Jamopower

Spending money for an army that can't be used for matched play is bit of a misleading thing as they sell those models that don't have an up to date AoS scroll only during this week... Of course there is the second hand market, but you can also buy stuff second hand that has had official rules last time in 80s..

Yes, my own beginnings were very much the same, but that sort of happens anyways most of the time when the people are very excited about the game and the knowledge is not on the same level.

In contrary to what is the normal way of thought, I would say that Open gaming is primarily for the experienced gamers while the newer gamers are better to start with the matched. The precondition for having reasonable open or narrative gaming is that both players realize that it is their responsibility to make the game interesting for both participants. As said, that'll include discussions before gaming and making the army lists in some part together or even better, by a third party umpire. Open gaming is actually pretty much the same as what is done in the historical wargaming all the time. You can look at the Perry miniatures facebook page or an issue of Wargames illustrated to see how successful it can be. It's not too hard to make reasonably equal armies by experienced gamers just by adding stuff together in fashion of a hero is worth 10 regular guys and an elite warriors are worth two guys, while the big monster is worth 30-50 of the regular guys. In similar fashion as you need to balance the armies out when using points, as two armies with the same total point cost can be very different in prowess due to additional special rules of the newer armies and with some armies just being very good against certain armies (that's why there are discussions of tournament metas). That said, for many the main interest in the GW games is, and always has been, the making of the army lists as in the end these are more of an army building games as the army lists have a huge difference and the game itself is pretty simple, at least compared to some other games in the market. For those players that especially are in the hobby because they like that, the open or narrative gaming doesn't offer much and it can be hard to get to the mentality. Luckily there is the matched play that has perhaps the best balance ever in a GW game for them.

It's also good to always remember, that the points presented in the general's handbooks are designed with the matched play scenarios in mind, and in different kind of scenarios, they might not result to any better balance than using old points or eyeballing. They are just tools available to players to organize their games. Good example are the batallions in a scenario where the attacker takes the first turn. The "one drop cost" doesn't make much sense in those. Similar cases are scenarios that put lots of value to certain units, like the priests that have important role in many of the Realmgate wars scenarios. Having less/none priests should be somehow compensated if the winning condition is strongly dependant on the amount of priests in the army. On top of the scenarios, the terrain has also a strong influence. In a cityfight the long range shooting units might be overcosted and some other units undercosted etc.

Aren't the WH Legends just that, the rules for Old world setting for playing with the AoS rules? The made to order campaigns are theirchosen way to make money out of it in the tabletop world.

The points gap is exactly what I meant. Even if the scrolls would have reasonable points costs, sticking into Bret or TK allegiance gives you very little in comparison to some of the new armies that get allegiance abilities, spells, artefacts, command traits, house traits and whatnot on top of regular synergies for free. Thus getting a fair fight between the armies will often lead to open/narrative gaming in any case. I believe that keeping the legends without points is a direct learning from the first GHB where the Tomb kings were as good as they were. I can imagine how many complaints they have got about them bring so good and not available to buy. Sometimes the economical realities just mean that something needs to be dropped from the catalogue. I would say that it is a huge favour that they still provide these, and the compendium rules before them, to give at least some options to use the old stuff. Especially as these are completely free. In addition to that, there are still also lots of other games where those models fit. Especially as the Brets fit to historicals in some degree, the horses are just ridiculously huge when ran together with actual historical models.

Aren't the Brets and TK already sort of wiped out of matched play due to their rules being so weak in comparison to their points costs and to the amount of special rules and synergies the new armies have? Warhammer games have indeed been always army building games, but everyone doesn't still build their armies on pure efficiency. Some people also enjoy building thematic collections and have suitably thematic battles with them. This kind of rules are for them and they don't take anything out from the people that enjoy different kind of gaming.

It took about a month for the Diaz Seekers of Slaanesh to arrive. Probably depends on the demand, but I guess it is quite high for this kind of offers.

Hopefully they release more armies soon as this is some of the best stuff they have given for a while. Waiting eagerly for the other elves and dwarfs. Also hopefully the blind Eltharion will be resold when they get to high elves. Have been sad for many years because I sold mine. It's also great that they say that the reason for intruducing these rules is because so many people wished for something like this in their survey. They listen to us!

