Grab Yourself The New Age Of Sigmar Skirmish Rules & Warbands
May 20, 2017 by brennon
Games Workshop has now put together pre-orders allowing you to snap up the Age Of Sigmar Skirmish Rules, acting as a great entry point into the world of Age Of Sigmar and Warhammer in general.
This skirmish variant of the game allows you to play out fights with warbands which consist of between five and twenty models. All of the main allegiances are catered for, but not every profile in Age Of Sigmar has their own Skirmish designation. This is to level the playing field one would imagine!
I think this is a great step from Games Workshop as it allows people who have picked up maybe a box or two of models to get playing. Open Play exists of course, but this makes things a little more structured and allows for individual models to fight and your warband to gain renown as it battles onwards.
As well as having rules for playing standard skirmishes there is also the Shadespire Campaign which links together six scenarios as you search for lost treasures in this dead city. You can also get stuck into Matched Play using the new rules.
Warbands
Of course, you're going to need some Warbands to play this game with and each of the main factions, Order, Chaos, Death & Destruction have got new boxed sets coming out to help you in that endeavour.
Here, for example, you see most of the contents of one of their Starter Sets for the Stormcast Eternals, the Hammerstrike Brethren, but with a focus towards giving you some alternative options on the tabletop in Skirmish. The same goes for Chaos...
...with their Khorne Bloodbound Frenzied Wartribe. I quite like this one as the warriors of Chaos have always been quite individual looking and driven by their own motives. This gives you a chance to really get stuck into the character of your individual warriors.
You can also get into it with the Death warband, the Flesh-Eater Courts Nightfeast Hunters.
Now, of course, you don't HAVE to build warbands based on the configurations that you see here as they will be giving you plenty of options to play around with. But, these probably give you a good grounding.
I have to say it might be hard to pass up this one for Destruction, the Ironjawz Weirdnob Warband.
I've always been tempted by the Ironjawz and I love their big hefty armoured look. I'm not a big fan of the yellow, but my orange scheme looked quite good! I might end up trying to replicate that and introducing that Weirdnob Shaman into the mix to play with some of the new spells in Skirmish too.
What do you think of the plans for Skirmish?
"As well as having rules for playing standard skirmishes there is also the Shadespire Campaign which links together six scenarios..."
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Maybe it’s me, but this amount of models (5-20 per army) is what I expected Age of Sigmar itself to play at when given :
(a) the scale (28mm)
and
(b) the fact that there are no formations like Warhammer had.
As such the question is : why does this exist ?
Aren’t the rules in the ‘normal’ game suited to small teams like this ?
Why the heck did they choose such a boring name for the product ?
What’s next ? A book called “Mass battle” for really big skirmishes using hundreds of models ?
oh … and yes, I’d apply the same logic to 40k & Shadow wars.
Because they feel like exactly the same style of game : small teams (skirmish/shadow wars) vs platoon sized armies in the ‘actual’ game.
Lol shadow wars is totally different rules to 40k bu i sure wow
In theory you could play AoS at whatever level you wanted, but if you want to know how GW want you to play you just need to look at how they present the game in photos, batreps, and whatnot, and it was always with lots of minis on the table. The impression I always got from AoS when it launched was that they thought structure to the games was hindering sales as it stopped people buying whatever they wanted, so if they removed any and all structure it would result in people buying more minis. Everything they’ve done in the last year or so, including this, suggests to me they realise they made a mistake.
In terms of the name of the product, never underestimate the power of easy-to-understand branding. Remember, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar replaced a game called Warhammer Fantasy Battle. That game’s first edition was called on the box ‘Warhammer: The Mass Combat Fantasy Role-Playing Game’.
Sure. And while I, personally, find it a bit blunt and unispiring, in the end I don’t much care about the title when the content works.
However, this is definitely a strange decision and sure nullifies part of its possible power as this goes totally against GW’s labeling policy these days.
Yep, they seem to be fixing a lot of holes in the original AoS system. IMO the fact that they are learning from and acting on their mistakes is a great thing.
The entry point to start playing and enjoying Fantasy was too high which was the reason for its slow death. There’s a lot to be said for the principle of buying a start collecting box and being able to start playing straight away both in AiS and now this Skirmish option.
But as you said having no structure was also a mistake which GW seem to have fixed (it is the more entertaining option to watch on the warhammer tv vs the soon to be outdated 40 k system).
When it comes to the number of models in White Dwarf battle reports they interviewed someone who works on it and he said the reasons were for the big model count were because it photographed better as well as increasing the likelihood of something interesting happening narrative wise.
Whilst I’m sure that’s a factor, GW have always used the way they present a given game to try and normalise how that game is played, often to try and maximise sales of their products (which is not intended as a criticism). It’s why when the Realm of Battle board was released that’s all you saw games being played on. The old Warhammer Armies book showed the GW staff with what were full-sized armies at the time, but which look tiny now. If GW were interested in pushing AoS as a game you could play at any level and which you didn’t have to buy a lot of models for if you didn’t want to, they would have shown the game off that way as well. That they never did that, speaks to how they wanted people to engage with it, even if just aspirationally. Again, none of this is a criticism.
