"Historical Age of Sigmar" Topic

Warhammer Historical is a well respected set of historical rules (it's out of print but still played). Has anyone attempted an Historical version of the Age of Sigmar rules? Is that of interest?

You mean Warhammet Ancient Battles?

Yes, to be more precise, Warhammer Ancient Battles.

Depends what you are trying to model – if you were looking less at the big famous battles and more the countless border raids, it might work well.

Have been thinking about converting it to Star Wars…

I think it would be great for doing Trojan Wars and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It might also work pretty well for F&IW.

For other periods it would work pretty well for doing boarding actions between ships, assaults on castle walls and city fighting games.

You would have the freedom to create your own Warscrolls for the historical units and characters. It would be especially suitable for historical skirmish with a heroic bent.

When I read the Age of Sigmar rules I couldn't really see how deployment, tactics, or the like were supposed to be relevant. It seemed to be largely an exercise in lining up your troops and rolling big buckets of dice to see who won.

I'm all for simplicity in rules design, but it looked like it had taken the principle far too far.

As such my instinctive response to the question was "why would anyone want to do that?" But I must admit I haven't played it, and I guess if you enjoy the game as it stands and/or the rules have been polished a bit since I tossed them aside in contempt, then there's no reason not to have a go at converting them to ancient battles.

I can't help but feel though that there are better fantasy skirmish games out there for adaptation, if that's what you're after. Some even from GW's own catalogue: Mordheim and the 6th edition Warhammer Skirmish rules come to mind. And for mass battles there certainly are, since that isn't (as far as I can tell) something AoS is really designed for anyway.

There are scenarios, just not in the 4 page rules.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms using AoS?

That's just….brilliant!

It seemed to be largely an exercise in lining up your troops and rolling big buckets of dice to see who won.

Just wait since it looks like they are going to do this for 40K as well.

But yes GW games these days are all about who can throw the most dice each turn.

Pretty much all games are about that by your definition, then.

Try Lion Rampant. It is also quite simple, and is already historical.

I have and like Lion Rampant, but I'm pretty sure its a different sort of game… mass units instead of skirmish… but I haven't looked at it for a while so I may be mistaken.

"When I read the Age of Sigmar rules I couldn't really see how deployment, tactics, or the like were supposed to be relevant. It seemed to be largely an exercise in lining up your troops and rolling big buckets of dice to see who won."

And this is exactly why people need to play rules to understand them.

So you not throwing 50-100 dice every turn?

I have seen the stat sheets for the units and the one thing that GW did when they put out Age of Sigmar is up the number of dice being thrown.

Do you realize that using lots of dice will flatten out the extreme results, as opposed to some games which rely on 1d10 (for example) that can have really swingy results? Therefore I personally like games where you roll a handful of dice instead of a single die which will inevitably lead to me rolling low and basically self-destructing my army.

Also "I couldn't really see how deployment, tactics, or the like were supposed to be relevant" must be hyperbole.

Otherwise you would be saying you aren't intelligent enough to realize that locking units in combat, retreating, model positioning and weapon ranges, applying Inspiring Presence and/or Mystic Shield to the right unit at the right time, and unit abilities on their warscrolls ALL lead to various tactics and deployment decisions.

I am not particularly interested in getting into a debate over the merits of AoS as a game in itself. Aside from questions of tactical complexity and so forth, in which case I may not have given the game a fair shake, I think there are still some inexplicable decisions in the rules, like the "bases are irrelevant, measure from any part of the model" business. I don't think I need to play them to know they're not for me. But I conceded in my initial post that some people may enjoy playing it, in which case, good for them.

I remain confident in the second part of my post, however, in that I believe there are better games for adaptation to ancients.

Yeah I wouldn't have thought of using it for ancients unless you were doing some kind of more heroic skirmish. The measuring from the models closest point is not a great rule. In actual play, players measure from the bases, even at official GW events from what I understand. We always measure from the bases locally for good reason.

I don't think anyone tried, and I don't think it will be a good idea.

AoS would be great for Dark Age large skirmishes as well. It does have that "big scrum" feel, but has a lot of applicable tactics for larger formed units.
Anyone who has not actually played the game should play it a few times before passing judgement. Seems silly to denounce the game as rubbish without actually playing it.
A few years ago my buddy and I got a few Napoleonics players at a convention to try out 5th edition 40K. At the end of the session each and every one of them were happily discussing the game and potentially investing in it. As one guy said, "Wow, it's actually a pretty good game. Not what I thought at all."
Go figure…

Strange double posting…