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Oops! Accidental post before the table was done :) Sorry BroG!

Monsters not being subject to it is a good clarification. (MI still need to be, imo, but they only need 3, not 5).

As far as characters leaving units, which part of it do folks value? Charging out solo vs. enemy units? Joining a fight in progress? Moving between friendly units? Something else? We dislike #1

@ClassicFlava Diverters are still alive and well, you just can't force the enemy unit to swing it's ass out in a stupid direction with just a few models. I have played more O&G vs. Brets than is healthy, and usually with 4 fast cav units on my side, so I've been doing this silliness for over 15 years... It's not good for the game :( That said, I can still get a ton of mileage out of these units, as I'll still divert somewhat, just to a lesser degree.

Check out Brohammer: http://www.ordofanaticus.com/index.php?/topic/25623-brohammer-wfb-85-for-all-us-bros-and-sisters/ :)

I found it didn't take too much to adjust my thinking. Only the second player can go twice in a row. The flank-ish maneuver is pretty darn limited. Imagine I have 36 goblins in a tight formation. you're going to force me to leave out 2 goblins at best! I've been looking at this a fair amount, and I have two different flank-replacement rules in mind. I do think that AOS could be made into a worthy game. Like I said above, I think it has some impressively elegant 'bones'. It's just missing a few key mechanics to capture the feel of block fantasy. I am also playing around with a 'facing' mechanic that I think could be a winner. My number of games with AoS and KoW is pretty low still, but thus far, I totally agree. However, I think an unofficial "Ordo" version of either could be a great game.

I'm realizing that my phrasing wasn't exactly clear. When I say "weak rules", I mean that the game designer did a weak job, not that the units described by the rules are weak. My own stupid phrasing from doing amateur game design myself (and it's dumb, because it badmouths the designers, and really, it's a thankless job already). Apologies for the unclear language! So when I say "weak warmachine rules", I don't mean that warmachines are weak, but that the rules feel like an afterthought rather than a really solid effort by the designer. Similar with magic: I think they gave it all a very mild effect in order to ease balancing. Not inspiring game design imo. Think Gandalf: he's not applying a stream of fireblasts throughout the battles, but when the shizz hits the fan, he's bringing the glory and the light to turn the tide. This is also what I mean by cinematic flair: a few key events during the game with fantastic effects. So long as they are situational, provide opportunities for counter-play, mostly reward the currently losing player, and don't outright prevent an opponent from doing his thing, they're great fun!

