Armies of Arcana Forum

[pcelella]

Some friends and I are playing on having some games of Armies of Arcana. I've read some great reviews on the rules, and having read through them myself, I'm pretty impressed. It seems that the official forum on the Armies of Arcana website doesn't work though, and it also appears that nothing has been posted on the player's forum since 2012. Is there a different forum where the rules are discussed or supported, or will the official forum be working again soon? Or could it just be that there is no longer any interest in, or an active community of players for these rules?

[Grün]

Look at this Forum: http://mythicwarlords.proboards.com/

Not direct "Armies of Arcana" but the most active people from the old forum are there.

[sukhe_bator]

Rajmahal is developing amendments/adaptations to AoA along his own take on the rules. While not to everyone's taste he is taking the discussion forward and has some interesting mods...
AoA is a good generic ruleset with some elegant systems and a points system allowing for using any models you want. In many respects it is the antithesis of WHFB. While the points system and flexibility is one of its main strengths it is also it's achilles heel. There is no bespoke figure range to go with it or backstory on which to pin them. There was something of a schism amongst the AoA fanbase as the latest ed of the rules came into being which I was blissfully unaware of. The current proprietors have all but withdrawn their support and marketing for the system which is a crying shame. Only die hard fans still use it... I don't game enough to comment on how it compares with other more recently introduced systems, but I plan to stick with the basic mechanics and use a LoTR low magic variant.

[Erny]

Warhammer can also be played with what ever miniatures you like and entirely without army lists or even points if you so wish.

Armies of Arcana is not the antithesis of warhammer but a derivative of it that I would argue isn't as good as warhammer at the things warhammer does well and fails to improve on the things that warhammer doesn't do so well.

That said it isn't a bad game but given the supposed selling point of the game is the fredom to create what you want you may find it disappointing that the drive of the forums is not only to create orthodox army lists but also recreate warhammer army lists.

[sukhe_bator]

Erny - you make some valid points.
I have only played one or 2 games of WHFB at the height of the 90's GW strangeness and was not that impressed and put off more by the all the GW 'fluff' associated with it. As a primarily historical gamer used to rules and figures being considered separately I found all the GW corporate integration a bit too much. But I agree that's probably not enough exposure to make a really valid comparison.

[Hobgoblin]

Erny - you make some valid points.
I have only played one or 2 games of WHFB at the height of the 90's GW strangeness and was not that impressed and put off more by the all the GW 'fluff' associated with it. As a primarily historical gamer used to rules and figures being considered separately I found all the GW corporate integration a bit too much. But I agree that's probably not enough exposure to make a really valid comparison.

I always thought that Warhammer was best when the setting was very vague - as in first and - though less so - second edition. From third edition on, it seemed to get more intrusive and fiddly. As an example, hobgoblins in the first and second editions were subject to frenzy. But in the third edition, they were subject to frenzy if they belonged to the Mourngul tribe and if they had a portable shrine on the battlefield. That sort of thing was a retrograde step, I think.

Now, the RPG setting was very interesting and absorbing. But I don't think it every quite meshed with the wargame setting. The RPG was much more human-centric, with just a hint of hooves under cultists' robes or scuttling things in the sewers, or prancing beast-creatures in the woods. The garish green orcs and goblins didn't really fit with that at all - and nor did much of the other kitchen-sink wargaming stuff.

The other thing that they did, of course, was to start linking specific models to specific rules to a greater and greater extent. So, rather than just make up your goblin chieftain and give him a name, you would buy a specific hero to lead your army. You could argue that that element had been there from almost the start with the Regiments of Renown, but I think there was a difference between a well-known unit showing up in an otherwise original army and set characters (with specific models and rules) being a commonplace across armies.