News:

Cammerz brings us some fantastically painted and customised Alpha Legion. Check out their work with detail shots and design insight.

Main Menu

First Experience of Age of Sigmar since its Initial Release.

Started by Narric, July 25, 2019, 10:01:02 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Narric

So today I finally had a proper taste of Age of Sigmar from another experienced player.

The skirmish was between my valiant (though technically not legal) Dwarf Gunline, vs an intense Khorne Warband.

The major differences I had to wrap my mind around were the slightly different/new turn structure, and the unit/weapon statlines for combat rolls. Not needing to consult half a dozen tables to figure out how screwed you are in a fight was pleasant to say the least. The biggest difference in my experience was how the Cannon worked.

Consistent rolls really did make the game flow a bit faster. The risky initiative at the start of each game turn making your choices the turn before more important.

If you haven't played recently I'd recommend playing even just to try the new system.

Irisado

I tried it out quite a while ago and the rules were certainly an improvement, but there was still too much dice rolling and too many special rules for my tastes.  That said, it was fun, and was less unnecessarily complex than Fantasy Battle had been.  Some of the models that GW is producing for it are also very impressive.
Soñando con una playa donde brilla el sol, un arco iris ilumina el cielo, y el mar espejea iridescentemente

Narric

I have the aid of the AoS and BattleScribe Apps for my two games, both of which had the rules laid out very clearly, in addition to an experienced opponent.

What do you mean by too much dice rolling? I only used one dice cube of 27die for my game, and my opponent used fewer for a CC based army. Do you mean there is too much reliance/inclusion of variability to the game?

Irisado

What I mean is that you still end up having to roll bucket loads of D6s.  It's fewer than in Fantasy because the 'to wound' stage has been removed, but it is still too many.  In addition, and I neglected to mention this before, the main problem is actually the use of the D6 in of itself.  I've played other games in the past and much more recently, which use fewer dice and none of them are D6.  Not using this dice makes for a much more effective spread of results and makes for a game which makes more effective use of characteristics than can be achieved with the D6.

To elaborate a little further, GW has characteristics values between 1 and 10 (in the past it was 1-12).  Representing such a wide variance on the D6 is very difficult.  Elite troops, in particular, suffer from this, as they tend to be very compromised in terms of how the dice reflect their skills.  All of this actually makes it very difficult to balance the game, although this is more of an issue for 40K, when combining infantry, vehicles, flyers, and super heavies, which I would argue is impossible under GW's current approach to making rules.  There is also rather too much reliance on luck, in my opinion, when using the D6 in this sort of context.

I am much more interested in playing smaller scale games on a smaller playing surface now.  It's more enjoyable, faster, and the rules are simply better.  Age of Sigmar represented some progress on this front from GW, but so long as the company remains wedded to its D6 philosophy, which is how it started, so I understand why it is hard to change it, I do not believe that I will be interested in playing any of their games again in the future.
Soñando con una playa donde brilla el sol, un arco iris ilumina el cielo, y el mar espejea iridescentemente

Lord Witherfume

I'm a huge fan of Age of Sigmar, it's my primary game these days. The brilliant models are just a bonus.
â€Ã...“It’s a lot harder to agree with something than disagree.â€Ã,

Narric

I might give it another try at some point, but for now, I'm sticking to the systems that I know :3