Age of Sigmar has been a contentious topic as of late since this has been one of the most drastic rules reboots since Warhammer 40K 3rd edition. I thought that I would withhold my judgment until I at least had a chance to play a game to see what it was like. I can remember not liking 3rd edition 40K when I first saw the rules, but in time I grew to like it and couldn't quite justify sticking with 2nd edition 40K. The only thing to do now is play a game.
I had a friend over and we had to establish some ground rules since AoS is a really loose set of rules. We based our forces off of a leaked set of tourney rules used by a Games Workshop store. We were allowed to take up to 5 Battlescrolls, max of 2 characters, no duplicate named characters, and only one monster per army. Each unit could have no more than 15 wounds. Seemed fair enough!
I decided to field a purely Tzeentchian daemon army while my friend brought his Skaven Plague Monk army.
My army consisted of:
Lord of Change
Tzeentch Herald on Disk
Pink Horrors (10)
Flamers (7)
Screamers (5)
My opponents army consisted of:
Lord Skrolk
Plague Furnace
Plague Monks (15)
Plague Monks (15)
Plague Monks (15)
We set up per the normal instruction and deployed along the short table edges. The Skaven finished setting up first so they got the first turn. It was a sudden death mission because the Skaven outnumbered me by over 1/3. I wanted to utilize the mobility of my army and made the sudden death choice of having my Herald on disk survive 6 turns. Knowing this after set-up didn't give the Skaven many options so they all moved forth knowing that the target was within my deployment zone.
My 1st turn was more eventful. Most daemons have the ability to allow chaos wizards to summon that unit being fielded. I decided to summon another Lord of Change since I had a spare in my collection. My roll was successful and much to the chagrin of my opponent I got a free greater daemon. To add insult to injury I was also able to summon a unit of 3 flamers. I moved the rest of my army into position to delay the Skaven horde and kept my Herald back on the arcane graveyard that helped with spellcasting.
On the next turn we had to roll off. I was hoping to get the high roll thus getting back to back turns, which would be quite devastating for my opponent. I ended up losing the roll and waiting for the Skaven to position for my impending charge.
The Tzeentch daemons set forth on turn two and I was going for a strong right hook with most of my army while my horrors bought me time on the other side of the battlefield. I had no successful summoning on turn two, but the flames caused 6 wounds to a nearby plaque monk unit before the screamers charged in to cause another 6 wounds. The Skaven didn't cause any casualties to my screamers so my battleshock roll was an auto success. The plague monks weren't so fortunate. They auto failed due to the high amount of wounds taken and lost the remainder of their unit.
Turn 3 saw the Skaven counter attack. Again, they won the roll off and got to start the round. The next nearest unit of plague monks charged my screamers and managed to cause a fair amount of wounds. I had two screamers left to counter attack causing three wounds. After battleshock I had one screamer left and the Skaven lost 3 more plague monks. On my 3rd turn I disengaged my last screamer to do a fly by attack and positioned to wither the plague monks with another round of shooting attacks.
It was by the end of turn 3 that my opponent wanted to concede the game. With having taken so many losses and not able to keep up with my summoning he didn't want to continue the uphill battle. I was in agreement. My army was cheesy mainly because of the summoning. It was too easy to pull off.
Unfortunately without points this system lends itself to some easy abuse. It may work out well right out of the box, but for established players of Warhammer more fine tuning will definitely need to take place. I don't feel completely negative about the game however. It does have some merit. I like how it's fast paced and the rules are free.
Here's a quick summary of the pros and cons:
PRO
Free rules
Fast paced
Easy to comprehend
CON
No structure for army building
Over simplified all phases of the game
Too much randomness
After the game I had a conversation with my friend and we both felt that Age of Sigmar would have been a good addition to the GW lineup of games, but it is not a suitable replacement for the Warhammer Fantasy we have played all these years. I won't be playing any more AoS for now. I hope to see more structure added to the game and then I will reconsider. If no changes are made I foresee a lot of veteran players dropping off in favor of other systems.
