Weekender XLBS: Do Points Costs Matter & Star Wars Podracing Game Mechanics!
July 5, 2015 by warzan
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first
lol
They see me troll’n….
Happy Sunday!
i’m glad this is here to watch since i won’t be sleeping any time soon (spent all night making music)
Happy Sunday
Happy late Birthday BoW
I think you’re stereotyping about Fantasy players. Not all of us are competitive (I’m certainly not, I’ve never been interested in tournaments). They could have just copy pasted the rules from 40k and the game would have been great,
As for the description on the show, you don’t necessarily need points for a well rounded balanced game. MTG doesn’t have points but it still has limits and a sense of balance. Also toy soldiers aren’t representative of real warfare 😉
Yeah your right I am generalising quite a bit on fantasy players, but just to try and make a point a little more clear 🙂
Yeah I get what you’re saying about the nerd raging neck beards, but c’mon man we aren’t all bad lol
Problem is it doesn’t take many of them to poison a whole game.
Unfortunately, die hard neckbeards are the reason I don’t enter tournaments (that and I prefer to have a fun relaxed game)
The problem is this is to some extent a case of GW being hoisted upon its petard. They shaped their rules to try and take advantage of the neckbeard types and rule jockeys to force people to buy more to be able to compete and all it’s done is turn people away from the game.
Warren all the war scrolls for your older minis/races are free to download as a PDF from GW web page.
Happy Sunday! Points make prizes!
Happy birthday fellows
Happy Sunday
Happy birthday yesterday! Also, Happy Sunday!
For Mad Max/Podracing, When a model reaches a curve in a canyon you can roll a D3:
1 – Model under-steers and crashes
2 – Model turns the corner successfully
3 – Model over-steers and crashes
Keep that as a standard
Then for skilled drivers/pilots you could re-roll the result.
Just an idea…
Nice simple mechanic, but far too granular I feel.
True, but it was an on the spot idea 🙂
Needs a mechanic linked with speed. The faster you go, the harder to control your vehicle on corners.
I was thinking that. Maybe you only have to roll the D3 if your vehicle/Pod racer is going full speed?
Happy Sunday All!
All the current unit War Scrolls are available for download
There are also War Scrolls for all of the GW fantasy terrain kits which I really like
War scrolls are on the GW website for the fantasy armies – free to download in the rules bit for AoS.
Yup, they dropped not long after filming 🙂
Happy Sunday. Have watched my first play through – Check out Guerrilla Miniature Games on Youtube and thought it looked fun. This there’s a problem with measuring from models though – particularly swords, spears and standards. I would definitely house-rule the main body of the miniature as the measuring point (arms, legs, torso head) – 40K used to do something similar for LOS with wings and banners saying they didn’t count so make all the pretty models you want. Looks much more organic and cinematic than old fantasy for my tastes though – actually tempted… though not with the new miniatures (which I personally don’t like). Maybe e-bay some classic undead or knights for me.
Or as a novel idea, from the base :p
Happy Sunday!!
Rock is overpowered but paper is fine.
Sincerely,
Scissors
Points cost ARE common sense. They are common sense in that people notoriously have very skewed and biased views of what is actually fair in a game.
Points costs mean that in theory someone acting as a neutral third party was paid to spend the time and effort required to test things under some sort of rational play testing regime and arrive at a professional opinion of what point valuation is reasonably fair enough that players will find the valuation to be an acceptable guideline to facilitate playing the game in a satisfying manner.
The players are free to discuss and reject or modify the guidelines if they feel the scenario they want to play doesn’t match up, or play at unequal points values if they want to.
To not even include the points in the first place is producing a crippled product. Players don’t have to use the points costs, or can agree to have unequal points for each side, but the publisher of the game is derelict if they don’t provide those points valuations for the players to ignore if they so choose.
If you watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zw_63NZ0D0 you see an outnumbered ogre player get the sudden death victory condition due to being outnumbered, and then their army walks over and smashes the chaos player’s army into pieces by virtue of having better models. In another video the Chaos player said he didn’t have any fun and it was a boring train wreck where nothing mattered.
Who knows how things will shake out… but at this point I suspect that Age of Sigmar’s tombstone will end up saying: nice idea in theory but a train wreck in practice.
These are concerns that I have too. It’s not so much that people will game the system to try and win, though some will, as it will be difficult to figure out how to balance the games. It’ll take trial and error with a lot of unsatisfactory experiences along the way. As you mention, this is part of the process that the games designer should be doing, not us.
Have to say I like the idea of no points, it was always artificial to me, ok I am an historical gamer at heart and prefer to play games based on actual forces… especially in Naval Warfare there are times when it is actually tactics that win the day, not how many troops you have.
