Bottle's going onto Warhammer Live to play AoS Skirmish!

[Lord Cedric]

This is what I picked up from watching today. My apologies if I remembered something incorrectly. They really threw out random rules sporadically.

 

The game uses a Renown system to build warbands... basically GHB points divided by 5. # of models is 5 to max 20. Have to have 1 hero. Book comes with 6 linked scenarios. The game is narrative driven and designed as such, although it *can* be played competitively.

 

Setting is like Mordheim, but Nagash-destroyed city. Takes place in realm of Death in a ruined city within Shadespire.

 

New spells. New artefacts and traits. Death is permanent Each model can be a separate individual. Battleshock is warband wide. Priority roll is still there.

 

There is a complete list of what models from each faction are playable: only models that are plastic kits are playable. No compendium. No FW. No named characters. No Gargants, Behemoths, Monsters.

 

Battleshock is done over entire Warband. This is done easily as each faction has a defacto Bravery skill level.

 

New supplements coming in future, most likely (per Ben Johnson).

 

Each game is mostly played in 30-45 minutes.

 

Expect stores to run full events of this.

 

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[mdkinker]

Wait, ALL renown values are the matched play points divided by five? So the value of a single Nurgle Drone and a single Grot both take the unit value and divide by 5? Or are they saying that you divide the unit cost by number of models to get single model point estimate and THEN divide by 5? 

 

Is experience gained? Are traits or bonuses added to models? Is renown used to just add models?

 

I have several questions. lol

[KevenM]

I'm extremely excited for this!

Too bad some older models aren't in the book - but if we use the regular warscrolls and divide by the number of models in a unit for renown costs... sounds like it isnt too hard to get everything with matched play points into the game

Will models earn experience and levels?

[Nin Win]

4 hours ago, Don Savik said:

Eh, I'm not going to lie the fact that they didn't make points for any finecast model is a huge downside. Grot armies suffer, no vampires, branchwyches/wraiths are out. Idk it just rubs me the wrong way, like they're just making this to sell models in stores. Can't even use my fantastic Thorgrim Grudgebearer model?

It looks like figuring out renown for anything you want will be super easy.  Just take a couple known renown and see how many points they are on scrollbuilder and figure out a sort of ratio for similar things.

3 hours ago, Greasygeek said:

Does anyone know if Skirmish use:

- Can a warband never exceed 20 models?

 

It looks like the 5-20 might be starting size.  It could be max, but I doubt it.  If you are playing a 6 game campaign (all the scenarios) it's totally possible to go into game 6 with 100+ renown worth of models.

[Lord Cedric]

Wait, ALL renown values are the matched play points divided by five? So the value of a single Nurgle Drone and a single Grot both take the unit value and divide by 5? Or are they saying that you divide the unit cost by number of models to get single model point estimate and THEN divide by 5? 
 
Is experience gained? Are traits or bonuses added to models? Is renown used to just add models?
 
I have several questions. lol

Very close. Example, the Abhorrant Ghoul King is 24 Renown, which was used in the 2 games today. They played a 50 Renown first game.

For renown (borrowed from another poster), the winner gets 10 Renown and gets 3 dice to roll on the Reward Table and picks any two dice which corresponds to the chart. The loser gets 6 renown and 2 dice for Rewards.

This is interesting because Ben, who won, got 11 and Bottle got 12!

As for XP.... its not really there. If you play the campaign within the book, its a linked narrative and renown points can be gained to get bonuses, more models, artefacts ect. But theres not really an xp progression.

In my opinion, while this looks fun and yeah... I will be playing lots of this... its more designed as an intro to AoS than a Warband Campaign progression like Hero Quest or Mordheim. If you only have 45 minutes to play a game, you can easily get this in your time available.

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[KevenM]

3 minutes ago, Lord Cedric said:

 

Very close. Example, the Abhorrant Ghoul King is 24 Renown, which was used in the 2 games today. They played a 50 Renown first game.

For renown (borrowed from another poster), the winner gets 10 Renown and gets 3 dice to roll on the Reward Table and picks any two dice which corresponds to the chart. The loser gets 6 renown and 2 dice for Rewards.

This is interesting because Ben, who won, got 11 and Bottle got 12!

As for XP.... its not really there. If you play the campaign within the book, its a linked narrative and renown points can be gained to get bonuses, more models, artefacts ect. But theres not really an xp progression.

In my opinion, while this looks fun and yeah... I will be playing lots of this... its more designed as an intro to AoS than a Warband Campaign progression like Hero Quest or Mordheim. If you only have 45 minutes to play a game, you can easily get this in your time available.

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No xp, levels or progression? Well... sounds like im going to rip a page from the hinterlands book! ?

