Just Starting Out

[west tiger]

Hello! I'm dipping my toe into getting into war gaming and Age of Sigmar would be my first. I've played the Warhammer rpgs, but never touched the war games.

Is 500 points the standard starting point for an army? I'm trying to gauge what I should do to start out, and wanted to start planning out my first army. I'm not looking to be competitive, just have fun in casual games.

[polar meteor]

There is no standard starting point

2000 is the standard endpoint

Starting point depends on your local play environment

Some places do 500, others 750, others 1000

[balmy minnow]

many of the starter boxes (vanguard boxes) for age of sigmar will get you well over 500pts. You can start there for learning the game, but its actually surprisingly not that tough to get up to like a 1k level for most factions

[west tiger]

Gotcha, thank you!

Should I be looking at a particular structure or ratio? Like in Magic there's a rough guide for X number of lands, X number of creatures, etc. that fluctuates based on style.

[polar meteor]

AoS has some pretty basic force organization rules

Beyond that it's more about unit role

Most armies tend toward certain playstyles, and generally that will influence what units work best

[gaunt radish]

Excluding rules, warhammer is more about army styles/strategies. Some races can do every style (stormcast), some do one thing well (orruks and smashing face)

What style do you like to play? I'm new too but played a lot in the past ^^

Rules-wise I think there's batallions? Like warlord, core regiment, vanguard etc that set up the core of your army

(Going off what I remember reading the other day lol but you get the idea)

[west tiger]

Honestly I haven't played wargames whatsoever before, so I'm not sure. I tend to prefer midrange, and there was an army picker on reddit that suggested Stormcast and Cities of Sigmar to me. I'm also really interested in Sylvaneth.

Like, I want to be able to engage evenly across the board. No incredible strengths, but also few weaknesses.

[polar meteor]

stormcast is decent for the all-around style

The one thing you will have to consistently mitigate is that you will typically be outnumbered

[west tiger]

Yeah, the model count had me concerned since that was a big turnoff for me when I looked at Custodes for 40k.

[gaunt radish]

Stormcast definitely have the unit variety, but yeah it's an elite style
Cities I heard is getting a remake, but might only be humans

Sylvaneth is elite too I think? Not as much variety as Stormcast but has good ranged, mobility mainly I wanna say

[brazen viper]

Sylvaneth are cool

I'm just starting out too and I'm going for nighthaunt

Horde army

[potent helm]

I can recommend from the painting side what you should like the aesthetics of the army you choose. Maybe take a look which faction look interesting to you and then check the playstyle of those. Where are a lot odf sources available where you can get additional information for the specific faction like goonhammer, youtube or wahapedia

[gaunt radish]

My problem picking an army (all hammer not just aos) is there's usually one thing that pulls me away from them lol
With stormcast it was the gold colors everywhere, then I was told your color scheme doesn't have to match your sub-faction ^^;

[gaunt radish]

How big are you starting? I was thinking a simple 500 points, but I never see/hear games under 1k lol

Even those are rare

[brazen viper]

Honestly just gonna buy a few different sets of the different battlelines and basic guys nighthaunt has and sorta feel it out, see what I like and what I don't like, see how I wanna build my army

[gaunt radish]

Fair, that's kiiinda what I'm thinking of doing. By the time I actually play there'll prolly be balance changes so no point looking at lists ^^

I just have the stormcast dominion half right now, wondering what to add next (maybe the warcry box)

[brazen viper]

I'm not going for competitive, I'm not gonna be meta chasing, I'm just here to have fun tbh

[brazen viper]

Oh sick

[gaunt radish]

Yeah deffo, meta lists look real different anyway ^^

Display > Play for me lol, they'll live on the shelf more than a table 🥲

[brazen viper]

As long as you're having fun