A Malign Digression

So everyone remember my brilliant plan to stick to one project at a time? Also, does everyone remember how I was going to focus on painting my English Civil War models while I continued my Shadow War campaign with, now, fully painted models?

Well that went a bit wrong, when I accidentally slipped and bought some stuff for Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. I am a bad person.

In my defence, it came about because I was meeting up with my little brother for the Beachhead show in Bournemouth, largely because it's closer to him than me an meant I could do the travelling for a change. I was looking for a way to spend a bit of money without derailing any of my existing projects (because why go to a wargames show and not buy anything?).

Malign Portents is Games Workshop's later Winter/early Spring event and has consisted of a, relatively low key, online campaign accompanied by the release of a rule book and four new character models, collectively referred to as Harbingers. Although I have largely avoided Age of Sigmar, my eye was drawn to the characters because all four of them slot into armies I already collect.

The Darkoath War Queen is part of the "Slaves to Darkness" faction which basically means Chaos Warriors, the Fungoid Cave Shaman is a Night Goblin/Moonclan Grot, which I have been collecting for years but haven't got round to painting. The Lord Ordinator is supposed to be a Stormcast Eternal, but he doesn't actually do anything for the faction of which he is a part. Instead, he boosts up War machines, which makes him a perfect fit for my Dwarfs. Finally the Knight of Shrouds is essentially a souped up Wraith and can be just about squeezed into my rather unfocused and scrappy collection of Undead.

My thinking was that if Warhammer 8th edition were still around and Games Workshop put out four characters all of which fit into existing armies and two of which fit into armies I have painted, I would snap them up. It seemed a silly time to be dismissive of Age of Sigmar.

I picked up the Lord Ordinator and the Darkoath War Queen at Beachhead, along with the rulebook and grabbed the other two Harbingers since. I painted the first two in double quick time and even managed to squeeze in a quick game to test out the Malign Portents rules.

Speaking of which, the Malign Portents book is rather good. £15 for an 88 page hardback, makes it one of Games Workshop's cheaper books and compares pretty favourably with the army books I bought in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It's a bit of a grab back of background material, scenarios, rules for the new Harbingers and for the titular "Malign Portents." It also has a fairly good balance of background material to rules and with only a few pages of photographs of models and minimal filler. A big improvement over the early Age of Sigmar "Realm Gates" books which seemed to be all bulk and no content.

The premise of "Malign Portents" is that the Great Necromancer, Nagash, now promoted to God of the Dead, has been gathering up all the magic in the Death realm of Shyish for some nefarious purpose. This has led to all kinds of omens and portents which have been interpreted by Wizards, Priests and the Harbingers. In game terms, this is represented by Prophecy points which are randomly determined at the start of each turn. The points can then be spent on various special effects by any character, rather like spells. The effects you can use are determined by the portent you are following which you can choose or randomly determine at the start of the game.

In addition to the six general portents, each Harbinger also has a set of special effects unique to them. With all of these special effects in play, Games Workshop have, conveniently, put out a deck of cards with all the abilities on them, for you to keep track. This an obvious money grabber, but I snapped them up anyway because I am a mug and because they reminded me of the spell cards from 4th and 5th edition Warhammer.

Overall, it's a pretty decent rule book with something for most players. Even if you don't want or can't use the Harbingers, the Malign Portents can still be used by other characters and there are a few scenarios to try out, including one for Skirmish games, as well as a few extra random tables and special effects to use if you want to play in the Realm of Shyish.

Overall, given the relatively low price of the book, I can see Malign Portents encouraging a few past players to give Age of Sigmar a second look, so smart marketing on the part of Games Workshop.

And just to prove I haven't completely neglected my official projects, here is my latest unit for the Pikeman's Lament: 12 Musketmen including one with a long hunting musket. There is an example of one of these at the Basing House Museum, so I couldn't resist including in my company.

If you can't beat them join them?

Things have been a bit quite on the blog since the end of my siege campaign. I have actually been working on another project, but more about that when it's a bit further along. Today, I want to write about this...

The Warhammer: Age of Sigmar General's Handbook.

