• AoS had no points or matched play system, whereas 8th does. (blah blah general's handbook it came out a full year+ after launch, shut up.) AoS relied on either a system of gentleman's agreements for matched play, OR it relied on customers forming their own tiny circles that would sustain themselves, OR it was written from the standpoint of rule authors who were and are used to having access to the entire painted GW range at all times, which is the only play environment in which the system at launch could possibly have been considered balanced. Or possibly all of the above. Obviously, not being able to show up to a game unless you 100% trusted everyone or had pre-made lists, or only showing up to a circle of equally dedicated friends which wouldn't grow much, and no one on earth having literally All The Models, was not good for AoS on launch. 8th has points. Even if we ignore the game design purpose of points, they also serve as a social "language" which players can agree is theoretically fair, or fair enough to play by. Hell, it has three. And one of them isn't even fiddly and doesn't require much effort. A 100 narrative power point army is super easy and quick to calculate, whereas the points system is clearly more for the army builders of us - and let's face it, bad formatting aside you're enjoying it already and can't wait for apps to help you with it. I know your hearts.
  
  
• AoS increased randomization; 8th decreases it. AoS infamously has random dice-rolled turn order which can see an army go twice in a row, but it also has a "charges can always fail no matter what" rule, a "one army can suddenly double in size" rule and a "one army can win if you use this special seven-pipped die GW sold to roll a 13" rule. To name only a very few. It also had at least a few stinkers amongst its scenarios which were essentially decided at random: the first campaign book had a scenario which involved capturing four parts of the table, but which parts you controlled was decided by dice and nothing else. So you could table your opponent and lose. Coming from Fantasy Battles, this was a gigantic shift even for people who'd come to learn that sometimes Magic meant you lost a unit to a dice roll. 8th edition on launch, however, does away with all of those design choices and on top of this reduces the randomness of the edition that came before it. Reserves are more reliable. Deep striking is more reliable. Larger amount of wounds per figure and larger number of dice per some weapons creates a more statistically reliable playing field. You can guarantee charges within a certain distance. Command points allow you a limited number of rerolls, and even automatic successes on specific checks. And even if I dislike the wound tracking, at least it's pretty frickin simple and that's a personal preference, seeing as how most of the community is quite liking the idea of large things getting weaker while wounded. And note that all of the AoS problems I mentioned are still in it; they are absolute game-killers. And 8th even does one better and has the "to hurt" roll be decided partly by what you're attacking, not solely by the attacker, making it less of an easily mathematically solved exercise in what is the best weapon to take always.
  
  
• AoS showed open contempt for its community: 8th at least hides it behind mere greed. Yes, this is a weird one, but consider: On launch, and even now, AoS has rules which openly mock people for using them, involve ridiculous bullshit, make fun of people's appearance, are disability-unfriendly and the list kind of goes on like that and hasn't been deleted or edited at all. 8th ed doesn't do that crap, but it locks the rules release behind a series of books instead of releasing them for free, which overall is a slightly lesser show of utter contempt for your audience than openly shaming them for playing with figures that in some cases were less than a year old at the time in order to make them want to toss them in the trash and buy new ones. And less visible but equally awful were White Dwarf articles which openly derided people for not understanding the brilliance of no-points army building, which is surely something you want from a physical magazine you purchased weekly. It was a goddamn shitshow, and I'll take them at least trying to not be openly disrespectful of the people whose money they are taking as a point in favor in this comparison - if not in general. And even White Dwarf has gotten miles better, for that matter.
  
  
• At least the new models in 8th aren't poo poo that totally divides the community. I mean quibble as I might about the guns not having rear sights, the Primaris marines are at least competent, correctly proportioned, have human touches, have a nice amount of detail without going terribly overboard with it and aren't totally stiff (the Inceptors being an exception, holy poo poo the posing on them is terrible for them supposedly being airborne) and the community is overall pretty receptive of them. That I'm listing these as points in favor shows exactly how loving poo poo the new Age of Sigmar models were on launch; tiny-headed golden C-3POs who, two years into the game, still had people regularly assuming they were robots or golems, even after having paid for them and painted them. Or nudist dwarves in near default T-poses with arrows pointing at their rear end cheeks. And a healthy dose of square-butt syndrome. And models whose heads you couldn't find without effort. Overall, the team they have on 40k clearly has by far the larger amount of talent to it. Their new airborne steampunk dwarf line has the exact same "faceless golem" problem on their launch, which shows you that even after learning from that mistake with Sigmarines GW is still capable of doubling down on it anyway. The paint jobs they're doing now are also a massive improvement: for a while, White Dwarf was festooned with pictures of models that were mispainted, didn't have painted eyes etc. in a misguided attempt to look more "natural" like how an average painter would do them, completely missing that a well-painted model is an aspirational thing which inspires people to purchase and try their own hand at it, and the official artwork often posed those models in featureless foggy photoshop voids. They've fortunately stopped doing most of that, presumably for reasons of realizing they shouldn't make their own models look amateurish.
  

Hamshot fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Jun 7, 2017

Irate Tree fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Jun 8, 2017

Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Jun 9, 2017