AoS My First Game of AoS ! And First Thoughts !

[DanBot]

Me and My friend met up at our local hobby shop to play our first ever AoS game! To be completely honest, I had no expectations at all. I haven't played 8th in a good while and after reading the rules, I was like everyone else, disenchanted. I'm sure the good majority of you all realized that after deployment you can basically set aside the first two pages of the rules. The actual game is really just the two pages. The draw originally for me into warhammer was the war gaming aspect. I picked dinosaurs just because I love dinosaurs. I originally was going to run all dinosaurs with no riders or handlers modeled out. I thought the saurus and skinks were stupid. Then I read the lore and feel in love with all of the Lizardmen individually. Krox. Skinks. Saurus. Slann. The Lore. Everything has it's place and the motives and themes of the race is perfection! I only bring this up because in AoS feels like "Lizardmen goes to space!" Furthering my disinterest in the game. It carries into the way the lizards now play with summons, flying lizards, and moon hammers. But wth? I owe my hundreds of hobby hours a shot at AoS before they hit the cardboard box and retire to the attic.

So as it is our very first AoS game, I haven't even fully read the rules at this point, we decided to play just how the game is written. We decided to play 5 or 6 War scrolls. I'm bad with the names of the army's units. I'll just do my best.

Friend's List Skaven:

Spoiler

3 Rat ogres +1 handler (didn't know he was a separate scroll)
1 warp lightning cannon
20 gaurd
20 clanrats
20 clanrats
1 Rat warlord

My List:

Spoiler

5x Slann

I decided to go with 5 scrolls rather than 6 to keep it fair.

I won first turn after deployment and summoned 2x stegadons, 5x Saurus Blocks, and 4x Camo skink units.

Spoiler

/AoS Joke

Didn't have my Lizards with me so I used my friend's Ogres.

4 Iron guts
4 Bulls
3 Lead Belchers
1 Thunder Tusk
2 Mournfang
1 butcher

#No magic
Before you read on, guess if the armies were fair, and who won.

My very first impression of the game seeing the board after set up was not good. I dislike the rankless skirmisher look for the entire board. And the speed of moving units as a whole. I will continue to use my trays despite the disadvantages in moving and piling strategies.

The Game didn't play as bad as I expected. I can see hope in the gameplay. I don't like it at all. But I see a fun game in it, buried deep. My game was really bad which made it harder to like. I got first turn, moved my army up. His turn, he charged my Belchers with his 20 rat guard and blew them off the table scoring no less than six extra wounds without battleshock. On my turn, I blew his rat guard away with my iron guts. Including the battleshock he was left with only a few. His next turn, his Clan rats charged in and did very little damage, and my 4 iron guts basically ran the table. Nothing really mattered aside from that. There was some other combat between the mournfang and rat ogres out on the far flank. Each scored between 0 and 2 wounds per turn. There were some shots from the warp cannon and thundertusk scoring a fair amount. 4+ wounds a turn. But the steam rolling on the other side outweighed anything else going on and was really all that mattered. The battle field was semi split by three bits of mystical terrain that was actually keeping both our generals gawking at it rather than fighting. After his guard went down and my thundertusk joined my mournfang in combat against the rat ogres, we called it. It was a steamroll.

After the game we decided that if he had won the roll off to go first in turn two, he would have gotten to blow my iron guts away before they made an attack like he had done with the belchers. Then he would have been the one that steam rolled me. In the end our game was actually determined by a single d6 roll. It was a terrible test. Hardly a game at all. It was our first game and we see the mistakes in army creation that caused this all around feel bad game. I sense hope though. So we do plan to run a larger more stable game with my lizards vs his undead. We plan to use our summoning only to keep the game fair and fun after bad luck or poor balance wrecks our armies.

Conclusion:
Stay Optimistic.
Things I like:

The new Lizardmen rules. Aside from the Star Deamon non sense, this is my favorite Lizardmen rule set to date. I look forward to the new skink priest, kroxigor, trogladon, razordon, and carno rules tremendously.

The models. First time I've really put a whole lot of thought into buying a second army. GW always says they are a model company first and a game company second. They did deliver.

Freedom with units and armies. As a dino lover, I can now field all of my dinosaurs without having to play a 5000 point game! And I can combine my units how I please for flavor or utility. And we Lizrdmen players love mixed units.

Things I don't like:

The game no longer feels like a war game. All aspects of strategy come from "gamey" gimmicky mechanics like, plan on failing the roll for turn, jump from combat to combat to maximize damage, and declare only one charge on your turn that you know is a key combat.

I miss 8th mechanics like ranks and toughness. As said earlier, I like the battlefield look and feel of the ranked up troops. Feels more like a battle line and a war game. And I miss toughness just as much. It kept the game organic. More of a push pull. Without it, there is nothing to match up against. I can calculate the average damage output of each and every unit. Feels very flat and one dimensional.

 

[pendrake]

Keep experimenting. But Join up with the 8th-hammer / Oldhammmer / 8.5hammer movements and see where that goes as well.

Do you really have 5 Slann models?

 

[DanBot]

No. I'd never field them like that even if I did. Although I almost do have five. I have a conversion I painted and use exclusively. I have two medal versions of the common place everyday slann we see most often, unpainted, unmodeled. I have Lord Kroak, unmodeled, unpainted. And I have been searching for a cheap forge world version since I first laid eyes on it. But, it is very unlikely that I will ever actually find the 5th since, as time goes by, his price only rises. I will have 5 the next time a new slann character/model becomes available. I'm told at least one of our forum sculptors has one in the pipe line as well.