I've not played any AOS since my try out game some time back. I was naturally inclined to be hostile to it because I liked the old Warhammer rules and the old Warhammer world and didn't like it when Games Workshop threw them both out. AOS is such an overhaul of Warhammer that it is really a new game and I'm not looking to start any new games. On the other hand, my principle complaint about AOS had been the absence of points values which the Compendium addresses and, at only £15, it's pretty cheap for a GW publication.

If previous AOS books had focused on background material and lots of pictures with very little rules content, this is pretty much the exact opposite. It's basically all rules. The book attempts to introduce three different ways to play AOS. What it calls "Open play", "narrative play" and "matched play" and has sections for each.

There's actually surprisingly little of this

"Open play" isn't actually a new style, however. It's just AOS as it has been up to now, no points, scenarios, use what you like. This section of the book instead concentrates on multiplayer games with some new scenarios to suit. As Warhammer never quite ironed this out, it's good to see this. How effective the rules are, I'm not sure.

The narrative play section is focused on campaigns and story driven scenarios. It introduces some new, deliberately asymmetrical scenarios, such as one in which a whole army takes on a single monster or another which is basically a last stand. It also has a section on recreating the great battles of history.

The most interesting part of this section is the rules for campaigns. There are several differnt types described, including map-based, tree-campaigns (in which the outcome of one scenario effects the next played) and matrix (in which both players make decisions that effect the scenario to be played).

The most appealing part of this section for me, however, is the "Path to Glory" campaign. This describes a campaign based on choosing a warband lead by a champion and playing scenarios to win "glory points" which can be used to recuits new troops or improve the ones you have. It reads like a simplified version of the old "Realms of Chaos". Usefully, it also specifies that you can randomly generate your warbands or choose from any of the options on the random tables, allowing you to use the campaign either with an existing army or as the basis for building a new one.

 Good, but could we have few more unit options?

It's not all good, however. Not every faction is represented in the tables. I can understand why the newer ones would have been left out, but I'm not sure why there's no tables for the Seraphon. Also, all of the factions from the Death and Chaos compendium books are included, but for some reason Order and Destruction are not. So while I can use my old Undead and Chaos armies to build a warband, I can't do anything with my Dwarfs or Greenskins as only the Fyreslayers and Ironjaws are included. Hopefully, GW will put out some more tables online.

The final section, "Match Play" is the one that most people will be buying the book for. This includes some tournament rules and scenarios as well as a battle report. This is a nice touch and reminds me of the days when GW supplements used to repurpose White Dwarf content. Though, I believe this battle report was written solely for the book.

 So that's what a battle looks like

The tournament rules include some fun random tables of artifacts and traits giving you some ability to customise your characters, which is a nice touch. But the most important bit is the points section. This is a very comprehensive list that includes all the existing war scrolls and even the formations. It also includes all the units from the early compendium PDFs that GW put out, even for models that have been discontinued like the Bretonnians. The only thing missing is Forge World. Hopefully, they will follow suit and put out there own points list.

Finally the book includes the four page basic AOS rules, so you don't have to print them out or buy any other books to play.

The book isn't all good. One of the "historical" scenarios included is a ridculously oversized batttle between the forces of Chaos and Death. All the units in it are way over the top. To give an example, it includes a unit of 24 Varanguard which would cost £480 alone at GW prices. The battle is designed to be multi-player, but would still rely on several players each with large Chaos or Death armies to put together. If you going to include a large multi-player battle, why not one with more mixed factions so there is a chance that someone out there might actually be able to play it?

Can anyone play this?

But that's my one major complaint. Overall this is pretty good stuff, that expands the AOS rules in an interesting way without undermining the simplicity which was the essential selling point. I have a few quibbles, but nothing major. I'm not sure I'm going to be playing a lot of AOS in the future, but this book does make it a lot more likely.

Points mean prizes

Bear with me, this one is going to be a bit of a ramble.

The other day I was thinking about Games Workshop's new Archaon model (it takes me 15 minutes to walk from the station to work, my mind tends to wander). I was thinking about how effective he might actually be on the table. My, so far limited, experience of Age of Sigmar is that individual models are not as effective as you might think because they can overwhelmed by units that can roll a lot more dice.

I then thought, but could a unit of Stormcast Eternals roll enough dice to finish off Archaon before he annihilated them? But then I thought, Archaon costs £100, you can get nearly three boxes of Stormcast for that.

