Age of Sigmar - Recent Thoughts

So I've been working on my Death faction slowly and deciding what I should and shouldn't put in it. This is more of a future plan then anything else as I'm slowly incorporating various aspects of my old Tomb Kings into the faction. Sadly, the support for them has all but dried up with the coming rules for Age of Sigmar: Skirmish, so how long they'll last is unknown (and without more Bats, not sure how long the armies theme will last too). That brings me to two things, the first being Age of Sigmar: Skirmish and the second being the new Kharadron Overlords.

So first is my opinion of AoS: Skirmish. I love the idea behind it. Not only is it a great introduction to the game, but it makes for some simple, short games that you can have fun with, without having to spend ages moving blocks of units. It's like a less complicated Mordheim in that sense. It means I can focus on creating some nice characters and work on a small scale stories with plenty of fun thrown in (though Death and Destruction got ripped off as far as model lists go).

This then leads me to my biggest problem, the Kharadron Overlords. While their models look nice, the prices show a serious flaw in trying to get people into the game. While I like nice details, affordability is what people are looking towards these days and this faction is something only those in very nice financial situations can get. Lets look at some of the prices:

Special Character - $70
Heroes - $40 (there are four of them, they are all $40 each)
Arkanaut Company (10 models) - $77
Grundstok Thunderers (5 models) - $70
Endrinriggers (3 models) - $70
Grundstok Gunhauler - $84
And the two airships are both $140 (small) and $190 (large)

I can only assume the rules make these more modern models in AoS mean they must be powerhouse punchers, cause it's hard to see why one would invest quite a bit of money into this kind of thing. Yes, I consider this hobby to be an investment cause you put a lot of time and money into it with the expectation to have something to show (an army, enjoyment etc,). Maybe I'm just jealous that we got some nice models and I can't justify purchasing a single hero, even more so now we have AoS: Skirmish. I know such conversations in regards to GW and its competitive pricing died years ago, its just me being frustrated that I feel left out when compared to so many other small miniature games out there.

UPDATE:

So I wanted to talk some more on AoS, but felt it would be better to just attach it here instead of adding another post.

Been looking into what would be involved in Age of Sigmar: Skirmish, cause I actually have a bunch of models from 8th edition and could easily create a warband for each faction, but would need to see if I should add new things to them to work with. Certainly this is something to consider with things like the Death faction I'm working on (like do Bats have costs? Where can I get them cheap? Do I go for a Varghulf?). I recently came up with a question about base sizes and I did get some clarification at my local GW store, but I thought of a few more after writing this original article, the most important one being an issue of which War Scroll to use? Apparently according to the FAQ, you can use anyone you want, though the more recent version should be considered to keep your opponent happy (then again, the FAQ still states that they will continue to support the rules for the discontinued models like the Tomb Kings and given what's in the Death list in Skirmish, it's clear that that's not the case).

I bring this up because if you look a few lines back I mentioned the Varghulf, which has a few rule variants from the ones in the Vamp pdf, the Death book and the Flesh-Eater courts version, the latter being useless in my army due to the rule differences from the Vamp Varghulf version vs the Flesh-Eater Courts version. I can see there being confusions in some games when it comes to rules and it's something I'd like to avoid. That said, it'll be some time before I can get something like that, so perhaps I'll just wait and see.