I've been an amateur game designer all my life (too bad the pay sucks), and love to sit around and analyze what makes a game 'tick'. So this whole madness around "what next?" has me thrilled to be perusing rules-sets and ruminating on design choices :) In particular, comparing KOW2, AOS, and WFB, I see some really stark contrasts: AOS Pros: -Brilliant game flow: you get right into things in a natural and fun way -Elegant and interesting player choice: hero and command powers present viable and meaningful options in-game, but take very little effort to understand -Wonderful flavor: You can't get much better than CCG-style "basic rules, complex 'cards'" Cons: -No army construction rules! Even casual players are complaining. That's pretty bad -No tactics in movement: there is no question that ranks 'n' flanks is what elevates WFB over 40K in terms of depth (jab!) -Currently weak scenario support: this means there isn't even strategy in movement :( The game is all about unit-power and combat management. How to fix and make great: -Army construction rules -A mechanic to reward 'surrounding' enemies so that the movement tactics of ranks 'n' flanks is added to the game. -6 solid scenarios, or really iron-out a good way to do 'sudden death', so that more strategic movement is added to the game -Minor incentive for clumping a single unit (enabling movement trays and therefore full-sized armies) -Discourage clumping multiple units (less necessary for larger games and games with multiple positional objectives) -Use bases + KOW2 LoS system (if the game is worth it, I'm happy to rebase) KOW2 Pros: -Unit based ranks 'n' flanks gameplay: Such a good choice to scrap model-based gameplay. Cleans up so much of the garbage from WFB. You basically have ~10 pieces (units). -Streamlined movement: easy to carry out, easy to understand, gives enough choice for a high-skill ceiling, but not so much that it burdens the player -LoS system: so superior to TLOS. This system is probably the first house-rule my brothers and I apply to every miniatures game :) Cons: -Currently bland. The basic rules actually have plenty of possibility in them for flair (though they're missing a few obvious improvements), but the actual army designs fail to take full advantage. -Weak magic system: They went for reliable and low-impact. That's where shooting should live, not magic. -Weak warmachine rules. They're just really high-variance shooters :( -Overly predictable combat math: I applaud the system, but again, the numbers they've chosen make for bland combat (too low variance). -You lose cinematic flavor by not removing models How to fix and make great: -Redesign the army lists to have more character and more diversity within a list. Units are mostly just separated by what other units they'll win/lose against. Better is to differentiate units by what positions they excel in. -Redesign the spell list to be less reliable but more awesome (I have quite a bit in mind here) -Tweak the rules for 'to-hit' rolls in order to create a bit of a rock-paper-scissors effect on whether units are strong/weak vs shooting and/or warmachines (leads to more deployment decisions based on shooting lanes). WFB 8th Pros: -We already know it and play it :) -Huge body of material to draw from -Great flair and character in armies -Great emphasis on both strategic and tactical positioning -Some magic phases can be very fun and interesting -Combats can be quite intense and wild -The flee mechanic can be quite interesting Cons: -SLOW to play. So many cumbersome rules that don't quite meet their intentions. Planning a movement phase can easily take 20 minutes, especially in a close game between large armies. -Extremely 'abusable': tactics can devolve in to game-exploitation, leading to players losing due to unforeseen and unintuitive minutiae -Some magic phases are just "roll and pray" due to internal imbalance in lores (only one spell really worth casting each turn). -The flee mechanic can be a lot of work to resolve How to fix and make great: -Rework to be unit-based and remove 1 model units that aren't at least 50mm wide. Would immediately clean up so much of the game. -Rework basic mechanics to get rid of worthless minutiae and reduce mental burden But which game to 'fix and make great'? Personally, I'm most drawn to AOS because I think it has some really, really good 'bones'. KOW2 is chess-like in movement (good), but also in combat (bad). I see KOW2 as 1/2 brilliant and 1/2 desperately needing more math-minded game devs. From a core-rules perspective, WFB needs the most love. While it does have the best army rules to start with, it won't get new rules to support new models. Another way to look at it is how to maintain each: -For AOS, the needed extra rules would not change the warscrolls, so you'd get usable rules to go with new models. And the new models are bound to be awesome (just look at the new chaos models!). What you WON'T have is construction rules, so you'll need to add those for every new unit. But you WON'T need to create the rules for the new models. -For KOW, it's the army rules that need fixed most, IMO. If Mantic catches on and can fix that, then they might be able to produce new rules for new models for us all. Otherwise, you have to create the rules AND costs for all new models. -For WFB, all new models would require complete conversion, as the game is dead :( Again, I'm leaning toward AOS :) Okay, I'm officially distracting myself until I can leave for the OFCC :) See you dudes soon!

Wow! I wish I'd known about those guys a month ago :) Thanks so much for the link, Jim! See you tonight!

Anyone have recommendations? Anyone try these: http://ironheartartisans.com/shop/round-base-to-square-movement-tray/

@hobbit Very good point! I hadn't even thought about that, but of course you can't use rules off a warscroll not in play!

Nail hit on head :) @Jim maneuvering is sadly drab. Objectives are a must, because most armies have no incentive not to clump up. Even then, two units in the same area are best off clumped. Combat is really the best part.

I read that pile in is optional on a per-model basis, but that the move itself can only be done one way (3" along the shortest path to the nearest enemy model). Means that you might not pile-in some guys in order to avoid the giant standing nearby. I don't mind this, personally. My biggest concern is that there isn't much reason not to clump your units.

8th is quite broken, imo. Regardless of AoS, I find myself longing to use a different system anyhow. The alignment/combat-reform/who-can-attack complexity gets so out of whack so fast that it makes me crazy. At least half of our flank charges happen in some unsatisfying way for BOTH players. And many combats involve some form of annoying tricks centered around poorly done combat reform rules.

@RoG, the Ravening Hordes example is right on, except that they won't be releasing new rules for old models. Shooting into combat touches on to an issue I have: true line-of-sight. KoW 2nd edition uses the good old 'height category' mechanic I find so much better for these kinds of games. Unit footprint + height mechanic would resolve a lot of issues, imo. Character sniping is a problem only because of 25mm characters. I doubt any new lone heroes will come mounted on anything less than 40mm rounds, and they'll have stats to let them take some punishment. Boring wizards is again about the "Ravening Hordes" effect, where they've pushed out a TON of new rules at once. There is no balance at present. For the folks I play with, I'm not too worried. We'll just let the loser add some stuff for the next game until we start trading games happily. New unit summons is bonkers. Not sure how they got that so wrong. No idea what could be confusing wrt to flying dudes and charging. They have to land within 1/2" of the target unit. I'm missing where that breaks down. Pile in manipulation is there, but you're still a long cry from either 40K or WFB in terms of annoying shenanigans you can pull in combat positioning. Objectives will be the life-blood of this game, imo. WIthout them, it's a pile-in cluster-jam :) I agree on the rerolls. It's a product of attacks-per-model. Not fine-grained enough otherwise. As a 40K and WFB Ork/Orc player, buckets of dice are my norm :) Movement trays are fine up until pile-in/terrain :( This is a problem, I think.