And then the revelation hit me. If you want a points system for Age of Sigmar, why not just use pounds? It's good enough for most game shows.

I am not being even slightly flippant or facetious. I genuinely think this could work. Though this wasn't always the case. Back in Warhammer 4th and 5th edition, the proliferation of special characters meant that for about £5 you could pick up a single model that could destroy a unit single-handedly. Then as Games Workshop increasingly used a mix of metal and plastic, cheap plastic units could be far more effective than bulky metal special units. But as the company has shifted to producing pretty much everything in plastic, they have also shifted to producing larger models in plastic and developing rules to justify the price of the model. This became most apparent during the end times when the super sized characters, Nagash, the Glottkin, the Verminlord and the Bloodthirster all cost multiple hundreds of points to justify their cash you had to shell out to get them. The development of the new Archaon model seems to have been driven by this trend. Only a model of this size could justify the plethora of special rules required for the Lord High Grand Poobah of Chaos (or whatever they're calling him these days).

Put simply, expensive models tend to be worth more on the battlefield.

Of course there would have to be some adjustments. The prices used would have to be based on the current Games Workshop prices, not discounts from third party retailers. And, if you wanted to use old models, you would have to base the cost on the versions currently available from Games Workshop. My 20 old Dwarf Longbeards cost me £25 when I bought them, but to replace them with the new versions would cost £60, and so that's their Age of Sigmar cost.

Possibly the most difficult models would be the ones in the starter box, which is generally considered to be excellent value for money. Fortunately, the bulk of the models included can now be obtained separately and the rest can probably be calculated based on their size. You would also have to do some adjustments if you wanted to use any models from Forge World.

I'll admit its a bit crude and not entirely balanced, but then what points system is? Certainly not Warhammer 8th edition (and probably not Warhammer 40,000 7th edition). But I'm guessing this would work at least as well as a system based around wounds.

So who's for a £500 game?

Unconventional Armies

I have been reading the story section of the Tamurkhan book recently. Yes, it has taken me nearly four years. I had read the rules and all the Chaos Dwarf background stuff, I just hadn't read the main story.

It's actually quite a good read, albeit a touch overwritten, with some of it trying a bit too hard to sound epic. But it does a good job of presenting a series of battles, across a variety of locations clearly and without getting too repetitive.

The story describes Tamurkhan and his armies journey across the Warhammer World, starting in the Northern Chaos wastes, before travelling South through the Ogre Kingdoms, west across the Dark Lands, into the Border Princes and then attacking the Empire from the South. In the course of the story, the Chaos Horde fights a variety of foes, including a few quite unconventional armies, such as a tribe of Mutant Savage Orcs living close the Chaos Wastes and an army of Ghouls and giant worms, lead by a Dragon that they worship as a God.

It's a welcome reminder that not every army in the Warhammer World fitted into the narrow confines of the published army books. When Warhammer 3rd edition was published, these sharp restrictions between armies did not exist. The points system was written as a tool box, allowing you to build your own custom troop types and then combine them to produce extremely varied armies. If you wanted your humans to hire Ogre mercenaries you could. If your dwarfs formed an unlikely alliance with a tribe of Giants, no problem. Want to field a Chaos horde allied with the undead followers of an ambitious Necromancer, go ahead.

All of this started to die out with the publication of  the original Warhammer Armies book. Although the book was intended to provide strict army lists for tournament and competitive games, in practice everyone started following its rules. When fourth edition was published, the practice started of publishing individual army books for each army, and the divisions between them became crystallised. By the end of eighth edition, virtually every model was part of a specific army and could be used in that army alone.

In fact, this has become standard practice in most games developed by miniature manufacturers to support a specific range of models. War Machine, Kings of War, Malifaux, Infinity, Bushido and so on, all feature rigidly defined factions with each model being a member of a specific faction (though most also include a range of unaligned models usable by all). This means that each faction has its own aesthetic and play style, but doesn't lend itself to player creativity.

In contrast, rules sets that are not attached to a specific range of miniatures, such as Song of Blades and Heroes, Hordes of the Things or Dragon Rampant, necessarily offer players a great deal of freedom to build their own troop types and army lists from a range of types. When your game does not have its own range of models, it pays to make it work with as many different manufacturers as possible.

