My first reaction to AoS was decidedly negative because of the terrible launch decisions but I started wheeling out some of my old fantasy armies, when the General's Handbook came out and I could build a fair army to play an opponent, and discovered the game was great fun.
But I had no intention of buying any new models, none whatsoever ye ken, under no circumstances, and then I wandered into my flgs and saw the starter set and the models were Oooooooh and the price was reasonable and.........
Centre piece of the army is a monster kit, that can be assembled as a giant undead bat or dragon. I chose the bat and used it as a mount for my Ghoul King.
The paving on the base is scratch-built from plastic card, fish-tank gravel and sand. I wanted to give a ruined ancient city look to match the fluff in the Battletome, that I also sorta bought (but second hand on ebay - honest).
One also gets the bits for three 'small monsters' that can be assembled to give a variety of running or flying characters of 'heavy' troops. I chose to build them as Crypt Flayers.
Finally, you get some cannon fodder, ten crypt ghouls let by a Crypt Ghast or you can upgrade the ghast to an independent character, the Crypt Ghast Courtier.
The box contents are a playable army of around 600 pts or so, depending what options you choose to build.
You are short of ordinary foot, so I use 20 Oldhammer Zombies as ghouls to pad out the army. These are crummy models - too big for the stands so they stand shoulder to shoulder in a ranked army more like Guardsmen than Zombies - but fine as fillers for my Court.
So what did I learn about the army in its first tryout against Seraphon.
Weeell......
Advantages
You have some highly mobile units that can be across the battlefield in a flash of wings.
Your units hit hard on the attack.
Disadvantages
Crummy armour save, you need to use your unit's advantages to take out the opposition before they wear you down
I also learnt a few things about AoS
We already have 'codex-creep': (i) 'new' armies like Seraphon and Courts are much tougher than old armies like Slaves to Darkness and (ii) winning the initiative can have a sizable impact on the balance of the game.
So there we are and, of course, I shall not buy any more.
No really, I can give this up whenever want....
Of course you can; now would sir kindly empty his account in to this one labelled Games Workshop. (Nice figures though very,...Shiny)
ReplyDeleteHave you ever worked out what you've spent over the years. I could have had a Jaguar instead.
DeleteHi John Yes once when I changed banks it was around £6K in 10 years (and that was just what I had spent on the Debit card) after roughly 40 years I reckon I could run to a Ford Focus :)
ReplyDeleteTerrifying, ain't it.
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