How do YOU play Age of Sigmar? (POLL)

[Guest]

Thought this might be an interesting one. Conversations quite often turn to people insisting that X or Y is the 'normal' or most popular way to play - let's finally get some numbers! Not that this poll is scientific in any way or necessarily representative of the community beyond TGA, but it will at least give us something tangible to refer to.

[Dez]

I don't do open play

I like Narrative play, I think it's fun. I like having a theme/idea in my head when fighting a battle, or making a ridiculous objective for myself (Kill the Flamespyre Phoenix, keep my unit of 10 Clan Rats alive, etc). I love talking up my general (usually a Warboss). The idea of having a story is appealing, though I usually defer to others for that I can make up some basic ones myself.

Everything we do in my area is based upon Matched Play though. I don't mind that either, in fact I love a challenge. I like NOT playing the net list/combo and trying to claw my way to the top of a tournament. 

So my answer is, I'm a gamer and there is no 'right way to play' in my opinion. It's our hobby and free time, have fun.

[Killax]

Cool poll! Having fun is essential, what helps having fun for two is be clear what kind of games you like the most  

[RuneBrush]

I selected all 3 ways to play, but generally it's Matched or Narrative with Pitched Battle Points.  Open will still be cracked out on occasion, but generally between me and my brother who have roughly equal pointed armies.

[WarbossKurgan]

I mostly play Open Play but Narrative comes a very close second. Our Open Play games have a narrative though, so it's hard to say where one starts and the other ends.

I have never played Matched Play and I have never worked out how many points are involved in an AoS game. My group has pretty much stopped calculating points for games in the 40k universe as well, so Open / Narrative play has already bled across into games like 40K, Kill Team, Necromunda and now Shadow War. Pretty much how Inquisimunda / Inq28 games are often played I suppose! The story is king, so it's not the result of the game, but the events that unfold during the game, that matter.

[Menkeroth]

Open and Narrative in various combinations. Game is about fun which is manyfold, and the setting provides lots of interesting variants and scenarios (and ideas, of course), that to play with "equal" forces one and the same kind of battles is very lame and boring. For that I can play Hearthstone, MtG or other such stuff.

[Skrekkugle]

We play open but sometimes check the points after the game. Usually it's close both in points and results so it works pretty well for us.

Found out last time that there's a "points, no restrictions" mode so maybe we'll go for that in the future.

[Mikester1487]

Right now all I play is matched.  I don't think it's the only way to play, but I constantly try to build lists in some kind of boundary. That's just how the local area played when I started 8th edition.

 There is probably some fun opportunities with my current army to have a matched/narrative theme.  Just a matter of finding the players to do so.

[BunkhouseBuster]

When playing games in our local group, we just pick out a rough amount of points for our game size based on the Matched Play points values and not worry about the Battlefield Role of any of the units.  Really, it's just to gauge army size to roughly estimate how long the game will take.  We then ask each other if we want to use the Allegiance Abilities and if we are using Battalions at all.  Makes for quick games, and the modularity of the different game types and add-ons greatly benefits casual play.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the basic structure provided by the Matched Play rules in the General's Handbook gave me and others in our group the final nudge into playing Age of Sigmar, and we prefer more relaxed Open and/or Narrative play with the rules for Matched.  We aren't really competitive at all, as most of us have had bad experiences with the local WAAC 40K players dominating that scene, so we are keeping things chilled and calm for Age of Sigmar.

[Sadysaneto]

I plays it nekid.

 

WAAAAGHHHHHH

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, Sadysaneto said:

I plays it nekid.

 

WAAAAGHHHHHH

I'll add that to the poll.

[Joakim]

Perhaps also add the option for those of us that actually dont play but "just" hobby and follow along.