I have not completely finished reading the rules yet but to me a few things will kick in here
1. Power gamers will soon find that they don’t have opponents if they are unreasonable.
2. Objectives change the game massively at times a smaller force is better in a situation
3. Get away from thinking about open battlefields with no terrain
4. I have not read the war scrolls but I am guessing there are certain characters of features in each army that give them an edge over certain types of troop so you know your opponent will be playing x army so you design your army for that battle against that type of force
5. Time… If your limited with time your not going to play with hundreds of figures as it seems the more men the longer the battle.
6. It gives you the opportunity to have almost role playing bands of adventurers in a dungeon situation so the scope is there.
1. I’m not concerned about powergamers as nature finds a balance there. It’s broad appeal for pick-up gamers that is the concern.
2. Objectives do change the game, but as things stand the rules don’t handle them very well. One of the main problems, which was highlighted by Justin, is that the game doesn’t discriminate on troop quality, which is real problem for the sudden death balance (amongst other things). The sudden death chart also skews the game radically and makes it very one-note.
3. I don’t think about open battlefields with no terrain.
4. That is list building 101 and not really relevant to the problems being highlighted.
5. That doesn’t stop your opponent fielding hundreds of models. Which means you either enter the arms race or you’re not competitive. It’s the latter which is of greater concern as the mass appeal of the game is limited as a result.
6. Again, not really relevant to either the concerns or it’s likelihood of finding a mass audience.
As probably comes through, the concern I have is primarily around whether AoS can have the mass appeal it needs in its current format. In trying to be accessible, it risks making itself inaccessible in one of the most fundamental ways it needs to be if it’s to be a mass market success. I play and enjoy all sorts of different games, but I understand that some are more likely to attract a mass audience than others.
Ok all fair points and my observations s are based on a brief reading until I get to play I cannot really tell…
One thing I do like though is I can get my old mini’s out and see if they will work in the new system:-)
Everything I have read still convinces me that GW’s primary concern is to try and force customers to buy the more expensive higher profit margin models. I’m sticking with KoW
I the models sell GW wont care. And if they don’t try will try to force them to sell.
I hope they don’t turn their eyes to 40k and say “hey AoS boosted fantasy, lets boost 40k and do away with rules”.
I’m assuming you have some intimate knowledge of how the management in there feels right now yes?
Because from where I’m sitting (and that’s still very much on the outside) I’m seeing quite a lot of changes, since KR took over 🙂
It’s all speculation from all we are, yes? Call it an educated guess, just like you’ve made an educated guess. They’re all guesses, none of us have the facts.
But lets face it GW have said they’re a model company first and foremost, not a games company so if their models sell then they will obviously make more regardless if people like the rules or not.
Of course they will. Though if they sell lots of AoS models they’d be justified in assuming people do like the rules. Consumers don’t buy product they don’t want.
@redben The rules aren’t the product though. I myself am not a fan of the rules but I do love the sigmarines and plan on getting some for my space marines, I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
Since GW have said it’s not a games company we can assume that the rules don’t matter to them as long as their miniatures are great.
If the Age of Sigmar minis are a success, then the game has been a success. Sales of minis for use in other systems will only go so far. It would be unprecedented for a minis line from a game to be successful and the game itself not be successful.
Also, GW aren’t a minis company. They’re an IP exploitation company. It just so happens that they exploit the IP best by selling minis.
Surely this will have had to be in the pipeline for a good long time pre ceo change?
Hi Nork,
Watched part of the link you posted. Don’t feel to bad for the Chaos player, I have seen him in other vids & he does have that why am I here attitude & it gets worse when he is losing or has lost. We just have to wait for more battle reports to be posted before we start sounding the death bell.
Here is another AoS battle report to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D54nIzA1VsE
All I can say is play a few games
Happy Sunday & happy 5th belated birthday as well.
Welcome to the game designing world with the Pod Racers & the Mad Maxxer, but before you go to kickstarter make sure you get it IP approved. 😉
The talk about Age of Sigmar was interesting. I have some trouble with Justin, first & for most, he has to grow some sort of facial hair or go with the Miami Vice look aka the 5 o’clock shadow lol. Secondly Justin talked about bring in 20 dragons, well on some of the forums the same thing roughly was talked about, but with 10 demons. The first thing said in reply was could that person afford to bring in 10 demons or 20 dragons in Justin’s case. Cause if they can’t bring in 10 demon or 20 dragon mini’s on their side, then why ask how fair it would be if they played against 10 or 20 Orc Boar Chariots.
