Age of Sigmar: First Impressions Part 2

Last entry, I commented on the first two pages of the rules for Warhammer Age of Sigmar.  This covered the army selection, table setup, deployment, and victory conditions.  Now onto the actual game mechanics of models moving, hitting each other, etc.  But before we can even do that, there is the matter of figuring out who goes first each round.

Page 3 of AOS rules

This rule sets a player to have back-to-back turns from round-to-round, which in a game where one player does all their actions before the other is very powerful.    It seems like Games-Workshop attempted to borrow the Initiative concept from other games, including some of their own and then failed horribly by keeping the turn mechanic.

Most of the interaction rules themselves are straight-forward.  The real test will be how similar/diverse individual models/units are and thus the difference in interacting.  With so many existing models and thus interim rules, the room for variety/complications is huge.

Page 4 of  AOS Rules

Cover rules are not particularly clear by the letter of the rules as presented.  If players do not recognize the need to read the Scenery Compendium, they miss how various pieces of terrain have a real impact on the game's rules and how models play (see below).   By minimizing the rules, the authors have created the opportunity for confusion. The rules did not even mention the Compendium exists and details rules for Citadel scenery sets.  It makes me wonder if they self-limited to four pages instead of writing out the rules with references to aid clarity.

Until I play a game, I will have to wait to really delve into whether the order of the phases is appropriate.

Page 8 of AOS Scenery Rules

*Images are either from Games Workshop's site or their freely available rules.  The author does not claim any ownership over the content of those images.