Never heard of these movements. I do much prefer 8th. But It was far from perfect. They whole time it existed I was just waiting for a new version/rules tweaks. I mean, how can you expect the game to have any balance or cohesion when you allow 7th edition books to be played until the release of the armies 8th book. It was bull. 8.5 sounds promising. But I really don't know what the ".5" includes. Interesting.

 

[Mr Phat]

I can calculate the average damage output of each and every unit. Feels very flat and one dimensional.

Thats really not something new is it?

In 8th you had to know what unit you were up against to know the average amount of wounds output.

In Age of Sigmar you know your wounds output, but cant know how many will go through before you add the enemy unit to the equation.

- What is its save?
- Does it have an ability that re-rolls certain saves?
- Does it have an "ignore rend" ability which have effect on my predetermined calculation?
- How many wounds does it have? (the addition of more wounds makes up for the loss of a "toughness value")
- Does anything close to that unit offer synergy which changes my entire calculation?
- Does his formation prevent me from maximizing?

There isn't LESS to take into consideration in AoS, its just different.

The entire thought that the disappearance of WS and Toughness combined with the loss of separate saves have made the game less deep is a misunderstanding in my point of view.
They simply merged the variables into a singel percentage of saving the wound, and let the result vary from external factors instead.

in 8th we had a formula to find out what amount of wounds we could get through, we still do, the equation just changed to have less variables in the initial calculation, and more in the following additions made by abilities and synergy.

 

[DanBot]

It really is new. Never before was I able to say unit A inflicts 10 wounds on average. And unit B inflicts 6 wounds on average. I should bring unit A rather than unit B.

- What is its save?
- Does it have an ability that re-rolls certain saves?
- Does it have an "ignore rend" ability which have effect on my predetermined calculation?
- How many wounds does it have? (the addition of more wounds makes up for the loss of a "toughness value")
- Does anything close to that unit offer synergy which changes my entire calculation?
- Does his formation prevent me from maximizing?

There isn't LESS to take into consideration in AoS, its just different.

Not exactly.

Since all of the those bulleted factors were present in 8th. Not having WS, Strength, and toughness does mean there is less to consider. Just replace the word "rend" with "armor piercing". And of course the last bullet has arguably far more impact in AoS than it does in 8th. Unless You're opponent was running a horde of 25m blood letters rammed up against your 5 wide 20m skrox or something else extreme or random in 8th. (1 wide column of zombie chaff) But since WS, Strength, and Toughness change the static to hit and to wound values into varying numbers. There is less to consider now. Much less. Those numbers changing is a very big deal. And that is excluding strength's impact on armor save and WS's impact on the enemy's to hit rolls. Also, leaving out dozens of common additional variables that used to effect to hit, to wound, and saves, such as fear, poison, and flaming attacks to name a few. Finally, lets not forget stand and shoot, frenzy, and stomp/thunder stomp adding additional attacks variably.

The only bullet that actually changes the formula in a way that may change which unit is better suited vs the other is the third bullet.
Lets say I have a vanilla unit in AoS that hits on 4+ and wounds on 4+. And another unit that hits on 3+ and wounds on 4+. apply this information to every bullet above, the result is the same. The 3+/4+ will always be better. I find that not only limiting, but flat. Boring. Mindless.

Simple question.
Given the information, which of these units is better?

AoS
1 attack 3+ to hit 4+ to wound
or
2 attacks 4+ to hit 4+ to wound

Now?
8th
1 attack WS 6 Str 6
or
2 attacks WS 3 Str 3

How about now?
AoS
1 attack 3+ to hit 4+ to wound 1 rend
or
2 attacks 4+ to hit 4+ to wound 0 rend

Looking at only the last two examples, I find the 8th rules much more interesting, flavorful, and deep. I respect your opinion. You may say that's not that big of a deal. The formula is relatively the same, just fewer variables. That's fine. I accept that is enough for some people. Unfortunately for me, I'm always going to want more than rend. Having had more and lost it, I will always want it again. Why? Because even with rend, it is far too easy to calculate the damage output on the fly, and most importantly for me, it lacks the depth it used to have. (200+ page rule book. to 2 page rule book. ofc)

Spoiler

And adding the variable of points into my question of "which of these units is better" takes the 8th edition example to another level, adding to the immersiveness, and leaving the AoS examples even more flat at just 1 war scroll each. But I refuse to make this another discussion about AoS's lack of an attempt at a balancing system. I just bring it up to further the point about lack of depth in AoS.

Also, I should add to my like section, that aesthetically I find the round bases superior to the square bases. Many may consider this minor and not worth mentioning. But given the amount of time and effort most people put into the look of their army, this is kinda a big change.

 

[KingCheops]

You've conflated things. Compounded by the fact that WFB had that stupid rule that S also gives AP. You've also left out some of the finer points of AoS as well. For scenario 1 given that everything else is the same b is better than a. Scenario 3 they are equivalent unless the opponent has 0 armor in which case b is again better. Scenario 2 is impossible to evaluate without more data and is also why WFB was an imbalanced mess.

My experience from Flames of War and Kings of War tells me that even with flatter math people will still struggle. It is also the fact that it is a pool of dice and not a single roll that will trip people up -- hard to calculate binomial distributions on the fly. Expected values only give you part of the story.