Your weekender shows are doing great.
I won’t rehash my thoughts on the AoS rules other than to say that many of the points you make about how to play it work in a ‘basement meta’ environment, but aren’t suited to a ‘pick up meta’. Also, wargames are games, not battles. They have to work as a game first and foremost.
Hail Caesar and Black Powder both sprung to mind as games that were designed to throw models on the table rather than use points. It’s somewhat ironic that in the first edition of Warhammer to be released after Rick left that they do this. I didn’t mention them as examples of games that don’t use points in the thread on the topic because both of those games wound up using points and army lists. Not because Rick wanted to, he didn’t, but because the consumer base demanded it. Which if anything makes them the worst examples of games that don’t use points as all they did was highlight the demand for balance mechanisms.
Finally; happy spirit-journey formation anniversary! The creature thus be born and five bells will chime!
Perhaps by placing the onus of fairness on the players it will force a rethink of ‘the spirit of the game’
It’s a bold move no doubt, and it will be interesting to see what comes out next (probably a whole series of mini games with missions and terrain etc – and the warscrolls we have seen are there just to placate those who own those models)
By focusing on the existing way things are played and the existing model range we may intact be missing the point of where this range is headed 🙂
I’m not wedded to a points-build system or army lists. If anything I like to seek out games that do things differently and I welcome innovation. My concerns with Age of Sigmar based purely on what we know right now are that it is flawed in its execution of this and that in trying to remove all hurdles to play, they have inadvertently inserted a new hurdle. Compared to other games that have been the success that Age of Sigmar needs to be (or greater), whether it be 40K, X-Wing, Settlers of Catan, or Magic, what they all have in common is they provide a simple framework to pick up and play. That’s not the same as saying they are balanced, rather that they don’t ask the players to balance the game. Right now AoS doesn’t do that and that is a hurdle at which many potential players will fall. Whether they intend to right now or not, it wouldn’t surprise me if future AoS releases begin to inject a framework.
Here is the thing with placing the onus of fairness on the players. It reminds me of something Monte Cook said about writing rules for roleplaying games: DMs that have the spare time and talent to write their own roleplaying systems don’t need the products I make, so I write material for the people who don’t have the time or talent to do so.
Literally nothing is stopping players from just writing their own home brewed wargaming system.
The only thing that seems to be going on here is Games Workshop throwing everyone who doesn’t have the spare time and talent for wargame design under the bus.
The entire concept of telling people they can do what they want could be covered in Games Workshop version of Page 5 where they tell players the rules are a guideline and to feel free to ignore them, just like most RPG books do.
I think Monte is spot on there and essentially is summing up the job of the games designer.
And yet with set force organisation charts, magic items, unit upgrades and the like how much longer would we spend drawing up army lists? Whether it’s to squeeze in that new unit, take something to fill a mandatory slot even though it doesn’t fit you army ethos, or doing endless hours of mathhammer to come up with the winning combo.
Warhammer in its previous incarnations took FAR longer to prep for than it does now whereby a 10 min pre-battle chat with your mate and maybe 1 practice game is all that’s needed. If you stick to the balanced points cost mentality you deny yourself of so many opportunities for great scenarios that you and your mate will reminisce on (or even lend itself to in a narrative campaign).
As a GW player I found it weird to drop into Flames of War and see people take tank armies against infantry with little or no antitank.
“Where’s the balance in that?” I asked.
“History shows battles were rarely balanced” the player controlling the soviet conscripts replied smiling.
At the end of the day this is a bold move by GW. I’ve heard on the grapevine that this is more like an Albion campaign before the big battles ruleset comes out. Pinch of salt needed there.
There is a big difference between prep to play a game and prep to make a game work. Not least of which is in the former case, you know you’re playing the same game as everyone else, which is crucial for a game with mass market appeal. I would contest that all WFB players spent countless hours of prep on things like mathhammer. I certainly didn’t and no-one I played against did.
And just to stress the point, that made pick-up games very easy. We could go to a club or a store and play anyone. All that was needed was an agreement on the size of the battle and we were ready to go. We didn’t need to break the game, and we didn’t need to negotiate the game. In its current format, if AoS is to avoid the former, then it demands the latter. Only the basement meta is spared this.
I hope AoS does good, but time will tell. If i was GW I would have decks of magic spells ready for sale along with existing army war scrolls, just in case you don’t have a printer or only want certain war scroll cards at hand so you don’t have to flip through pages of one’s home made war scroll book. And yes AoS is geared more to the first timer & cheap at 75 pounds. Depending on where goes, I don’t think they will be spending more than 200 pounds in a year. You can laugh at that, but think of how much you have spent on your armies over the years & how many of those can you still use?
