So this thought has come into my mind over the last few months. The Empire force I have was started as part of an army painting challenge between myself and my brother. However, he soon gave it up while I continued on. After the Old Worlds destruction, I've had issues where I've questioned if I should keep going and finish the rest of the miniatures I bought for it. As I'm close to finishing off the Light Wizard, one could wonder if I should just go into Age of Sigmar with it.
There are two problems with that (three if you count re-basing the miniatures). The first is that it is technically lead by a Celestial Wizard Lord on a Royal Pegasus, which under Age of Sigmar means he'd have to use the rules for Balthasar Gelt, which I guess is OK with the exception that his rule list stated Metal instead of Celestial.
The second has to do with Command Models. Under 8th edition, most units such as the Handgunners could skip the Standard Bearer and Musician. Likewise, detachments didn't need a command structure too. This meant you could use those extra points for gear or more model numbers in units. Age of Sigmar works differently. The points for a unit is based on an average box amount (so most are points costs for box units of 5 or 10) with extras based on box unit sizes (so in a box of 10, you get the first unit cost for 10, with extra model points only being counted per 10 miniatures). Command units are already included in the initial cost, as it is assumed that when you get your box that you will just add them. Correction, you need to add them. Under Age of Sigmar, the Standard Bearer and Musician are now a vital importance to the unit.
I'll use the unit of Skeleton Archers as an example as to why I had to go full Command. The Champion adds 1 to his To Hit rolls with his bow (Champions previously just got an extra melee attack), Standard Bearers let you add D6 slain models to the unit in your Hero Phase (previously it just added +1 to your Combat Resolution) and the Musician now lets the unit can move up to 6" in the Charge Phase, (unless roll is higher) and can let the unit shoot even if they ran that turn (as opposed to adding one to melee combat if a tie, adding +1 LD to rally -pointless for Undead- and letting you take a Ld test to get a reform move). As such, a Command unit was really unnecessary back in 8th edition for a unit like this, but now it's a basic requirement to have or risk making your units less effective. Now given my Handgunner units only have Champions and the Halberd detachment has no Command, that sort of puts my forces in a bit of a predicament. As such, I'd need to purchase an entire box set just to get full Command for these units, which feels a little unnecessary.
I guess when it comes to Skirmish it doesn't matter, so I guess that would be alright (though I refuse to re-base just for that). I mean, for friendly games we could come to some arrangement, but I don't think in-store or competition use would be wise. For the moment I'll continue working on them, but they will end up as back log over more active projects (like my upcoming Blood Bowl team for example).
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