MattT

Norsca turning from the "first line of defence" and thus dead 'ard, into chaos scum riles me too. The army was top cool with the various norse infantry types (that only lives on in the fan based Warmaster). Sadly missed.

Sums it up very well. AoS is just a plethora of colorless "realms" or "planes", whatever that is. It has zero recognition. Old World is pseudo Earth (mostly Europe), but very recognizable and thus with an emotional attachment. "It´s Arthurian Knights in a faux-France? Cool!" What else do you need? 😉

Agree that the answer rang a bit gatekeeper. As a former player of the WFB system I wouldn´t say the game is complicated. It´s different since it harks back to old school military games wanting to pin down formation movement.

(Disclaimer: this is drawn from experience from earlier versions of the game, which I assume still holds) For those skeptical I just want to emphasize that the great delight in playing this game is that you win by much less by model stats over maneuvering correctly. It´s a game of clever use of the board and understanding of flow of battle rather than picking the deadliest unit pre battle. E.g. If you send your mighty Chaos Warriors straight at the pesky Empire Pistoliers, they´ll most likely just gallop away with jeers ringing in your ears and the next thing that happens is a thick block of Halberdiers crashing into your flank. In all other GW games this will make little to no performance change by the Warriors, but not here. See, this game might look like any other battle game, yet it is really about Morale and positioning. What happened now in the view of the Chaos fighters was that an unknown foe attacked from a blind angle. Does this mean the whole army is surrounded? Fleeing? Is the General Dead or maybe Fled? They don´t know. Enter the Morale rules. You fight, but the games is less deadly than other GW games, so the bonus due to the smart maneuvering kicks in and most likely will force a Break test upon the CW. If they hold their nerve they can turn and face the threat, but the take home message here is that their martial superiority was out the window at that moment and things could go either way despite the difference in troop quality. This aspect is what I and many with me loved about the game. It´s a game of correct positioning over pre-game picking deadly troops and combos.

Rather I find current GW combat cumbersome since it´s buckets and buckets of dice which takes ages to roll and resolve. It´s annoying when each and every model has three attacks and you have to fiddle about a big heap of skirmishing models where you want to place them so as many as possible get to swing. In this system it´s (normally) the front rank. End. Much easier imo.

It´s of course up to opinion, but the calculation you need to sort out the number to roll in this case is miniscule and, as mentioned before, was the norm in GW for maybe 20 years without being considered an issue. It was rather a bit of a surprise when they changed it into set to hit #. But it´s a thing of personal preference for sure.

The tables are just splash outs of a simple matrix. From Even WS up to 2x opponent WS: hit on 4+ (E.g. you are WS3 means enemy WS 3 to WS6 is 4+.) Opponent having more than 2x your WS hit on 5+ Reverse the process for being better than opponent. Basically it makes a lot more sense since the interaction with the foes WS matter. It´s totally weird to have a a system where you always hit your foes at the same rate whatever skill they have. This was the norm in GW up until a few years ago. I like it better 👍

I´d say that AoS and WFB aren´t the same games and doesn´t compete really. The former is a combo game whereas the latter is a formation one. I´m really excited about the return of something similar to WFB for that play style.

Like 👍 E.g. 100 Points for Wild Riders is in Expendables cost range imo. Run in, beat some face and smile benevolently when that Ratling Gun perforates the remains over and over. The Riders will be reborn from the mulch and the rest of the army went unmolested for a turn... 🎯

Sorry, but podcasts are terribly impractical. There´s a reason AoS Tactica is still at the top of Googles hit list and it´s that it consists of easily digested and very well illustrated scenarios. Listening through some random guys ramblings and banter for 30 minutes to try and glean some information on the subject I´m after is just a non-starter. Podcasts works best as light entertainment, not research material.