January 2019 White Dwarf "overwrites" Skirmish book from 2017?

[eekamouse]

Ya I’m curious what the February White Dwarf will have. Didn’t GW hire the designer of Hinterlands?

[Ben2]

They did indeed. 

 

Basically this is an open Beta Test for AoS Kill Team to come out later this year. 

[robinlvalentine]

3 hours ago, eekamouse said:

Ya I’m curious what the February White Dwarf will have. Didn’t GW hire the designer of Hinterlands?

They did, but he doesn't seem to be working on this version of Skirmish at least - most recently he wrote the Beasts Of Chaos book

[Mykah]

On 1/19/2019 at 2:16 PM, robinlvalentine said:

They did, but he doesn't seem to be working on this version of Skirmish at least - most recently he wrote the Beasts Of Chaos book

Are you talking about Sam Pearson?

[robinlvalentine]

1 hour ago, Mykah said:

Are you talking about Sam Pearson?

Yes, you can find out more about what he's up to these days on episode 2 of the Stormcast 

 

[Mosquito onthe TenthFloor]

Are these going to be published or made available anywhere outside of WD? Is it more likely that they'll form a new supplement somewhere down the line? Lots of narrative goodness in small actions that these rules facilitate.

[robinlvalentine]

1 hour ago, Mosquito onthe TenthFloor said:

Are these going to be published or made available anywhere outside of WD? Is it more likely that they'll form a new supplement somewhere down the line? Lots of narrative goodness in small actions that these rules facilitate.

I suspect they'll eventually release the rules as a PDF, as they have with things like Genestealer gangs for Necromunda, but it could be a long wait

[Kramer]

Yes especially if there will be several additions, it might be a long way. 

On the twitch stream, stupid amounts of killteam references by the way. 

Also they mentioned they are very happy that white dwarf is now a platform so smaller updates can be published, so again a reason not to wait on a booklet  

also a lot of suggestions for shadespire for being a setting for skirmish. Don’t know if that’s going to be something or just the hosts personal take on it. 

[Mosquito onthe TenthFloor]

Was going to pick it up and had it in my hands.............but I'm not in so much of a hurry that I need to spend £12 over the two issues. Quite happy to wait.

[michu]

New WD is still worth buying even if not for skirmish - good hobby article about Aqshy conversions and basing, new rules for CF (very good rules), two new short stories, nice tips for WHU....

[Agent of Chaos]

To those struggling with a Stormcast warband with the new points system, what about something like this?

Lord Castellant - 100

1 x Prosecutor Prime with Trident 43

2 x Prosecutors with Javelins 66

2 x Liberators 40

Thats 7 models including the free gryph hound that comes with the Castellant, good movement and some range with the Prosecutors and 2 x body guards/objective cappers in the liberators.

The Castellant can buff himself to a 2+ save, has 6 wounds and has a decent melee profile, plus if you find yourself against a chaos warband he can dish out a mortal wound (D3 if they are daemon).

Im yet to play a skirmish game but having seen a few battle reports in the old rules I feel the above could be effective. 

Thoughts?

[Kramer]

13 hours ago, Agent of Chaos said:

To those struggling with a Stormcast warband with the new points system, what about something like this?

Lord Castellant - 100

1 x Prosecutor Prime with Trident 43

2 x Prosecutors with Javelins 66

2 x Liberators 40

Thats 7 models including the free gryph hound that comes with the Castellant, good movement and some range with the Prosecutors and 2 x body guards/objective cappers in the liberators.

The Castellant can buff himself to a 2+ save, has 6 wounds and has a decent melee profile, plus if you find yourself against a chaos warband he can dish out a mortal wound (D3 if they are daemon).

Im yet to play a skirmish game but having seen a few battle reports in the old rules I feel the above could be effective. 

Thoughts?

Why is your prosecutor prima 43 instead of 38. I thought you paid 5 for champion and 5 for unit upgrades that are limited per x amount of models. The champions alternative equipment isn’t that, so doesn’t cost 5 extra right? I’ll check later today with the white dwarf at hand (would be a extra champion upgrade for the libs)

Edit: no my bad, the trident is one in three. Only ever seen it on a prime apparently have assumed it was a champion upgrade

[eekamouse]

Sca

Looks like a pretty basic campaign... meant only for two players. 

