With Games Workshop recently announcing that the Age Of Sigmar Grand Tournament (GT) would be returning in 2017, this got me thinking about the game Age Of Sigmar as a whole.
Age Of Sigmar was released in July 2015 after the End Times and the death of the Old World and the popular Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition. At that time I was thinking about getting into Fantasy myself, although I didn't actually play a game of 8th edition before Age Of Sigmar dropped, I played several games afterwards and I had to admit that 8th edition was a better game through and through. Sigmar, with its 4 page rule set, lacked the structure to become anything more than a 'beer and pretzels' game, and I, along with others thought that the open rules allowed a lot of manipulation and exploitation, despite the fact that this could be argued as just being 'tactics'. This was proved at the Age Of Sigmar Schools League semi finals this year, where our team came up against the most stinking cheddar that could be thought of. As there was no point system or structure to the armies, just a 30 model limit, which allowed the 'That Guys' to go wild, building full lists of monsters and one kid with 30 Lord Kroaks, who quite clearly had every intention of guzzling his opponents tears by the gallon!
As a result of this new ruleset and game, many diehard Fantasy players got fed up and moved to other games such as Mantic's Kings Of War and fan made '9th Age', the would be sequel to 8th edition. In short, GW fucked up massively and screwed a lot of veteran players over, by removing both Tomb Kings and Bretonnia, as well as all the named characters, which in my opinion was the worst thing. They got themselves onto a loser in which a lot of players who were loyal customers had left and the new influx of 10 year olds was not enough to cover the drop. Of course, there were still many players interested and willing to give Sigmar its run, but lots didn't.
I'm sure that anyone who reads the blog already knows this, but I thought it would be interesting to look at Sigmar's rough history before looking at how the game might change. I personally only played a few games of AoS before sort of shelving my fantasy army and focusing more on the 40k side of things.
When the Generals Handbook was released in June a lot of hype surrounded it, and the question was raised as to whether this could be the book that 'fixed' Age of Sigmar? I was not particularly bothered at the time because I was focussed more on 40k, but one thing did strike me as a bit odd - it only cost £10! For GW to be selling a rulebook at this price is unheard of, but I think it was deliberately set low in order for those who had got bored and left AoS to try the new game modes, with less investment.
The one particular game mode that was of interest to most was the 'Matched Play' system, a points system similar to 40k, but for all the units in AoS. This caught my eye as a possible way to get back into playing Sigmar, and although it is unlikely I will be able to persuade Commissar Raphel to join me, I think its high time I broke out the Counts and gave it a go! Who knows maybe if its good, I'll attend the tournament next year? That would be fun.
Anyway, thanks for reading and leave a comment below if you have a particular personal experience or opinion on this - it would be interesting to see some other thoughts.
~DaemonColin
I would say give it a shot. Use of points is not perfect (never is) but it does stop some silly abuses and gives an opportunity to do some list building / tweaking which is always fun. I have played a couple of old school warhammer players using it and they had a good time.
ReplyDeleteYeah I think that it is better to embrace it than go back to the past. I mean after all, they aren't going to update or work with 8th edition again so why not focus on what they are currently working on? I agree, a points system will never be perfect but it makes the game more balanced.
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