Players, Pride and Prejudice - an exploration of playing without points.

[Mr Mystery]

Good afternoon, all.

First up, I want to make something abundantly clear....

THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT DECRYING COMP OR FAN MADE POINTS SYSTEMS. AT ALL. RESPECT THAT, AND RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF OTHER GAMERS TO DO AS THEY WISH

OK. Everyone grasped that? Then I'll begin

As I'm sure you're all well aware, Age of Sigmar is something of a radical departure for GW. Not only have they done away with any kind of force organisation outside of optional pre-set formations, but they've done away with points.

I know, crazy, right?

But hey. It's been about 6-7 months now so I dare say there's a few fellow mavericks out there who have embraced this.

What I want to discuss in this thread is how you've gone about not being a phallus when it comes to selecting your army for a game.

I'll kick off with my Undead force, which I'm currently working on (and who knows, might even paint. Someday. In the future. Possibly.)

Currently I've got the contents of the old Batallion, and the Malignant's £50 set. This in itself is a pretty reasonable army, with an equally reasonable variety of units.

Of course, I'm not going to stop there. I want more. I'm used to mahoosive armies, and dangit, I just can quit that.

But.....how to go about fielding a large collection in a way where my opponent doesn't just raise an eyebrow and then walk away? It's something I've been giving quite a lot of thought towards these past few days. And here's my take.

Ratio. It's all about the ratio. Brace yourselves, completely arbitrary opinion in 3....2....1..............here it comes

I have 20 Ghouls. I shall field them as a unit of 20 Ghouls. Mostly because I have....20 Ghouls, and I've got a thing against small units of infantry (PTSD from MSU and Min/Max days perhaps, and the sort of goon who claimed tactical genius from it?). They're not too shabby in a fight, but importantly, nothing most opponents would ever struggle to deal with. Huzzah!

But I want some muscle to back them up. As much as I've got a thing against small units of infantry, I've got a real thing for units of Monstrous Infantry. Like calls to like, so I'll probably be adding some really rather fighty Crypt Horrors to help the Ghouls deliver the old 1-2 punch.

So far, so good. There's a kind of theme right there - I'm taking the Ghouls because I've got them, and the Crypt Horrors because I like them. But just how many Crypt Ghouls? Well, I've settled on a unit of 3. Why, I can't really explain, but it feels about right, and would look about right on the board.

Likewise Skellingtons. 20, Spear and Shield, full command. Fairly resilient, and an important 2" range on the spears for some cunning stuff on the board. Much like the Ghouls, they're classic Undead fare, and shouldn't prove a nightmare for my opponent.

Now I want some real muscle to back those fellas up. Oh, HAI Morghast Archai. You'll do lovely for this - get in my basket, NAOW. They're handy in a fight, and stupid resilient as Undead go. Now I know my onions when it comes to Warhams, and these guys aren't meant to be particularly common - so just the two please, Mrs Wembley (bonus points for the archaic comedy reference).

And in a nutshell, that's pretty much how I want to go on. Pick an infantry unit, the pick a support unit of a similar ilk, rinse and repeat. When it comes to actually deploying for a game, find out what sort of stuff my opponent wants to field, and then try my best to match it. If he's using four characters, I can use four characters etc.

Right, slightly bizarre ramble, over to you guys.

And remember, this isn't about 'stupid comp, tcoch'. This is about simply not using one, for whatever reason.

[Erik Setzer]

Hmm... I have the models already, so I'm not sure I'd want to limit myself that much. I think it depends on what's being put on the table on the other side.

I've got 40 Ghouls painted up, I can field them as one big unit or a couple small ones, as situation dictates. Similarly, I've got 9 Crypt Horrors, and a couple Terrorghasts (one can have a Strigoi Ghoul King hop on his back). Taken as a whole, it's a themed Strigoi force, but could pack a lot of punch, which has to be restrained if the opposing force isn't that nasty. In that case, I might go with my themed Khemri (or -esque) units, which include a Lich Priest, couple units of Skeleton Archers, Casket of Souls, couple of Screaming Skull Catapults (old school models!), Necrosphinx, and four Morghast Archai... although something in those last two might have to give if the opposing force is a bit weak and doesn't have much heavy stuff to beat on. Then I've got five Spirit Hosts, 10 Hexwraiths, 15 Black Knights, two blocks of 40+ Skeletons, 30 Grave Guard with halberds, ten Direwolves plus a Doomwolf, Corspe Cart, Black Coach, bunch of characters...

So yeah, not likely to field that all at once.

Let's not go down the rabbit hole of what combined Chaos would look like. The Skaven part is bad enough. I think it's fair to say that deploying nine Stormfiends, Thanquol, two Warp Lightning Cannons, ten Jezzails, and a couple of Soul Grinders will, and probably should, get you mugged, even if it's just a themed Machines-of-Chaos force. (Boneripper totally counts! Oh, wait, maybe the Hellpit Abomination does technically, too.)

Really, all you can do is look at what your opponent is putting out, and go from there. In your mind you can decide on limits, like, "If he only puts out X of Y, I'll limit B to C rather than D." And you can opt to limit your selection using something like theme or just trying not to bring anything too heavy. But that's about it. You can't plan too much ahead, you have to just see what kind of match it's going to be and react accordingly. And if Archaon hits the table, well, you lose all pretense of feeling bad and the Machines of Chaos force and roll with it. (Then laugh at yourself as your army blows itself up.)

[Mr Mystery]

I'm also wondering how others go about encouraging 'good behaviour' in other gamers.

Don't get me wrong, it's just a tiny minority of us that are game wreckingly selfish, so I'm meaning how to get collaborative gaming going.

[Erik Setzer]

I find that a classic pewter Space Marine Dreadnought works wonders to encourage good behavior...

[malisteen]

I typically ask approximately how large a game the opponent wants to play, and then put my models on the table and say 'I'm fielding that, field whatever you think is reasonable against that', then they'll put out what they think is reasonable, and if it passes a (fairly lenient) gut check with me, then we're good to go, with the understanding that any units available for summoning or other effects that bring new units onto the table have to be held in reserve from those initial, agreed-to piles.

For instance, for a medium sized game ('a few units, a few heroes, and either a big monster or war machine or a couple smaller ones'), I might set out Krell (who is almost always my general), Kemmler, and a banshee for heroes; 20 wights, 2 archaii, and 6 spirit hosts for units, and a mortis engine as my big thing. Then I would ask if that was about the size of game my opponent was thinking, and if so then the opponent would pull out whatever they thought was reasonable to play against that, and if I thought anything was especially egregious, or if I thought they were underestimating my force, then I might say something.

Then, during deployment, I might say that I'm holding the spirit hosts and the banshee in reserve to summon during the game, but those would be the only units available to summon, and I would not be able to 're-summon' stuff that started on the table unless it was specifically called out while agreeing to forces.

Overall the system works alright, though it's a fair bit of extra hassle before the game starts that I didn't have to go through back then arranging games was as simple as 'hey, you wanna play?', 'sure, how many points?'.

[Auticus]

The thing i've noticed with the group here that plays no-comp is that every game that they play involves hordes of summoning and always includes models like archaon, nagash, etc. I just think that having to play against those types of lists all the time would get old. Once in a while I'd be all for it but when you have no points or anything its just a free for all and usually involves only taking the super stuff and never taking the chaffe and to me every battle has its chaffe.

Pretty much every AOS novel to this point has heroes wading through chaffe, but the table never reflects that because no one wants to take chaffe here.

Its rare to even see things like chaos warriors or blood warriors!