Started my first true game of 2.0 last night. 4 player game, 2 on 2; two players making their army from 1 starter and 2 boosters, two sides making their army from 3 boosters + promo Kierin Starsdawns. We planned to put the relics in a generic pile, but the only two we pulled (from the starters) we didn't get any figures that could use. One of the promo Kierins did get equipped with the Silvercloud bow that came with him.
For constructed terrain we have 2 tents (one yak and one leather...um, whee that's an exciting difference :rolleyes: ) and 1/3 of a pavilion. The tents are basically getting used like low walls.
With only a few domains, instead of having each player pick one we shuffled them up after picking our armies and placing terrain, and drew a random one. We got a Heat Wave so demoralized models would be eliminated.

So far, it has been playing...pretty much just like it always has. The biggest difference has been the ability of bow troops to fire into melee. This combined with pulling a whole fnerkload of High Elf Archers has meant a constant volley of arrows raining into the mass combat in the middle where the two armies smashed into each other over the middle objective.
We intended to play with a one hour time limit, but were so into the game we went an hour and a half before we thought to check the time. At that point, both sides were tied on objectives (each controlling the two closer ones, with the middle objective being fiercely contested), and only one or two models had died on each side. This just didn't seem like a satisfying end to a 800 point battle, so we will be resuming it for a second half tonight to get in a little more destruction.
What I'm not seeing at all is the faster, more destructive combat that keeps being touted. Sure, you can surge, but every time I consider it I come to the conclusion that its a bad idea. I think I have made one surge, which went, well poorly. My orc had just been shot twice and was now on a frenzied click with not all that great stats. I figured if he was like old orcs, he would probably have a good nasty click toward the end of his dial, and surged (also a push) him to melee one of the shooters. After the surge click he was...demoralized! Whoops. (Then he was dead after the push click :) )
Soaring hasn't matter a whole lot. There were two Blood Shaman flying around, but my Kierin blasted one of them out of the sky with a shot from Silvercloud (after critically missing my first try :( ). Kierin was shot to pieces shortly thereafter, but my ally may be able to pick up the bow and keep using it. She also has a Vampire Archer soaring, but with most of the energy being focused into the melee mess in the middle no one has made a try at killing it. Her griffon hasn't been soaring since its been wanting to attack troops on the ground.
Its being a fun game, and a lot of the new abilities are quite helpful, but this whole idea of the game being so much faster? Just not there. I keep wondering if its "faster" for other people because the objectives encourage you to attack from the get go, which we have usually done anyway (in fact, we usually played with objectives long before 2.0 was announced).
My big success moment so far? Taking a gamble on needing a 10 to hit Caldera with a Steam Mauler and getting a lucky critical hit, smacking the draconum for 5! Sadly, she managed to fly away and may be getting healed...but so far the healer has missed twice.

Part o fthis may be due to the fact that there was a limited pool of figures. If you mix in 1.0 that are surge well, there is a ton of them, then it may change somethings. Also there is the whole isse with bounders and such. Bound units will force the issue unless someone wants to get sniped all day.

Did you use formation range attack with the archers? Electing to ad both to the attack and the damage? 2.0 figures do not have deep dials and dameg output is fairly large as a whole. Also keep in mind you are using 2 200pt forces. Was one team taking 4 actons and then the other team? In such a battle in 1.0 figures would not last that long either. I think what we may be seeing is stand offs. I said this at some other point that when we use to see range stand offs me may start seeing melee standoffs where players do not want to enter into surge range.

I agree that figures may not be surging all over the place yet when you use a larger figure selection with some range/bound to force the issue one may see a difference

Sorry if the way I typed things caused confusion - looking now I see I didn't actually say what the build totals were.
Each player made a 400 point army, for essentially an 800 point game with a total of 1600 points worth of troops on the battlefield.
Now, I know that a game of this size is not going to resolve in the same amount of time as a game where the total is 300 points, I'm just not really seeing much faster play.

