Loving the people upset about warhammer AOS

[Spider-pope]

It was someone who was talking to a WHW Staffer and was obviously annoyed at the changes and so reported back everything in a pretty negative light, yeah. Not a direct quote from GW, as its been reported on clickbait sites, but a second hand source with obvious bias.

It's not even really there in the supposed report of said conversation. They said the rep said that the silly rules were for vets because they are more likely to be playing in private with friends. That's a very different thing to what's being claimed, that they introduced silly rules so vets would be forced to play in private.

If people don't like the silly rules, don't use them. The entire aim of AoS's rules seems to be allowing the players to play the game how they want to play it.

Like i said earlier, there are legitimate reasons to be annoyed with GW, without having to make new ones up.

[Path Walker]

As I noted in the article on the front page - this stuff doesn't bother me because I grew up with these type of rules and 3rd edition Warhammer was exactly these kind of rules.

Back in the late 80s everyone (adults included) had a great time.

Today - its all serious business.

So many people have been talking about how Warhammer going means that they don't have a serious tactical wargame, as if that was what Warhammer ever was. Nerds thinking they're Sun Tzu is always hilarious.

[40kGamer]

C

Couldn't agree more, I'm pretty happy with what I'm seeing so far. I haven't touched WFB for 7 years at least. This has me excited and I will be ordering AoS tomorrow. Isn't that the point of this release ?

Absolutely! I've been on a 15 year break from playing much fantasy although I've gathered a lot of the new kits just because the models are cool. I'll be grabbing the starter as the models are super easy to cross to 40k if need be... but I'll be waiting on the rumored future 'balancing mechanic' before I get to excited over game play.

[40kGamer]

Cons:

The use of Within throughout the rules. Target friendly unit within 12" - check with the measuring tape and it's exactly 12 inches away and so you can't use the ability/spell you were about to use as the friendly unit is not within 12".

Measuring from the model not the base, check to see how far away you are from enemy - 10", roll dice and get 9". Look at unit and then notice that if you had turned them so that their weapon which is 2" over the base was pointing towards the enemy unit you wanted to charge and discover you would have successfully made the charge.

Measuring from the model has so far been the single most annoying aspect of these rules. Especially since I suspect the mechanic comes from some ill-fated attempt to pacify square basers. Just agree with your opponent to measure everything from the base and it flows much smoother. As for within, well it shouldn't come up as an issue as the difference between 12" and 11.999" isn't even perceptible, so just use 12" as the benchmark. Even as an American, I really wish they just wrote the rules in metric. Inches are flat out stupid.

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But isn't it supposed to attract lots of new, i.e. inexperienced, players?

Can always attract the newbs with promises of free ale I suppose.

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Which is why i'm not convinced that AoS will succeed in the long run. Launching a new game without changing the prices and the way they market won't achieve the turn around they want. There are certainly positives about AoS. I actually like the rules, i like the abandoning of points in favour of narrative and players using their self control, i won't shed a single tear that the overly competitive elements of the playerbase are leaving the hobby.
But without addressing the core problems with GW, it's not going to work. As i said fairly often before i abandoned the cess pit that Warseer has become, when the makers of adult sex toys have more of a social media presence than you do, your business model needs to change.

Sadly one need not be overly competitive to accidentally break AoS or 40k at the moment. I hope the so called balancing mechanism proves to be true and actually provides some semblance of order to an otherwise Chaotic system.

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Hahaha, no, the experience is gained while playing in a Beginners group at a local GW or hobby story, learning with your friends how to play the game as you go.

They don't really care about existing Fantasy players all that much, they stopped buying years ago which is why they had to change this up, the game wasn't suitable for new players and the old players weren't dropping enough money. Now they can teach a new generation of hobbyists to play narrative wargames for the fun of playing with a system that makes a competitive game unfeasible.

I always love how when the game requires some sort of positive social interaction, you break down and can't possibly comprehend it.

Have to agree. WFB players were just not buying enough anymore and the game was viewed as too much of a time and $ investment to attract the necessary new blood. And lest anyone forget, once upon a time GW had no customers for the games and had to build it from all new players. Back then we had games like Adeptus Titanicus, RT and the WFB early editions that were all wildly unbalanced, often silly and loads of fun regardless. Simpler times I guess.

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Back in the late 80s everyone (adults included) had a great time.

Today - its all serious business.

All business and no soul...

[Auticus]

I think part of that is rooted in Magic: The Gathering turning into a professional game. People have wanted that with a wargame since tournaments became a thing. Professional wargame circuits would not have silly rules and professional game circuits are very serious business.

[40kGamer]

I think part of that is rooted in Magic: The Gathering turning into a professional game. People have wanted that with a wargame since tournaments became a thing. Professional wargame circuits would not have silly rules and professional game circuits are very serious business.

Ah, kind of like the difference between sandlot football vs the professional, make a living game.

[Path Walker]

I blame you americans getting hold of it, with your competitive attitudes, Brits should be far too embarrassed to try and do something as unsporting as winning a thing. How gauche.

[40kGamer]

It's not our fault! Competition is literally conditioned into us from the day we enter the school doors. Cooperative play is just so un-American.

[Spider-pope]

I blame you americans getting hold of it, with your competitive attitudes, Brits should be far too embarrassed to try and do something as unsporting as winning a thing. How gauche.

There's definitely a cultural thing going on. My friends and i saw the silly rules and thought "Ha! That's hilarious" whereas the American response seems to be "Silly rules? Game over man! Game over!".

[Auticus]

Ah, kind of like the difference between sandlot football vs the professional, make a living game.

Precisely this. THere have been many attempts to form a national circuit that is "professional" but the community always gets in its own way (mainly in its politics - arguing over who gets to be in charge and what ruleset to use kind of things). Really the only way a professional warhammer circuit could exist is if GW made it so and they won't do that.

However thats diverging from topic.

Moving more towards silly rules and loose RPG framework takes us further from ever having warhammer being "professional".

Now I will also caveat that not every competitive player wants professional warhammer or is even a goal, but it does remove the serious nature of serious competition from it, which is similar in vein.

While not universal I note that the majority of people that are really angry over Age of Sigmar are also pretty serious competitive type players (that doesn't mean they go to tournaments, but they play the game in a serious manner and want serious rules and competitive framework in place) whereas the people that aren't as bothered are less so.