexity at lower levels compared to higher levels, primarily because it will differ per army.

 Units in AoS are only as simple as the army composition affords them to be: synergy is the key part of the game, and you can achieve interesting compositions at 1k, conversely you can build a force with zero synergy at 2k. All of the allegiance stuff comes reading the warscrolls and seeing how various keywords effect each other, or understanding the artefacts, abilities and battalions effect your units.

It's probably worth taking the Tale of Four Warlords stuff with a pinch of salt - as far back as I can recall the WH battle reps have nearly always ranged from 2-3k points, which is double what you need for a fun game. My last 1250 point game lasted nearly 3 hours and it wasn't even particularly synergy heavy thanks to Nurgle's underdeveloped army at the moment. On the flipside of this, my opponent's ironjawz army, which was 75% a start collecting box, had much better synergy due to its allegiance abilities and so on.He was getting +1s to hit and extra movement shenanigans across the board.

 

[someone2040]

I have to really wonder what you have against the Tale of 4 Painters. All it literally is, is a bunch of mates painting armies are relatively the same schedule. Paint the start collecting box to get you jump started, then paint a unit, then a monster, then a hero and a unit. It's just painting to a plan, and really, is trying to encourage people to spend less! By buying only what you need on a month by month basis and finish what you buy rather than ending up with a pile of grey plastic.

 

It seems the root cause is that you're not happy with the cost of entry into where you're figuring the real game starts. Yes, Warhammer is an expensive hobby. You need to understand that before you get in. It is going to be more expensive than your other games you've talked about. You can play it at smaller points limits, and it's perfectly fine to do so. However, you need to figure out what level you and your gaming associates will play the game, figure out an army, and see if it fits your budget.

 

So all I can really recommend is. Go arrange a demo game. Go look at an army you might like to build. Smash some stuff into Scrollbuilder and see whether it fits the points you'd like to start out at, and the budget you'd like to be within.

[Sception]

I can't speak to the other factions, but for Death the start collecting boxes, while all perfectly decent deals on very nice models and not at all bad purchases in terms of value, are not at all good places to start a new collection.  All three come with 'big kit' items that are batter saved for later, after you've already build up a functional but small starter force of actual units.  The skeleton and flesh eater starters both only come with a single 10 model unit of their base infantry - units that you want to run 30+ of if you're going to run any at all.  The skeleton and malignants boxes both come with a set of the undead plastic cavalry, which, while great models, are at best mediocre and unexciting units on the table.

And NONE of them are legal matched play armies out of the box.  The skeleton box has only a single battle line option (black knights only become battle line with deathrattle allegiance, which any of the three mortarchs will break), same with the ghoul box (the crypt horrors/flayers only become battle line with a matching courtier general, but if you use one of the models to convert the needed hero then you don't have enough left over to make a legal minimum unit), while the malignant box has none at all (spirit hosts are only battle line with nighthaunt allegiance, which the throne/engine breaks).  The malignant box doesn't even have a hero to be a proper general unless you build the throne instead of the engine!  It's also frustrating, and this is a problem shared with the other start collecting boxes, that the included war scroll battalions are unusable in matched play since they were never given points values.  Not a big deal for the skeleton box, that formation is pretty boring anyway, but I really would have liked to run the malignant formation in some games, as it's actually tactically very interesting.  Oh, well.

But even if you're not playing matched play, the other problems - including big kits that you really shouldn't be starting with, not including enough of the basic infantry to get any real use out of them, etc - still keep these kits from being good ways to start an army.  which is frustrating, because better starts were certainly possible.  Skeletons could have been 20 skittles, 10 gguard, 5 bknights and the plastic wight king for about the same discount which would have been a much better start to an army and a much more appropriate selection for a box titled 'skeleton horde'.  Malignants could have been 6 hosts, 5 hexwraiths, a banshee, and a cairne wraith or two.  again, similar value, far better start to an army.  A deadwalker/deathmage box with 40 zombies, 10 dire wolves, a corpse cart, and a necromancer would have been another solid start, and if it had a decent formation (with actual point values to make it legal in matched play), we might even have seen a real boost in the variety of death armies seen on the table.  FEC, unfortunately, is rather hobbled by their lack of actual character models, what with all of their hero options being conversions (which render the remainder of their boxes largely unusable in matched play) apart from the monster-riding ghoul king.

But whatever, wish listing is neither here nor there.  Again, the models in the actual start collecting boxes for death are great, and the discounts on these boxes are fine.  These aren't bad bundles at all, provided you're using them to cap off an army that you've already built up.  They're just not very good ways to start new ones, as you'll be stuck buying almost as much extra stuff on top to get up to a playable state as you would have had to purchase had you just skipped the SC box altogether.

