"Age of Sigmar: Too Simple?" Topic

Are the rules too simple?

I don't think simplicity is the problem, simple rules can provide a challenging and enduring game like chess or DBA, the problem I see with them is that they lack depth and don't offer a stimulating gaming experience.

That's of course just my opinion and I know others like them. Horses for courses (or vice versa) and no disrespect intended. If you want to put some nice looking stuff on a table and have fun – they seem to fit the bill.

The individual unit/type 'Warscrolls' when used with the rules give added depth and having played a few games there's more to them than meets the eye – got me back into fantasy gaming after an absence of 20+ years – great fun !.

The basic mechanics are fine – largely copied from Kings of War – its just that they haven't put in the effort to fully develop them. Examples of a lack of polish would be (a) the inability to balance a game – the standard response in a GW Store from the Red Shirt is " … oh, you just need to be playing the set scenarios from the Campaign Books … ", these are the multiple books they've released at pretty significant prices. (b) the stupidity of measuring from the figure and not the base – this from a company that releases winged models with massive overhang beyond the base.(c) the sloppy writing that has left some face-palm obvious holes … and so on … and so on!!

Core mechanics are fine, some heavy errata and attention to detail could fix them – but with their problems not resolved after 8 months we've stopped playing them now and have moved to other better rules.

The units seem to function a bit samey, other than a little plus or minus here or there. It'd probably be fine for a historical game (like Viking skirmishes), but for a fantasy game it falls a little flat. Compare the new stuff to the old Orc and Goblin army from 1992… Units that used to explode into disorder (Squig Herders); move in random directions (Squig Hoppers); vomit out insane, spinning goblins (Night Goblin Fanatics); roll on random charts for their attack moves like bawling and jumping up and down (Giants) and stop dead in their tracks to drool at the most inopportune times (Trolls). I mean, the entire Orc and Goblin army was always on the brink of breaking down and fighting itself… Now THAT is a fantasy army.

I agree that complexity is not absolutely necessary for a game to be any good, although my own personal preference (from scanning my bookshelf) certainly leans towards very complex games.

I agree that the rules themselves are not the main issue (though the ranged combat in-and-out of melee is a problem with verisimilitude), but the fact that there is NO real attempt at balancing the factions, putting all of the workload on the players (all the while trying to spin this as a benefit), really lets this game down by a huge amount.

Beyond that, killing a mass battle game and replacing with a skirmish game, plus killing off a long-standing middle-fantasy setting and replacing with a gonzo-fantasy setting, is there little wonder why people were upset about it?

Damon.

I'm glad there was no attempt to "balance" it, whatever that means.

It is a great game. As with mossdocking it got me back into fantasy gaming after a lengthy absence. I love it.

"is there little wonder why people were upset about it?"

There is a lot of wonder why people are upset with it.

I really don't understand the "killing off a long-standing middle fantasy setting" thing. They destroyed the Old World in the fluff, it doesn't mean you can't still play games in it.

I mean World War II ended 70 years ago and I don't hear Flames of War players complaining that is over. They don't want Germany to rearm and go to war with the whole world or anything.

And WWII actually happened.

You can still play 8th edition. It isn't killed.

People still play the Sword and the Flame and there hasn't been anything new produced for that in years and years.

I don't know that they ever supported the game with figures.

Well, arguably Battlefront still publishes new material for the WW2 "setting" (is that even true? I don't know, it seems like BF is branching out from WW2 a lot lately). The Old World will never see an update or a closer look ever again…

I can understand how disappointing it is to play in a setting that will never get another publication for it, but honestly it has been that way for years. Around 2000, when the Old World started getting way too serious and gritty, I felt like my favorite setting had died. When GW pulled the plug on the Old World last year, it was already something I didn't know or care about for a decade and a half… I could not care less about what happened in 6e right up to 8e and "the End Times." I still happily play in my early 90's version of the setting these days, but I admit there was something really exciting about having professionally published material for it being released constantly (across a broad family of games that explored the world… Warhammer Quest, Blood Bowl, Man O War, WFRP etc).

There was still so much left to explore in the Old World. We got a good look at some Empire provinces, but others were really left incomplete. And what about the Norse (and Norse Dwarfs), or Nippon? I would have loved to see those things back in 4th or 5th edition. I shudder to think, however, what post-90's GW would have done with those settings.

1990's GW would have had twice as many armies, but they'd all be painted bright yellow :-)

The Kislevite list for Warmaster was a pretty fun army. I have a whole Kislevite army painted up and we've played them a few times. They are similar to Empire but the warwagons make playing them a lot different and you really need to get your timing right with them.

Yes, it is still there…as a dead game. Sure I can keep playing 8th…in my basement by myself. AoS killed the fantasy scene here stone dead. No one plays anymore, unless it is for Kings of War. So sure I can keep playing a dead game. How many games of Chronopia do you think are still played?

Damon.

How many games of The Sword and the Flame are still played?

It is just as dead as Warhammer Fantasy Battle.

Did all of your stuff dry up and blow away when GW announced they weren't making any more rules for it? They are still making all the models, or most of them, by the way.

I wish they'd do the same rules and 'codex' treatment for 40K.

I mean, it is empirically demonstrable that dead and unsupported games have steep, steep dropoffs in player base and play opportunities. It is undeniable, even if we want to say that it "ought" not be true. GW didn't take your minis, no, but evidence suggests that dead games… well… die. Sometimes some games break that trend, but I'd note that 1) they never remain as popular as they were in their heyday and 2) those are exceptions to the vastly more common rule.

