HeelanHammer AoS Great Game Guide (H.A.G.G.G) v1.1 www.heelanhammer.com
‘Designers’ Notes
These are the restrictions I am using in my inital games. It is a living document and will be updated the more I play, but as people have been asking me a lot - it is presented here.
I am not saying this is ‘the best’ way to play, here is just how I enjoy it thus far. I want to keep it simple and as close to the rules as possible, in order to be (in theory) able to play anyone who is used to playing the game out of the box. A struggle sometimes in previous editions was playing something like ‘ETC’ restrictions with large rules changes on a consistent basis, then trying to have a game with an opponent playing out of the box. It almost leads to playing two separate games on some interpretations!
I also really want to give these rules a go as is (as close as possible).
Game Play
Ive found so far that the strategical element and often the ‘balance’ and fun of the game is impacted heavily on the scenario you are playing. Playing the ‘standard’ game is probably not maximising your game. Any secnario where the objective is based around ‘killing’ tends not to be as fun as based around objective capture (from my experience).
We hope (and would imagine) GW are going to continue to release scenarios - so lets use em.
Force Selection
Ah, good old ‘comp’ as it was previously known. Ive thought a lot about this and will discuss on a show in the future. Obviously we hope that GW do bring something out to aid us with this, but in the meantime my gaming group (and most of the across the world I imagine) are grasping for some guidelines to help us.
The more I thought about ‘balance’ the more I thought it never really existed. Ever. We had some arbitrary values (points) and some restrictions (rare, core etc) which were a great starting point, but the reason we had comp was because these didn’t ‘balance’. Then the ‘comp’ always had holes in. Hard to explain in text, easier to explain on a podcast 😉
Competitive gamers always picked the most effective thing given any set of restrictions.
So my initial thoughts are to provide an arbitrary value (in this case wounds) and allow people to pick what they want (I certainly want to). If something is super broke, time will tell and comp will come in, adding further restrictive layers for organised play. This isn’t intended to balance, its intended to give some *rough* ‘fairness’ and ‘expectation’ to the forces.
You can talk about survivability and/or damage output of any given model vs another (zombie/goblin vs high elf), but ultimately I am not sure it matters. Pick whatever you think is most efficient given the wound cap if you are that way inclined (I will be!).
There is a great ‘pool’ system being used in UK events as an alternative to this, which can be found on our Clash Page.
House Rules
Just how I’ve been playing them in my games - there are plenty of ideas out there.
Tips & Tricks
A few things we have picked up so far , to be expanded in a future show.
The Set:
Game Play
Choose a scenario to play with your opponent. Some great ‘standard’ ones from the UK’s first AoS event can be found on our page www.heelanhammer.com/clash . Play the turn limit of that scenario or to the agreed time frame or turn count. 5 turns works great. 25 minute toilet breaks are not permitted when you are winning 🙂
Force Selection
Select your force from any available war scrolls as normal.
You may deploy as usual with the following restrictions:
*Up to 120 wounds worth of models
*You may deploy no more than 3 of the same war scroll
*Up to 3 war scrolls with the keyword ‘MONSTER’
*Up to 4 war scrolls with the keyword ‘WARMACHINE’
*Up to 4 war scrolls who are Wizards (Units and Heroes)
*Up to 2 Wizards with knowledge of summoning spells
*Up to 1 war scroll of each ‘named’ Heroes (such as ‘Teclis’) - they are unique
*Up to 50% of the models may be armed with ranged weapons over 10”
House Rules
For clarity, models have a 360 line of sight.
Pivoting a model on the spot to face another direction is ‘free’ (i.e does not cost movement/no need to measure).
Models may not be placed (‘stacked’) on another models base. In combat if it is obvious that due to modelling or if the base did not exist it would otherwise be possible for a model’s weapon to be within melee range; presume it is. Some ‘fair play’ and ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ is necessary. Don’t be that guy. Some people prefer to measure to bases instead, this also works.
Summoners have knowledge of all units in the controlling player’s war scroll collection where spells are stated (deployed or not).
Models may not summon other models with knowledge of summoning spells. You may not summon copies of ‘named’ Heroes.
You may only successfully cast one summoning spell per turn.
