rfkannen Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Hi, y'all! I have wanted to get an age of Sigmar army for a couple of years; I don't plan to play much (maybe a tournament game once or twice a year), but the minis are some of the coolest I have seen and seen like a ton of fun to paint! Also, I just really like the idea of having an age of Sigmar army! However, as you all know age of Sigmar is an expensive hobby. It is hard to justify a $500 expense for a game I don't even play in my budget this year. HOWEVER, I play DND every week, and I can justify getting an age of Sigmar army if I can also use the minis for dnd! At first, I thought it would be as simple as buying a normal army and using it in dnd, but then I realized scale is a thing. Dnd works on a 1-inch grid. So anything that is 25mm base works excellently, anything that is a 32mm base is unusable, and anything on a 40mm base or higher is a large creature (size of a horse or an ogre) This makes some armies a lot easier to re-use than others. All kruelboyz are 32mm, so I can't really use them. Stormcast Eternals fit in dnd as large creatures and look awesome, but I am not sure what I would make them represent; dnd doesn't have many 10 foot tall creatures that wear golden armor. I have divided models into how useful they would be to a dnd game: One star: any model that is on a 32mm base. two star: Hard to justify scale: any average person on a more than 25mm model. three star: Models you get a lot of that would be hard to use in that quantity. I can absolutely see myself using a model of an ogre riding a strange creature; I have trouble seeing myself using the 40 that are in an oggor army. Four star: common dnd monsters on a scale that works. Stabbas work as goblins. Deamons as demons. Plague monks as rat folk. troggoth are trolls, ironguts are ogres, etc, crypt horrors as any big undead, etc. Five star: Individual models I can use to represent big villains. Nagash as a lich, thanqual as some sort of fleshwarp abomination, karazai as a red dragon, maw crusher as a dragon riding ogre, etc. I am looking for an army that has any many 4 and 5 star minis as possible, and as few one stars as possible (though some are okay) Any recommendations? My goal is to eventually have a usable 2k point army (it doesn't have to be strong though, just technically playable), and I would rather keep things on the cheaper side (I am willing to spend for a set-piece model, but want to avoid the ones that are 60 bucks for like one 2-inch tall dude.) thank you for any advice you have! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arzalyn Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 (edited) 57 minutes ago, rfkannen said: Hi, y'all! I have wanted to get an age of Sigmar army for a couple of years; I don't plan to play much (maybe a tournament game once or twice a year), but the minis are some of the coolest I have seen and seen like a ton of fun to paint! Also, I just really like the idea of having an age of Sigmar army! However, as you all know age of Sigmar is an expensive hobby. It is hard to justify a $500 expense for a game I don't even play in my budget this year. HOWEVER, I play DND every week, and I can justify getting an age of Sigmar army if I can also use the minis for dnd! At first, I thought it would be as simple as buying a normal army and using it in dnd, but then I realized scale is a thing. Dnd works on a 1-inch grid. So anything that is 25mm base works excellently, anything that is a 32mm base is unusable, and anything on a 40mm base or higher is a large creature (size of a horse or an ogre) This makes some armies a lot easier to re-use than others. All kruelboyz are 32mm, so I can't really use them. Stormcast Eternals fit in dnd as large creatures and look awesome, but I am not sure what I would make them represent; dnd doesn't have many 10 foot tall creatures that wear golden armor. I have divided models into how useful they would be to a dnd game: One star: any model that is on a 32mm base. two star: Hard to justify scale: any average person on a more than 25mm model. three star: Models you get a lot of that would be hard to use in that quantity. I can absolutely see myself using a model of an ogre riding a strange creature; I have trouble seeing myself using the 40 that are in an oggor army. Four star: common dnd monsters on a scale that works. Stabbas work as goblins. Deamons as demons. Plague monks as rat folk. troggoth are trolls, ironguts are ogres, etc, crypt horrors as any big undead, etc. Five star: Individual models I can use to represent big villains. Nagash as a lich, thanqual as some sort of fleshwarp abomination, karazai as a red dragon, maw crusher as a dragon riding ogre, etc. I am looking for an army that