That's probably OK by me... and maybe a good sign we'll get Kill Team/Mordheim at some point even if it's 2020.

[Realmhead]

Question: can units (like Evocators) that require a certain number of models in the unit for it to count as a wizard, be wizards in skirmish? If so, would they need to be within 6" of each other, like other squad upgrades such as banners?

[eekamouse]

I play that they can never be wizards as each one counts as it’s own unit.

[Yoshiya]

3 hours ago, eekamouse said:

I play that they can never be wizards as each one counts as it’s own unit.

I think this is the correct ruling which obviously makes wizard units (especially things like pink horrors overpriced). I think given the general reception that they are overpowered anyway it may be ok to keep Evocators as non-wizards on their current points but I'd recommend either house ruling lower points on such models or applying the 6" rule.

[Dai-Mongar]

Maybe consider letting the prime be a wizard if there are two or more other evocators within 6"?

[Nin Win]

The scenarios in the january edition are good.  I like the smaller table size a lot.

The biggest issue our group keeps having though is that so much of the flavour of a given army is in their battletome traits and whatnot and none of that is used.  We've been using it and trying out interpret it all on a case by case basis and make it all work, but it's been rough.  Basically for anything that talks about unit or whatever we've been basing it on the standard bearer and doing the 6" thing.  It mostly works but some stuff doesn't really.

We're probably going to transition more to the full game with the AoS:Warbands rules (here on TGA, link below)  which reduces the minimum unit size.  If GW comes out with more in the future we'll look into it, but for now we're going to go a bit larger and play with units.
 

 

[Kramer]

On 1/26/2019 at 10:40 AM, Yoshiya said:

I think this is the correct ruling which obviously makes wizard units (especially things like pink horrors overpriced). I think given the general reception that they are overpowered anyway it may be ok to keep Evocators as non-wizards on their current points but I'd recommend either house ruling lower points on such models or applying the 6" rule.

Try it, because they are still amazing!  

As for the wizard rule. I guess you can go either way. In general I think magic should be kept very rare and my opponent who played my stormcast was new to the faction so we ‘banned’ magic all together. 

[EMMachine]

I think units that can bann spells could be a problem too. I'm meaning units like the Flesh Hounds. with the "Collars of Khorne".

A houserule that only the Champion of such a unit can cast or bann a spell would be a step into the right direction.

[Agent of Chaos]

@EMMachine cant say I agree with that. A flesh hound in skirmish will cost you 20 points for 2 wounds and a 5+ save.  The collar of khorne is built into their cost and having to pay the 5 point upgrade for the champion to have one shot at this ability seems harsh. An unbind is not something that can actually damage your opponent. Its also a distinct part of the khorne fluff that he hates magic so any warband coming up against them with a wizard or 2 should expect to have a tough time casting. 

[EMMachine]

@Agent of Chaos

It's partly an immersion break compared to the regular game when normally a unit of 5-20 models give 1 unbindrolls while in Skirmish 5 models would give 5 rolls. (It's the same for Wizard units (except spells are restricted).

Don't forget that each model has 4 attacks hitting on a 3+ and reroll charge rolls.

Okay Champion was the wrong Term in that case because Fleshhounds don't have a Champion, only Gore Hounds that are more like Specialweapons.

[JPjr]

@EMMachine why would you get 5 unbind rolls? You can only take one unit of each warscroll and the flesh hounds unbinding ability is a unit ability not an individual model one.

so whether you took 1 or 5 in your warband you still only have 1 unit, so 1 unbind.

the idea referenced above that models need to be within, say 6”, to use any unit abilities also strikes me as a perfectly sensible suggestion and pretty much how I’d house rule it.

So essentially in Skirmish games ‘unit cohesion’ is increased to, say, 6” (though I’d like to test out a few different options there) and allows certain unit abilities to work, but there’s no compulsion to stay within that distance if you don’t want them to.

adds a nice tactical layer to the game actually. 

