What is it people like about AoS?

[NagaBaboon]

Ok, right from the off I have to say I'm not a fan. I think it's a pretty bad game I just don't see the appeal of AoS but clearly there are plenty of people who do. Unfortunately there is not much of a community supporting it around my area so I have no one to really ask questions like this. I have only played it 3 times so my experience is not vast, and I'm not saying I didn't have some fun, I just have much more fun playing a lot of other games (I play 40k, WFB, Malifaux, Guildball, X-wing, Armada, Batman and am starting to get into Relic knights, Dropzone commander and Infinity too).

I commend the attempt to make such a streamlined rule set, my favourite game is x-wing for this very reason but to me x-wing seems neat and concise, where as the games of AoS I played felt like there were rules missing. It also feels like it's really lacking room for tactical play (outside of math hammer, which I don't think is the same as tactics) and the models don't really feel like they are interacting with each other. I'm not saying it is devoid of these features, just lacking compared to the other games I play.

Anyway basically that's where I am. I'm not trying to troll or anything, I want to hear about everyone elses experiences, good and bad, and I'm really curious to find out what it is that works for those people who have really taken to it, especially those who play other non GW games systems and are a similiar age to me (ie late 20s - early 30s).

[Mr Mystery]

It's well paced.

I have access to all the rules for free, and none of my existing collection has been rendered obsolete.

There's far more depth to it than many give it credit for. Example? Getting the most out of your 'Reach' units. Anything with 2" range or more can be deadly, as they can stick it to the enemy, cranking up their Battleshock modifier, whilst staying safely out of reach behind a friendly units.

Match this with a decently armoured, ideally multiple wound unit, perhaps with a buff to their armour of some kind, and you can give pretty much any unit a really bad day.

Rock/Paper/Scissors planning has largely gone. Everything is a threat to everything now, thanks to the fixed (but still modifiable) rolls. You can't really listhammer to victory now.

In short? It's just fun. The very basis of how one selects an army encourages sportspersonly conduct. Beardmongers can no longer hide behind their powerbuilds, claiming the fault is with the writers - their powergaming penchant is now laid bare.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

I have played a massive variety of games of AoS now and I think it is great fun. I love heroes and big monsters. I can now finally take these without any restrictions. I love the freedom of being able to go to GW and buy any Fantasy model without the need of setting aside money for lots of basic infantry. I can just buy and play with models that I want.
I believe the game flows well, and there is a lot of tactics involved in the combat phase. There have been several games where a decision has flipped the game.

[Auticus]

What I like

* free rules
* IMO the best models of any game (aesthetics are important to me)
* great looking terrain (aesthetics are important to me)
* simpler rules. I hate rules lawyering, I hate having to stop a game a dozen times to flip through a rulebook and try to find a rule and then argue with someone over the english definition of a conjunction as they try to twist something to give them an advantage
* simpler rules II - less rules means less finding obscure loopholes to game
* movement. I actually thought I'd hate it and I would like some formations to return but I like how armies flow
* simple mechanics and the special rules on scrolls - again I hate memorizing 100-200 pages of rules and then having to reference rules all game
* battleshock - I like that everything is not all or nothing now. armies fight like I would picture them to, with guys running here and there, not wholesale
* battle lines that resemble battle lines, not squares slamming into each other statically with arbitrary combat modifiers
* battle lines that don't just all vanish right away due to a bad roll.
* I am a big fan of the Total war series, and the games of AoS resemble total war much more than arbitrary blocks do.
* abilities, command abilities - each commander has different things they contribute, unlike older edition where it was go level 4 or go home because of the weight of the magic phase


What I don't like
* no facings, no rears, no flanks (warmachine gives you a bonus for fighting in the rear of a model for example)
* no balancing mechanism - its hard to run events and write scenarios for people to just drop whatever models they want on the table
* no balancing mechanism - everything seems to be about taking all elite now - the lack of requirement to take mainstay units "core tax" is kind of annoying to me because I like armies that are representative of the whole, not cherry picked special forces every game

So to me the pros outweigh the cons and I will continue to write scenarios and run events for my area and share them until something else comes along that hooks me more, which to date has not yet happened.

[NagaBaboon]

I forgot about the lack of balancing mechanics, which is odd becasue that's perhaps my biggest gripe! I have to admit a lot of these points are positive spins on things I had seen as bad before, I'm still not convinced but I think I need to try it some more games with these approaches in mind.

Regarding the models I really am not overwhelmed by them which has not helped, I think so many systems are making better models now that the GW minis are less of a draw than they used to be (and it's more about the minis than anything for me too), they do have the big and grand models though, which not many other companies can compare to yet and that is the only real attraction for me as of yet.

[Mr Mystery]

Giving it a try is the most one can do. There's games which, on paper, I should be all over like a rash, but upon trying them just didn't do it for me.

Another big plus?

There's Judas Priest songs which just fit AoS. Judas Is Rising fits, Nostradamus (substituting the instances of Nostradamus with 'God King Sigmar', Painkiller. All put me in the mood to descend from Azyr and get some righteous smiting on!

