Dipping a toe into One Page Rules – Age of Fantasy

I have played Warhammer: Age of Sigmar(AoS) off and on through all of it’s iterations and have now played 4 games of the most recent 3rd edition. My go-to army has been Disciples of Tzeentch (DoT), and I have played basically the same demon-based list since the first DoT battletome was released.

I have never been overly impressed with it as a system and I have not been tempted to spend a great deal of my hobby dollar (or pound) on it. As a result all of the models in my DoT army are old school demon stuff from back when I played primarily Warhammer Fantasy Battles i.e. none of the new characters and no Tzangors etc.

Despite playing a small 1000 point list consisting of only 4 different warscrolls I have never played a full game and successfully remembered all of my game/army/unit rules. The cognitive load in this game is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

For example, in the first phase (the Hero phase) of each of my turns I need to:

• Roll a dice for each of my Pink Horror standard bearers to see if they generate a Command Point on 3+ (unless they’ve been removed as a casualty of course in which I don’t)
• Choose a Battle Tactic for the turn. This has to be a different selection every turn and I can select each option from those available only once per game.
• Think about my Agendas of Anarchy army rule and which one, if any, I might want to complete this turn.
• Choose a Heroic Action for one of my hero models.
• Cast any Spells.
• Check for Command Abilities I might want to play in this phase.
• Make sure I remember any ‘In the Hero Phase’ effects printed on my units individual warscrolls.

And this is indicative of the other turns of the game. In the movement phase I don’t just ‘move’ my models. I again need to be aware of opportunities to use command points and abilities printed on warscrolls to trigger in the relevant phase of the turn. My army also summons extra demon models at the end of the movement phase.

Repeat this process for the shooting, charge, combat and battleshock phases and I get scrambled egg for brains.

Behind all this negativity is the sad fact that I think, in one way, this is the best edition of the game to date. For the first time in Age of Sigmar I feel the points based victory conditions have added enough sophistication to the game that it doesn’t feel like wiping your enemies units from the table by sheer brute force is the be all and end all of success.

The Battleplans, Battle tactics and Grand Strategy system are good.

The models are beautiful and the range of model options for each faction in the game is bewilderingly large at times.

But quite frankly the structure of the warscrolls is too complex. Many units have multiple attack options with different ranges, hit, wound and armour modification values. Most units have two or more additional bonus effects or variations on their core stats that occur when certain conditions are met. I.e. they get bonuses to hit if within X distance of model Y. Or like my Pink Horror example above if they generate extra command points on a random roll etc.

Another common effect in this game is choosing to trigger an effect in one phase that will do nothing until a later phase. For example using an ability in the hero phase to modify my number of attacks in the combat phase,

Over my many games I have created reminder lists and custom bottle cap tokens to drop around the table next to units to prompt me to remember effects and rules I would otherwise forget. And still I forget things!

How anyone plays this game at the recommended 2000 points point level baffles me. I am in awe of their gaming savant abilities.

I have played AoS first, second and now third edition. I have been playing wargames since my late teens and am now 50 years old. I have played 6 different game systems in the last 12 months. In summary I am NOT new to this hobby or wargaming, but the sheer amount of things to remember in this game defeats me.

This brings me to my most recent AoS experience. I was asked to lead someone through their first game of AoS 3rd edition. This person was not a new gamer and had played older editions of Warhammer 40,ooo (although I don’t think they have yet tried 9th edition). They came well prepared, with proxy models for a Gloomspite Gitz list they had prepared on Battlescribe and which they had obviously familiarized themselves with, to some degree. They had obviously studied the core rules and were comfortable with relatively sophisticated concepts such as piling-in moves etc.

Their list contained 7 units using 6 different warscrolls and they even made the decision to not worry about army specific rules and focus on the units and their warscroll rules and the core game mechanics.

We played at 1000 points and also disregarded terrain rules and ran no warscrolls for endless spells or terrain.

After three hours we had completed TWO turns of the game.

TWO turns!!!!!

During general chat after the game while clearing away models etc. my opponent mentioned the One Page Rules company and their range of games.

I have had this company on my radar for a while and was definitely up for trying any one of their games out. This seemed like an opportunity too good to refuse and so we decided to have a game on the following week using the One Page Rules Age of Fantasy system instead and see how it goes.

For my first game of OnePageRules:Age of Fantasy, I decided to keep the models in my army exactly the same as my old Age of Sigmar (AoS) list to see just how stark the differences were.

