"What a surprise! (AOS initial post battle thoughts)" Topic

So, my 11 year old son and I played our first Age of Sigmar Battle today.

The excitement and marketing blitz around the launch, plus our first read through of the rules, was enough to encourage him to put aside his 40K Tyranids and beloved Warma/Hordes Trollkin. He un-packed his Lizardman Army, and my Skaven, out of their boxes where they had been languishing for over a year.

My Skaven won handily by the start of Turn 4 but it was close for the first 2 turns and a couple of better tactical choices on his part during deployment and in each turn would've made it quite close. Skaven are a very dice dependent force in WFB and that holds true for AOS (but I found they are a little more reliable in AOS over WFB 8th). Lizardmen (now "Seraphon") are still every bit as tough and masters of defensive and summoning magic as they have ever been.

To his delight, and my great surprise, the rules actually worked really well. There are some holes (more on that later) but we played through smoothly and got a result with a lot of figures on the table to start with – we like large armies ☺

There are some surprising subtleties in these simple less-than-4-pages of rules. Of course a large chunk of the rules are not in the 4 pages but rather on the data sheets ("Warscrolls") that we printed off the GW Website. I would comment that both armies felt as they should and tactically played very much as they always have. The unique flavours of the Lizardmen and Skaven have not been lost at all. I thought the end of rank bonuses would cripple the Skaven but actually the new alternative and simpler mechanism works quite well.

It was a first play through and we had the usual situation of discovering mistakes as we went along and as usual did better every turn. Last couple of turns zipped along.

There are quite a number of things that are not well explained or very clear in the rules as they currently stand. Most are minor, the only significant hole that I still feel is a glaring problem is the total lack of points or army structure so that my son couldn't tell whether we had a fair fight or not (hard to compare Lizardmen with Skaven by eye, you really need points.) We feel the workaround for the Mighty Empires (the original version) Campaign that we've decided to start will be to use Army Builder for WFB 8th to work up a rough guide and be pretty flexible.

Minor holes are around choosing which weapons are used in attacks when there are multiple choices and the pile-in/lapping around sort of 40K Assault Phase approach to Close Combat. Neither are well explained and we had to guess and muddle around. Magic and heroes were pretty straightforward, movement, shooting and combat resolution were straightforward as was morale checks ("battleshock" checks).

I was very pleasantly surprised with how simply and smoothly they worked and how cleanly the battle flowed. There was way more focus on tactics and manouver and a lot less math and remembering of special rules, who has what armour and which weapon effect, what spell cast 2 turns ago is still in effect for figures with orange socks, etc, etc.

Now, I have to say, as AOS stands today, the 4 page rules feel a bit raw and unpolished. They sort of feel only half play-tested. They feel like the "Getting Started" basic rules that used to be included in the boxed sets. I do wonder if a sensible rule-book with better explanations and some pictures and diagrams may yet be coming in a few weeks. The downloadable "Warscrolls" are a great idea as a temporary "get-you-by" but not everything is clear and they remind me of the Ravening Hordes Booklet that came in the box with WFB 3 when it first came out as a boxed set and was such a radical change from WFB 2 – yes, I do remember back that far :)

In summary, AOS is a really refreshing change. Simple, straightforward, emphasis on common sense and good tactics and maneuver, magic and heroes in proportion, my 11 year old loves them and can get his head around them. We'll be playing them a lot I suspect and may even start to buy a few White Dwarf Magazines again, something we stopped doing 18 months ago when the horrible "Visions" colour picture book started arriving in the mail instead.

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar … a pleasant surprise from GW, who would've thought?!

Sounds like you had a great game.
Thnkyou for writing the summary/opinions on AoS, i am looking to pick up the game mainly because i like the new models, but also becuase the rules seem like they could be fun and a bit different.

"they remind me of the Ravening Hordes Booklet that came in the box with WFB 3 when it first came out as a boxed set and was such a radical change from WFB 2 – yes, I do remember back that far :)"

Not as far back as you think, I'm afraid – WFB6 was the one that had the Ravening Hordes booklet. WFB3 was never in a box but was the standalone hardcover rulebook (prior to that, WFB1 and WFB2 were in a box with no minis and were still geared to using anyone's figures) and had hardcover Warhammer Armies, Warhammer Siege and the Realms of Chaos books.

WFB4 was the first of the 'traditional' starter boxes with High Elves and Goblins; WFB5 (aka HeroHammer) had Bretonnians and Lizardmen, WFB6 had Empire and Orcs (and the Ravening Hordes book), WFB7 had Skull Pass (Dwarfs and Goblins) while WFB8 had (of course) Island of Blood and the High Elves and Skaven.

I played my first game of it last night as well.

It wasn't that smooth as there were multiple places where we were looking up rules, but that is true for any thing where you play for the first time.

We also had a difficult time with some of the rules where they weren't clear.

We did Dwarfs and Daemons.

I'll pick up the new game and see if it runs any smoother with the models from the boxed set.

The dwarfs had a lot of units in their army that were different (warriors vs. thunderers vs. long beards vs. hammerers) and I think my opponent was not only getting confused about the special rules for each but confusing which unit was which on the table.

The OP might be conflating the later Ravening Hordes booklet with the much earlier Ravening Hordes hardback:

To add some confusion, The original "Ravening Hordes" was also the 2e army book, released later, and served as the interim army list for 3rd until "Warhammer Armies" came out.

They apparently liked the name.

There is a point system. Since GW pricing is based on how capable a figure is, just use retail prices. e.g. Play a $400 USD battle, and so on.

Gobemouche,

That is so very true.

If I can get the link thingy working this is an interesting article from Bell of Lost Souls quoting the GW "Ambassador" for AOS

link

From what I understand, wounds will be the new points system. Which makes zero sense to me.

You bring a force of 90 models that have 110 points worth of wounds.

Your opponent brings 110 points of wounds as well.