@redben : that has indeed been obvious once the AoS marketing got started.
However my initial impression of AoS was that one of the problems it intended to fix was the insane amount of models you needed to buy in order to have a decent game.
Given how they’ve then chose to represent the game this wasn’t the design goal.
OTOH the release of ‘Skirmish’ seems to acknowledge that this small scale is something they want people to play, but at the same time it’s getting treated as something different.
From a business point of view it does make sense to seperate those two variants, because it makes it easier to sell and there probably aren’t a lot of people who would start small and move to the ‘standard’ sized game.
They appear to be convinced that enough people want to stick to the ‘skirmish’ level that it becomes profitable to treat it as a separate market.
I don’t see skirmish games as necessarily a gateway to the bigger wargames. As @redben says, it’s better to have a game that starts small and scales up so you can play a game with whatever size collection you have.
For me skirmish games tick some different boxes to wargames and I think it’s a shrewd move for GW – or anyone for that matter – to be considering that market. It’s almost an acknowledgement of the older audience they have, and here’s why it feels like that to me.
I love big wargames. I don’t play in many these days but I love the sight of them at shows or in White Dwarf or here on BoW. It’s very much a visual thing, like model railways I guess. Decent painted armies on good terrain just looks amazing and I love it. Except I struggle to paint the number of models required to play such large batles for a number of reasons. I also lack the time and space needed to set them up. And that’s not a situation likely to get better any time soon. Skirmish games offer me a different experience. They have a lower model count so I don’t need to paint as many models (and because I like the visual aspects of wargaming it’s important to me to paint my models). They require less space and I can play most skirmish games on my dining room table (subject to permission from my wife of course). Generally speaking Skirmish games also require less time to set up, play and of course tidy up. The constraints on time are definitely a symptom of having to be a functioning, adult member of society and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that skirmish games have gotten popular and that they maintain a strong adult following. This is obviously my own opinion but I have seen the habits of nearly everyone I know who plays wargames follow a very similar path so I know I am not on my own.
From my own personal perspective skirmish games also have another advantage. Their small model count means I can paint a warband/crew/gang/whatever fairly quickly and then if I am really enjoying the game I can start a new one, something totally different. For someone like me who really enjoys painting and modelling skirmish games are small enough that I can dedicate more time to painting the models and also paint a wider variety of models too, so they offer a much better outlet for my creative needs than wargames do.
Now, that’s not to say that I won’t potentially graduate into Age of Sigmar or 40k after playing Shadow Wars or AoS Skirmish but that will be a long term thing if I do. I would like to expand my Shadow Wars team into a full army but there’s a lot of work involved because of all the conversion work involved. However be that as it may, I am considering the possibility of a 40k army as a separate project to Shadow Wars, for now I just want to get my kill team painted and get some games of Shadow Wars games in.
Different way to play, it’s a skirmish, no units just individual models. And for £6, why not?
And there are formations, it’s just that you are not confined to several ranks of models on a piece of card, you make your own on the fly as strategy and tactics dictate.
Aren’t the rules in the ‘normal’ game suited to small teams like this ?
No, Minimum unit sizes in AoS Matched Play mean that while yes, you can technically play with low model count, the game is intended for forces of 30-50 models a side or more rather than 5-20.
Why does it exist?
Because customers are asking for it and “The New GW” are actually listening.
Why is it named in a way which offends you?
Who knows? Why does such a name offend you so? I personally like it. It could have been called “Age of Sigmar: War in the Shadows” but then you can’t really tell what it is about at a glance.
I think the core question is “What IS actually different to AoS?” in order to find out what system one likes for which sizes of games. Or if there even is a real difference at all (scratching unit sizes etc. and simplest minor changes don’t qualify as real change for me here).
After all this seems to be intended as another intro mode to the ‘big’ game. I’d just *VERY* clearly communicate how.
Paraphrased from GW site for lazy folk who can’t / won’t click three links:
– Smaller units (1+) of dudes
– Models acting independently rather than in units
– New Spells for Wizards
– New rules for Battleshock (as units of 1 wouldn’t normally take BS tests)
– New Command Abilities
– New artefacts
– New mysterious terrain rules
– Updated rules for summoning
– Narrative Campaign
– Rules for warband growth over time
– Points values for individual models
Hope that helps.
The thing I will focus on is rules for warband growth. This could be like Dogs of War for Confrontation. I loved playing that type of game as the models became better as time passed and got new abilities. I really hope that’s what it’s like.
To be fair, the updates rules for summoning are “these abilities do not have any effect under any circumstances.” (the rules can be found on the GW preview image for the skirmish battles rules). Still, happy with what seems to be a way for warband growth in a way more fleshed out than path to glory!