[Nin Win]

I actually really like how easily Hinterlands becomes an amazing expansion for this game.

[bsharitt]

A better campaign system will be nice, but realistically I can't ever commit the time to a campaign. What I really needed was a way to play short pickup game after work without consuming the whole evening while at the same time letting me get a bit more variety in my armies without having to buy full 1000-2000 point armies. So it definitely looks like it'll hit the mark on those points. I've been looking at a skirmish game to get into, but not it looks like I'll be sticking with AoS. Nice thing is that if I build a Goblin warband, an Ironjaws warband, and maybe an Ogre warband, I can maybe at least combine them into some kind of 1000ish AoS destruction army if I really wanted to with having to commit to another full size army of another faction. Once I get my Kharadron Overlords to 2000+, they'll probably be my only full army for a while, so this will be how I get my variety.

[someone2040]

Missed the games (bit early in the morning for me that second session), but pretty disappointed on the finecast/metal thing. It effects some armies a lot more than others. For example, if you need a Hero, there's no Ogor Heroes in plastic. So you can't run any kind of Ogor warband unless you mix them with other factions.

I just see it as weird that GW are choosing a non-subtle way to push their agenda. They've been edging out resin/metal in favour of plastic for years now, something I approve of! I hate resin. But it's always subtle, replacing units with plastic versions, putting them into new dual kits, making finecast/metal direct only, not migrating some finecast/metal units when the Grand Alliance books rolled around.

But the fact is, they've still kept some of those models in the range. And unless they're about to chop a whole bunch more and make those compendium this GHB2, they've got no reason not to support them in Skirmish.

I hope there's a foot-note or something, that states "These are just some models you can use in your games of Skirmish. If you want to use models without renown provided in this book, simple take the points from GHB, divide it by the minimum model count and then divide again by X". Otherwise you can't use new releases in future either

 

Otherwise, I'll wait and see. It's cheap which is a huge plus, so it's probably worth it to check it out and give it a shot. 

[The Door Master]

I heard that you are not able to use Forge World models (such as Fimir) in skirmish, can anyone conform this? Thank you.

[ProvokedTree]

20 minutes ago, The Door Master said:

I heard that you are not able to use Forge World models (such as Fimir) in skirmish, can anyone conform this? Thank you.

Like all things Forgeworld, if they will get rules for it, they will likely be published separately.

[Chikout]

I think the intent was to make a cheap book to facilitate skirmish for the masses. If they added points for every unit it would just up the page count and therefore the cost of the book for less and less reward.

The game is designed to use the warscrolls from the main game. The renown points are just the points cost of the unit divided by 5, divided by the number of minis in the unit. I think there are a few tweaks. The ghoul King is a little more expensive. 

It is trivial then to adapt any unit, forgeworld, metal or resin to work in the game. 

Bottle has already said that his plan is to add scenarios to the game and GW may well do the same if AOS skirmish proves popular. By inviting Bottle on the stream and by highlighting stuff like inq28 and Aos28, they realise that if they provide a basic rule set, then players will take that and run with it.

It looks like a good entry point into AOS and it increases the value of games like warhammer quest as those odd sized units now have another official way to play. It also means that pick up games of skirmish in GW stores will be much easier to play. I imagine that managers would be reluctant to allow people to play hinterlands in store.

[Nin Win]

Warhammer Quest as a source of a variety of miniatures actually looks better with this available.  Though I think I'd only get it if I also really wanted to play the Quest game.  

I think I'm more likely to get a bunch of individual figures from bitz sellers.  My local store has a bunch of stuff for sale on sprues and I've never taken a close look at it.  Now I have a reason to.

[someone2040]

2 hours ago, Chikout said:

If they added points for every unit it would just up the page count and therefore the cost of the book for less and less reward.

The game is designed to use the warscrolls from the main game. The renown points are just the points cost of the unit divided by 5, divided by the number of minis in the unit. I think there are a few tweaks. The ghoul King is a little more expensive. 

I don't really buy that. They could fit renown for every relevant warscroll into the book I think. Remember that they don't need to point monsters or war machines (As they don't fit Skirmish) or warscroll battalions. They also don't need to specify as much information, just "Warscroll Name, Points". That's a lot less than needing to specify "Warscroll Name, Min Unit, Max Unit, Points, Battlefield Role, Notes".

So it'd be easily less than half the page count that the GHB uses.

 

Ideally though, given we already know it's not happening, in my opinion, there should be a footnote in there that says: "These are points for the majority of units in our current range, but check out the Warhammer Community website for more units you can use within Age of Sigmar: Skirmish". If not, then just do it anyway!

They'll need to provide points in future for new units as they come out anyway, so it kills 2 birds with one stone.

