Dipping a toe into One Page Rules - Age of Fantasy

I have played Warhammer: Age of Sigmar(AoS) off and on through all of it’s iterations and have now played 4 games of the most recent 3rd edition. My go-to army has been Disciples of Tzeentch (DoT), and I have played basically the same demon-based list since the first DoT battletome was released.

I have never been overly impressed with it as a system and I have not been tempted to spend a great deal of my hobby dollar (or pound) on it. As a result all of the models in my DoT army are old school demon stuff from back when I played primarily Warhammer Fantasy Battles i.e. none of the new characters and no Tzangors etc.

Despite playing a small 1000 point list consisting of only 4 different warscrolls I have never played a full game and successfully remembered all of my game/army/unit rules. The cognitive load in this game is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

For example, in the first phase (the Hero phase) of each of my turns I need to:

• Roll a dice for each of my Pink Horror standard bearers to see if they generate a Command Point on 3+ (unless they’ve been removed as a casualty of course in which I don’t)
• Choose a Battle Tactic for the turn. This has to be a different selection every turn and I can select each option from those available only once per game.
• Think about my Agendas of Anarchy army rule and which one, if any, I might want to complete this turn.
• Choose a Heroic Action for one of my hero models.
• Cast any Spells.
• Check for Command Abilities I might want to play in this phase.
• Make sure I remember any ‘In the Hero Phase’ effects printed on my units individual warscrolls.

And this is indicative of the other turns of the game. In the movement phase I don’t just ‘move’ my models. I again need to be aware of opportunities to use command points and abilities printed on warscrolls to trigger in the relevant phase of the turn. My army also summons extra demon models at the end of the movement phase.

Repeat this process for the shooting, charge, combat and battleshock phases and I get scrambled egg for brains.

Behind all this negativity is the sad fact that I think, in one way, this is the best edition of the game to date. For the first time in Age of Sigmar I feel the points based victory conditions have added enough sophistication to the game that it doesn’t feel like wiping your enemies units from the table by sheer brute force is the be all and end all of success.

The Battleplans, Battle tactics and Grand Strategy system are good.

The models are beautiful and the range of model options for each faction in the game is bewilderingly large at times.

But quite frankly the structure of the warscrolls is too complex. Many units have multiple attack options with different ranges, hit, wound and armour modification values. Most units have two or more additional bonus effects or variations on their core stats that occur when certain conditions are met. I.e. they get bonuses to hit if within X distance of model Y. Or like my Pink Horror example above if they generate extra command points on a random roll etc.

Another common effect in this game is choosing to trigger an effect in one phase that will do nothing until a later phase. For example using an ability in the hero phase to modify my number of attacks in the combat phase,

Over my many games I have created reminder lists and custom bottle cap tokens to drop around the table next to units to prompt me to remember effects and rules I would otherwise forget. And still I forget things!

How anyone plays this game at the recommended 2000 points point level baffles me. I am in awe of their gaming savant abilities.

I have played AoS first, second and now third edition. I have been playing wargames since my late teens and am now 50 years old. I have played 6 different game systems in the last 12 months. In summary I am NOT new to this hobby or wargaming, but the sheer amount of things to remember in this game defeats me.

This brings me to my most recent AoS experience. I was asked to lead someone through their first game of AoS 3rd edition. This person was not a new gamer and had played older editions of Warhammer 40,ooo (although I don’t think they have yet tried 9th edition). They came well prepared, with proxy models for a Gloomspite Gitz list they had prepared on Battlescribe and which they had obviously familiarized themselves with, to some degree. They had obviously studied the core rules and were comfortable with relatively sophisticated concepts such as piling-in moves etc.

Their list contained 7 units using 6 different warscrolls and they even made the decision to not worry about army specific rules and focus on the units and their warscroll rules and the core game mechanics.

We played at 1000 points and also disregarded terrain rules and ran no warscrolls for endless spells or terrain.

After three hours we had completed TWO turns of the game.

TWO turns!!!!!

During general chat after the game while clearing away models etc. my opponent mentioned the One Page Rules company and their range of games.

I have had this company on my radar for a while and was definitely up for trying any one of their games out. This seemed like an opportunity too good to refuse and so we decided to have a game on the following week using the One Page Rules Age of Fantasy system instead and see how it goes.