has any many 4 and 5 star minis as possible, and as few one stars as possible (though some are okay) Any recommendations? My goal is to eventually have a usable 2k point army (it doesn't have to be strong though, just technically playable), and I would rather keep things on the cheaper side (I am willing to spend for a set-piece model, but want to avoid the ones that are 60 bucks for like one 2-inch tall dude.) thank you for any advice you have! As you want as many 25mm base models as possible Gitz, Soulblight and Cities are probably the best ones to look at. The problem is that 25mm models are usually used in great quantity, so you will have to compromise between the scale and the quantity. If you aren't looking to play on tournaments, it get much easier to just get a couple of those models and them focus on more elite/monster heavy lists to play. Let's start with the ones that work but have little variety, DnD wise. I would avoid Skaven mostly because all of he units are different flavor of ratmen or mutant rat ogres, unless you have a campaign that focus heavily oh them as enemy you will get very little you can use. Flesh-eater courts have a similar problem with ghouls. They have a very swallow model pool (ghoul, king ghoul, ogre/flying ghoul and zombie dragon), but all of them should be usable for DnD. Just the ghouls are on 25mm base, but I reckon the bigger models wouldn't be a problem here and I think its easier to use ghouls in a campaign them ratmen. As far as variety go, I would say Soulblight has the most usable monsters for DnD (zombies, skeletons, big vampire monsters, necromancers, undead wolves, giant bats, zombie dragon), they are in the right scale, but you gonna need a good amount of those models for playing (zombies and skeletons come in box of 20), but I imagine having 40 zombies could come in hand for some really epic sessions fight a necromancer! Gitz isn't a bad option either as it has goblins (useful in numbers), Trolls and Squigs (not similar to any DnD monster, but it should be hard to create one to use them). Less variety them soulblight in term of stat blocks representation, but it has a nice variety of goblins. Cities has dwarves, elves and humans, some pretty old models here and there, but could be useful to use has player characters or enemies for more urban campaigns. Monster wise they have a phoenix, a ugly dragon and a hydra that could be useful for you. Moving on to the bigger size, maybe Ogor mawtribes if you focus on the bestclaw side could be useful. They have yetis, ogor hunter (could use them as more intelligent ogres), frost sabers and a couple of cool big monsters. They use a very small amount of models, but they have a good amount of resin models that are quiet old though. One last option would be Sons of Behemat, you could simple grab 4 giant miniatures and you have a functional list. Not exactly the best army to start with as each model is quiet expensive, but you shouldn't have much problem using them in DnD as Hill giants (or other kinds of giants with the right paint scheme/kitbashes). Just one last piece of advice, check with your local scene/tournaments what is they rules about using proxies. Some are quiet forgiving and would let you use some 3d printed DnD minis as proxies of AoS models, which could be more useful (and cheap) for you! Edited February 21, 2022 by Arzalyn 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Arthur Hotep Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I'll go on to give some actual recommendations in a second, but before I do that let me just mention the possibility of gridless DnD. It basically works like regular, but you measure all the distances from the base edge instead of counting squares. It makes accomodating various base sizes much easier. Plus, you can actually move in diagonals no problem, which is always nice. Now, for your actual question: I have been getting a lot of use out of my Soulblight Gravelords and Cities of Sigmar armies for DnD. Gravelords have all the undead staples you might want, between zombies, skeletons and vampires. Zombies, Skeletons and Grave Guard are on 25mm bases. Vampires are generally character models, so 32mm and above. There are also a lot of nice centerpieces in the army for boss battles. They are also a very solid beginner faction in AoS because nearly all their units are viable. Cities of Sigmar is the most generic "good guys" army in AoS, with a lot of unit variety. You can find dwarves, wood elves, dark elves, high elves and humans in this army and mixing them in your army is actually quite good, too. You don't have to focus on one race. The downsides are that the models are mostly pretty old (especially the humans) and that the army is not super beginner friendly. Overall, I find that my model collection influences my planned DnD adventures at least as much as the other way around. Once you have a Steam Tank in your possession, it just makes you think "How can I use this as a cool set piece in DnD?", and base size really becomes a secondary concern. So personally I would not give it too much weight. This stuff is easy to homebrew. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rfkannen Posted February 22, 2022 Author Share Posted February 22, 2022 I'll try out playing gridless! I still want to prepare for if I keep using a grid, but I'll give it a shot! Tournaments are not a priority, so I am super up for focusing on big elite units! What got me re-interested in getting an Age of Sigmar model was seeing Nagash used as the mini for a villain in a dnd stream; the big models are super cool! Cities of Sigmar has some great soldier minis, but I will admit I am somewhat underwhelmed by their monsters. If they are not beginner-friendly, it might be best to avoid them; the rules of AOS are a bit intimidating to me, ill admit. Ogors seem cool, and I could always use a couple ogre minis, but ogres aren't one of the minis that you use a lot of in one campaign; I have trouble picturing myself running an encounter with more than 15. Can you make Ogor Mawtribes with a reasonably low model count? Both gloomspite gitz and soulblight gravelords look like a ton of fun! I painted a couple grots I got from a friend, and they were a lot of fun to work with, but from what I understand, getting a gloomspite gitz army is pretty complicated? I have heard that the starter set isn't very good. My ideal would be to get both grots and trollogs, with a couple squigs and spiders thrown in for fun, but am I correct that you need to focus on one? Can you use all types of undead with soulblight gravelords, or is it better to focus on one?? Because I would love to have a combo of zombies, skeletons, wolves, a couple vampires (I prefer to not use 32, but I am up for a couple), and a couple of the big set-piece models (the zombie dragon, in particular, seems pretty rad)! If I had to focus on one skeletons would work, but I would prefer to have variety. I am up for painting swarms of undead; I like throwing my players up against groups of enemies! Is the starter set a good purchase for this army? Any recommendations for a list that might work? Thank you for the advice! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warboss Gorbolg Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 I recommend that you look at Warcry instead of a full AoS army. It's a GW skirmish game in the same setting as AoS with a much better encounter scale for D&D (5-20 models). You can collect many many Warcry bands for the same price as an AoS army. If you really end up enjoying a specific faction and the hobby, then start expanding into an actual army. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nighthaunt Noob Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 1 hour ago, Warboss Gorbolg said: I recommend that you look at Warcry instead of a full AoS army. It's a GW skirmish game in the same setting as AoS with a much better encounter scale for D&D (5-20 models). You can collect many many Warcry bands for the same price as an AoS army. If you really end up enjoying a specific faction and the hobby, then start expanding into an actual army. Leapfrogging on this, the new Warcry Tome of Champions 2021 just added all the Underworlds warbands which are great sets to sample a bit from each army (Sepulchral guard is a nice set of skeletons, new Ogre pirate is a nice big character that comes with a crew of goblins and animals on 25m bases, rumor is a warband of necromancer and zombies is coming next, etc., etc.). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rfkannen Posted February 22, 2022 Author Share Posted February 22, 2022 If underworlds warbands count as warcry warbands I technically own three! I really like warhammer underworlds, and I didn't realize it was compatible! I have mollog's mobs, the grymwatch, and zarbag's gitz! Some of my favorite minis I have ever painted, Mollog's mobs was my main warband. I also have a start collecting flesheater courts box that I started 3 years ago and never finished. I made all the crytpt goals, and got 3/4 of the way done with one crypt horror (I had based him and applied shadows but not highlights or details. I could deffinitly build a zombie dragon from that (and potentially rip the head and arms off the crypt horror and build some varghests) Would Sepulchral Guard be a good next buy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zilberfrid Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 (edited) Warcry wasn't compatible, but now it is! I