But the release of Age of Sigmar may have shifted Warhammer armies back the other way. The latest issue of Warhammer Visions features an alliance of Undead and Elves* which combines Dark Elf and High Elf miniatures and includes Elves mounted on Demi Gryphs. I don't know if their owner has made his own warscrolls for these, but I certainly hope so.

If throwing out the old army books and points values leads to more creative army building, I am very much in favour of it. Sadly, Games Workshop has already released two "Battle Tomes" that are almost army books, even if they feature no points costs. Hopefully, as Age of Sigmar develops, Games Workshop won't reimpose a needless division between armies.

*I don't know what an Aelf is and I don't want to know

Considering radical options

I promise I'll try to move on from this Age of Sigmar stuff. I'm sure this is the last post, or maybe the second to last.

Anyway, I stumbled across the following post 

http://www.corehammer.com/self-reflection-in-the-age-of-sigmar-brinton-williams/

As interesting as the post is, I am more interested in the comments. It seems to me that reaction to Age of Sigmar can be divided into two camps and the two are largely talking across one another.

One side is pretty angry with Games Workshop for dropping a game, and a game world, that they largely liked. They see it as deeply cynical, motivated only by a desire for short-term profit. Viewing Age of Sigmar from that mind set you are bound to see it in negative terms. The other view point is that, for better or worse, Games Workshop had produced a new set of rules and we may as well see what we can get out of them. Games Workshop's motivation may have been cynical, but that doesn't actively make the game bad and we may as well judge the game on its own merits.

The two sides are not really talking to each other because one is motivated by a desire to see Games Workshop fail because they feel they deserve it, while the other doesn't really care about Games Workshop at all and just ones to play a game or not based on its own merits.

It occurs to me that my last post on Age of Sigmar was very much from the second perspective, demanding that Games Workshop not be allowed to spin their behaviour however they choose.

So this post is an attempt to look at Age of Sigmar from a more optimistic bent. The corehammer post above makes the point that we have to view AOS as redefining the the kind of experience we expect from a wargame. With that in mind, two thoughts occurred to me.

The first is that Age of Sigmar all but invites you to make up your own rules. This occurred to me when I was looking through the Warriors of Chaos war scroll and looking at how to represent my Nurgle Champion on Palaquin. According to the "official" rules, he should be treated as a Chaos Lord on a Daemonic steed. This doesn't sit well with me, Daemonic steed are faster, stronger and tougher than Palanquins, while Palanquins have more wounds and attacks. But the Daemons of Chaos war scroll includes rules for Epidimus and his Palanquin, so why not splice the two together? But while I'm at it, why not make up your own rules for any or even all your units to put your personal spin on them. Games Workshop have removed a lot of the old weapon and upgrade options, as well as throwing out magic items, chaos rewards, vampire bloodlines etc. So why not make up your own?

Of course, you always could make up your own rules, but this never squared well with the old points based system, in which the default mode was to play to a set points value based on the restrictions of an army list. If you knew and trusted your opponent you could start playing with rules and scenarios, but this was not standard behaviour. But now, with points gone, the only option available is to trust your opponent. And if you trust them to bring along a sensible, balanced collection of models, why not trust them to invent their own rules..

I'm thinking of practicing my photo shop skills and making some proper war scrolls specifically for my models.

My second thought occurred to me when considering that Age of Sigmar is largely unsuitable for competitive games. With that in mind, why not throw out the rules altogether? There is venerable history in the Roleplaying game community of playing with no written rules at all and having game play develop based on a negotiation between player and Games Master. This produces a different kind of game, and one that will not work if the players (including the GM) are at all adversarial, but it is still a valid activity.

Could we have a situation in which two players play out a scenario, devised by a games master, who determines the outcome of all combat based on his or her judgement of the situation? It could still involve dice rolling if you like, but the GM decides what dice to roll and the outcome. For example, "well those Orcs are fighting uphill in difficult ground against human spearmen. On the other hand, the spearmen have suffered heavy casualties and are pretty demoralised. I think you have a 35% chance of victory, roll a D100". Again, this is heavily based on trust, but we need that to enjoy a game with no points. If we don't need points, why do we need any of the rest?

