Finmirage's stuff: Warhammer Age of Sigmar musings and playing it with my son

Age of Sigmar...

Been following the game develop and have read commentaries and watched youtube videos of it during the past two years. They made you feel Age of Sigmar was a terrible mistake from Games Workshop and an atrocity against everyone that were playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle, which was "murdered" by the corporate vampires.

I've been playing Warhammer on and off from the beginning of 90's, mostly around 2001-2005. You could say I'm of the generation, which grew with the game (as well as with 40k), but for some reason AoS never offended me. Maybe the "big move" didn't concern me, because of so many editions making the old ones obsolete, I dunno.

On the other hand the game didn't much interest me either. Originally I thought it would be great "rules light game" to play with kids and family, but the price's of the AoS miniatures put me off big time, so I kind of forgot about it. Then few months ago I bought the AoS basic set because... I don't know sometimes you just buy stuff :)

Another ongoing thing that has been going on for about 15 years now, is my attempting to get my wife play miniature games with me. She is very much into games (RPGs, board games, computer games etc.), but with miniature war-games I totally botched right in the beginning.

Around 2003-2004 after about a year of cajoling, I got her to play Warmachine with me. We played two games where I totally annihilated her force (you know you got to lose and learn) and she basically declined every request to play for like 12 years after that. I have made it a habit to ask at least once a month.

This fall (after I bought the AoS set) I got her to read the rules and she said YES. Apparently 2 pages of rules are somehow better than 250 pages, go figure. And then we played and I lost :( BUT she agreed to play again. So last tuesday we did. And I played with my son too, and they both liked the game.

With 2-4 units per side the game is set up in 15 minutes. With players, not experienced in war-games, it lasts for around an hour or so. The rules are simple, but you get to make meaningful choices all the time. The new miniatures are "too expensive" I think, but since I have about 1000 old citadel miniatures of various factions, it makes not big difference. I have and probably will buy the new miniatures as well because they're really sweet to paint and if you don't need to invest in a complete army, the cost is not so important.

I don't know if Age of Sigmar was a good or bad move on GW's part, but I can tell you if they would have churned out 9th edition, I would for one would not be playing it with my wife and son. In my mind this is something to do home and since I get out every once in a while, I can play "more serious games" with "serious gamers" who have read the 250 page rulebooks :)