also recommend the Underworlds Nighthaunt team with the thorny lady. Most are on 25 bases, just the leader on 32. Agree with Warcry, smaller bands are all you need for Frostgrave or D&D. Edited February 22, 2022 by zilberfrid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EccentricCircle Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 I'm a D&D player first and foremost, so all of my warhammer collection started out with buying stuff for D&D and then expanding it to full armies. So I have a lot of thoughts. First, I've never found 32mm bases on a grid to be that much of an issues. D&D is pretty forgiving and even when using the squares to count distance and position, it's not as though the characters know they are there. I usually have a mix of 32mm scale warhammer, reaper and lego models and 25mm scale LotR, frostgrave and D&D figs. Lego bases in particular don't fit the squares at all, but they are the most customisable pc figs so it's worth it! If you are still worred I believe that non competitive AoS still doesn't actually require a specific base (unless 3e has changed that). So you could always put 32mm models on 25s. You could also check out LotR which is mostly 25mm bases, and has some gorgeous models for D&D characters, though quite a different style from aos. To actually answer your question, grave lords is the way to go as you get at least a dozen encounters of different combinations of undead out of the standard army, and can ally in other death stuff like the ghouls and ghosts. Cities of sigmar then has all your basic D&D races covered and again can be mixed and matched. Lastly I strongly suggest building warcry bands, rather than a full AoS army. A couple of those built around different themes will rapidly get you more variety for you rpgs, and once you have a couple it gets easier to have a game as you cam lend your D&D players a band to let the try it out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Arthur Hotep Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 9 hours ago, rfkannen said: I'll try out playing gridless! I still want to prepare for if I keep using a grid, but I'll give it a shot! I personally really think gridless or hybrid play (mostly stick to a grid, but allow off-grid movement where necessary) enhances the game. Particularly with regard to base sizes. The average horse and rider might be a large creature, but really to look natural they should probably be occupying just two squares (or a bit more), and not 4. That kind of thing. 8 hours ago, rfkannen said: Tournaments are not a priority, so I am super up for focusing on big elite units! What got me re-interested in getting an Age of Sigmar model was seeing Nagash used as the mini for a villain in a dnd stream; the big models are super cool! It's definitely a lot of fun to have normal-sized minis on the table for your player characters and then slap down Nagash in front of them for the sheer difference in scale. Be aware, though: The largest AoS models are a lot bigger than even gargantuan creatures would be in DnD by default. Nagash is on a 130mm base, for example, so about 5 squares across. You can find a list of base sizes here: https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/tCNYGKMMqiHkNESG.pdf It's not completely up to date, but most models are on there. 9 hours ago, rfkannen said: Cities of Sigmar has some great soldier minis, but I will admit I am somewhat underwhelmed by their monsters. If they are not beginner-friendly, it might be best to avoid them; the rules of AOS are a bit intimidating to me, ill admit. The good news is that AoS actually has a lot less rules you need to know compared to DnD, so if you can handle that you should be fine. The reason I say Cities of Sigmar is not super beginner friendly is mostly just because you have a really huge pool of unit choices, and it can be intimidating and exhausting to feel like you have to read and compare all the different warscrolls before you can build a list. It's not as difficult as it appears at first glance once you are familiar with the faction, but you would probably need to have someone talk you through it if it's your first army. 9 hours ago, rfkannen said: Can you use all types of undead with soulblight gravelords, or is it better to focus on one?? Because I would love to have a combo of zombies, skeletons, wolves, a couple vampires (I prefer to not use 32, but I am up for a couple), and a couple of the big set-piece models (the zombie dragon, in particular, seems pretty rad)! If I had to focus on one skeletons would work, but I would prefer to have variety. I am up for painting swarms of undead; I like throwing my players up against groups of enemies! Is the starter set a good purchase for this army? That kind of