Age of Sigmar "Laws of War" Balancing Rules

[Bigred]

via [URL="http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/08/age-of-sigmar-balancing-rules-sighted.html"]BoLS[/URL] 8-10-2015

There are reports of a new set of add-on rules for Age of Sigmar that balance the game and allow mismatched sized armies to fight on an equal footing!


The New Rules
Sources tell BoLS the new rules are described as “Laws of War” and work as follows:

– There are still no points

– Both sides will deploy forces as normal then check against a list of criteria for “mismatches” including things such as :

a) does one side use more factions?

b) does one side use more spammed warscrolls?

c) does one side use more special characters?

d) does one side use more monsters?

e)… There are several more

Both players tally up their total points and determine the difference in who has the most “mismatch” points.

The player who has the lowest total gets a number of free “Law of War” warscrolls based on a chart.

These “Law of War” warscrolls are themed after the 8 Realms and grant a variety of game altering effects. Some make your army harder to kill, some do damage to the enemy, some make casting magic more difficult for opponents, and so forth.

via [URL="http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?412670-Age-of-Sigmar-Balancing-Laws-of-War"]Warseer's Laws_of_War[/URL] 8-11-2015

[URL="http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?412670-Age-of-Sigmar-Balancing-Laws-of-War"]PDF Posted Here[/URL]

[Mr Mystery]

Interesting stuff.

I see the whingebrigade have already passed judgement over on Warseer.

[Path Walker]

Doesn't look official to me

[Mr Mystery]

Dunno dude.

If it is a fake, someone's gone to a decent amount of effort to make it look the part.

[Erik Setzer]

Well, the other whingebrigade probably thinks it's perfect and anyone saying otherwise is evil and cold and soulless.

You can say "you need to play games with it before you can pass judgment!" but it's kind of obvious from the start that it's a mess and doesn't add balance at all. I would definitely not use these in a tournament meant to test player skill.

Seriously, look at that first one. On average, you'll be able to take 1/3 of the wounds out of a number of units equal to the difference in "army power."

It could add some more amusing randomness to a basic game (and that can be fun, sure), but these are not rules for balancing. If you enjoy them for adding fun randomness to a game, cool, you're not wrong for doing so, I might even try them for a bit of random fun here and there. Just don't call them "balancing rules," because they aren't.

Something about the wording in this also doesn't feel right. But I'll just avoid saying more on that, lest the whingebrigade whinge some more about me not being a 100% AoS cheerleader.

[Mr Mystery]

FFS Erik.

Seriously.

Just.....FFS.

[Path Walker]

Looks the part a bit but its not very intuitive and doesn't support the idea of building the army you want which GW have been really keen to promote (they've given stores who try and put comp systems for local game days in place a telling off for example)

[Erik Setzer]

Dunno dude.

If it is a fake, someone's gone to a decent amount of effort to make it look the part.

It's possible. When I get a chance, I want to try to see if I can make my own warscrolls (for adding new units or resurrecting old units). Someone with the right software could make it look right.

Since we've opened this can of worms, I'll comment on where the wording feels weird to me... First off, it comes right out talking about "balance" and "philosophy" and mentioning tournaments. The language in the "Philosophy" section seems to meander a bit, like it's not sure what it wants to say, but really wants to get across "AoS is a serious game that requires serious tactics and strategy!" It's particularly odd that the document says it's good for pick-up games and tournaments, and says "bring the number of models you agreed to" but then suggests you don't know who your opponent is or what the scenario might me. Maybe they're trying to cover all scenarios and just doing a poor job of it.

It's possible it was faked, but it's more likely it was just a quickly pushed project to answer concerns about balance. If so, I mean, kudos to them for recognizing that's an issue, but maybe don't get an intern to write it really quickly at the last minute?

[Mr Mystery]

It's extra stuff.

If it's legit, extra stuff is always welcome.

If it's not legit, extra stuff is always welcome.

[Al Shut]

Real or not, not necessarily my cup of tea. If you wanted to avoid the laws of war (and some quite powerful) keeping track of all ten power benchmarks during setup could be quite a hassle.

And I would most likely try to convince my opponent to skip the part where each player can take at least one scroll.