[ltpliskin]

Narrative but with even-ish points armies would be my favourite I guess, though I'm still pretty new. Unless doing a last stand scenario or something

Sent from my EVA-L09 using Tapatalk

[Guest]

Interesting stuff. With 91 votes cast, here are some stats:

 

• 25% of people play some form of Open Play
• 54% of people play some form of Narrative Play
• 91% of people play some form of Matched Play

 

Open and Narrative are actually a little higher than I was expecting. Matched seems about right.

[Fungrim]

This is not what I imagined, almost half playing <2k

[Killax]

1 minute ago, Fungrim said:

This is not what I imagined, almost half playing <2k

Well its a bit of a misclick on my point. I mostly play 1 and 2k, not 2k+. I think most logically play 1 to 2k. Some of my 2k forces are 1980/1990 points

[karch]

2 hours ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

•  

2 hours ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

Interesting stuff. With 91 votes cast, here are some stats:

 

• 25% of people play some form of Open Play
• 54% of people play some form of Narrative Play
• 91% of people play some form of Matched Play

 

Open and Narrative are actually a little higher than I was expecting. Matched seems about right.

I'd be interested how those who voted narrative+matched split their time.

80-90% matched would be my guess.

 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, karch said:

I'd be interested how those who voted narrative+matched split their time.

80-90% matched would be my guess.

 

The way I've worded it is deliberately broad. 'Combination of Narrative & Matched' could mean that they alternate between the two, or it could mean that they combine elements of both in their games - or something in between. For example, anecdotally it seems that a lot of Narrative players use points for convenience even though they're not playing competitively and don't use the Matched Play battleplans, so they are likely to vote in this category.

[Trout]

1 hour ago, karch said:

I'd be interested how those who voted narrative+matched split their time.

80-90% matched would be my guess.

 

I think it depends on how you define it. I've never played a pure matched game. I have never played a game where we didn't use point values either though. So, you could say I have never played matched, but then you have to say I have never played narrative either. Obviously, I have played something.

 

In my area, this is fairly standard. I don't know of anyone playing purely matched, nor anyone playing without any regard for points. So...what does that count as?

 

My guess is people mix and match and aren't necessarily playing strictly one way or the other.

[Tuluth]

I think part of the Narrative Play boost is thanks to Hinterlands, which is more of a Narrative type of game (It's even in the Narrative forum here).

Personally, I play with two different circles: At the FLGS it's more Matched Play, typically around the 1000 point range for time sake. But since I play at a small GW, the community tends to rotate between AoS and 40k. It's also about a 2 hour drive for me, as there's not really a community for it where I live.

Otherwise, it's more Open Play on occasion with friends or the wife, who aren't as familiar with the game, and don't have full armies yet. I've been wanting to convert over to a Hinterlands/AoS Skirmish campaign, if there's interest. It might even help me paint faster!

Totally not surprised on the Rules voting so far. Allegiance abilities tend to give armies their own flavor, even outside of Matched Play.  Can anyone give their perspective on Allegiances when below the 1k point level? Do some of them tend to be more wonky than others?

[Wraith01]

At my local store we usually play 1000 point, objective based games using Allegiance Abilities. Sometimes we do open play to introduce new people to the game, to test out a new model, or because we have an uneven number of players and don't want to leave anyone out. We did a Narrative Path to Glory campaign last year and I have to say those were my favorite games yet. 

[Veterannoob]

Hmmm, I thought more might also do the d6 for terrain type and larger armies. I'd prefer to do 2500+ pts but in practice play mostly 2K. What can I say, I love mass battle games and this is a visual hobby  

 

[Jamopower]

The third poll has interesting way of representing the results as they have been somehow normalized to total of 100 %, even if you could choose more than one.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Jamopower said:

The third poll has interesting way of representing the results as they have been somehow normalized to total of 100 %, even if you could choose more than one.

Yeah it's misleading. You need to look at the number of people who voted for each option and ignore the percentage figure for that one.

[SuperHappyTime]

Maybe this is conjecture, but the first poll tells me that if 40K 8th Edition launches without points, it's gonna be a massive flop.