mixed arms force is actually one of the best ways to play the faction. The starter set is sadly not so good: Grave Guard are strong and are a staple unit, but Black Knights are like the one unit to avoid in the whole faction, and the Wight Kings is not really the best hero to go for to start. If you want to get into the faction, I would recommend one of two courses of action: A slow-grow approach where you start with a box of battleline models like Skeletons or Zombies and a hero like the Vampire Lord or Necromancer. From there, add about a box of models per month, take it slow, and enjoy the painting and modelling experience. Try to pick up the Soulblight Gravelords battleforce box that was released last year for Christmas. There should still be a few around in stores. It contains a lot of models: 5 Blood Knights, 40 Zombies, 20 Skeletons and a Vengorian Lord. The discount for the bundle is pretty sizable, but the amount of models might be daunting. 9 hours ago, rfkannen said: Any recommendations for a list that might work? Yes: This is a Soulblight list that I built with the aim to let new players get started fairly easily and experiment with different subfactions before deciding what direction they want to go into. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flemingmma Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 Cities of sigmar. Tonnes of old wfb models on 25mm bases. Humans, dwarves, elves of the light dark and wooded variety. Either that or undead. Skellies, zombies and ghosts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nighthaunt Noob Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 When Cursed city re-releases, that is also a viable choice that would give you a nice mix of baddies (zombies, skeletons, vampire thralls, etc.), and a few good guys that make fun DnD characters (gunslinger, elf ranger, human paladin, wizard/warlock, cleric, etc.). 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
readercolin Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 So the factions, starting with Chaos: Beasts of Chaos is an interesting army to collect in relation to DnD, because you get quite the variety of various goat men and monsters to choose from. For Hero's, you have a fighty goat man, a casty goat man, a crazy looking bird man on a flying disk, a minotaur, and a gigantic centaur thingy (beastlord, great brey shaman, tzaangor shaman, doombull and dragon ogor shaggoth). Then for monsters, they get a giant, a chimera, a cygor, a ghorgon, and a jabberslythe, while for "regular" dudes they get a variety of goat guys, minotaurs, centaurs, dogs, chariots, and more of the crazy bird things (tzaangors). Overall, if you want to have a wide variety of "opposing" monsters to throw down, and you don't necessarily care that they perform well in AoS, beasts is a decent army to get into. Additionally, if your local stores/groups are good with 3rd party mini's, you can get QUITE the variety in your list, even if you run a lot of the same model. For reference, if you got 1 of every unit in beasts of chaos, it would come out to 3435 points (note, it wouldn't be a "good" army... but beasts never was a good army to start with so meh?). Khorne. Khorne has a variety of "classic" demons, and bad guys in armor. Get a bloodthirster or two as big arch-demons, some of the smaller guys, and you end up with a small "evil" army of bad guys you can use in DnD, and a rather terrible army to put on the tabletop. Do note that even if you "optimize", Khorne currently isn't in that great a place, so you would still end up with a "bad" army on the tabletop, so you aren't really missing out much by getting some variety. Legion of the First prince. Now, let me be clear here - legion of the first prince is a TERRIBLE army for a beginner to pick up. However, the upside of it is that its units are "any chaos daemon unit". So if you want a bloodthirster and a great unclean one, you can shove both of them into this army. Be'lakor is also the "big bad" in charge of the army, and his model is AWESOME as an end game threat in DnD. If you want to run a campaign where you are fighting the creatures of hell, you are likely going to be eying these guys up anyways, so might as well get some variety and just throw stuff together and call it an AoS list too. Nurgle. Nurgle is your "gross" bad guys basically across the board, and they all tend to be fat and disgusting. You can pretty easily put together a list with them that isn't spamming a ton of the same thing, but on the DnD side of things your mini's are going to be a bit one-not and not as "generic devil" as khorne would be. As for AoS, this is probably the easiest chaos army to start with though, which swings some points back in its favor. Skaven. Do you