Plenty of wargamers have described their hobby as "playing with toy soldiers" their tongues only partly in their cheeks, but why not take this to its logical conclusion and dispense with the rules?

A little honesty

I was in a branch of Games Workshop* the other day and got chatting to the staff member in charge about Age of Sigmar. He rather generously allowed me to have a look at the new great, big book before its official release date.

While we were talking he made a comment that during a recent Age of Sigmar test game, a player who was something of a power gamer brought along an army with a large number of summonable daemon units and proceeded to wipe the floor with his opponents. After the game they had a conversation and the power-gamer admitted that he hadn't had much fun and reconsidered what he was trying to achieve from the game.

On the face of it, this is just a neat little story about the way Age of Sigmar is supposed to play and the way in which players have to approach it in order to get some value out of it. But, delve a little deeper, and I think it says something about the direction Games Workshop is heading.

Before I go any further, have a look at this article

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/04/40k-safe-sane-and-consensual-or-the-arrogance-of-unacknowledged-playstyles.html

The article is basically about how different sorts of players have to approach one another and show tolerance of one anothers play styles and is well worth a read. It's probably better than anything I have written, so take your time. This post will still be here when you get back.

Anyway, the part I want to borrow from the article is the author's division of gamers into three basic types.

1. Competitive or tournament players - whose focus is on a contest of tactical skill and whose goal is to win.
2. Narrative players - whose focus is telling a story and have some relationship to roleplayers.
3. Casual or social players - whose main interest is in having an activity to share with their friends.

It's a fairly basic division, and there is certainly some overlap between the three categories, but it will do for my purpose.

For some years now, Games Workshop has been trying to shift its attention from players or type 1, to those of types 2 and 3 and Age of Sigmar is probably the apogee of this. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with this, any more than there is anything wrong with being one of the three categories (I am pretty firmly in category 2).

However, Games Workshop are not a player, they are a company. And they are not choosing to play a type of game, they are providing a product.

Games Workshop's shift in focus two gamer types 2 and 3 has been characterised by two major developments. One is the tendency of staff, both in shops and in the studio, describing gamer type 1 using more prejudicial language. "Competitive" or "Tournament" gamer has given way to "Power" gamer. The other, is that the rules have gotten vaguer.

There have been complaints dating back for years that Games Workshops rules are unbalanced, that certain army lists are broken (either by being too good or too bad), that certain army builds dominate and that errata and FAQ are not frequently updated.

This is in part because keeping rules balanced is hard. It takes time and effort to play test everything properly and you are still likely to get flak from a community that can be very demanding. It's not surprising that Games Workshop would rather jack that in in favour of a game that isn't supposed to be balanced in the first place.

But, by not trying to produce a game that works for competitive players, Games Workshop are providing less of a product than they used to. Lets face it, no narrative focused or casual gamer has ever complained that these rules are just too fair and balanced. In practice, type 1 gamers are the hardest to satisfy because their demands are greater and, because they are more quantifiable, it's easier to judge when a game fails to meet them.

With Age of Sigmar, Games Workshop has basically thrown in the towel. By throwing out points values, or indeed any guidance on army composition, they have basically declared that they aren't even trying to make a balanced game. Play testing can go out of the window, because there is no expectation that any model won't be more or less powerful than any other. This isn't necessarily wrong, but it should be clear what Games Workshop has done.

Games Workshop has a very "creative" attitude to the truth. I remember when the Specialist Games department was down-sized, left with only one employee, no new products after six months and its magazine was cancelled, and Games Workshop announced "Good news, Specialist games has a new online focus" mentioning all the rest in small print.

What I think Games Workshop is doing with Age of Sigmar is announcing that it is no longer even pretending to support competitive gamers, no longer interested in game balance and no longer bothering to play test its games, and hiding it behind their "Great new focus on narrative games".

If you don't care about that and like Age of Sigmar any way that is absolutely fine, but don't let Games Workshop pretend that they are doing anything else.

*One of the ones that still is a Games Workshop and not a Warhammer shop

First game of Age of Sigmar - a few thoughts

I actually tried out Age of Sigmar for the first time yesterday, digging out my dwarfs and Chaos Warriors.