Nope, they were spread out to where each player had 2 of them, so no formations were possible. My group did have 2 archers and a War Priestess, but I decided to take shots at range 12 and 14 rather than try to get into the Priestesses range of 8. One player did have a decent Atlantis formation that looked like it could make some impressive combined attacks, led by a Magestone Golem with Stormfire, but since it looked scary it was hammered by the archers from longer range and reduced to uselessness pretty quickly. As of when we quit it had pulled back to a mechanic, then been based by one of my teammate's elven warriors to keep it from getting fixed.

Confused...are you thinking this turned into a standoff? Because that definetly hasn't been the case - both armies charged for the center and engaged as soon as possible. The only thing vaguely standoffish was a player passing for one turn so as not to push a Frenzied Skull Golem that was leading the attack. Most of his big formations were active, so he just would have been moving one or two strat support models.
Or are you just contemplating stand offs in general?

I guess I tend to take the following view of surge:
Surging to attack a figure that is weaker than yours in melee isn't usually a good idea; you are doing garanteed damage to a better figure that you are potentially hurting. You should win anyway, don't take unneccessary damage.
Surging to attack a figure that is stronger than yours in melee isn't usually a good idea; you stand a lower chance of hitting but are inflicting automatic damage on yourself, reducing the amount of time you can tie it up, and every bit of lost ability that comes with the surge click can greatly reduces your chances of hitting.
If you want to attack a model of roughly the same melee ability, surging is often a good idea...except that attacking a model with a comparable model isn't a very good idea to begin with. With roughly the same melee ability, there is no reason you should win; you are better off using your own forces against the targets they are most effective against.

The comment was about standoff in general but also about surging. Now I can see why you were not surging due to your way of thinking and I am just not sure I subscribe to the same form of thinking. This of course is also due to the fact you were playing in a sealed enviroment in which the think is always a tad different.

I think you'll find in constructed games were forces are designed instead of sorta piece together from a much smaller figure pool you will see different results. You gave reasons why you would not surge and it doe snot seem like gang up was used either. A werewolf is a good example of a figure to surge with due to the fact that suring puts into a good click to which attack an opponets fig small or large. You will be trading a 22pt fig or so for a much higher point figure. Bladegolems are another that could be looked upon as a far trade.

I've been picking on surge just because its the main thing I can see that would speed up the games, getting more damage dealt quicker. Damage scores on models seem to be about the same - 3-4 on big hitters, 2-3 on general use models, 1-2 on low power troops. Dial depths seem about the same.
I definetely have noticed the dials seem more consistent, losing abilities less quickly. I like that as opposed to top heavy dials.
As far as werewolves and blade golems, those aren't part of the 2.0 set - if 2.0 is faster and more destructive, it should be faster and more destructive with its own figures, not just with old figures :)
(Side note: While I look forward to trying weres in 2.0, I have misgivings about getting them into surge range...yeah they can surge for a nasty attack, but if your opponent surges them first...12 defense, really easy capture and eliminate.)
Aside from a final "bid farewell to 1.0" game my group has been using 2.0 rules as best we could interpret them ever since the first demo set was posted on the realms, and we never saw this speed increase with all 1.0 figures either.

Keep in mind that this is a general comment, not a hard and fast rule. I just often haven't seen it as worthwhile to. In one game with 1.0 figures we played, my opponent's army was mostly mancatchers and we had a lot of surging there - I didn't dare let her get in a capture attempt, and she wanted to take captives as quickly as possible before the high attack scores dropped.

I'm not sure I can see blaming this on the small figure pool either - $120 worth of figures is not a trifling amount, and I can't see it being all that different if we had built freely with these figures.

Now, note that I am not saying the game played badly at all. Its just that people seem to talk about how much faster and more destructive 2.0 is and I haven't seen any sign of it. I'd really like to hear from people for whom it HAS been faster and more destructive about why, and how much faster.