AoS how to win consistantly win in AoS

I wrote this for Druchii.net but it can easily transfer to lizzies,

How to win a game of AoS, I have taught long and hard, the best way to achieve is through a tactic I call "Pay to win" PtW for short. It gets you the most chances to win.

what is PtW? The UK has done this in the past, where their fleet had to be bigger then the top 2 other nations, and they conquered a third of the world, building the biggest empire in history. It can work for them then surely it can work for you. How to achieve this in AoS? Well its simple, you need to buy more elite and shooting models then your opponent can ever field, and this is not a joke.

I will go over a few possible scenarios.
You must first look at the game mechanics. And ask you self how can I win?

Them most important rule is not to loose, pretty simple, but most people forget about this, as they are so focused on trying to win. And they just set them selves up for a disaster.

Once that is done, and you know you wont loose say by sudden death, you can focus on the winning.
You must consider how the game can be won, in AoS your options are:

1. wipe my opponents models off the table
2. sudden death
3. loos a smaller portion of you army then you opponent.

So lets expand on this.

How to achieve this?
Again we look at the game mechanics, what will allow me to gain an upper hand.

a. You can have any amount of troops you want.
b. You hit and wound ever thing regardless of what it is.
c. units have many wounds but little protection.
d. Shooting is overpowered

okay with that in mind, how to secure yourself from loosing?
You must consider what is your opponent playing?
if he is going to go for a sudden death?
I suggest fielding war machines first, a hero, possibly a caster. Small things that will not allow my opponent to get sudden death option. Or if he has limited shooting, then don't worry just make sure you have a considerably larger force at your disposal.

Now the way the rules are constructed in a way that makes shooting is just broken. There are no restrictions of who you can shoot, if something is hiding behind buildings obelisks, you just need a bit sticking out, and then BOOM!!! you can cannon ball it in the forehead, I realize you dont have cannons, but still, did you know cannons now shoot twice, and hit on a 3/4+. Also there are no rules that prevent you form shooting from, and in to combat. So you can shoot and then charge your opponent, and in the next phase, you can shoot them again, and continue fighting in combat. Combine that with special rules that allow units over 20 to get extra shots (archers usually get double, man at arms get quadruple), Remember shooting rules are badly written so you can move your war machines and still shoot. So in druchii terms you could use like a 100 shades, 20 RBT, 10 chariots and the rest should be Malekith and all the black guard in the world. The rest is irrelevant in the list. They are sub optimal and pointless to field, except heroes, you can have many of them also, as they don't crumble ever.

The deployment is critical, this is where the game is decided, do this right and you auto win, do this wrong and you have to depend on your opponent to screw up and give you a fighting chance.

If you has access to canons you should always aim for the kill the hero sudden death option. Unless your fighting TK, they will just bury the chosen hero, and you cant win. Then drop on the table ever thing they have, This is called Pay to win - who ever bought more will win. Go GW.
If there is any way you can hide a unit or hero, then drop every thing you have on the table. Same thing if there is any way your opponent can hide it from you, make sure you have more elites then he does, considerably.

If you want to try for the sudden death your self, you need to ensure, you have so much shooting, you can delete any hero any where on the table, only then you can choose to go for sudden death. just stop deploying, right here, choose kill character, you get first turn blast him, game over you won. This is the only situation where you use all you troops as a mislead.
Rest is just is irrelevant, since you can shoot through units and any terrain. Do it, then pack up your toys and go home a winner.
If your opponent is decides to continue setting up units, start dropping big units of shades and BG, then minimal sized units switching back and forth, to get your volume up. Who ever has the ability to roll more dice will win, it is a flaw of the game mechanic engine used in AoS (Again Pay to win, because who has more models rolls more dice and has upper hand).

Remember not to go over 33% of the models you opponent has, the only time you go over is if you know you opponent ran out of models. Remember his war machines can also move and shoot.
So if he has limited shooting, and his war machines cant get to your heroes, you must decide if you have enough of your own shooting to take his threats off, before they can target your hero or unit. Securing your self so you don't loose. If you calculate, and the outcome is you can shoot the threats off then go crazy deploy so many units, that there is no room on the table for more. You have already won. This is Pay to win at its finest.

Taking units that are not the best, is just a waste of space on the table. And giving your opponent a chance to win.

All other so called tactics are irrelevant, if deployment is done right, game is decided there and then you win. If you mess up while your opponent doesn't, game is also decided and you loose. If you both mess up, then you can actually have a game. The only problem is time, with sooo many units you might not finish a game, but that is AoS for you.

And Remember Pay to win is your best bet to win your AoS games.

With the above you easily to reach objective 1 and 3. By fielding a considerably larger force then your opponent, you can easily take all of his models off.
As to point 3, by having the most elite models you can possibly field even if even if your enemy kill 3 times what you killed your force should be big enough to make that number insufficient.

 

Several people have asked the question: "What stops LM from taking a cannon?" ...I have some cannons.

 

I ran a Cannon and Helblaster in my AoS game! (They aren't nearly as devastating as they used to be)

 

you are aware that they do d6 W at ren -2, to the unit not model, and they shoot twice. A single cannon might not cause devastation, but PtW requires you to use massive amounts of stuff, place 10 cannons on the board, and see what happens.