The Dwarfs brought

1 Dwarf Lord
1 Rune Lord
10 Hammerers
10 Warriors
10 Miners
10 Thunderers
10 Quarrelers
1 cannon

While Chaos had
1 Chaos Lord
1 Chaos Sorcerer
10 Chaos Warriors
2 units of 10 Marauders
5 Chaos Knights
5 Marauder Horsemen
1 Giant

 Deployment

I had no idea if these would prove to be balanced, but they seemed roughly right at the time. Having played the game, here are some observations.

1. It plays very quickly, The whole game was done and dusted in 2 hours, not including setting everything out and packing it up again. A similar sized game of Warhammer 8th edition would probably have taken a good hour longer, and that's with me knowing the rules backwards. I had never played Age of Sigmar and had the rules down in minutes with only a bit of checking backwards and forwards.

 Chaos take heavy casualties from Dwarven missile fire

2. It is in some way like Epic 2nd edition, in that the basic rules are very simple, but just about every unit has its own special rules. In practice, a lot of these rules are fairly generic. The rules for musicians and banners tend to be shared across whole armies. These could have been summarised at the start of each army list, but the plan appears to be to make sure that all rules are included on the units war scroll. Like Epic, I could see the game getting increasingly unwieldy the bigger it gets. The rules say a game with 100 models a side should last "an evening" which is a pretty open-ended statement.

 The miners tunnel there way onto the battlefield to assist the Thunderers who are still holding their own against the Chaos Knights

3. You can't use previous editions of Warhammer to judge how units will behave in AOS. There isn't nearly as stark a difference in the combat performance of different units. Take the Chaos Warriors and Hammerers, for example. Both have the same saving through, but the Warriors have two wounds each. Both have two attacks each and hit on 3s, though the Hammerers wound on 3+ while the Chaos Warriors wound on 4+. The big difference is that the Hammerers have a rend value (saving through modifier) of -1, while the Warriors don't. In fact, the whole Chaos armies is short of rend values, which means they don't hit very hard against dwarfs who are quite well armoured.

 Having dispatched the Dwarf Lord, the badly-wounded Giant lurches towards the Dwarf lines

4. Individual heroes can be very vulnerable against units and large monsters. Because they can't join units any more, I made the mistake of treating them like units in their own right in the same way as Kings of War. If you do that, they can be swamped by larger units, especially as units can now hit and wound a Chaos Lord exactly as easily as a Goblin. The only thing that makes characters tougher is that they have more wounds, which makes them behave like an elite unit of 5 or 6 models.

 Having defeated one unit of Marauders, the Dwarf left flank finishes off the Marauder Horsemen

5. On the other hand, monsters can be lethal. The Giant was comfortably the second most dangerous unit in the game, because of the sheer number attacks he could bring to bear. He swatted the dwarf lord aside in one combat round. If he hadn't been killed by the cannon (the most dangerous unit because of the amount of damage it did), he could have rampaged through the dwarf lines.

 The Miners and the Rune Lord bring down the giant (taking some damage when it fell on them) and turn their attention to the Chaos Lord, who has summoned Marauder reinforcements.

6. Combats can become bogged down. The crucial fight between the Hammerers and the Warriors lasted for most of the game. Morale is no longer a decisive factor in combat. In now works by rolling a single D6, and adding the number of models killed this turn. If this beats the units bravery, they lose a number of models equal to the difference. This means the morale is only likely to wipe out a unit if they have already suffered significant damage. Combats last longer, but it also means that a good unit is unlikely to be wiped out by an unlucky roll.

 Despite serious wounds, the Rune Lord defeats the Chaos Lord (who also suffered damage from cannon-fire)

7. The order in which combat is fought can be crucial. There are no initiative values in AOS and no priority given to charging units. Instead, the player whose turn it is selects a unit to fight, and the other player selects one. There is no need, and usually no advantage, to choosing a unit in the same combat. This meant that the Chaos Giant was able to kill the Dwarf Lord before he had a chance to fight, but this meant giving the Hammerers the first strike against the Chaos Warriors.

With the Chaos Warriors defeated, the Hammerers turn their attention to the last unit of Marauders

8. Ranged units are a little odd. There is nothing to stop them shooting when they are in close combat and, technically, they can shoot a unit they are not in combat with, though this is difficult as enemy models block line of sight. What this means is that ranged units are not as vulnerable in close combat as they used to be. In fact, thanks to some lucky or unlucky rolling (depending on your point of view), the Thunderers were able to beat the Chaos Knights, although it took them most of the game and only one Thunderer survived.