The box set certainly is geared that way, and if you’re in a like-minded playgroup then you can make AoS whatever you want. Is it the low-entry point with sustainable scalability that it needs to be? I don’t think we can know that right now.
The biggest problem with ‘spirit of the game’ as written, as far as I can see, is that at the moment, who knows what is actually fair and balanced. Everything is different now, even existing army units work differently.
How many high elf, sorry aelf, spearmen are comparable to a unit of the sigmarines with hammers and shields? I’m not averse to house rules and so on, I play 2nd edition 40K with current vehicles and units because we have adapted everything, but we had the knowledge of the game and its basic synergies to be able to do that, no one has that with age of sigmar.
As the game stands right now, I think it has potential for gaming groups, but is unsuitable to pick up games (as played in GWs own stores) or any form of competetive gaming environment. I don’t think it can sell well enough to be considered a success without at least one of those other groups being able to take part meaningfully.
Who knows where they will go with it, I like the models (not so much the sigmarines other than bits for my angels of sparta blood angels), the chaos stuff is fantastic although a bit too skull heavy, but they really need to complete the game, quickly to give it a chance. Especially with mantic announcing the release of the free kings of war 2.0 rules on the same day.
But without a points system, how do you know if the game is fair, bit late to find out once its finished.
Even with a points system, GW players have spent decades complaining about the lack of balance in the game being inherent to the “crappy job” the GW designers have been doing for years. If it wasn’t points, it was the force org, if it wasn’t he force org it was a lack of percentage system, etc etc.
To be fair, I think what happened here is GW thought they were removing a point of contention, and instead added another one.
I’ve been spending the weekend reading and watching AoS info as if it was some sort of slow motion train wreck. My schadenfreude love of GW has been going overdrive.
On consideration I think vagrantwhisper is correct about the removal of points. If GW had included points for everything then two things would have happened first a team would have had to grade and test the points on units and second we would have complained that the points were incorrect. Just because there is a points cost doesn’t mean it is balanced. Getting the values right is something that requires rigorous testing and is probably best approached with a living rulebook sort of approach.
Removing the testing team obviously will save money, it also will speed up the release schedule both excellent business reasons to remove it. If I were to pick up this game with a mate (something thats not going to happen), in the first few games one of us will probably get destroyed. As we continue to play, adding and removing units, the games should get more challenging and interesting as we tweak the armies. In the end I’ll probably end up with a larger army compared to by opponent because they will be the better player, but the games will be tight and down to the wire. Weirdly enough the armies won’t be balanced, if we switched chance are I’d lose. If two other players picked them up it wouldn’t work out for them. It would be perfect for us though.
On a side note, if our main rule for fielding was that only fully painted units could be fielded then maybe I’d have less of a pile of grey plastic sitting in the corner.
Happy Sunday!!
Got a morning game of Saga in already, now time for the XLBS 🙂
Just on the new format having now seen both shows, if it saves you time then keep doing it. Any loss of editing quality is minimal and long before the end I had mentally adjusted to the occasional look into the wrong camera.
Ok after today’s xlbs I had a couple of minutes to check out the GW site… now I am interested having seen they have a war scroll for Bretonnians I can finally dust off my Mk 1 Bretonnians and have a game….only thing I now have to find them…and cringe at the 25 year old paint job…holy cow is it really that long ago…..#scary
I definitely agree that AoS is putting the old grey matter into action, to me they must be looking at losing money on this product in the short term. New players need less figures and won’t need to buy a shiny codex. Old players may run into the arms of KoW or jet keep player their old rules. Unless we see another jump in process the cost of armies should now be lower I’d guess a decent size skirmish force costing 50% of previous editions.
Happy Sunday
Happy Birthday!
The video format was fine, no issues at all. The wall thumping was hilarious!
I think the thing with points is that it’s much easier to take points out of a game to have some narrative gaming than it is to add them in to have competitive gaming. You could do all those scenarios you mentioned and still have points, but you can’t play a balanced or competitive ‘game’ (yes real battles arent balanced, but this isnt a real battle, its a game) without some sort of balancing like points or force structure. I also feel there is a danger of an arms race, and the people who spend the most money on the best minis will have the best armies, similar to Magic.
With regards to the game design, I had thought of using poly dice to represent the gears, but normalising the values so a d20 would go from 10-20 say rather than from 1-20, that way there was a minimum distance you would go, and to reduce the randomness of your speed.
Oh, and happy Sunday!
So much yes.
AoS smells like a pay to win system.
Itnis much easier to remove an army selection system from a game, to build one that works.