Heads Exploding! Age of Sigmar Rules Released Online

[Jack Shrapnel]

I generally like the guidelines presented with the exception to your summoning rules. Most summoned units have to be placed more than 9" away, which means they need a very good roll to successfully charge. Few of these units have shooting attacks, and even fewer are Wizards who can cast spells the turn they arrive.

I believe a rule stating newly summoned units cannot cast spells the turn they arrive is a fair balancing rule, but to eliminate attempts to charge or shoot is too much.

It wasn't nearly as stringent at the beginning... but those lizardmen... just wow. When they are summoning Bastiladons to the battlefield... or engine of the gods

so that's why the effects of summoning were so greatly reined in, but this is probably more a local meta thing than anything else. The 1+ armor guys (Ottawa) have even a stricter comp on summoning - once per game! but I thought that was a little too strict.

[PensivePanther]

I find it interesting that 8e was a point-based system that had many complaints about how GW pointed it. People online discuss how to repoint them only to disagree on how to do so from one army forum to the next. Now GW has decided to leave it to us to determine what a fair game is and the first thing we do as a community is try to get points back, only to discover that none of us agree on how to do that, either.

I think the biggest thing being missed about AoS isn't the purpose of making a fair game on the table but rather an interesting game. The idea is to storytell, to come up with a scenario and build towards it. The new book that came out highlights this. The scenarios contained therein do not anticipate both sides will be evenly matched, but they do provide means to ensure it's an interesting match for all parties involved... as long as both parties are open to achieving that end.

Real-world wars were never even. One side outnumbered the other. One side fought on ground it preferred to wage war upon. Sometimes the same side accomplished both ends and wiped out the other side entirely. These are not interesting battles. The interesting battles are the ones where each side got one advantage apiece. consider the Spartans and Persians at Thermopylae. Both sides had an advantage--Spartans had the battleground and the Persians had the numbers. We would not be watching stylized movies about such a battle if it were a Phalanx of 300 in an open field against tens of thousands. Other real world battles follow the same blueprint: outnumbered side uses the environment, weaponry or circumstance to get closer to even odds. Battles where the underdog did or nearly did prevail are the ones that are told.

So let's not worry about balancing the match. Let's focus instead on telling compelling stories. If anything, we should be designing scenarios that make the model side of it negligible. Put in objectives that negate the need to put in Sudden Death requirements. Determine how many turns are reasonable for the underdog to withhold/maintain/resist. Use terrain to complicate things, especially with the complete randomness of the Terrain Table. This is how I believe successful tournaments can be run and is perhaps how we as a community should be looking at how to make AoS work for the majority.

Here, here!