9. There are a lot of aspects of the rules that feel quite "gamey". Which is to say, they don't seem to represent anything in the real world. Hit and wound rolls being the same, regardless of the opponents abilities, that you can shoot in and out of close combat without penalty and that the order in which combats are fought is crucial. It's hard to translate any of these into any "real world" situation.

Overall, the rules are quick and easy, albeit with a few uncertain rules that could be clarified. In theory, it would be good for quick pick up games without too much planning, but the lack of points values complicates this, because you end up having to do more work to set up a balanced game.

The rules seem to have been written with novice players in mind, keeping the basics as simple as possible and adding additional rules only as you introduce new units. On the other hand, a refusal to introduce proper points values works against this. If the idea is to produce an uncompetitive game, I don't think refusing to provide guidance for army building will do it.

Although I will probably try the rules again, if only to see how well it plays with different models, but although I like the simplicity and speed of the rules, I don't like having to spend time working out balanced games.

The Magpie game

The more I look at Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, the more I find myself thinking of another game.This is most obviously illustrated by looking at the box art.

While many people have seen similarities to Warhammer 40,000*, the image it most reminds me of is this:

It's not just the art style, which emphasises bold and heavily saturated colours with a lot of gold and red (in contrast to Isle of Blood's more muted shades), but also that we seem to have zoomed right into the action as opponents pile in on top of each other, and yet the action is frozen at the moment before impact, reflecting the models who can only pose at each other and never actually fight.

This isn't the only influence from Warmachine. The scale of the game, with an emphasis on heroes and large individuals with a handful of units of about five to ten models, is also similar. As is the idea of an ongoing narrative. The new book is not a core rulebook but "the first part of the ongoing narrative: The Realmgate Wars". Though, unlike Privateer Press, Games Workshop hasn't made any attempt to keep the cost down.

But it's easy to see the influence of more than just Warmachine. Having abandoned using tables to find hit and wound rolls, models no have a standard to hit and to wound value that does not vary according to their opponents, exactly in the style of Kings of War. The bravery system, in which the number of models killed is added to the bravery roll is also reminiscent of KoW.

The lack of points values and the expectation that players discuss what they want to achieve from the game recalls Black Powder and Hail Caesar. Both of these emphasise player discussion and co-operation to achieve a goal from the gaming experience, rather than a simple competition.

The scenarios from the leaked Tournament guide will be very familiar to Bushido players, from their preference for circular control zones in groups of two or three to the distribution of victory points at fixed intervals. Not to mention the abstract nature of the scenarios and the fact that their titles appear to have little to do with the scenario itself.

Finally, the new "Warhammer world" with its abstract realms and portals and its apparent lack of a fixed geography and focus on daemonic and mystical beings seems to recall Helldorado.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing. The previous Warhammer world borrowed elements from other fantasy games, novels and films and squashed them all together. Games Workshop could certainly do worse than borrow the best bits from a number of different games. The question at this stage is whether they have the right ingredients, the right recipe and the necessary skill to bring it all together.

*I like to think of it as Warhammer 40,000: European Edition (or Warhammer 40,000 without the guns).

Possibly flatly contradicting myself

Over the past few days I have read a few posts on forums from people trying out Age of Sigmar and the consensus seems to be that it's actually quite fun, if a bit rough around the edges.

Then I read this post on the Too Much Lead blog which suggests that Games Workshop intend to keep the rules permanently free and to never introduce point values. Both of which come across as quite daring and interesting manoeuvres. And that GW really want this to work and are interested in feedback.

Looking over the free "War Scrolls" for the existing Warhammer armies it also looks like pretty much everything I own does have rules and I wouldn't have to do any real re-organising of my armies (I might cut down the size of some units a bit, but that's all).

So if the rules are actually reasonably fun and very open to customisation, and I don't need to buy any new models, why not give it a go? I  have no interest in the Age of Sigmar background with its Realms, its Eternals, its Orruks and its Aelfs, but who cares? As far as the rules are concerned it doesn't matter where the game is set.