3 posts while I fumbled to post from my phone.... I think of AOS as streamlined 40k :)

You guys are nice :) Jim, I will check those games out right away! Though I do often win games with excess minutae, I prefer games that restrict detail to only when it involves interesting player choice. AOS might be this way. I really like the way generals work. I like choosing attack ordering. If spells prove to be interesting, you might get all the 'meaningful player choice' needed for high skill ceiling. Just four choices per turn with three viable options each makes 81 good ways to play a turn! Then it comes down to is the aesthetic evocative? This being the essential piece for gamer geeks like us. Not sure on that score, but I remain hopeful :)

I should also mention that I played with a buddy who hasn't played warhammer since early 7th, and we learned and played in less than 3 hours, which was cool. Ogres vs orcs. As host, I had to lose :)

One game in, and I like the game a lot. Basically, if you fix the model-2-model measuring nonsense and add a simple rules for how to measure with square bases, then use the kings of war 2nd edition LOS rules, it plays very well! No balance is a non-issue for me, as WFB sucked without community balancing anyhow. After 1 game of AOS (with kow2 LOS rules), I like the game better than kow2 (3 games of that so far). I actually think it is a superior game to 40k, btw. Has all the same basic strategy (objective control, concentration of force, match selection, terrain use, etc) with a far cleaner system and more meaningful player choices. You lose the ranks and flanks game, which breaks my heart a bit, but it isn't as far dumbed down as you might think. I actually think it might have a higher skill ceiling than kow2 (which I find frustrating for how it is one-half brilliant and one-half failure).

My OnG would love to bash heads with this :)

When I say "breaking the comp system", I don't mean "cheating". That's reading a lot into what I said :( I'm in no position to judge the guy's win, and certainly don't mean to pass judgement on him. The comp system states that: "The main goal of the system is to evaluate the strength of an army". When I say "breaking the comp system", I'm referring to finding a build where the system is off by a lot in terms of the list. This has nothing to do with fluff or cheating or even legitimacy. Ideally, the comp system absolves us of the exhausting "am I building a cheesy list?" question that nobody likes. So let me rephrase my question: "How often do master's winners see their list comp drop by 2+ points in the following comp-pack update?"

Yeah, bummer that he basically found a hole in the comp system as opposed to made TK work. How often are master's events won by way of breaking the comp system?

Boo on that list :( One block that wants to fight. That's it. Lame....

I have an update that I am going to be running for the next little while. My thought is that I should really embrace Swedish comp to make this list more in line with the aesthetic I like. -I'm starting by dropping the manglers. They rock (I had one kill 8 ironbreakers and two warmachines last game), but they don't look right in an army without the rest of my squigs (I like running them with both hoppers and a herd), and the squigs don't look right with Gorbad. -I'm also dropping the night goblins for regular goblins. Again, I like the aesthetic better. The army looks more cohesive with regular goblins to match the fast cav and gobbo heroes. -I'm adding my giant back in. I've never gone to a tournament without him, and he's my first good paintjob ever (15 years old!) Current Version, 16 Comp Gorbad Ironclaw, 375 (-20) L4 Savage Orc, Fencer's Blades, Shrunken Head, 290 (-35) Goblin Big Boss on Giant Wolf, Spear, 4+ save, Ironcurse Icon, 58 (-4) Goblin Big Boss on Giant Wolf, Spear, 4+ save, Charmed Shield, 56 (-4) 23 Savage Orc Big 'Uns, Double Choppas, Full Command, 288 (-17) 22 Black Orcs, Standard, Musician, Shields, 306 (-17) 50 Goblins, Standard, Musician, Shields, 195 (-5) 9 Boar Boys, Full Command, Spears, Shields, 215 (-4) 6 River Trolls, 270 (-16) 5 Wolf Boyz, Musician, Spears, Shields, 70 (-3) 5 Spider Riders, Musician, 75 (-2) 1 Giant, Warpaint, 220 (-2) 1 Doom Diver, 80 (-11)

I'm continuing to love this list. I played it against Bunto's dwarves, and it was a nail-biter. Started out looking very grim as his warmachines rolled up some beastly numbers, but then his forging cannon blew up and his longbeards failed stubborn on 10 with reroll. It looked like lights out for the dwarves until Gorbad fell to his dwarf lord in a challenge! Only changes I'm considering at this point are to lose the fanatic and try to fit in a chariot.