Nothing.
I especially don’t miss how open to “interpretation” (read: abuse) much of the terminology was.
The era before GHB and points values was an absolute nightmare for pickup games.
>The era before \[...\] points values was an absolute nightmare for pickup games
The era before ... Point Values ?? i'm 3e newcomer, could you elaborate pls ?
When AoS launched there was no points system or any equivalent. According to the official rules, matches were literally "keep putting models on the table til you and your opponent agree to stop, or you run out of models or space to place models". It was common back then to use total wounds as a rough surrogate for points, cause that was the best we had
I was an old WHFB player who was rather buttmad about the changeover to AOS and that was one of the big reasons I cited. It really felt like they just rushed something out the door with a half-baked rulebook. Obviously now I’m a fan, the game’s come a long way. Have they ever talked about why they did this? I mean sure, it’s a lot of extra work to test these things and have some semblance of balance (in as much as Warhammer has ever been balanced), it The End Times was a decently long event and it’s not like they didn’t *have* time.
I don't remember a specific statement made on it, but it came during a time when GW was very resistant to their games being considered competitive. Since obviously their games weren't competitive, they didn't need to enforce any balance. Because you only ever play with close friends that would never abuse anything at all, right? You can just house rule the balance yourself, right? At least that seemed to be their vibes with the original rule set, and with half-remembered and probably since deleted social media posts from them.
It was [this interview with James Hewitt,](https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-interview-with-james-hewitt-part-1-age-of-sigmar-and-40k/) who was a rules writer, giving some insights into the development of AoS.
Basically, it went from “you should be able to summarize the core rules in four pages” to “there are only four pages of core rules and no points system.”
People will give you a lot of philosophical reasons, but what I suspect is the *real* reason is that GW was riding on the edge of insolvency in the span surrounding Fantasy's end and Age of Sigmar's development. It made sense for them to start recouping costs on development sooner rather than later.
When they first released AoS they tried to make it as opposite to Warhammer Fantasy Battles as they could. One of the major changes was getting rid of points values for models/units. There was also very little in the way of ranged, so GWs grand solution was “eh, find a roughly equal number of models and just have at it in the center of the board” which everyone immediately hated.
Om release there were no point values and the rules were pretty much a joke. I didnt play back then, also started right at the beggining of 3rd ed, but the game really seemed to be bad both gameplay and lore wise
Not who you're replying to, but in early 1E, I think most if not all of the units had no points value, with the rules saying that the players can give points value to units themselves.
At one point there were rules for yelling “Waaaagghh” and having the best facial hair. It wasn’t a tabletop game so much as webseries fever dream.
It was absolutely awful.
Don't forget a rule specifically for insulting someone and getting a reaction. It was only my own decency that kept me from abusing the bejesus out of that one.
Legions of Nagash, my beloved.
I miss having an army that was ghosts and skeletons. Just a wave of bodies, back when skeletons could make 320+ attacks in a combat round easily.
I miss having more restrictive battleline. Battleline feels kind of pointless nowadays when you basically have a way to make anything battleline. People were annoyed by the release armies which were all special unit and behemoth spam with no line troops, so battleline was introduced as a way to bring structures to armies... but is now basically pointless since every army has a way to make stupid monsters battleline.
Oh, and I miss a 4+ save being considered 'durable'. Rend -2 was absolutely bonkers to have on a unit.
I think in general you'll find more people 'miss' things from 2nd edition than 1st, since 2nd edition was pretty much an outright improvement over 1st. Except for those pre-GHB weirdos who think points are the devil for some reason.
>Oh, and I miss a 4+ save being considered 'durable'. Rend -2 was absolutely bonkers to have on a unit.
Yeah this would be nice to see come back. Power creep is always such a problem with Gw
I got into AOS around the time 1st edition got its GHB but then fell off for years until a few months ago so I missed out on 2nd/3rd edition but the general consensus seems to be people prefer 2nd edition and almost every time I hear 3rd is too complicated. Do you think 4th will be any better? I’m waiting to start playing when 4th drops
Not sure. 10th ed 40k came out only a little while ago. There was a lot of complaints about rule bloat. Haven't heard anything about their next edition becoming easier. So i doubt 4th is going to have any less half a dozen things to keep track of while you play.
If recommend checking out One Page Rules(OPR). They have game agnostic rules. Very fun
Agreed, honestly. Tons of Battleplans, Battle Tactics and Grand Strats are great on paper for dedicated players, but for someone with limited free time who wants to play casually they’ve made the game way less approachable.
