A Skeptics Review of AoS

All discussions related to games of fantasy battles such as AoS, T9A, KoW, MESBG, WAP, Warmaster, etc go here, including army construction, comp creation, campaign and scenarios design, etc...
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Andrew_uk
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A Skeptics Review of AoS

#1 Post by Andrew_uk »

I was quite scathing of AoS when it first came out - A skirmish game with no points limit, an abandonment of all the fluff, an abandonment of most of the structure of the game... how could we possibly enjoy that?

The thing that opened my mind to the possibility that it could be fun was a wargame called Saga. Now Saga has quite different mechanic to it in that you roll dice at the start of your turn to determine how many command abilities you have and you can then distribute them among your units activating them in different ways. Some units are only activated on a 4+, some on a 5+ some on a 3+ but you have the dice rolled at the start of the turn and can then choose how you allocate those dice rolls: it works very neatly.

But essentially Saga is just a very simple game with only a few small units on each side. Movement is loose and there's not much to it. But it is still fun and it's more tactical than I was expecting.

So on my day off I decided to check out the local GW to where my girlfriend is. She's only recently moved to Hull and I was up visiting her so wandered in to town while she was off work. While I was there I decided that since I liked Saga I may as well try AoS.

Tactics;
The movement is still very tactical... It may be loose but you still have to assess where on the board your force is needed. So for instance with WHFB you might choose to focus your force on one flank and refuse the other or you might choose to concentrate your forces in other ways like for instance by doing something strategic like killing your opponents general or taking control of a particular area.

I both love and hate the sequential combat idea... I hate that it's quite a poor model of an ongoing fight between two sides, but I love that it's actually one of the areas of the game which involves more tactical skill than WHFB. With WHFB you were locked in to combats and had no actual decision making throughout them, whereas in AoS you actually choose what order they happen in and also do lots of movement within the combat phase.

So anyways the outcome of the battle in store was that I out maneuvered the store manager. I was the Stormcast Eternals and made use of the faster movement of the winged guys to get round the back of his line, I then also moved my tough unit against his weakest unit and wiped it out quickly to then turn and move everything in on his generals. It worked and I almost tabled him without losing a single unit (albeit every unit I had took casualties).

Conclusions;
I didn't hate it like I expected to. In fact it was actually kinda fun as a small scale skirmish thing. I could reasonably enjoy playing it once every year or so while enjoying a pint.

Why not more? Well primarily because I think it plays more like a boardgame so I'd probably wind up treating it like such. I've got a collection of 100+ boardgames and am a member of a club where we've got something close to 500 between us, we mix things up and never play the same thing more than once every 6 months or so.

AoS is more like a boardgame in the respect that the starter set comes with 2 pre-set lists and short easy to follow rules. It's ill suited to being considered a traditional wargame because it doesn't appear to scale well past the size of the armies included within the boxset and because there is no points value (so getting balanced lists could be a real issue).

Is it a suitable replacement for WHFB? No. Just No. They're very different games and I'll never find anything to quite replace that. But why should I have to when I can just carry on playing 7th like I am doing?

Am I going to rush out and buy the AoS box set? No. I liked the fluff of the old world and that was what I invested into when I bought my first High Elf box set. I'm not prepared to support a company that takes such a massive dump over its own IP. I also really dislike the new models.

Could I enjoy playing AoS with my High Elves or WoC? Maybe. But I miss the points balancing and I don't think I'd be able to play with bigger armies than those which are in the box set which makes my huge collections almost redundant. I guess maybe I might buy it if they brought out a series of set scenarios which could be fun.
Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log
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John Rainbow
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Re: A Skeptics Review of AoS

#2 Post by John Rainbow »

I think we all need to get used to the idea that AoS is different. There isn't really a comparison to be made to WFB 8th and we should forget trying to do that. To me, AoS is a lot like Space Hulk is to 40k. It's a fun game that you can play pretty quickly which has terrible balance. If you're looking for a quick 30 min game though I don't see this as an issue.
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