I wish they'd do the same rules and 'codex' treatment for 40K.

More than likely that they will.

As for AoS I will remain silent.

I am truly at a loss as to what people mean by a "dead game". I do not get it!

Our gaming group of friends has been playing Warhammer for twenty years, just the five of us. Never had an interest in tournaments, we don't even bother trying to play at gaming stores or clubs, just too much hassle.

I realize that not everyone has a group of friends who will still the same interest as long as mine have, but even so…

…I do not understand how AOS had the power to "kill" previous editions of Warhammer fantasy battle, and I don't understand what this psychological thing is where a game that previously held the interest of a group of people at a store suddenly and mysteriously loses all interest and the game quote unquote, "dies".

WHY??? As Pictors pointed out, did your miniatures dry up and blow away in the wind? Did your rulebooks vaporize and vanish? Did your gaming table and terrain suddenly get sucked into a black hole?

Is this about the whole support thing again?

Mordheim is another example of a game that technically is "dead". Yet it's still played among private gaming groups and at some gaming clubs. GW stopped "supporting" that game what, over ten years ago maybe?

The remarks above about how now you can only play Warhammer alone in your basement – well, I doubt that. If you searched, I am sure you could find someone not too far away that would be willing to get in a game now and then. Perhaps you wouldn't get to play as often as you previously did, but the game doesn't disappear just because GW stops publishing new rules for it!

If you look at websites like "Oldhammer" and others, you will see that for them, just like for our group, the game is timeless, and you keep playing it, and you keep loving and painting the miniatures, because you love it.

This whole thing of "official support" for a game to me only applies to tournament nonsense, where they need to hang on GW's every new "official announcement" of a rules clarification or update, in order to facilitate their ongoing Warhammer Olympics.

But I just don't get how something that you previously loved suddenly becomes nothing and supposedly dies because GW publishes a new game that you don't care for.

I've got minis going back to 3rd Edition all the way up through 8th Edition. I'm happy to play the game a few times a year with my friends, or play it solo, or just spend some time painting and modelling and giving the gaming part a break.

It's YOUR world, not GW's. You can do with it whatever you wish!

Baranovich, again we can distinguish between "ought" statements and "is" statements. It ought to be true that unsupported games can live on… And sometimes they do. But in the vast majority of cases, a dead game is dead. You can make an effort to keep it alive locally, and sometimes games will make little comebacks as niche, retro-games, but the chance of going to your FLGS for a friendly pickup game of Chronopia or Clan Wars is effectively non-existant now. That is an "is" statement: it is empirical and undeniably true. We can say that is weird, or dumb or nonesensical, but it is (for whatever reason) true.

Anyway, this thread is about rules simplicity, not official support.

@Achtung Minen,

Granted.

I do not feel that the rules are overly simplified.

I think they are actually liberating and honestly, a refreshing change from classic Warhammer. I don't think that one is better than the other, just different. I still love classic Warhammer and always will, but AOS is a nice alternative as well.

Going from full army books to warscrolls was a shock to many. However, if you really think about it, the warscrolls are not that different from the older books. The full-length army books had the stats for the armies, which really only took up five or ten pages of the actual book itself. Other pages covered special rules, yes, but a huge chunk of the old books were all the support stuff for the army like the lore, painting guides, photos of the army in battle, etc. – all the stuff that makes GW books so much fun to read and makes them such high quality.

But, technically, you didn't need all of the rest of it if you just were looking for the stats themselves.

And sure enough, if you put together an Empire army, for example, and you have seven or eight warscrolls in front of you to cover all your Empire units – well you have just about the same amount of pages as you would if you had torn them from an old army book. Each unit still has its own stat line with its own special rules.

As far as AOS not having a points system, again I find this to be liberating and refreshing, not a limitation or a failure to "balance" the game.

The way you play AOS is first you need two reasonably SENSIBLE people, who can work out together two forces that are reasonably equal, more or less. When I say equal, I don't mean equal amounts of wounds, or any technical equality, but two sensible forces. If you play the game and it was too far favored towards one player or another, well then you adjust it for the next game. I have never personally found it difficult to find the right balance of fun/immersion/and evenness in an AOS game.

AOS most certainly does not have "competitive" balance, that's true enough. But that's not a failure of the game or an oversimplification issue. It's not meant to be a balanced competitive game, not in the sense that tournament gamers think of balance when using a rigid points system. That's why it's been trashed by them as a game supposedly only fit for ten-year olds. That's because it doesn't have 8th Edition's spreadsheet depth, the kind of statistical depth that tournament players salivate over and love to drill down into. So be it, to each his own, but don't call AOS a kid's game, it most certainly is not.

AOS has PLENTY of tactics, PLENTY of depth, and PLENTY of good stories to tell.

Just look at any of Pictors Studio or Mongoose Matt's battle reports and you will see it come to life, as it has always had the potential to do.

Baranovich, if I may, I believe the answer to your query lies within an usumption you put forth. I don't believe any of this is about "games they love" and more about love of winning, competition and one upsmanship most might rather play complex and constantly power creep infused tiddly-winks as long as it is "supported" updated and expanded. I don't mean to have come across as harsh, but I have seen the same attitude permeate the gaming hobby for decades. Those folks are in it for different reasons than you or I , perhaps. Those are also the same folks who complain the loadest even when their game of choice is fully supported. Different personalities for sure.