[bottle]

Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed the stream last night! I had a blast and GW treated me really well up there so I was able to make it a great day out.

From watching it back I understand there was over 1000 people watching live, which seems mental!

Both games were actually nail-bitingly close and I was playing to win the second game right up to the end - (if I had rolled a 6 to activate either the central or western treasure horde I would have been in a winning position). I think a few of the finer points were missed by the commentators but with a hectic chat it's understandable! 

The rules are really quick and easy to play, if you've been playing Hinterlands you'll feel right at home with them  The Battleplans are absolutely awesome. The first one we played (Seize the Relic) is my favourite and it's really thematic with the arcane storm slowly closing in on the cemetery. The second one, Treasure Hunt, is really interesting tactically because it's not a mad scramble for objectives and instead they only come into play if a player actively tries to "activate" them.

There are extra rules we didn't play (either we forgot or chose not to). For example there is a new scenery table which we didn't use and in the second game Ben had 1 less renown spent than I, and so should have got a single Underdog re-roll.

The best thing about the system is firstly how cheap it is and secondly how easy it is to build on top of it. I'll definitely give it a go for the next iteration of Hinterlands - but I expect lots of others to create some awesome content for it too!   

[aquietfrog]

I am slightly annoyed that the commentators talked more with the chatters asking all sorts of questions than about the game that was being played.  I stayed up late for this (but fell asleep right after the second game began).  My impression is that it's a lot like Hinterlands, except they chose to play with the full hero warscroll, instead of toning down the hero stats.  The battleplan sounds great, and it seems the format will also be great for all the other battleplans in the GHB. 

Do I remember correctly that both bottle and Ben Johnson were wearing headsets?  What were they for?

[RuneBrush]

51 minutes ago, aquietfrog said:

I am slightly annoyed that the commentators talked more with the chatters asking all sorts of questions than about the game that was being played.  I stayed up late for this (but fell asleep right after the second game began).

This is fairly commonplace for Warhammer Live.  The commentators (whichever ones are doing it) tend to follow the chat if there's a lot of activity, I think they've found that if they don't you get a viewer drop off.  It's taken a while for me to get my head round but Twitch isn't a broadcasting platform in the same way as other live streams and has a much higher audience participation.

What they've said before is that they tend to put headsets on one or other player to allow them to feedback about what's happening in the game (think it may go to one of the team off screen) as they try and stay a fair distance away so as to not influence what's happening

[aquietfrog]

I see.  This was the first warhammer live broadcast I watched.  I probably won't be watching much as the timezone difference makes it difficult.  It was a great game anyway, they did enough commentary on the game for me to understand what's going on.  Very cinematic

[KnightFire]

10 hours ago, Nin Win said:

It looks like the 5-20 might be starting size.  It could be max, but I doubt it.  If you are playing a 6 game campaign (all the scenarios) it's totally possible to go into game 6 with 100+ renown worth of models.

 

I expect its the max, there is a design goal to keep games short (45 minutes) and having two warbands of 20 models is already going to be pushing that limit.

[BrAiKo]

Here' the page with Renown Points for the two lists from the stream:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/05/17/warhammer-live-lists-for-may-17th/

[Killax]

Seems really cool to me! Great as a base and also something I think they might eventually attach to AoS if 40Ks Power Points are a 'hit'. 

[wayniac]

I have like a ton of ideas for this now that I have given it thought.  It seems incredibly malleable so you could do like a warband against a monster (basically a WoW raid boss) or mix things up a bit with a little work.  I'm already thinking of possibilities such as:

• Using skirmish as an interlude between campaign games (maybe a raid or scouting party, with the winner getting some small bonus in the next "real" game)
• A warband versus a big monster such as a dragon or even something like fighting the boss' minions and then the boss shows up on a big monster (my GW once did this last year in a way; a guy brought in custom made lava tiles and a magma dragon and it was a race to see who could get the most treasure with heroes only)
• An oldschool 1980s Realm of Chaos style narrative with warbands (basically Path to Glory but done right)

[Brucimus]

I think it'll be great for small one night campaigns, and club events.

I also think it'll be easy to add more units (even resin and metal ones) using the breakdown for how they got renown points.

( (Matched play points / 5) / Number of models in unit)

As long as my opponents happy with that we could come up with an unlimited number of warbands using the whole range, and even do scenarios with a warband vs a single behemoth, or warbands with named characters etc.

Can't wait to play loads

[Greyshadow]

Delighted to see someone who has put in a great effort for the good of the community be recognised. Really interested to see what official news is released about Skirmish over the coming days.

[Lysandestolpe]

Man, I could not watch the game due to Family. Is there a way to see it now, afterwards? I tried to click on some twitch "past" videos, but they seemed to not work.  -___________-