 

This is just wrong on so many levels but none of it is the players fault.

What I mean is that KillerK is completely right on what he's saying but the fact that this is even possible is one of the biggest things that irritate me in the game. By just plain poor rules writing you are able to completely ruin a promising idea.

I still haven't played any games of AoS and with the game already broken like this I'm not so keen on testing it out anyway. Granted I would be testing it out with my friend and we can then agree on some limits.

Anyway, good write up!

BR
Agrem

 

If you are just testing it out you and your friend ought to make a determined effort to find out how badly you can break it.

 

A full page of worthless cr*p, well done killerK. Everyone already knows that the rules can be taken advantage of but then they were just as bad in 8th. 40k is no better and that has kept points values. All you have done is proven why no one will ever actually play an AoS game with you. If you play for fun this is a very good game. Also cannons are nowhere near as bad as before. Autohit and wiped a monster on first turn pretty much, made a monster list worthless in 8th. I have came up against a very shooty army with several canons and I have still won in AoS.

Just because you don't like the game you are looking at ways to ruin it. Why not look at ways to make it fun instead, it will be a much better investment of your time as you will find people to play with and actually have some fun in your life for once.

 

... and then your opponent fields an all dragon army...

 

I think you should tone down your attitude and observe this forums community. We dont trash-talk here. Keep it civil or take it to warseer.

 

Agreed; there is no place for it here.

 

Apologies, as he was trash talking the game I thought it was fair game. Free speech and all, didn't exactly trash talk in my opinion though. No insults were made just observations from attitude in the post.

 

You are OF COURSE allowed to disagree but this isn't constructive in any way.

Then again, lets not give you a hard time dont think I have even welcomed to the forum, so welcome. I think you will like it here

 

What KillerK is absolutely correct. But what it all comes down to, is if all you do is power play like KillerK said people just won't want to play you if you be all about WAC. It's as simple as. If someone played me with the sort of army mentioned (and it wasn't just a fun thing to see what happens) e.g. on a GW gaming night, I wouldn't want to play them again if that's all they played because it would take the fun out of the game for me.

I think this has been one of the unseen limiting factors of AoS. If you throw your weight around by fielding said armies, people are not going to want to play that. Simple.

I do however completely agree with what KillerK is saying, if you are a WAC player then you can fairly easily abuse the rules.

 

...Nah. There's no such thing as Pay to Win for this game, I find. Take me. I'm dirt poor, took me years to build my army, I still use the models I used in 8th with only one character addition since the change, and I play against people with seemingly infinite funds.

Guess who's not lost a single game of Age of Sigmar since it came out (we play it twice weekly, by the way.)

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the simpler rules mean that strategy is dead, but I find that strategy is more important than every. Using tactics above all else, I've slain a Glottkin on turn 1, slain a Nagash on turn 2, killed Archaon on turn 2 after I reached him by killing a wall comprised of a Giant and a Chimera on turn 1, and have become feared throughout the circle for being absolutely unstoppable with nobody being able to touch me. The fact of the matter is, people have adopted that theory that pay to win is how it works now and I am the only one there who actually thinks about strategy. And the results don't lie, strategy and skill trumps money. Pay to win only works against other pay to win players.

 

That depends on the differential. If you show up with 100 wounds worth of models and I show up with 2000 wounds worth of models, I'm sorry to say that you'll get curb stomped each and every time. That is of course if we play AoS uncomped with RAW.

 

To be honest, if somebody can afford the money to bring 2000 wounds then I'd gladly play them just for the laugh of the size difference. And to have a fun challenge to see how many of them I can take down with me, I bet I can wipe out at least half of them if I've got favourable terrain conditions.

But more importantly, I've always surrounded myself with players who prioritise fun over winning, so that's just not a problem to me. To be frank, if I can't have a chat with my opponent and socialise as we play, I don't want to play that person. AoS, thankfully, punishes the overcompetetive and rewards the people who remember that a game's priority is to have fun, I like that.

Plus even then, there's nothing to stop one imposing a House Rule wound limit. (Give me 125 wounds and I still think I can take 1000 wounds off that 2000 list if my opponent doesn't consider real tactics.)

 

Hence the "pay to win" idea.

That is true, that's why I said playing AoS uncomped using RAW.

Maybe... but your opponent would really have to have no idea of what's going on if you're going to remove 8 of his wounds for every 1 of your wounds.

I fully agree. In a friendly environment the "pay to win" idea is pretty much non-existent. However, AoS as officially written still suffers from it.

 

So you're saying "well yes sure, there are a million ways around this potential scummy behaviour, and a half dozen ways to turn it fun regardless, but ignoring all that it's still something to condemn because somebody could do that in theory?"
You remind me of something a friend of mine said when the game dropped. "There's a difference between could and would. I could bring in 100 ogres, but nobody will play with me if I do and that's a lot of money to waste and never use."

 

Thats the best way to go about doing it, because although I said it can very easily be a pay to win game, if you rock up with a WAAC 2000wound army no one will want to play you if thats what matters to you. So in that sense I've come to realise the game can quite easily police itself within each gaming community.