Ever so often I lose my mind and start thinking I'd like to get into the money sink that is WHFB or 40k. Typically I lean toward Fantasy.

What's all this about Age of Sigmar? Why does everything on the starter set look like it belongs in 40k?

Now I hear that the focus is going to be on smaller games. For me that's not a bad thing, I have always though the rules structure of WHFB was more skirmish oriented anyway, plus I have a two year old so funds and time are in short supply.

Why should I be excited/enraged by this? What will this mean for someone who has a few boxes of unpainted Empire lying around and want's to get into the game?

I was never as into WH fantasy as 40k, but I invested enough to care about it.

Frankly, I was alarmed by the things I discovered while reading the free AOS rulebooks on the GW site and this HUGE thread on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer/comments/3c1i1t/age_of_sigmar_megathread/

Some pretty shocking stuff. Now, I'm open to being talked into seeing this as a good thing, but it would be a hard sell.

I love it.

But then I'm a Kings of War fan and I expect Age of Sigmar will be as good for Mantic as D&D 4e was for Paizo.

Holy shit I kind of like it! Seems very free form. All the moaning on the reddit thread comes across like people don't realize the rules might be taking the piss some and that they must always be followed to the letter. This almost strikes me as an oldhammer approach.

It's GW trying to poach a bit of the Warmachine/Hordes cash from privateer press, not a bad idea but you know given GW's usual way of doing things they'll fuck it up somehow.

The rules aren't bad so far, but it's GW so i'm kinda cynical that they aren't going to ruin it somehow.

Looking at the models, all I can say is, "too late!"

There's one thing GW knows sells well.  Space Marines.  So they decided WFB should be about magical space marines.  The existing product line was failing them in terms of sales, so they had this massive series of books about the Warhammer world coming to an end and being rent apart.  Now the world is fractured into warp bubbles that occasionally come into contact with eachother and everything is chaotic.

It's all very calculating in terms of commercial purposes.  The lack of army rules means everyone who walks into a GW store can be sold the latest new release.  There's no more "What army do you play?" "Dwarves" "Oh... this month's new release is Chaos Warriors... you should start chaos warriors" instead, every new release will be legal for every player.

The free form game elements are also about selling as many models as possible.  The limits of army sizes are literally how many models can fit into your deployment zone on the table.  And you can even explicitly stack them with their bases overlapping eachother so you could fit more.  Want to win? buy more product.

I would highly recommend getting the miniatures you like from it online from eBay and finding better rules as it's the latest in a series of callous cash grabs from GW.

I like it, it's actually got me excited to play again.

As for "Buy more, win more"

There are 2 stops against that, one official and one unofficial.

Official: If your opponent outnumbers you by more than 30% you can choose a Sudden Death goal. They include such things as: Killing a specific unit, holding an objective after a certain number of turns, having a unit survive a certain number of turns, and a few others besides.

Unofficial: "You brought one unit of 500 orcs/stormguard/elvseses? Maybe go fuck yourself. Anyone else that's not a knob want to play?"

Went to my FLGS today and asked around about it. Everyone seems convinced that the download is just a demo version of the rules and simply cant be "really" played as is. Hopefully I come across some more open minded players.

Quote from: NathanIW;840026I would highly recommend getting the miniatures you like from it online from eBay and finding better rules as it's the latest in a series of callous cash grabs from GW.

That's been my SoP for years.
I do like the look of some of the AoS figures... but for use as giant war-golems in 15mm games of Armies of Arcana or Song of Blades and Heroes.

I like skirmish-level games... but I kind of suspect this might be bait 'n switch like Rackham tried with Confrontation. A skirmish game to get them started with the intent they'll move on to a big battle army version... and then push/shove them toward it when it turns out everyone prefers the smaller game with fewer figures.

Love me some Song of X and Y games.  I wonder if an eBay seller that does single figures will do that for this.  I think getting one of the bigger Chaos guys and four or five of the smaller ones would work out nicely.

Though really, I have enough to paint as is.

Quote from: Simlasa;840239A skirmish game to get them started with the intent they'll move on to a big battle army version... and then push/shove them toward it when it turns out everyone prefers the smaller game with fewer figures.

Ahh, the tragic demise of Necromunda...

I would move on to another game, but in my area if I want to have a decent chance of ever gaming with someone else I pretty well am locked into war hammer. I bought the Arthurian version of Song of Blade and Heroes or whatever and have not once drummed up any interest.

Speaking of that is there some way to do miniature wargaming online? For the most part I'm stuck playing Rally Round the King solo.

I don't know what this is but I'm pretty sure it's bullshit.

A friend sent me a picture of these miniatures and I was all like:

Quote from: The Butcher;840323I don't know what this is but I'm pretty sure it's bullshit.

A friend sent me a picture of these miniatures and I was all like:

Yeah I notice that so far everything looks like it belongs in 40k and not fantasy. In fact now that I think about it the starter set looks suspiciously like the newest 40k starter set.