Age of Sigmar ain't so bad!

Hello again, dearest Porchhammer. It has been too long. Working life has largely distracted me from minis for the past several months, but that changed around Christmas time. Ian posted about his reassessment of Age of Sigmar. This is the first post about our current project, which is an outgrowth of that reassessment.

I would like to take credit for Ian's change of heart, because I worked subtly and relentlessly to make it happen, but the real credit goes to our friend Philip, who was able to change my heart first and thus became the progenitor of our new gaming project, despite being the youngest and least experienced hobby guy in our gaming circle.

When AoS first launched, I was lukewarm on it at best. While I was never entirely turned off by it like Ian was, I was pretty sad about the loss of the Old World, and I was melancholy about the end of something that had been a big part of my childhood. AoS itself launched with two factions which held little interest for me (though the Stormcasts have grown on me), and I couldn't much bring myself to care about the game.

Philip had tried on and off for a year or two to break into Warhammer Fantasy with us, but always bounced off of it somehow. AoS, however, pulled him right in. I don't want to speak for him, but he intimated to me that there was something about the density of the Old World and a game 8 editions old that intrigued but ultimately pushed him away. I remember him saying to me that AoS, a brand new game which was wide open, felt like it could be "his" the same way that the Old World had been "mine." While I was not that interested in the game, I was very interested in playing with my friend and encouraging his growth in the hobby, so I entertained the idea.

Meanwhile, Philip convinced Ian to play a few games of AoS using some legacy armies. Armed with some old figures and a lot of unfortunately internalized baggage from old WFB rules, I heard that those early matches were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, however, the internet was turning in its opinion, and I was starting to hear really cool things about the game. I knew that something was missing in their games. I was also being sucked in by the amazing AoS28 stuff that was coming out, and you can see about my own aborted project called the Witching Wood on this blog (I still think that might happen this summer!). 

And so, I started watching AoS battle reports on YouTube. Lots and lots of AoS battle reports. You should know that I hate watching battle reports, but this was my dedication to finding things to love about the game. It worked. I cleverly gifted Ian some AoS orcs for Christmas and told him he'd been missing a few rules, and he agreed to play. About a month ago, he and I played a 1500 point battle using the open play cards for a scenario, and we loved it. It was stupidly fun, the game moved quickly, and the inevitable big brawls that always happen in the center of the table were actually fun to resolve. We immediately played another game the next night, this time a Triumph and Treachery match with Philip and our friend Scott, and, again, it was a blast. Everyone was in.

Now we are beginning a Path to Glory campaign, a Tale of Four Warlords, if you will. I will share my Death warband in a seperate post, as well as some info about our campaign. My hopes are to get Philip and Scott to do a guest post or two as well. Goodbye for now, Old World. My fickle heart belongs, temporarily, to the Mortal Realms. 

Oh, and I do still have some newly painted Dark Angels to share, but that can wait until my attention wanders back in the direction of 30K.