There seems to be a difference. No "extra special rules" requiring out of game stuff and even some of the unit special rules have been changed. Also the keyword references are to Dark elfs, witch elfs etc. Instead og whatever they were called in the beginning of AoS. What comes to Bretonnia and Tomb kings, as they are now, they are hardly matched play worthy in any case, so updating their rules to Legend status would most likely be an improvement. Depending on the attitude of the local gaming community of course. My biggest gripe with this is that it will probably take ages for all of the old armies to get this treatment and before that, it'll be quite hazy ground.

Well my guess is that when, (or if) it comes to their turn, they just release a bunch of classic metal characters and update the rules. As they did for dark elves. Fey enchantress, Louen Leoncour, the Grail reliquae, The trebuchet are good candidates, maybe even some of the fun stuff like the Robin Hood group from 5th edition.

Well that's the point. These scrolls are for playing with Dark elves in the Old world, the newer are for same models but they are named Aelves, which live in a different world and are split to minor factions. It's good to keep them separate as mixing them together would easilly just lead to all sorts of shenanigans, power gaming and complaints of brokenness. Naturally I assume that every one understands that they don't want to change the new aelves back to the old elves so this is sort of the best compromise.

This is better than I had wished for, as they updated the rules for the whole range. No points, but they are easily derived from the current and the old GHB for friendly games if needed. Waiting eagerly for the wood elves, dwarfs and high elves.

It would be very surprising if Grots and Skaven wouldn't have some new stuff incoming in next year or so, as they have always been very popular and one of the key races in the whole "Warhammer brand". Especially as almost all other classic Warhammer races have been "aosified" already.

Yes, that's for sure. The new factions will make sure that the old ones drop out from the competitive gaming during some duration of time. But it also applies to non legacy stuff. Not much gutbusters or Skaven outside skryre on the tournament tables. I have understood that the relatively new Khorne is also bit on the suffering side as well with the new meta. But that's just how it goes. Everything is still very much playable in any kind of gaming, as long as rules are concerned. The power level is a completely separate thing. Many units in the newest army books won't see much play either. I also think like was said above, that they release these small factions to test water and I wouldn't expect to see more models to most of the factiond released for AoS this far any time soon outside of Shadespire or specialist games.

Do they come and delete the pdf's I have on my computer or burn the printed out warscrolls from my shelf? I'm sure there will never be any new content for those armies, but it doesn't make them any less playable with the rules they already have. That said, I don't believe we are going to see any new content for, say Daughters of Khaine either. At least for many many years. Basides some splash release for Shadespire or a character for some boxed set. They might lose their official status and all, but still the rules are there and if you have a Bretonnian army you can use those rules until the end of days. It's not like a computer game where something can just be removed from the game totally. The people have the physical copies and will use them no matter what. I mean, people around here play warhammer 3rd edition regularly. It's also the reason why it's hard to see them removing stuff they have already made rules totally from the game. Keeping them in with minimal effort gives them a lot of goodwill from their customers for almost free. I have understood that the whole Legends thing was created because a lot of people (me included) wished for more of the old stuff in their big survey they had. The first wave seems to be old special characters and having non pointed warscrolls for them makes a lot of sense.

Yes that was my point exactly. In tournament play, even a lot of the quite new stuff seems to be already out of fashion, but it still doesn't stop people using stuff like Khorne bloodbound armies based on Blood warriors and the Gorechosen back at home. Just like it doesn't stop anyone from playing with their Tomb kings, even if they don't have the perfect counters for the newest flair. The rules still work perfectly and there are the points if you use them. It also doesn't cost any resources from GW to keep supporting them on this level. They just need to keep those few pdf:s somewhere on the back of the webpage. In which they are quite good at. You could find a lot of specialist games rulebooks and stuff like the witch hunter codex from the official pages a long time after they had ended "supporting" them.

Even when wiping the slate clean with AoS, they still made rules and points for almost everything that they have produced in the years gone by. They even bothered to add counts as recommendations for stuff like Wood elf chariots in the first army lists, even though they have had rules last time in 5th edition and models even before that. It's just like with stuff like Chaos dwarfs and Dogs of War in earlier editions. They got the initial rules in the white dwarf after the release of 6th edition and people still played them in 8th edition ten years after with those same rules. It is not likely that Bretonnians will ever get new rules or models (at least in that theme), but with those rules they already have, they are still very much playable, at least outside tournaments, as long as any army with a current Battletome. They just aren't as good on the tabletop as the new offerings, but I believe it doesn't matter for many gaming groups.