Plus, background wise, I find it very refreshing to see Chaos as the one whose dominance is under threat. It's a different take than we're used to from Warhammer and 40k both, which are both tales of entropy.

[NagaBaboon]

That's true, that is kind of refreshing but to be honest I've always found the chaos vs. man story a bit tedious, it just feels like it gets a lot of focus and I'm a bit bored of it. I like all the fringe forces like Tau and Tyranids for 40k and lizardmen and beastmen (ok they're chaos but they have their own aesthetic and it's the warriors of chaos I don't like so much) and these always seem to suffer with a lack of attention in the fluff if not the actual rules.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I can actually make the army I actually want now! Never liked any of the core choices in tomb kings, only liked the snakes and sphinxes and other non-humanoid things, and I can actually build an army of that stuff now.

In the old game I only liked TK and Skaven, in the new game there is Sylvaneth and Stormcast Eternals. So more factions I can appreciate.

I Prefer the backround/setting of AoS - more high fantasy and more weird and otherworldly locations/terrain fits my taste better.

Rules are simple enough that my learning disability doesn't get in the way, so I can actually get into the game side finally.

[nsc]

Free rules and nothing limiting force composition and combat is actually a game now, instead of resolving attacks in initiative you can actually choose something which has a lot of impact .

Also if I see a box of cool looking fantasy models, I can buy them and play with them. There's nothing which says I can't, I don't need to buy a full army book, or a full army, I can just use whatever I want.

Is age of sigmar the best game ever? No, it's not. There are countless games, but as far as fantasy miniatures I personally don't believe there's a game better than age of sigmar.

That people say there's no tactics is complete crap. As always, the definition for tactics is carrying out a plan, this translates to positioning for almost every wargame. Even infinity, tactics is about firing lanes, and preventing your opponent for doing something. Killing a tag by first wiping out support infantry and then focus firing a tag is a strategy, not a tactic. The tactic is maneuvering your forces to wipe out their light infantry before you collapse your forces onto the unsupported tag and dismantle it with heavy firepower.

Age of sigmar has a lot of depth with using your units effectively. If you play without tactics then sure, there are no tactics, however if you maneuver your shock infantry into a flank of soldiers who are engaging a line of your own soldiers this does a few things:

1. Hitting a 'flank' of a rectangular formation minimizes return attacks against you
2. You've maximized your unit saturation against an enemy force, bringing more attacks to bear and killing more guys
3. Taking more causalities worsens their morale which causes units to flee and route.

Next you have to balance spell buffs, command buffs (such as general commands and auras from battle standards), watch out for their guns, their magic, their command buffs, the threat range of their units, your threat range.

There are a lot of tactics, whether you use them or not are up to you.

As far as balance goes, you and every other naysayer are using the word incorrectly. Age of sigmar is without a doubt 100% balanced. You can't even say that about chess. In age of sigmar you have at your disposal everything your opponent does, you can field whatever you want, who goes first in a round? It's 50/50, perfectly balanced who will go first in a turn.

You have some idea about FAIR though, you want guidelines to determine which force is fair and which force isnt--currently, I've never found a perfectly fair system for a wargame, even infinity (my favourite) has many terrible unit choices which if they make up the majority of a force, the other side will be obliterated by an "optimized" list. This is true in 40k, warhamhordes, star wars, etc etc etc. There will always be units which have rules which make them better or worse than other units. I've seen greatly imbalanced point fights in 40k go both ways, with horrible tablings, close fights, and everything in between. Often the points were irrelevant in the out comes. Chances are you've seen this too, if you take a "fluffy list" against someone's tourney-tested list, it very likely will be a slaughter.

From what I've seen, through playing many AoS games, most units are fair when compared to similar units. Yes there are stronger ones, yes there are weaker ones, but they all "fit" something, or can be used and enjoyed. Sure this unit of infantry might not be as good as Pheonix Guard, but they're good enough within an average power-level.

[Anthrax ion pusscabe]

I like it because I pretty much always play against the same opponent (a friend who has dwarves and also does fluff list) and most of the games we play will be part of a continuing narrative of a struggle between our armys which is why I like the scale of the mortal realms, we can literally forge entire nations with our campaigns without majorly breaking the map (one of our campaigns in 8th went particularly one sidedly and saw half of Sylvania get put to the torch until winter forced his dwarfs to retreat)
Then there's as mentioned the battle lines look more like proper melee where unit formation breaks and the two regiments mix across a sprawling melee.
And all armys seem to have units that are evenly matched depending on their classification, for instance skeleton warriors and dwarf warriors (both light infantry) have almost the same basic stats, and when upgraded to have one better another worsens by the same amount, only thing that doesn't fit neatly into the types of light infantry/cavalry, heavy infantry/cavalry, monstrous infantry/cavalry out of the regiments is really chaos warriors and storm cast eternals (to much hp for heavy infantry to little for monstrous infantry) but I feel like every alliance will get a unit of 2hp infantry eventually.
All in all I just like the option of being able to play large continent shacking crusades that would not work in the world that was