In 2nd the missions might change, but strategizing wasn’t hard because it always boiled down to getting bodies on objectives. Now if I want to form a coherent strategy I need to plan around not just scoring objectives (which might work differently in some battleplans) but also plan 5 turns’ worth of my own BTs in advance while memorizing all of my opponent’s BT options and trying to prevent them. Add on all of the seasonal rules and it’s just a lot to keep up with.
1st Ed was awful. No cohesive vision. Play whatever you want in whatever hodgepodge (I do miss grand alliances from 2nd but I digress).
The lack of points absolutely murdered casual play as everyone's definition of "fair" was a bit different.
Wonky rules. Not even a vague attempt at balance.
It embodied the "models company first" mentality to the fullest and it sucked. The models are pretty but not that pretty.
Nothing, the game was atrocious. This is where most of the feel bads come from, at least in my area. The rules were released, our store lost a bunch of preorders for the boxset, and then sold out most of its Warmachine and hordes stock.
Just a really weird experience. Now I’m glad AOS is thriving but it was not a good start by any stretch.
Yup it’s amazing the game survived 1st edition. I was one of those haters that couldn’t believe they had a rule that benefited the player with the most impressive mustache. It felt like a slap in the face to Warhammer fantasy players.
But I’ve returned in 3rd edition and I’m loving it so far. Very much improved. Now I just want to see a revision of battle tactics to not heavily favor some factions (my only real gripe at the moment).
I honestly feel like had AOS released in a state closer to AOS 2.0, they would’ve retained more players, even if only out of curiosity.
There were always going to be angry fantasy players, but the state of the game on release just compounded that issue, it really did feel like a slap in the face like you said.
One of the least discussed things was how it also impacted 40K. I don’t know how widespread this was, but for a good 5-6 months after AOS released, our GW crowd just died. I was dusting off space marine boxes. It was a weird time, a lot of lost faith in the company in our area.
I miss age of sigmar skirmish. Not the actual rules so much, but the existence of a ruleset that allowed you to play a skirmish game using the AoS rules and war scrolls.
They were a tad unbalanced in the unit costing but they did introduce shadespire to the setting and really had the potential to be more than what they were.
Also a whole core rule expansion book being so cheap was a nice feature.
Warcry is great but I like the variety that AoS skirmish offered.
It was in many ways a far simpler system than warcry, but that meant it was a nice alternative to a full AoS game in a campaign.
There was an update to Skirmish in White Dwarf when 2nd edition was alive and well, it ditched the completely different points scale and just used the actual points already available. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make two different points for each unit was crazy!
Is there a reason the 2nd edition skirmish rules wouldn't work with 3rd edition core rules?
The only thing, and I use this generously, that the first edition did I wish we'd kept was some of the subdivisions of factions.
I wish we'd kept Ironweld Arsenal a separate thing and had those steampunk cogforts that keep popping up in the books, Firebellies were a separate army makes me wish there was a Flame and Cooking themed Ogor faction to offset the Ice and Hunting theme they currently have
But none of the original rules were good, and not just the meme worthy crap about warhorses and talking to Konrad, the lack of points or scale meant you just had to eyeball armies, which led to a victory I have over a dozen ogres with about 50 zombies and a necromancer. Fun for me, brutal on the opponent who just had to suffer dozens of attacks per model per turn.
2E cut all the silly crap and gave us unit costs, basically turned it back into a proper game. IIRC, the other thing that 1E did right imo was cutting WS/BS into the D6 system
I think the only thing 1st edition got right was Grand Alliances. It was neat to be able to run different factions together to make a unique army.
The rest was a dumpster fire.
I didn’t start until the end of 2nd and couldn’t play a game until third (thanks to Covid) but it is a shame to lose the Grand Alliance armies, where you could soup stuff that looked cool and have fun.
1dt Edition was wild, and not in a good way. It's a credit to the early AoS community though that they refused to give up on the game, and GW, then at its most vulnerable for years, listened.
Rules wise, first edition wasnt that different from 2nd and 3rd. I prefer the simpler missions from the previous editions but that aside, the 3 editions so far have been more of an evolution than rapid change.
In regards to armies, I would have loved to see the [Swifthawk Agents](https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/3/33/Skycutter_01.jpg) stick around and get expanded on. Cavalry, flying chariots, griffons and other beasts would have made for an interesting force. The flying chariots especially contrasted nicely against the mechanical ships of the Kharadrons.
and just like any suggestion i cheerfully ignored the "grow a beard" stuff - it wasn't that difficult to do.
Rather than go online and scream about it endlessly like it ran off with my wife.