This was going to give me some issues, in that the ‘Split’ and ‘Split Again’ rules on my horror models meant that I could end up with a scenario where I had to place 40 Blue Horrors or 40 Brimstones on the table at one time, as I could no longer preferentially remove models to ‘game the system’ as it were. Needless to say, I don’t have anything like this number currently but if I enjoy the game format, it is something I can look at improving upon later.

My 1000 point Age of Sigmar list has consisted of the following for some time

Fateskimmer on Burning Chariot – General

Daemon Prince of Tzeentch with wings

2 units of 10 pink horrors (my battleline choices)

A unit of 3 Screamers (this was previously flamers  but the points in crease in Pink Horrors at the last update necessitated a change)

A quick look on some forums and stuff seemed to suggest 1500 points was a good points level in Age of Fantasy (AoF) for a quick 1-2 hour game. So my goal was to manoeuvre these models into a 1500 point list.

My Age of Fantasy list ended up being very upgrade heavy and I would definitely add more models such as my beloved and much unused Soul Grinders in future games instead of dumping every possible upgrade on my hero models to pad out the points, but as previously stated I wanted to keep the models the same to recreate the game environment as much as possible from my last few AoS games.

A Fateskimmer becomes a Champion of Change on a Flame Chariot. I added the Wizard upgrade because Tzeentch. I added a ranged attack with Magic Bolt and Symbol of Change ability to soak up points. Total cost 250 points.

A Daemon Prince of Tzeentch becomes a Daemon Champion of Change. I bought wings, Great Magic Bolt, Wizard level 3 and Symbol of Change for a total points cost of 310 points.

I ran my two units of Pink Warriors as 10 man units with no upgrades. As I HAVE to remove all Pink models before removing spawned Blue models I feel upgrades on these units are a poor investment. As I understand the rules once my Pink standard bearer is gone for example so is the bonus so upgrades I have paid for won’t persist for the life of the unit. These units run at 375 points each. Expensive, as they are in AoS, because of the ability to spawn extra models.

Lastly my Screamers of Tzeentch became a 3 monster unit of Manta Daemons. I had no upgrade options on this unit so they came in at a stock 165 points.

The gets me to 1475 points. Again I could spend the 25 points to add a Banner of Change to one of my Pink Horror units or put a champion and standard banner bearer in both units but I feel I would rarely if ever do this in a ‘real’ game where my choices weren’t quite so restricted so I’m happy just to drop the points and go with it.

With this done I have printed my 16 page rulebook, 1 page army reference sheet and army list (using Openoffice) and am ready for the game.

If the game goes ahead I will post the outcome and my thoughts  here in the project blog.

Many thanks for reading, and I hope this inspires some of you to look at some of the many new miniature agnostic rulesets out there and maybe gives you the opportunity to dust off some old and ‘unloved’ models to breathe new life into them.

This week at club I had my planned game of One Page Rules Age of Fantasy (AoF). As detailed previously we were playing at 1500 points and unlike myself who was taking exactly the same models as my previous Age of Sigmar (AoS), my opponent wisely decided to pad his list out with extra models and ended up with 10 or 11 unit drops.

The mission structure is defined in the starter rules and involves placing a random number of objectives on the table, in our case 3. Victory is determined by controlling the most objectives at the end of turn 4. Control of an objective is determined at the end of each turn by having models within 3″ and control persists even when units move away.

The game was really enjoyable in general and despite being entirely new to both the core rules and the armies we finished the full 4 turn game.

The result was a draw which I felt I had to fight hard for.

The rules overhead is so much less than AoS it is difficult to describe how much easier it is to take decisive actions and resolve dice rolls.

Unlike AoS the first player in each turn is determined by the player who finished activating in the previous turn. As a gamer I much prefer knowing information like this rather than having it determined by the throw of a die even when it is going against me. Knowing this information, I feel, allows far more strategic and tactical play.

The sheer preponderance of dice rolling and randomness in game events in AoS becomes starkly obvious when you step away to play a different system like Age of Fantasy.

In the spirit of balance and fairness, it is worth saying that my army did not feel as flavourful or evocative as it does with the Age of Sigmar rules and the complex structure of the A0S missions with Grand Strategies, Battle tactics and in-game objectives is  a nice puzzle to solve. In fact my opponent and I did discuss modifying the AoS mission system for use within Age of Fantasy.

I am absolutely certain I will be returning to Age of Fantasy again, although as mentioned in my previous post, my lack of Blue Horror and Brimstone models in this list was an issue. An issue my opponent was very gentlemanly in helping me get around with any proxy that was to hand (mainly dice), but an issue none the less.

In summary I would wholeheartedly recommend someone try Age of Fantasy as an alternative way to use their Age of Sigmar models should they feel disillusioned with the system.