[EMMachine]

16 hours ago, JPjr said:

@EMMachine why would you get 5 unbind rolls? You can only take one unit of each warscroll and the flesh hounds unbinding ability is a unit ability not an individual model one.

so whether you took 1 or 5 in your warband you still only have 1 unit, so 1 unbind.

the idea referenced above that models need to be within, say 6”, to use any unit abilities also strikes me as a perfectly sensible suggestion and pretty much how I’d house rule it.

So essentially in Skirmish games ‘unit cohesion’ is increased to, say, 6” (though I’d like to test out a few different options there) and allows certain unit abilities to work, but there’s no compulsion to stay within that distance if you don’t want them to.

adds a nice tactical layer to the game actually. 

Okay, than I got the "Each model in your warband is therefore therefor treated as a single unit" wrong (don't know if the White Dwarf rules still have that exact wording because I don't have my White Dwarf right now and even then it would be german, so I wrote that sentence from the old Skirmish Book I have in my App), fearing that, when choosing 3 Flesh Hounds they would be count as 3 units and would get 3 unbind rolls.

[robinlvalentine]

Got the new White Dwarf, thought I'd post my thoughts on the extra Skirmish rules:

 

Overall, the campaign rules in this issue are pretty messy and weird. Instead of being generic, they're tied to a very specific and pretty thinly sketched two-player, six game narrative campaign in the Realm of Metal. They're simple enough to extrapolate out, but why am I having to houserule stuff for what's supposed to be the new version of Skirmish? 

Basically, after each battle, you gain Renown based on how well you did, plus a roll on a table which can give you a buff for next game, a permanent magic item, or some more Renown. You can also get one of three Realm of Metal spells. The nice thing about these is they feel like they were actually designed for Skirmish. One of them fires out a thin line, and anyone under it takes a mortal wound - I bet it'd be really satisfying to pull off a good shot.  Though I suspect they'll all feel underpowered compared to some of the cheesier spells on some wizard's warscrolls.

The Realm of Metal campaign is basically just you play through six scenarios in sequence. The winner of each battle gets an advantage in the next e.g. choosing who goes first, or picking their deployment zone, or getting an extra artefact. The winner of the final scenario wins the campaign, regardless of what happened in the previous scenarios.

There's not really anything in place to stop snowballing, apart from an underdog bonus (if your opponent's Renown is higher than yours, you get re-rolls to use in the game). 

You start with 150 Renown each, which seems like it's just unnecessarily resurrecting the problem original Skirmish had, where loads of factions couldn't actually fit into a starting warband. Stormcast are screwed at 150, for example.

 

It's followed by a battle report that follows a whole six game campaign (though only very briefly describing each battle). It's really weird, because it basically just exposes every flaw of the preceding rules. 

First off, neither warband has a hero, instead using a champion as their leader - presumably because they couldn't fit a hero in at 150 Renown. There's no official rule given about doing this, or even a little caption explaining the decision. It seems incredibly damning to me for the very first battle report of the system has to include house rules to function...

Then the campaign itself is a classic case of snowballing - it's Fyreslayers vs Skaven, and the Fyreslayers win the first five battles, most of them being complete massacres by the sound of it. 

Then, on the final scenario, the Skaven manage to just eke out a win because they technically kill more Renown of Fyreslayers, even though there aren't any Skaven left on the board. They thus win the whole campaign. I guess it's sort of cool that it's possible to make a comeback like that, but it just feels really weird in the report. 

 

Overall I'm pretty disappointed - last week's article wasn't perfect, but this week's feels rushed and poorly thought-through. The battle report feels like the first playtest, after which you'd go 'right, we obviously need to go back and change a bunch of stuff', but instead we just get the first draft rules. And while I really like the idea of presenting a little narrative campaign, it should be in addition to a core set of 'generic' campaign rules, not instead of, IMO. 

The reward table is quite neat, but apart from that there's really nothing here you couldn't houserule yourself, probably to better effect. 

There's no indication of another article next month, so I suspect this is all we get for the forseeable