Age of Sigmar Rumor Roundup

[Kirsten]

so, my next lot of thoughts

no points values on those scrolls

if every unit will get a scroll on saturday then we can at least get a good idea of stuff staying/going etc. and how it fits in.

scrolls are a big departure from previous statlines, which means there are limits to what any 'bigger ruleset' might contain. the scrolls go hand in hand with the new mini rules, so I am not sure how a rulebook for larger battles would actually differ, aside from perhaps adding rules for ranks somehow, or at least just outnumbering the enemy or similar.

[Tomgar]

It's fun to do scenarios and stuff at times, but not trying to work that stuff out for every game. Sometimes you meet a new player and just want to have a quick match, rather than spend 30-60 minutes discussing what forces can be used, what the scenario should be, etc.

Yep. The great strength of 40k (for all its many, many faults) is that you can say "wanna play 1500pts?" and then play a game. Bam. Minimal set-up time, just agreeing on a pts limit, then you're away. Who wants to spend half an hour before every game saying "right, I can have this many Warscrolls and you can have this many Warscrolls?"

It is literally the laziest games design I've ever seen.

[Erik Setzer]

scrolls are a big departure from previous statlines, which means there are limits to what any 'bigger ruleset' might contain. the scrolls go hand in hand with the new mini rules, so I am not sure how a rulebook for larger battles would actually differ, aside from perhaps adding rules for ranks somehow, or at least just outnumbering the enemy or similar.

It looks like having more models in a unit means that you might be able to position more to strike (though if I'm understanding things right, melee weapons have a 1" range, so you need to be within 1" of an enemy model to strike), and you get a bonus to your "battleshock" rolls to keep from losing more models to flight. On the flip side, if you have more models in your army, your opponent gets the ability to pick a way to end the game instantly with a "major victory" by doing something so simple as having a model close to a certain piece of terrain at the end of turn 4, or killing a certain enemy unit or character, or just having a single model alive at the end of turn 6.

[Auticus]

Yep. The great strength of 40k (for all its many, many faults) is that you can say "wanna play 1500pts?" and then play a game. Bam. Minimal set-up time, just agreeing on a pts limit, then you're away. Who wants to spend half an hour before every game saying "right, I can have this many Warscrolls and you can have this many Warscrolls?"

It is literally the laziest games design I've ever seen.

Historical games were often like this. The games I started with were exactly like this in the late 80s and 90s. The concept of points was not something that I started experiencing until 1996 or so. Until then I went almost a decade without ever using points based systems.

[Erik Setzer]

Who wants to spend half an hour before every game saying "right, I can have this many Warscrolls and you can have this many Warscrolls?"

It has to be more than that. The Warscrolls don't list a number of models on them. So you have to figure out relative power levels between units, and how many models a unit can have. If you just say "we'll both take X number of warscrolls," you could still find yourself facing a couple hundred models to your 50.

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Historical games were often like this. The games I started with were exactly like this in the late 80s and 90s.

They moved away from that for a reason. And they were usually designed to represent actual historical battles anyway. This isn't a historical game.

[40kGamer]

The one I can think of off the top of my head is Force on Force, though the owners of that system are working on a revised version with point values as an update to their original Ambush Alley rules as I understand it. I think Fire and Fury still may not use point values or army construction rules, but I haven't looked at it in a while. But in general you are correct. All the currently popular historical games (Flames of War, Bolt Action, Hail Caesar, Black Powder, etc.) all use point values and are quite fun.

You are both quite correct, hence my reference to "traditional" games. Although PIQUET rules still avoid points in general and a lot of smaller non-mainstream games don't bother over points. However, the fact that the majority of popular Historical games systems do use points should be an indicator that the community as a whole approves of some semblance of balance.

So if they do ditch points it is a huge step backwards in game theory and a full admission from them as a company that they think game balance is irrelevant. Quite a departure from the believe they followed just a few years back when there was at least an effort to balance things through points. In fact if you read the designer notes in Epic Armageddon Jervis launches into a full exposition regarding the importance of Game Balance and Tournament rules. This isn't just a different game but an entirely different company.

I'm not willing to bet on anything anymore as I didn't believe they would ditch square bases and regiments in favor of what looks to be 'another version of 40k', so no points is within the realm of reason.

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Yep. The great strength of 40k (for all its many, many faults) is that you can say "wanna play 1500pts?" and then play a game. Bam. Minimal set-up time, just agreeing on a pts limit, then you're away. Who wants to spend half an hour before every game saying "right, I can have this many Warscrolls and you can have this many Warscrolls?"

It is literally the laziest games design I've ever seen.

I agree the PV are awesome for ease of game play but 7th 40k is such a debacle of game balance pick up games have become increasingly difficult.

[Auticus]

It has to be more than that. The Warscrolls don't list a number of models on them. So you have to figure out relative power levels between units, and how many models a unit can have. If you just say "we'll both take X number of warscrolls," you could still find yourself facing a couple hundred models to your 50.

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They moved away from that for a reason. And they were usually designed to represent actual historical battles anyway. This isn't a historical game.

Battletech wasn't a historical game either

It worked fine until the competitions started. Once tournaments became a thing, points had to be used.

I don't think a game *requires* points to play well, and I don't see it as lazy design.

However I do think that if you want to play tournaments that you need points, but those points have to be meaningful and not just arbitrary (like 40k seems to be for example)

[Mr Mystery]

£75 in proper munneh.

Worth a punt if you ask me, and better value than Armada.

[Wildeybeast]

Okay, I'm going to come out and say it. When these rumours started emerging a couple of months ago, I thought Erik was just being a doom merchant. Turns out he was right and in fact it looks even worse than he thought. Warhammer is dead and unless there is something very important that we aren't currently aware of, this games looks beyond stupid.

[fraziersm]

Okay, I'm going to come out and say it. When these rumours started emerging a couple of months ago, I thought Erik was just being a doom merchant. Turns out he was right and in fact it looks even worse than he thought. Warhammer is dead and unless there is something very important that we aren't currently aware of, this games looks beyond stupid.

I heard from my local store today, that this is a stand alone game, and that this is not WHFB 9th ed.