[Popisdead]

On 4/9/2017 at 6:19 AM, DynamicCalories said:

 but I think on a whole the Start Collecting boxes are great.

They sure are.  

Even as someone who has been in this hobby for 30 years and wants to shrink my collection those Get Starting boxes are tempting every time I go into the local GW.

[DynamicCalories]

35 minutes ago, Popisdead said:

They sure are.  

Even as someone who has been in this hobby for 30 years and wants to shrink my collection those Get Starting boxes are tempting every time I go into the local GW.

Yup, and although what @Sception says about the Death sets might be true, I think it's pretty common knowledge that the Seraphon and Slyvaneth boxes are pretty much perfect for starting armies, to the point where you could almost just by two of those and be at just shy of 1k points. Even so, I still have to tear myself away from them whenever I go in store, even for armies I am not really interested in collecting.

[wayniac]

The biggest issue with them IMHO is that they can't be used out of the box unless you are lucky to find someone for Open Play (which, even at the SC level, is still hard) because they usually don't have 2 battleline (although a lot of people I know tend to only require one battleline at < 1000 points).  So I feel they are often good ways to start purchases, but bad for what their intent is i.e. "buy this, start playing" especially since none of the battalions are allowed in matched play, and they aren't really balanced to play against each other.  I think their best use is something like in Tale of 4 Warlords; a starting point that you build upon with extras.

[Spinsane]

9 minutes ago, wayniac said:

The biggest issue with them IMHO is that they can't be used out of the box unless you are lucky to find someone for Open Play (which, even at the SC level, is still hard) because they usually don't have 2 battleline (although a lot of people I know tend to only require one battleline at < 1000 points).  So I feel they are often good ways to start purchases, but bad for what their intent is i.e. "buy this, start playing" especially since none of the battalions are allowed in matched play, and they aren't really balanced to play against each other.  I think their best use is something like in Tale of 4 Warlords; a starting point that you build upon with extras.

I guess none is a tad exagerated, since the Ironjawz box DOES include enough battleline to be a legal Vanguard Matched Play force worth 440pts...

[RuneBrush]

Just to jump in as this seems to have veered towards the "build a matched play army" conversation.  The following spreadsheet exists on Google Sheets:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wl3zJzmXcXrievqvnoqtlOMHwG3-SCtRXMWfKFQ2ZVw/edit#gid=0

This contains a number of suggested 1000 point armies for people just getting into the hobby and don't want to sell a kidney or their first-born.  Now I'm not going to suggest that they're necessarily top-end competitive, however for people starting out it's a fantastic guide on what bits to pick up and get going - all at a sensible price point.

[Nick in York]

5 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

Just to jump in as this seems to have veered towards the "build a matched play army" conversation.  The following spreadsheet exists on Google Sheets:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wl3zJzmXcXrievqvnoqtlOMHwG3-SCtRXMWfKFQ2ZVw/edit#gid=0

This contains a number of suggested 1000 point armies for people just getting into the hobby and don't want to sell a kidney or their first-born.  Now I'm not going to suggest that they're necessarily top-end competitive, however for people starting out it's a fantastic guide on what bits to pick up and get going - all at a sensible price point.

That's fantastic. Hats off to whoever put that together.

[Nin Win]

6 hours ago, Ratamaplata said:

Just have fun. Don't stress about stuff so much. You seem way too concerned about how the rules work. It's just a game. Get cool models, paint them and play.

I see where the disconnect is.  I'm not stressing.  I'm considering things and making evaluations.  Analysis for me is a very relaxed process.  I don't know how to impart that tone in text though, sorry.

[Nin Win]

6 hours ago, DynamicCalories said:

It's worth noting @Nin Win that if you're using the Matched Play point rules then you can't just keep summoning free units of daemons - they have to be accounted for with reserved points.

This sentence really made the "3 ways to play" thing click for me, so thanks.  Like it's okay if lots of daemons appear in a non matched play game.  It's not the rules collapsing, but a way of playing to see what happens and that can include things like an explosion of summoned daemons.

 

[wayniac]

1 minute ago, Nin Win said:

This sentence really made the "3 ways to play" thing click for me, so thanks.  Like it's okay if lots of daemons appear in a non matched play game.  It's not the rules collapsing, but a way of playing to see what happens and that can include things like an explosion of summoned daemons.

 

It's more that it can be abused easily so matched play "nerfed" it heavily by requiring points to be set aside.

[Sleboda]

2 minutes ago, wayniac said:

It's more that it can be abused easily so matched play "nerfed" it heavily by requiring points to be set aside.

Nah. @Nin Win has it right.