How to break the monotony?

[Just A Skink]

There are 4-6 players in my AoS group. The four mains are SCE, Orruks (with some trolls & ogres occasionally), Khorne and LoN. There is a Nighthaunt player (and has a new SoB gargant) and me with Seraphon, but neither of us has a big interest in playing. We all pretty much use the same units each time we play b/c we either can't buy (or don't want to buy) every unit for our armies, or feel like the ones we use are "good". Even though we haven't played that long and we don't play every week, I can start to see it getting a bit repetitive.

What suggestions do you have to keep the games fresh?

Thanks!

 

[Warden]

If you have a stable player base (same people keep showing up on a consistent basis to play games) maybe start a campaign?

Have someone make a map, conquer territory, declare a winner, all that. Maybe work it as an escalation campaign. Start out with a tiny force, say 500 points, go to 1000, then 1500, then 2000 or whatever your max limit is for the final few battles of the campaign. If someone looses do an epic last-stand scenario at the center of the board with all their characters against the screaming hordes of your opponents army.

Speaking of scenarios, I would try doing a different one every time. The basic ones I remember from the old WHF rulebook could still work. "Pitched Battle" was standard, but there were also Ambush (one side in the center set up facing all one direction, enemy surrounds them), Breakthrough (one side defends, other side attempts to break through enemy lines and exit the board), or Flank Attack (portion of your forces show up at the enemy's flank halfway through the battle) and others. Maybe do some epic siege scenarios too?

Or you can do a Mordheim campaign too , I am sure there are SCE rules for Mordheim somewhere.

 

[WildColonial Boy]

Campaigns are great for this. There are a few sites on the internet where you can find old campaign rules. These include rolling to generate a terrain piece which gives your starting force something extra, ie a free champion, a piece of artillery, a 50point magic item. Then your force evolves as the campaign progresses.

 

[pendrake]

I played in a League somewhat like WCB is mentioning @Just A Skink. It was fun.

In the tradition of using just D6s we had a chart of items called “Resources” numbered:

11 — 66

(There were only 36 items; (obviously?) but for convenience they were numbered the way the dice were...)

5,6 might be Treasure Vault, while 3,6 might be Arsenal, followed immediately by: 4,1 which might be Gun Tower.

Another fun idea would be scratch-building terrain pieces to represent them (so they could be captured and change hands).

 

[Killer Angel]

Other than the already suggested campaign, you could:
A - force yourselves to play units that you own but you feel are underpowered, and find some new tactic
B - if you don't want to buy immediately something new, try to proxy a unit or 2, and see what happens
C - shift armies! for example you can play Stormcast and your opponent can play your Seraphon. Each one will plan the list that thinks could work with the army of the other. Every once in a while it's pretty fun.

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

C - shift armies! for example you can play Stormcast and your opponent can play your Seraphon. Each one will plan the list that thinks could work with the army of the other. Every once in a while it's pretty fun.

I was thinking along similar lines to this, but also get yourself and others to start collecting other armies too, to improve the variety in your games. Another army will also help you practice different colour schemes and painting styles, will give you some variety on the making and painting table and will give you a different pool of tactics to think about.

 

[Just A Skink]

Wow! I'm always impressed with this community. Thank you for all of the good suggestions so far.

We have tried Path to Glory battles, but that didn't go too well due to imbalance. Not to say we'll never do it again, though. Escalation sounds like a nice next step. However, we hadn't really considered a campaign per se (short of the PoG/escalation), and that sounds like a fun idea. We all like rolling on neat charts too . We can do some internet searches for rules or just try to get creative.

Switching armies is an interesting idea as well, although some of us can be a little particular about our minis, ha ha ha.

I don't mind proxies, but a couple of the guys are a little more resistant to that. They're not totally against it, but they're just trying to keep us all honest. Mostly they just don't want something like "this bottle cap is Lord Kroak". I will say, my buddy who plays SCE has A LOT (but definitely not all) of that army and he can typically field what he wants.

Most of us have chosen the armies we like best and it can be a bit hard to break out of that. Still, SC boxes aren't too expensive for what you usually get, so that's an idea.

 

[bOdziO Wolf]

You can also try a following challenge. Day before battle or when you do your list creation an opponent picks a unit type from your race roster. You cannot include this unit type in the list. Now both of you have to try to work around that

 

[Just A Skink]

You can also try a following challenge. Day before battle or when you do your list creation an opponent picks a unit type from your race roster. You cannot include this unit type in the list. Now both of you have to try to work around that

That's interesting. Do you allow this for battleline units?

 

[bOdziO Wolf]

That's probably something you would have to agree before as not everyone has that big of a roster. The idea basically comes from some of the challenges we did to play Starcraft better, so I wonder how well would it work for tabletop games.
We did crazy challenges like no gas mining, cutting most of the roster out so well, a battleline should work too!

 

[Lizards of Renown]

I was going to say scenarios as well. That is my favourite way of shaking things up.

The other thing is team up. One of my favourite games I've played to date was me and my friend teaming up against someone else. It was really fun to be able to discuss plans with someone mid game, gripe over bad rolls, celebrate successful actions, etc.

Would highly recommend this.

 

[Lord-Marcus]

mini Tourney with prep:

If you have a stable player base of 8 this works. It can be adapted up or down based on number of players. If more than 8 I would have two equal groups.

Get each player to create and paint a model that could be utilized as an under-used hero from a matched player's army. This includes a name, but could be interactive and humorous by you all choosing via random name generators. If the players want to expand on this characters backstory they can, but it is not required.

run a tournament where the chronicles and exploits of these heroes and villains are required to be used, and charts their exploits for as many brackets as player count deems practical.

Take photos and post on the group social spaces.

Congrats, you've engaged your entire group. You've given them touchstones to discussion and good gameplay, and perhaps new friendships with people they see at the club but otherwise never get to game or game rarely. And, those characters (or their eventual promotions or iterations) can continue on in further tournaments.to create a series of good memories.