Review anarchistica 1/5 · Jan 26, 2022
Boring, overpriced, dead
Playtime: 20 minutes
Intro
I used to play Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Mordheim. WFB was about big armies using movement and formations to outwit the enemy. Mordheim involved small warbands using ruined buildings to their advantage. At some point they created Warhammer Skirmish, which doesn't have army formations or buildings. Some years later they killed WFB and replaced it with …
Playtime: 20 minutes
Intro
I used to play Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Mordheim. WFB was about big armies using movement and formations to outwit the enemy. Mordheim involved small warbands using ruined buildings to their advantage. At some point they created Warhammer Skirmish, which doesn't have army formations or buildings. Some years later they killed WFB and replaced it with Age of Sigmar - basically Warhammer Skirmish with some additions.
Review
Age of Sigmar is a fairly simple game. Basically all you do is move your four units towards the enemy or a control point and roll some dice. In real life there are some advantages to this. You only need to buy and paint a handful of models, you don't need any terrain (mountains, forests), you don't need dozens of dice and games are so quick you can play them during your lunch break.
For a video game the first three are irrelevant. That leaves quick games. Well, it's a multi-player game which peaked at 22 players today. Right now only 11 people are playing it which means you have to wait before you can even play. And the actual game itself has clumsy controls which makes it painfully slow. It took 20 minutes to play even just the first of three tutorials. The worst offender is probably movement, which has to be confirmed by clicking a button. There are countless turn-based strategy games that let you move simply by clicking once or twice on a hex, there's a reason why that's the standard. i wanted to Alt+F4 during the very first tutorial, i cannot even begin to conjure up the patience to play an actual game.
The cost
On top of being a simple, slow PVP game it's also really expensive. The €9 base game only gets you Chaos Warrior and Empire Space Marines warbands (i hate how they put Space Marines in Fantasy). Other warbands cost €6 each! Even more hilarious is the €3,30 card back DLC. Not only do you have to pay an insane amount to get 10 very basic, non-animated and frankly ugly card backs, you can't even use them unless you own the relevant warband! That's so scummy it's hilarious. Oh god, and they also have a game+DLC bundle that doesn't include all DLC. €45 and you still don't own everything.
I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Want to play something like WFB? Play Total War. Want to play something like Mordheim? Play XCom or Mordheim. Want to play a proper game with small armies? Play Age of Wonders 3.