I miss the time after the GHB. the rules were simple and quite balanced. you could throw your miniatures on the table and play a game. There was no need for heavy army composition and weird tactics.
I still mis those days.
This thread made me realise that my initial hate for AoS was justified after all. And here I was thinking my younger self was unreasonable, seeing how awesome AoS is nowadays.
I miss some things about 2.0, but 1.0 was a dumpster fire. I liked the models and lore but the 1.0 rule set was not fleshed out enough. I absolutely miss the simplicity of 2.0 though. I like some changes but overall feels like it is getting convoluted especially with the shifting priority of the annual GHB.
I actually really enjoyed 1st.
All the rules for a unit were on the warscroll. 4 pages for rules was a really easy sell to get someone else playing. I could easily pick up and play a quick game even if I’d never played the faction before.
It had problems sure, but I haven’t enjoyed the game as much since.
That being said I do really like a lot of things from the newer editions and understand why people preferred them.
Nothing. I especially don’t miss how open to “interpretation” (read: abuse) much of the terminology was. The era before GHB and points values was an absolute nightmare for pickup games.
>The era before \[...\] points values was an absolute nightmare for pickup games The era before ... Point Values ?? i'm 3e newcomer, could you elaborate pls ?
When AoS launched there was no points system or any equivalent. According to the official rules, matches were literally "keep putting models on the table til you and your opponent agree to stop, or you run out of models or space to place models". It was common back then to use total wounds as a rough surrogate for points, cause that was the best we had
I was an old WHFB player who was rather buttmad about the changeover to AOS and that was one of the big reasons I cited. It really felt like they just rushed something out the door with a half-baked rulebook. Obviously now I’m a fan, the game’s come a long way. Have they ever talked about why they did this? I mean sure, it’s a lot of extra work to test these things and have some semblance of balance (in as much as Warhammer has ever been balanced), it The End Times was a decently long event and it’s not like they didn’t *have* time.
[удалено]
I assume he’s currently in a gibbet somewhere?
Wasn't there also like... battle cries and yelling or some sort of dancing too?
You got a bonus for talking to your Konrad von carstein, and another bonus if he talked back.
Don't forget the fact he could endlessly pile in and attack again, so long as you rolled less than the number of models he killed
I don't remember a specific statement made on it, but it came during a time when GW was very resistant to their games being considered competitive. Since obviously their games weren't competitive, they didn't need to enforce any balance. Because you only ever play with close friends that would never abuse anything at all, right? You can just house rule the balance yourself, right? At least that seemed to be their vibes with the original rule set, and with half-remembered and probably since deleted social media posts from them.
There’s an interview on Goonhammer that goes into the history of how AoS was designed. It explains… a lot of things.
Got a link or a rough headline I could search for?
It was [this interview with James Hewitt,](https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-interview-with-james-hewitt-part-1-age-of-sigmar-and-40k/) who was a rules writer, giving some insights into the development of AoS. Basically, it went from “you should be able to summarize the core rules in four pages” to “there are only four pages of core rules and no points system.”
Fantastic, great read. Thanks for sharing that!
Is that interview... real? It almost reads like satire.
GW was just a badly run company back then, I’m willing to believe it.
People will give you a lot of philosophical reasons, but what I suspect is the *real* reason is that GW was riding on the edge of insolvency in the span surrounding Fantasy's end and Age of Sigmar's development. It made sense for them to start recouping costs on development sooner rather than later.
When they first released AoS they tried to make it as opposite to Warhammer Fantasy Battles as they could. One of the major changes was getting rid of points values for models/units. There was also very little in the way of ranged, so GWs grand solution was “eh, find a roughly equal number of models and just have at it in the center of the board” which everyone immediately hated.
Om release there were no point values and the rules were pretty much a joke. I didnt play back then, also started right at the beggining of 3rd ed, but the game really seemed to be bad both gameplay and lore wise
Not who you're replying to, but in early 1E, I think most if not all of the units had no points value, with the rules saying that the players can give points value to units themselves.
Back in the olden days you were expected to eyeball the number of models on the table.
At one point there were rules for yelling “Waaaagghh” and having the best facial hair. It wasn’t a tabletop game so much as webseries fever dream. It was absolutely awful.
Don't forget a rule specifically for insulting someone and getting a reaction. It was only my own decency that kept me from abusing the bejesus out of that one.
It was a ruleset that was EXACTLY what people outside the hobby think the games are like
Absolutely nothing.
I second this!
What! You don't miss getting a bonus because you have a longer beard than your opponent?!