And, if I don't have to revise my armies, then it may prove complementary to Warhammer 8th edition and I can keep playing both.

I'm still more interested in Dragon Rampant, mind you.

The Best of Times or the Worst of Times?

After months of faffing around, Games Workshop have finally revealed Warhammer 9th edition or "Age of Sigmar" (very much the Windows 10 of the wargaming world).

"The End Times" was never going to attract me in a big way because I don't react quickly to wargaming trends. I always sit around for a few months, or even years, before embarking on a new project so a range of models and rule books that were always intended to be very short-lived and quickly superseded by the next big thing were never going to work for me. That said, I approve of the idea of turning the end of an edition into as big an event as the start of one, even if it is an excuse to flog as many old models as possible before starting again.

Now that the new version is out we can see how accurate the rumour mill was and it looks like even the most extreme rumours were true. Pretty much everything has been thrown out, right down to the Warhammer world itself. After eight editions of minor tweaks and updates, everything has been thrown out, right down to square bases. The new game is leaner, simpler and very much skirmish based with units of five to ten models and standard and a more substantial role for heroes. There are free rules for all the old models for the moment, but the new models have a completely different aesthetic, looking more like Warhammer 40,000 without the guns.

There's a lot of anger on the internet at the moment with the simplification. The new rules are only four pages long and very straight forward. Games Workshop seem to have taken inspiration from Warmachine in terms of scale, but their rules are much simpler. Rumour mill currently has it that a more substantial rule book will be coming soon, but unless it is completely different from these starter rules, it will still be a radical departure from everything that has gone before.

I actually give Games Workshop credit for being this bold. They seem to be embracing their rule as the first port of call for new wargamers aged 10 - 12, with a rules set that is straight forward, uncomplicated and can be played with a small group of models. They seem to have recognised that eight edition's great misstep was pushing ever big armies with bigger units that no normal person could afford to collect. It is, once again, possible to buy a single box and have a usable unit. And the enhanced importance of heroes goes some way towards justifying their disproportionate monetary cost.

Having said that, I don't think I will be bothering with the new edition.

Partly this is due to the tone and style. I have been a Warhammer player for roughly 25 years and I had got used to its generic fantasy world with a twist. Games Workshop took the standard Hollywood Medieval style of Dungeons and Dragons, moved the technology level to late medieval and added a touch of black humour. Over time it had become more cartoon-like and more exaggerated, but the core had remained. There was still a touch stone of the Warhammer world grounded in the real lives of real people. Although it was nowhere near as accomplished, I always felt it had a quality similar to the Discworld with real people in a fantastic situation who, nevertheless, behaved like real people. But the Warhammer world was also broad enough to embrace a wide range of fantasy types, so it could take in Arthurian mythology, high fantasy, sword and sorcery, a version of Chaos taken largely from Michael Morcock and gothic horror without any of it feeling entirely out of place. Plus, at its best it had a sense of humour about itself.

The new reality of galaxy spanning wars across multiple dimensions doesn't really work for me, and sounds suspiciously similar to Warhammer 40,000.

But the main reason I won't bother is because this is simply a new game and I have no interest in starting a new game. I have something like seven different Warhammer armies built between fourth and eighth edition, none of which may be particularly tactically optimal, but all of which are playable. I have no desire to rework them for a new set of rules, especially when I have so many unpainted models for other games and other projects demanding my attention.

So for me, it's a no to Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

And yet this is strangely liberating. Eight edition Warhammer is now a "dead" game in the same way as Epic, Mordheim, Necromunda or Blood Bowl. Which means it's free of Games Workshop, there will be no new rules or model releases and I can simply concentrate on the models I already own (with one or two last minute editions while they are still available). Given Games Workshop's focus on new players I doubt I will be missed.

So this is not a farewell to Warhammer exactly, but rather the point at which I part company with Games Workshop. It will carry on in to the future with its version of Warhammer, while I stay put with mine.

UPDATE Just a small detail, but I think that daftest thing Games Workshop has done here is attempted to rename some of the most generic fantasy races so we now have Aelfs, Duardins, Grots and Orruks instead of Elves, Dwarfs, Goblins and Orcs. Presumably this is to make them easier to trademark, but I don't think they're fooling anyone.