After eight editions and over three decades, Games Workshop rebooted, rebranded and relaunched the venerable Warhammer Fantasy. Warhammer: Age of Sigmar radically changes how the game is played. This has led to a mixed reaction by the community. After a dozen or so games I’m happy to report that the game is solid, though it has a few issues.
The Rules
Anyone who’s played either Warhammer Fantasy or its grimdark sci-fi brother, Warhammer 40,000 has likely seen the tome that contains the rules for these games. They clock in around the same size as most core rules for an RPG. These books contain rules on army building, turn order, spells, special rules, magic items, and missions. Age of Sigmar trims 8th Edition’s 528 pages of Rules down to a mere four pages of core rules. You can get the rules for free on the Games Workshop website, along with the rules for every army in the game. (I’ll go into my thoughts on that in a bit)
The Core Rules cover the basics of how to play the game, how Hero abilities work, provides the basic spells most wizards get, and gives you some simple tables for things like terrain effects and victory bonuses if you want to use them. The game can be played with as few or as many units as each player agrees to. As far as core rules go, they’ve moved away from the Big Rulebook having all the details to play and gone for a simpler, streamlined approach. I’ve heard it compared to Magic: The Gathering, but Age of Sigmar is less reliant on Keywords and uses Keywords differently. Otherwise, the comparison isn’t a bad one.
The game is broken down into Rounds and Player Turns. At the beginning of each round, the players roll off to determine who goes first that round. This can mean that a player gets to go twice, if they went second in the previous turn and won the roll for the current one. This leads to some interesting dynamics and can swing the game radically. Overall, I’m a fan of this because it forces players to not rely solely on set strategies.
The players then go through the phases of their turn. The Hero phase is where heroes, monsters and spellcasters can use special abilities. Each army has access to a default command ability allowing a unit to automatically pass a break test that turn, which means players will always have something they can do. From there, you go onto moving, shooting and close combat.
Attacks, both shooting and melee, are handled differently than in previous GW games. Instead of having statistics like Weapons Skill and Strength that are compared to charts to determine what you need to roll, you are instead given a straight up die result needed on a d6 for your to hit, to wound and to save. Special abilities on a unit or from a Hero may modify it, but you never need to flip to a chart to see if you can wound. For learning a game and for teaching it, this saves a lot of time and frustration.
During each player’s close combat phase, they and their opponent will take turns selecting a unit engaged in close combat to make attacks. I’ve found that a lot of the strategy of the game happens in this phase, as resolving attacks in the right order can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Once each player is out of units that can act in close combat, you move on to the next turn.
Games last until one player’s army has been destroyed, a set number turns has passed (agreed upon by the two players) or Sudden Death occurs. Sudden Death is one of the more controversial mechanics in the game. If one player has significantly less models on the table at the beginning of the game, they get to select one of three victory conditions that, if fulfilled, grants them victory. These are wiping out a unit of the enemy’s choice, a hero of the enemy’s choice or hold a single piece of terrain. Sudden Death is supposed to balance the imbalance that comes from army size and selection. Which is the most controversial aspect of the game.
Picking Your Army
Now for the big change and the aspect of the game that’s lead to the most discussion. Unlike traditional tabletop wargames, armies are not selected through a points system. Instead, each player selects units by what’s called a War Scroll, which contains the unit’s entry, description and abilities. Typically, players agree to how many each side will be using. In games I’ve played, this has ranged from 3-10.
While these describe what’s included, for things that aren’t characters or monsters, they do not have a maximum size. Thus, per rules as written, a player who takes the minimum unit size (say 10 spearmen) and his opponent who takes 10 times that have exhausted the same amount of resources in their selection. This could lead to some ambush tactics for pick up games and I’ve already seen it lead to some feel-bad experiences. For example, in one game I played my opponent included in his army attacks dozen Mournefang Cavalry, ogres riding giant boars. Each has six wounds and seven attacks in close combat. By comparison, my wood elf cavalry has 2 wounds a piece and 4 attacks. The game was over in minutes and was one of the least fun experiences I’ve had playing tabletop minis.
Event organizers are coming up with ways to balance this through Composition systems, which put additional restrictions on your choices. In pick up games, I’ve found that discussing it with your opponent is the best way. While I’m not happy with this built-in imbalance, I have found that these pre-game conversations about the sort of game we’d like to play give it an experience closer to a tabletop RPG. The downside is that if some players are in the mood to beat face and they’ve spent a lot of money, they can win pretty easily.
As for what you can include in your army, any army from Warhammer Fantasy Battles has been fully converted to Age of Sgimar. You can find their Army lists at the Games Workshop website for Free. I feel for new players, this lowers the barrier of entry considerably. Where before you were looking at over a $150 just for rules (between the main rules and your army book), you can pick a few boxes of minis, some glue and print off the rules and you’re good to play.
In addition to the existing armies, they’ve added two new ones: Stormcast Eternals, champions of Order who arrive in battle via magical lightning, and the Khorne Bloodbound, a horde of magically mutated warriors seeking to bring blood for the Blood God and skulls for the Skull Throne. These armies, plus their WFB counterparts belong to one of four alliances, Chaos, Order, Destruction and Death. They can be used in tandem or as individuals and can lead to some cool combinations. Of course, staying in your faction works just fine as often heroes will give benefits to their own kind.
Is it Fun?
Whenever an existing game changes so dramatically, the Internet boils over with rage. I can see longtime players of Warhammer Fantasy getting upset. I only played for about a year following the most recent Wood Elf release, so I wasn’t particularly attached to the game, but I did enjoy it. Age of Sigmar is a different game than ones I had recently learned. To Games Workshop’s credit they haven’t been shy about that. Instead of passing this off as 9th Edition WFB, they’re trying something new. However, being a new game means that players who loved the more structured gameplay dynamics of the old game might not like the new one.
The game has its positives and negatives. The rules are easy to understand and the barrier to entry is way lower. The replacement of the magic phase with the Hero Phase has lead to some diverse selection of heroes and some less game-breaking spells. (I’ll plead guilty to dropping a Purple Sun down someone’s battle line). The open army design can lead to some very interesting matches, my favorite so far being 7 Heroes vs. a horde of undead. The changes to unit entry means that more units are usable compared to the old army lists, where some armies would have some unit choices that were simply inferior to others. Most units are at least good and some have fun mechanics and synergies.
However, it does lack some of the high level strategy that goes into WFB. Positioning is less of an issue and facing is no longer a concern. The Sudden Death mechanic can be really uneven. I feel that it should be based on wounds in an army vs. models, as it means that some armies like Ogres and Demons will often get the option to have a Sudden Death victory even when they’ve got more overall wounds. Though magic has become more balanced overall, summoning spells are still somewhat overpowered at the moment. Lastly, the game’s lack of maximum unit sizes has meant that, per rules as written, there’s nothing to stop a player from fielding as many of a non-hero unit as they own.
So, that brings us to the ultimate question. Is it fun? I have to say that despite some misgivings about unit sizes, I’ve had a lot of fun with Age of Sigmar. It’s easy to learn and the games run smooth. While not as strategic as its predecessor it still has a lot of depth. It’s not Warhammer Fantasy Battles and that’s okay. If you’ve got any Warhammer Fantasy models (or a 40k demon army) it’s worth giving it a shot.
zeonsghost
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- Tabletop Tuesday- Age of Sigmar - August 25, 2015