While it is possible to have units of 1 model in Age of Sigmar the game doesn’t encourage it. Many units get bonuses when they have certain numbers of models. Melee combat and morale is also set up to work better for units with higher model counts with rules like “piling in” and “battle shock”. So although in theory you could play Age of Sigmar with 10 units each containing just a single model the rules themselves aren’t really geared towards it.
I’ve ordered the rules and I am actually quite interested to see what they’re like. And for £6, it’s worth a punt.
Or have I misunderstood? Are you talking about AoS or AoS:Skirmish? If I have got it wrong, I apologise
I never said the name offends me.
It simply is rather boring and doesn’t really flow with the naming convention used within AoS itself.
We get the “Generals’ Handbook”, so why not something along those lines ?
40k got ‘Kill team’ and ‘Shadow wars’.
Both are short and meaningful (within the setting).
“Skirmish” is short, but it kind of lacks the message that a name like ‘kill team’ sends.
I understand what you mean there. Age of Sigmar Skirmish doesn’t really sound very snappy does it? And when you consider that most of their games have at least moderately imaginative names, this one seems a bit of a juxtaposition. I would have probably called it Age of Sigmar: Warbands or something like that.
Love to see your ironjaws Ben, Orange is the new yellow. . I am looking forward to a few quick games with these rules and already have them on order. I also like the look of the graveyard mat GW have done.
@beardragon14 I hear there was reason to be cautious about the quality of their mats. Too thin or so. Better check this in a store.
I bought their 40K one and it was fine…. actually, more than fine.. I shall go get it out later and check it’s thin-itude …. Is that a word??/
The image on the mat appears to be a collection of photos of their painted plastic terrain pieces. A strange take on a mat but cool nonetheless.
It looks like they’re designed as compliments to the Start Collecting boxes too.
Price point for this is excellent, and I can see it being popular. Personally there are too many other skirmish rules I prefer for me to be interested.
For me, I already have quite a lot of old Warhammer Fantasy stuff and, more by accident than design, a Chaos warband so for me this £6 is a bit of a no brainer – especially as I am not currently playing any fantasy skirmish games and the only one that really interests me at the moment is Bushido. I quite like the AoS setting (I know, sue me – I also like the Star Wars Prequels!) and although I haven’t jumped in with both feet yet because I want to see where they go with the new armies, this provides a way for me to stay engaged with the world.
And of course, at £6 even if it turns out to be a bit poo, I haven’t just broken the bank.
This is going to be fun! Cant wait to get my hands on it.
I am happy with good old Mordheim so to me this is easy pass.
If only they would update the rules to include new AoS minis that’d be great.
@mecha82 my thoughts exactly, and a much cooler setting in my opinion.
Hey folks.
I saw a couple of game of this on Warhammer TV in the week. It looked fun and is basically downsized Age of Sigmar with each game taking around 45 mins.
One thing the presenters mentioned is that it is something that can be easily demoed in their Stores. A lot quicker, easier and takes up less space than demoing a full Age of Sigmar game but basically the same thing.
In normal AoS “troop” units have minimum sizes. For example a Sigmarine Liberator unit has a size of 5+. I assume these new rules allow for you to pick individual models rather than have to abide by the warscroll minimums.
look good for new players to start a army.
In-depth review: https://www.miniwargaming.com/content/Warhammer-Age-Sigmar-Skirmish-Review
They cover everything pretty much.
Any plans on setting reasonable prices on character blisters GW ? 25£ is just insane, but apparently people keep buying at this price point. New GW could almost be perfect if they could handle this little issue.
I’d not hold your breath for single characters getting cheaper any time soon, but it has become apparent that GW is happy to sell them at a reduced cost when you buy any of the Start Collecting boxes (or indeed these new Skirmish boxes).
You also get so many extra bits in unit boxes now, I’d have thought most could just convert stuff to characters relatively easily.
Yeah it can be done, its just the way it looks .. a character at basically the same height and mass as a regular but with slightly more detail costs the same as an entire unit box. Its beyond me how they sell any single blisters ..
The material costs are minimal with plastic so the mass won’t impact the price. Tooling is very expensive so the biggest determiner is how many you think you’ll sell. It’s why the old paradigm used to be troops you use a lot of can be in plastic, whereas anything you don’t use a lot of is in metal (which has high material costs but low production costs so is suitable for smaller runs). I don’t pay enough attention to AoS or 40K to know for sure, but if GW believe people will buy mutliple unit boxes but only one of each character box, that would make the characters quite a bit more expensive to make. There are other factors not related to cost that go into their pricing decisions also.
Yeah a vivid imagination is one of them
Prices for clam pack characters actually vary significantly but the newest releases appear to be around the £18 point.
ordered! As soon as I saw it.
I’ll pick this up. Warband size + lite campaign rules.
And no huge monstrosities.
Count me in!