this will be a recurring thing from me, but I enjoy playing AoS as a fun game.
Something I heard on the jun 2018 heelanhammer podcast really sticks in my craw. The winner of the scgt boasts about his winning ways etc then admits later that a very well known player on the tournament scene said to him “you used to be fun to play”. (Paraphrase) Admittedly he does go on to say he should probably go on to try playing more for fun.
where do people stand on this?
I’m an open war cards, mostly matched armies type of guy. I like the matched play stuff don’t get me wrong. If I win I win. If I don’t, oh well c’est la guerre!
My last game a couple of weeks ago pitted 50 saurus warriors (10 & 2 20s) and 2 heroes and a salamander against 60 clan rats (3 units of 20) and 2 heroes and a warp cannon , with a basic objective of killing a messenger in one of the units (basically wipe out the unit with the messenger in it to win is how we set it up) after a couple of years + playing it was honestly one of the best games me and my mate have played. (Had I been on this forum then I’d have done a battle report) The saurus warriors v clan rats was just brilliant. No filth, no cheese. Just rolling dice and laughing. Lots of laughing. If anyone is getting fatigue from trying to build the optimal list, try something like this once in a while. It’s great!
I agree with this absolutely. I think just having fun and playing a good game is the most important thing with any form of Warhammer, be it Fantasy, 40K or AoS, and I really hate it when people choose to use the most OP armies and lists purely to win. A good example of this was when I went to my local Games Workshop several years ago when Fantasy was still at large to play in a fantasy event that occurred every week during my summer holidays. I went around 3 or 4 times to this event and every time except one nobody else turned up, so one of the chaps at the shop agreed to play a game, which at first glance looked to be a really kind gesture. However, it became less and less like this when every time he played me, this store guy always used a Warriors of Chaos force specially designed to beat mine. He never chose a different faction or a different build, he always used the same sort of build featuring large units of Chaos Warriors and knights all round with either an Exalted Hero or Lord depending upon the points. I used my lizardmen each time and used a balanced force of Saurus Warriors and Skinks with an Oldblood with Blade of Realities as general. Unsurprisingly, I was always unable to defeat him, which makes me sure he did this purely to win. The one decent game I had at that event was when others did turn up and I came up against a Skaven player who brought a list with no cheese or anything - a Warlord, a big block of Clanrats with Poisoned Wind Mortar, a Plagueclaw and a small unit of Rat Ogres. That game was a fun and close game - I did win, but it was a close thing. The main thing he did wrong was that he put all his units in a column, with the small unit of rat ogres at the front, then the Clanrats with the warlord inside and finally the Catapult at the back (We were playing diagonally), which meant that my Saurus Warriors were able to beat their way through the Rat ogres (there were only two or three of them) and then engage the clanrats before my Skinks snuck around the flank to fire upon the Catapult and riddle the weapon team with darts. His Clanrat horde actually fought my Saurus unit to a standstill (I had 16 Saurus to start) and my Oldblood was fluffing the challenge against his warlord, and it took a round of particularly good rolls for me and bad ones for him to send the remnants of the Clanrats and the Warlord running so I could run him down, before pressing the attack on his Catapult and destroying it. If he had placed his Rat Ogres on the flank instead of at the front, they would have been able to easily keep my Skinks in check and would have destroyed them if they caught them in melee, meaning they would have then been free to flank charge my Saurus unit while they were fighting the Clanrats and overwhelm them. A fun bash between fluffy, thematic armies that I would gladly have played again another time. That's the sort of game I like!
In any case, as Fantasy is now no longer played at GW, I play all my games of it with my dad, and again all our games were balanced, close, full of laughs and thematic. The two most recent Fantasy games we played were great fun - the first one was Dwarfs vs Greenskins where we tried out Storm of Magic for the first time, which involved my Runesmith swapping places with his Night Goblin Shaman, teleporting across the board and turning himself into a Troll through 3 consecutive irresistible rune strikings, before ending up as a clear Dwarf victory. The second was one of the first games I've ever played with my fledgeling Skaven army against his Greenskins again, and that was a resounding victory for the Greenskins despite them failing animosity tests at critical moments and my Night Runners playing hide and seek with his Black Orcs round a tower in their attempts to escape combat with them, predominantly due to the fact that I had spaced out my army too much and ordered my two clanrat units one behind the other which caused them to fail to support each other. It's fun battles like these that really stick into your memory, and although we don't play AoS at this time, if Moonclan gets a tome and reinforcements I'm certainly considering trying out 2nd Edition with him (Night Goblins are his absolute favourite), especially as some of the really stupid elements of the game have been scratched out with 2nd Ed.
