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AoS review

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2019 9:05 am
by Prince of Spires
I had a game of AoS last night and thought I'd share my observations on it. My first ever game of AoS, so I probably missed some of the finer nuances. And my opponent only had played a handful of games himself. So by no means an expert either. This is mainly my own observations and by no means an in depth review. But I thought it may be useful for someone. I will make comparisons to Warhammer throughout, though I must say that it is a very different game, and it should be approached as such. I'll mainly do this because WH is my main tabletop wargame. I approached it as such as well. The comparison is more there to give an idea of how I experienced the game and to highlight my thoughts and feelings.

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Just a radom game shot.

It is a fun game. Fun was definitely had while playing. Lots of dice were rolled and overall we had a good time. I'd play it again if it came along. The ruleset seems to promote a relatively relaxed approach to the game. While there is still measuring and units involved, there is also a bunch of finnagling and a reasonable margin of error in everything you do. Though perhaps if you play more competitively that disappears. But there seems to be less rules arguments possible then in Warhammer.

It's also an easy game to pick up. To give an idea of the setting. I showed up at my friends house (didn't bring anything, since all my models are somewhere in a box). My friend had an extra army (of sigmarines) I could use. I have a long time ago read V 1.0 of AoS, but since then the game has changed (and improved) a lot. A 15 minute (max) explanation later and I was good to go. The basic rules are straightforward. You get a turn, I get a turn. There's a couple of phases in a turn you take in order and there's a very limited number of things you can do.

Magic for instance is straightforward. All mages know the same 2 default spells and will know perhaps one or two extra spells. You simply roll 2 dice and try to get over a certain value, same with dispelling. No downsides, no miscasts and so on. easy and clean.

After the basics, everything you need to know is unit specific. And it is written in the stats of the unit. What roll you hit and wound on, armour save and so on. So for example no WS4 vs WS 3 calculations. You would simply always hit on 4+.

Compare this to WH where you probably want to read through 180 pages of rules (and remember most of them) to be able to get a decent game in. So anyone can pick up the game. It's probably ideal to play with kids. And as said, it's simple and straightforward. I'd estimate you can probably get 2 games in on a night once you get the hang of it a bit.

Also, it's much smaller in scope then WH. With a handful of units you can have a nice battle. WH only really starts working well at 1500pts and up. And if you really want to bring fun stuff then you're easily looking at 2400+pts. Which is a lot of models to purchase, assemble and paint.

It wasn't all good though. For starters, it may be that the basic rules are a lot more simple then WH. But somehow each and every unit has its own special rules. Of course, it doesn't help that I'd never even read the rules of the models before starting. But I had something like 8 different units. And each unit had at least 1 special rule or ability, which seemed very specific for that unit. And some of it even interacting with only very specific other units on my side. There are no regular warriors it seems.

It makes for an intricate rule set. But it also makes it so that it's very difficult to remember all of them. Even more so with multiple armies. As a casual player (with 1 game every month or every other month perhaps) I couldn't hope to begin to remember all of it, much less all the special rules of my opponents army as well. Which meant that we often forgot to implement some specific rule or would only find out after two turns in combat that I had some ability which would blow up half the unit I was in combat with.

To complicate matters, GW in all its infinite wisdom decided to give everything funny names. They should seriously consider firing (or just shoot at point blank...) whoever came up with all the nonsense. I spend all night looking at my units and their names, but I still can't remember any of it. No simple archers, wizards and longswordmen. Apparently I was playing with sequiturs, castigators and evocators and the like (yes, I had to look that up). Which is bad enough as it is. But it gets worse when you find out that your lord arcanum has a power that lets your sequiturs do one thing and another power that lets your sequiturs do something else and so on.

And then there was stuff that felt silly when playing. Things like shooting into combat with no downside (not even giving cover to your opponent), even if it's the unit in combat that does the shooting. Somehow being stuck in a combat by standing a little to close to a different unit that got charged. I saw a fair bit of abilities that felt overpowered (though if everything is then I guess nothing is). And if you're not very careful it can really end up being simply a case of piling models into a big combat in the middle.

I must say I still prefer Warhammer. WH is more a game of armies vs armies instead of a skirmish game. And while the basis is more complex once you know those basic rules you can understand how most of the WH armies work. And even if you've never seen the army across from the table before you'll understand how a model with a bow will work (roughly). So I think we'll mainly stick to WH. But it could be a fun addition for when we want something fast with dice and not too much complexity.

Rod

Re: AoS review

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2019 9:55 pm
by SpellArcher
Thanks for this Rod, props for giving it a go. So the first thing about AoS is knowing your units’ special abilities, rather than having a good grasp of the main rulebook detail as in 8th edition for example?

Re: AoS review

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2019 8:27 am
by Prince of Spires
SpellArcher wrote:So the first thing about AoS is knowing your units’ special abilities, rather than having a good grasp of the main rulebook detail as in 8th edition for example?
Indeed, this is very much the case. Though with the disclaimer that I haven't actually read the AoS rules, so it's very well possible I'm missing half of them. But the basic rules are very simple and you can get rolling within 15 minutes. All you need to know is the order of the different phases and a rough idea of what happens in that phase. The rest of the details are pretty much written on the unit cards. And that's were the complexity of the game lies.

I'm guessing that part of the depth of the game is actually in army list creation and deployment. Even more so then in WH. With so many different units each with their own, sometimes interacting, special rules there's probably a lot of room for synergies between units.

Re: AoS review

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2019 9:26 pm
by SpellArcher
Have you played modern 40K (I haven’t since 4th Edition)? If so are there any similarities?

Re: AoS review

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2019 7:28 am
by Olthannon
That was real useful to read, I'm glad you took the time to write all this down. I've not even looked at the AoS rules on the principle that it's sick and wrong and I won't stand for it. I like the idea that it's simple and easy to pick up and perhaps at some point I'll give it a shot. I do hope it's a little different to 40k because otherwise what's the point?

Re: AoS review

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 9:54 am
by Prince of Spires
I haven't actually played any 40k. So I have no idea how similar or different they are.

From what I've heard I gather that they are reasonably similar. The basic AoS are maybe a bit easier with more individual unit rules. And shooting is probably weaker.

But given that 40K is the big seller for GW I can imagine that they want them to be similar, just to draw 40K players into fantasy.
Olthannon wrote:I've not even looked at the AoS rules on the principle that it's sick and wrong and I won't stand for it.
For me, the End Times never actually happened (I also still play 25% lords/heros for instance). So, keeping this fixed in mind, I can view AoS as something unrelated to WH, which it is. And I think that's the main thing for people looking to try it out. It's not WH, so judge it as a separate game on its own merits.

Rod

Re: AoS review

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2019 3:03 pm
by Botjer
I play both.
And while both games have individual miniatures running around, they are quite different beasts.

On the subject of shooting in and out of combat, this is a big gripe i have with the rules, however i do benefit from them.

AoS is still developing and i'm actually hoping it will borrow more basic rules from 40k.