In order for a unit to claim the +1 save roll for terrain, every models must be WHOLY WITHIN the terrain - each model ‘clipping’ a wood is not enough.
Tips & Tricks
Use lots of scenery - you can now!
Use two dice to track turns - you will be amazed how easy it is to forget who’s turn it is!
Expect the game to only go to 3/4 turns in your initial games - this the Age of Sigmar and happens a lot! With play/experience this is not normally the case.
Bring some markers - some for batteshock, buffs and wounds - lots to track!
For for tactical thoughts, apart from listening to our show, check out special guest star Bryan ‘The Hobbykiller’ and his blog at https://hobbykiller.wordpress.com/
Enjoy!
Dan
Good set of rules so far.
My only criticism on these as written would be on attack range in melee - obviously it is possible to model a miniature for advantage by pointing a spear a long way out, and as the rules are written, the tip of the spear is where you measure from, right?
With the above system, you are removing the main disadvantage of modelling this way - restricting freedom of movement by making pivoting free.
Maybe this is a minor thing, I haven’t played a lot of AoS so I’m not sure?
Hi Dan and Co,
Hope this pack continues to develop - knowing you guys it probably will become the next excellent and influential SCGT pack.
A few of my thoughts:-
Wound Count - I think/agree that the wound count is the way to go - for both selection and calculating victory. Although I suspect 150 may be the eventual cap. Agree we have never had balance so why expect it now. If anything think by GW stepping back they have given space to the community to take a lead. Maybe, through the GTs they may even approve a community solution/pack at some point - may be wishful thinking, but I didn’t expect them to send you a starter pack.
Stacking Models and Close Combat Ranges - agree practically stacking not workable. However I think that is only the tip of the iceberg. As until models are all on standard bases and standard poses/weapon length I suspect the close combat ranges are going to be suspect to abuse/friction with or without “stacking”. And as these two things will probably never happen the close combat ranges will always be a source of friction. Personally I have been toying with using the inch range as a 20/25mm base size. So a 1″ range allows you to attack though one base and 2″ through two bases etc. Models on bigger bases need to work out how many standard bases their range allows. In essence this creates a situation similar to 8th of attacking though ranks and so negates the base problem and removes the need to stack. Clearly there will still need to be fudges (ie when models are not squared off). But appears fairer/clearer than using just ranges given the realities of the situation.
Summoning - to me there are two areas of abuse - cascade summoning in a single turn and mass summoning. The cascade summoning is relatively easy to solve - extend the can’t move in the turn it is summoned to also can’t take part in the hero phase during it is being summoned.
The mass summoning I think is relatively well handled by limiting wizards to 3/4. Especially as most armies can’t augment their magic phase now (except make Lord of Change 0- 1 or 2 choice). However for mass summoning I think the real solution lies in the next point.
Pool Armies: I think that AoS has another strength as written - it gets away from ‘net’ lists. You are meant to turn up with your collection and deploy in response to what your opponent deploys. Net listing is not really possible as it is your response that is crucial. Now clearly this has problems (especially when done per model and when model collections are so different!). But to keep this aspect I suspect what is required is a pool list. So you and your opponent turn up with say 200 wounds in 16-24 battle scrolls. You then are allowed to deploy 100-110 wounds in at least 8 battle scrolls. This, in a fair manner, brings back the tactics of deploying in AoS while also allowing you to pre-prepare your ‘list’ and opening some interesting tactically options. It also mitigates some of the ‘rock, paper, scissor’ match ups of 8th.
Furthermore I would link this to summoning - you can only raise the models that were not deployed in your pool. Hence limiting the mass summoning problem. Overall then I think you can remove the limit for summoners- which is quite crippling for VC character options.
Heros - would cap these to 4 to stop ‘hero hammer’
Infantry - I expect at some point the 1 wound infantry will need some differentiation to keep some variety. For example at the moment Empire should (nearly) always take greatswords over state troops. But I expect this level of detail will come in the future.
Hope these thoughts help. I suspect I am going to get relatively few games in soon - my wife and I had our first child 12 days ago! But would be interested to hear your thoughts on the above.
All the best and thanks for continuing to do the show
Why 110 wounds and not 100?