Tomb kings and Bretonnians already have points, so they just simply cannot lose them. You can always use the old ones as long as you have them, as they are not going to get any new units in long time.

Without going in to details. That sounds like it is a good few steps in to a direction where the game is decided on who gets the first turn, either by having less units or even worse, just by a roll off. Leaving a big impact on the result of the game to single roll off with a single d6 is a big reason for a lot of problems in many editions of both Warhammers. Of course it's not that simple and I have a feeling that that kind of addition would lead to a sort of chaff war, where both players have a lot of "speedbumps" to protect their hitter units. It can be fun of course, but due to nature of the importance of that kind of units, it can cause imbalance between the different armies as some of them have better tools than others for that kind of play. For example all of the Stormcast on foot without teleport shenanigans sound like big losers . And it's good to remember that the big charge doesn't need to be on the first turn. Almost every army can make a list where you can charge with all of your army on turn two. Currently it is just not a wise thing to do as you get hit back as much as you hit yourself. in any case it is a massive change to the game and to the value of different units and the probability to get the points right on the first time is quite low based on what we have seen from the 40k indexes and the two GHBs, for which is good to remember that they are based on the community generated and playtested fan made comps. So the current GHB points are already a revision of 3+ to the first draft. Going back to square one will surely lead to a situation where there are quite a few outliers on the points cost. But time will tell.

I guess this is the first time when the "alternative models" have been released much before even rumours of the army by GW: http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/trident-realm-of-neritica/product/naiad-wyrmrider-centurion.html Although I agree that the GW version is about zillion times better.

Yeah, probably it's a normal practice to check out what it looks like in flesh to fine tune it and for the box arts as said earlier. I have understood that the 3-up models are no longer needed for production purposes as the molds are made straight from the 3d files and not by hand.

It looks 3D printed, so maybe something from Forgeworld?

It's more about the subleties, the different ranges for the weapons and the 3" "free form" combat zone is what makes it so good in my eyes, the alternating activation is the added bonus, which I generally like to have in the games. All these add more decisions on the actual table top that are meaningful, while stuff like chargers strike first make the army selection have more importance, as you can just take more faster stuff and count on it being beneficial for your army. Shooting is not part of the combat phase, I don't like the shooting rules in AoS very much, but I think they are good enough not to annoy me too much, especially if the LoS rules are agreed to be bit tighter. I however understand the design points why the things are as they are. The 40k and AoS are similar games, but not the same. It comes from the army lists and not from the actual game rules. In 40k you have much more shooting, and the attacks are generally much more powerful, thus the units getting into combat need to get a "reward" by striking first and from more or less all of the "ranks". Also as the game is much more shooting focused, it's practical to have more rules for shooting and the close combat bit more streamlined. On the other hand in AoS, the attacks are in general much weaker, both in combat and in shooting, and the shooting is much less prevalent, which is seen especially in that there are lots of armies that have very little shooting options like most of Chaos, Death, Sylvaneth, Ironjawz, etc. Therefore the games are usually decided in the close combat, thus the shooting rules can be more streamlined and the close combat more elaborated.

For me, it was also the ranges that are huge in 40k, practically all models strike always and you get to do it first with all units, which combined reduces a lot of the tough decisions and importance of positioning in the combat. You just put stuff in and roll the dice. Then if the defender survives, they will often just retreat, or there are counter charges, so the second phase never happens. In many cases, I agree that it wouldn't have too much of an impact, but it''s very easy to have massive whole army charges at latest on turn two with very hitty stuff like summoned skeletons or Khorne, which combined with the chargers striking first, would make the game Very different from what it is now. I play a lot of different games, so the game needs to have something that makes it "tick" to keep the interest for me. In AoS it's the combat phase, which I think is actually one of the best systems I have encountered in this kind of games and the reason why I have mostly played AoS for the last two years or so. So if there is a possibility that it will be changed, especially to a system that I felt was very bland and uninteresting, I reserve my right to be littly "doomy and gloomy". On a positive side, the stratagems is the one thing I actually like in the new 40k, so getting them to AoS sounds fun (although we sort of have them already with the Malign Portents).