Age of Sigmar

After a couple more games of Age of Sigmar I have pretty much fallen in love with this version of Warhammer. It is just so much fun win or lose, and yes, I have lost all my games so far. Mainly because my opponent plays Ogors (ogres) and they are bloody tough.

One player who has pretty much quit Warhammer has given me his entire Tomb Kings army which gives me the basis for a legion of the undead that I want. Now that the silly must have a vampire and crumbling army rules are gone, it is feasible to play one. I'm looking at finding a suitable necromancer figure to represent Heinrich Kemmler aka the Lichemaster, who will be my regular commander.

I find it odd that I really want to get into this game now. I am going to give an uncharacteristic thumbs up to Games Workshop for what they have created here.

Age of Sigmar

Last night at the club I had my first game of Age of Sigmar, the newest iteration of Warhammer Fantasy. You have to be aware that I was already positively disposed towards this before I had the game. It looked to me to be exactly what I wanted from a fantasy war game. My friend Brian build two lists, one ogre and the other wood elves. Both were balanced to 55 wounds total with no monsters. I chose wood elves and off we went.

Movement is now more like 40K in that your units are essentially skirmishing which is much more historically correct and you can just move as you want without all the old wheeling nonsense. Much more preferable to what we used to have.

The magic system seems nice and basic although it did screw me over severely. Brian had a magician in his list and I didn't. I had a nice tough hero though. He only did the spell once but it basically opened up the ground and devoured an entire unit of elf warriors.We had a good laugh about it but even with a 50/50 chance of ending the spell kept going and it was frustrating. I'm not going to hold it against the game for now as it was just dumb luck one way or another.

Combat was good and simple and there still are tactical decisions to be made if you end up with a multi-unit melee. In an odd sort of way it reminded me of very early Warhammer and Rogue Trader. The only issue that I had run through my head was the multi-wound ogres compared to my little elves. It was much much harder to drop a single ogre and thus their unit effectiveness, than it was for them to smash through my units. It should balance out but something still niggled.

Brian's ogres did me in ultimately as I gave up the ghost when I was down to two archers and my hero. At least my elf lord died giving the ogres a good thrashing.

I don't like the world setting and shall just ignore it, but I found the system to be just about (maybe 80%) what I want from a fantasy game. Saying that, it isn't going to be good for the traditional Warhammer Fantasy player who wants the OTT level of complexity that Fantasy had. But for casual players and newcomers to this sort of hobby, Age of Sigmar is going to be a breath of fresh air.

Ponderings



I really want to like Warhammer Fantasy but I just can't stand it. Considering it is quite the following there must be something to it but whenever I have tried it the game just doesn't live up to my expectations and I find some armies, not mention the magic system, horribly overpowered.

I first started with a Beastman army under 7th edition. Just a small one, but enough to teach me the basics. Almost beat my friend's Dark Elf army. It was a close game, but certain rules immediately struck me as unbalanced. Fast cavalry were too good, and if my men have spears why are they not stabbing at a unit as it walks past? Block infantry doesn't really work. Start way sure, but historically, everything turned to skimishing once the battle horn was sounded.

Then I went with a Chaos Warriors army because it was cheap to do and the basic troops had decent armour saves. For a while it worked, but as soon as current edition game out I lost everything mainly to magic. Everyone would take lore of metal or lore of gold, both of which screwed my entire army over something chronic. So I gave up and sold my stuff, preferring 40K much more.

Now two years late I keep looking at the lovely Lizardman models and the spark is there to retry it. Problem is that I know it will be a waste. I hate the Fantasy rules system with a passion. I don't want to waste time and money on something I won't enjoy regardless of the itch I have.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.