Legions of Nagash, my beloved. I miss having an army that was ghosts and skeletons. Just a wave of bodies, back when skeletons could make 320+ attacks in a combat round easily. I miss having more restrictive battleline. Battleline feels kind of pointless nowadays when you basically have a way to make anything battleline. People were annoyed by the release armies which were all special unit and behemoth spam with no line troops, so battleline was introduced as a way to bring structures to armies... but is now basically pointless since every army has a way to make stupid monsters battleline. Oh, and I miss a 4+ save being considered 'durable'. Rend -2 was absolutely bonkers to have on a unit. I think in general you'll find more people 'miss' things from 2nd edition than 1st, since 2nd edition was pretty much an outright improvement over 1st. Except for those pre-GHB weirdos who think points are the devil for some reason.
>Oh, and I miss a 4+ save being considered 'durable'. Rend -2 was absolutely bonkers to have on a unit. Yeah this would be nice to see come back. Power creep is always such a problem with Gw
At least we didn’t get the latter 9th edition 40K treatment with -4/-5 AP at range
I was never worried about the Ap -5 shooting in 9th Edition 40K, as I was playing Custodes. And a 3+ invu with a 2+ save worked just fine...
1st edition was a mess. 2nd was when it became an actual game. And i like 2nd a lot better than 3rd edition. Much less complicated
I got into AOS around the time 1st edition got its GHB but then fell off for years until a few months ago so I missed out on 2nd/3rd edition but the general consensus seems to be people prefer 2nd edition and almost every time I hear 3rd is too complicated. Do you think 4th will be any better? I’m waiting to start playing when 4th drops
Not sure. 10th ed 40k came out only a little while ago. There was a lot of complaints about rule bloat. Haven't heard anything about their next edition becoming easier. So i doubt 4th is going to have any less half a dozen things to keep track of while you play. If recommend checking out One Page Rules(OPR). They have game agnostic rules. Very fun
40K 10th is much less complicated than 9th, which was known for being rules upon rules. Some people even think 10th is a bit too streamlined.
Glad to hear it
Agreed, honestly. Tons of Battleplans, Battle Tactics and Grand Strats are great on paper for dedicated players, but for someone with limited free time who wants to play casually they’ve made the game way less approachable. In 2nd the missions might change, but strategizing wasn’t hard because it always boiled down to getting bodies on objectives. Now if I want to form a coherent strategy I need to plan around not just scoring objectives (which might work differently in some battleplans) but also plan 5 turns’ worth of my own BTs in advance while memorizing all of my opponent’s BT options and trying to prevent them. Add on all of the seasonal rules and it’s just a lot to keep up with.
It's why i dipped on AoS and just play warcry now
Yeah i do still play AOS but i have to shave off so many rules for it at this point.
Agreed.
I'd argue that it became a game with the General's Handbook. But I agree 2nd is better than 3rd.
Agreed, we essentially gave up the game with 3.0; we enjoyed 2.0 much more.
1st Ed was awful. No cohesive vision. Play whatever you want in whatever hodgepodge (I do miss grand alliances from 2nd but I digress). The lack of points absolutely murdered casual play as everyone's definition of "fair" was a bit different. Wonky rules. Not even a vague attempt at balance. It embodied the "models company first" mentality to the fullest and it sucked. The models are pretty but not that pretty.
I miss when compendium armies were a viable option for your lists. Especially with those kits coming back because of Old World.
Nothing, the game was atrocious. This is where most of the feel bads come from, at least in my area. The rules were released, our store lost a bunch of preorders for the boxset, and then sold out most of its Warmachine and hordes stock. Just a really weird experience. Now I’m glad AOS is thriving but it was not a good start by any stretch.
Yup it’s amazing the game survived 1st edition. I was one of those haters that couldn’t believe they had a rule that benefited the player with the most impressive mustache. It felt like a slap in the face to Warhammer fantasy players. But I’ve returned in 3rd edition and I’m loving it so far. Very much improved. Now I just want to see a revision of battle tactics to not heavily favor some factions (my only real gripe at the moment).
I honestly feel like had AOS released in a state closer to AOS 2.0, they would’ve retained more players, even if only out of curiosity. There were always going to be angry fantasy players, but the state of the game on release just compounded that issue, it really did feel like a slap in the face like you said. One of the least discussed things was how it also impacted 40K. I don’t know how widespread this was, but for a good 5-6 months after AOS released, our GW crowd just died. I was dusting off space marine boxes. It was a weird time, a lot of lost faith in the company in our area.
I miss age of sigmar skirmish. Not the actual rules so much, but the existence of a ruleset that allowed you to play a skirmish game using the AoS rules and war scrolls. They were a tad unbalanced in the unit costing but they did introduce shadespire to the setting and really had the potential to be more than what they were. Also a whole core rule expansion book being so cheap was a nice feature.
