Ok so I went to an AOS tournament over the weekend, and that got me up to almost 10 games in AoS, so I think its time to write up a full impressions article. Also because we all know 4th edition is coming this summer and if I don’t do this soon, itll all be moot, so here we are.
For this article Im going to stick to the format of what I like and what I dislike about the game. However since I have documented this before, Im going to just state that everything I mentioned after the first game impressions article is still the same. So I wont touch on that, if you are curious you can go back and read that one, but none of those impressions have changed. I will add a few new things, but for all intents and purposes this article should be read alongside the previous AoS one for my full thoughts.
The tournament I went to was a 3 round store tournament using ONLY the Core Rulebook, bot the Generals Handbook. That definitely skewed lists a bit, but I still have more games using the full GHB than just this. But that being said, the core book battle tactics definitely heavily favor killing your opponent instead of doing almost anything else. In fact theres only 2 battle tactics that don’t involve killing an entire unit or the enemy general.
Excited:
Combat- I just want to add a quick note about going back and forth picking who fights. I really like this mechanic, it makes you have to think about charges a little more, and gives the inactive player a little more to do, and a chance to not just get steamrolled. There are things in the game that break this rule, but for the most part its alternating activations, and I really like that. Initiative systems can work well for this too, but then I have flashbacks about charging elves in old fantasy and they still hit me first. I think alternating is just easier and ultimately feels better for the player getting charged.
Hesitant:
Turn 1 combat- So this one Im not sure if Im really hesitant about it or just kind of neutral on it, but it was unique from most other games so I thought Id throw it in. I also want to preface this by saying this happened to me every game during the tournament, so Im not sure if its isolated to that, but after looking into it, it looks like it could come up everywhere. Every round though my opponent went first, and I got charged round 1. Now I know you can redeploy to avoid this and screen units so only chaff gets charged, but I was playing ogres with a heavy irongut skew, so I was fine getting into combat. It just seems interesting that I played 3 different people, using 3 different factions, and each game I got charged top of turn 1. Even outside the tournament that’s happened to me multiple times (Although as Ive played more Ive gotten around that, but its still an option if I don’t play to it. This seems very strange to me, as pretty much every other game Ive ever played you cant get charged in your deployment zone turn 1. Yes shooting can get you, but melee? And like I said Im not sure if this is actually a downside. Its definitely bad for new players who don’t see it coming, but it is a unique aspect of the game, and lends itself to the fast paced nature of AoS. I think it ultimately falls more to personal taste, but the fact that other games don’t have this, and often errata things out that have this ability, makes me think this is a downside to the game as a whole.Â
Armor save stacking- This one I didn’t really see much until the tournament, but Ive seen a lot of units that get to a 2+/3+ save even after all the rend is added in. Between faction abilities and all out defense, they can just stack armor real high so they are still saving on a 3+ against a super punchy unit. This would be fine on one really tanky unit, or something unique, but it seems like every game I ran into at least one unit like this, and usually more. This just seems off to me. Having a big unit like ironguts hit something and that something still has a 2+ save, seems real bad. I think the amount of stacking is just too much, and while most things have a limit of +/-1 with the armor theres things that add to armor, things that subtract from rend, and just different ways to get around that.
And there we go, I know it was kind of a short list this time, but like I said, this is meant to be read with the previous AoS article. I just wanted to come back and touch on some things that Ive learned after ~10 games. I didn’t quite hit that threshold yet, but with 4th right around the corner, I wanted to make sure I got something out, before it all went out the window. Until next time, keep rolling dice!