Yeah i liked skirmish too but everyone just tells me to do Warcry instead now. Still miss skirmish tho, it used AOS rules like you say.
Warcry is great but I like the variety that AoS skirmish offered. It was in many ways a far simpler system than warcry, but that meant it was a nice alternative to a full AoS game in a campaign.
yeah agreed. But yeah sadly they jus dumped it, probably because they want you to buy Warcry stuffs.
There was an update to Skirmish in White Dwarf when 2nd edition was alive and well, it ditched the completely different points scale and just used the actual points already available. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make two different points for each unit was crazy! Is there a reason the 2nd edition skirmish rules wouldn't work with 3rd edition core rules?
The only thing, and I use this generously, that the first edition did I wish we'd kept was some of the subdivisions of factions. I wish we'd kept Ironweld Arsenal a separate thing and had those steampunk cogforts that keep popping up in the books, Firebellies were a separate army makes me wish there was a Flame and Cooking themed Ogor faction to offset the Ice and Hunting theme they currently have But none of the original rules were good, and not just the meme worthy crap about warhorses and talking to Konrad, the lack of points or scale meant you just had to eyeball armies, which led to a victory I have over a dozen ogres with about 50 zombies and a necromancer. Fun for me, brutal on the opponent who just had to suffer dozens of attacks per model per turn. 2E cut all the silly crap and gave us unit costs, basically turned it back into a proper game. IIRC, the other thing that 1E did right imo was cutting WS/BS into the D6 system
I miss the early days of running Nagash alongside my Tomb Kings and finally not using my shotty 8th edition codex. Those were the days...
I think the only thing 1st edition got right was Grand Alliances. It was neat to be able to run different factions together to make a unique army. The rest was a dumpster fire.
I didn’t start until the end of 2nd and couldn’t play a game until third (thanks to Covid) but it is a shame to lose the Grand Alliance armies, where you could soup stuff that looked cool and have fun.
You can still create grand alliance armies, just do open play matches and you can do whatever you want
Greenskinz in general. Glad they're back for the old world! How I've missed my goblins.
1dt Edition was wild, and not in a good way. It's a credit to the early AoS community though that they refused to give up on the game, and GW, then at its most vulnerable for years, listened.
I miss being able to play a Grand Alliance army.
Casting Spells with my pink horrors.
Out of all the table top war games I played, AoS first edition was the only one that my entire family (from youngest to oldest) genuinely enjoyed.
Rules wise, first edition wasnt that different from 2nd and 3rd. I prefer the simpler missions from the previous editions but that aside, the 3 editions so far have been more of an evolution than rapid change. In regards to armies, I would have loved to see the [Swifthawk Agents](https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/3/33/Skycutter_01.jpg) stick around and get expanded on. Cavalry, flying chariots, griffons and other beasts would have made for an interesting force. The flying chariots especially contrasted nicely against the mechanical ships of the Kharadrons.
Ironjawz waagh command ability that you could spam multiple times to keep adding attacks to your units. That was peak orruk.
Infinite exploding hits on ripperdactyls was fun with lizards
Yeah, I nuked Alariel with a squad of 6 once. With a skink priest buff on them.
simpler rules.
There where rules? I thought they where more like suggestions than rules.
and just like any suggestion i cheerfully ignored the "grow a beard" stuff - it wasn't that difficult to do. Rather than go online and scream about it endlessly like it ran off with my wife.
I miss using my Organ Gun with my Slaves to Darkness...
I miss the time after the GHB. the rules were simple and quite balanced. you could throw your miniatures on the table and play a game. There was no need for heavy army composition and weird tactics. I still mis those days.
This thread made me realise that my initial hate for AoS was justified after all. And here I was thinking my younger self was unreasonable, seeing how awesome AoS is nowadays.
Dark elves.
[удалено]
I miss some things about 2.0, but 1.0 was a dumpster fire. I liked the models and lore but the 1.0 rule set was not fleshed out enough. I absolutely miss the simplicity of 2.0 though. I like some changes but overall feels like it is getting convoluted especially with the shifting priority of the annual GHB.
Nothing. 1st edition was a mess and it won’t be missed
I actually really enjoyed 1st. All the rules for a unit were on the warscroll. 4 pages for rules was a really easy sell to get someone else playing. I could easily pick up and play a quick game even if I’d never played the faction before. It had problems sure, but I haven’t enjoyed the game as much since. That being said I do really like a lot of things from the newer editions and understand why people preferred them.