like rats? Do you like rat abominations? Are you ok with a kind of steampunk/technopunk asthetic? As you ok with the idea of painting hordes and hordes of rats? Overall, skaven are an interesting faction, but aside from their "chaff" units (which you would need a LOT of) their asthetic doesn't really fit a traditional DnD setting. If you like them, feel free to go for it anyways, but unless you are doing some rather significant homebrew you aren't going to get a lot out of a skaven army for DnD. Slaanesh. The "sexy" demons. Here you can get an interesting variety of human models and some "interesting" demon models, but again they don't fit the "traditional" demon look like Khorne would. If they appeal to you, you can probably make them work for DnD and AoS, but you would probably need to have more variety in paint jobs than the traditional slaanesh look. They also suffer from the problem of not being in a really good place in AoS, and can be somewhat hard to use, which makes them something that I wouldn't recommend from the AoS side of things. Slaves to Darkness. The "traditional" chaos look. These guys would actually be a great place to build out for both AoS and DnD because of the sheer variety of models. They have a few mediocre monsters you can grab, and a mixture of heavily armored and lightly armored dudes in both hero and unit rosters. However, the biggest thing for them is that they also include most of the Warcry Warbands, and the warbands are actually a decent place to start collecting both for bands of bandits to fight in DnD, playing warcry, or shoving them in your slaves to darkness army. Additionally, if you want to take the time to clean off the chaos Iconography (just use a nail file and some patience), a lot of the guys can be pretty decent as "generic" good or bad guys in armor. A Chaos knight is an armored dude riding an armored horse - with all the spiky bits on, he is scary and intimidating and probably bad, but if you get rid of the spiky bits and chaos symbols he is a knight in armor, whether that is a good knight or a bad knight is up to you. For AoS, slaves is a bit tricky to play and has a lot of "trap" options, but as long as you are playing casually you can get most anything to work. If your local group is really competitive though, look at dropping Archaeon on their head - and he also does a good job in DnD as the "King of Hell". Tzeentch. Tzeentch has some options for various demons and various humans, as well as the crazy bird things from Beasts of Chaos (Tzaangors). They can be ok as DnD mini's, but tend not to look much like traditional DnD enemies. As for AoS, they are a pretty good army to play, but have a lot of fiddly bits, and their best builds tend to run a lot of "pink horrors", which means buying pink horrors, and blue/brimstone horrors as well, and can feel a bit spammy after a bit. Overall, if you want some demon action in your DnD campaign they can work, but will probably require some homebrew to make them work well in DnD. ------------ Next up, order: There are only 2 factions worth talking about in order - Cities and seraphon. For seraphon, do you want dino's and lizardmen? Cool, then a seraphon army might be for you. Don't have your campaigns fighting off dinosaur invasions? Well, you don't know what your missing out on, but it does make a seraphon army hard to use in DnD. Overall, a kind of mediocre choice. Cities though is where it is at. Do you want traditional humans, dwarves or elves? Do you want to get that cool model from literally any other non-seraphon army in order? Cool, the cities is what you want. Cities has "Coalition" which is a special rule that says that 1/4 units can be from another army, with no points limit. Depending on which city you choose to play with this time, it will change which army that you can use with them, but most of the order armies are "good guys" in a traditional DnD world, and are going to be hard to take advantage of a full army of them. Running the cities fixes that problem because you can get that big cool looking model, or that unit of cool looking guys and be able to play with them in both AoS and DnD. The only armies they can't coalition in are Fyreslayers and Idoneth deepkin, and most of what you would want to play with from those factions can fit into your ally limit as well, so you can literally pick and choose whatever looks cool in order and run it. Except dinosaurs. Apparently GW is anti-dinosaurs in their cities, and don't want you collecting them as well. On top of all of this, Cities tends to be VERY accepting of 3rd party mini's and various conversions, so don't worry too much about units if you aren't all that fond of their asthetic. -------------- Next up, Destruction. Ogres. Ogres is Ogor Mawtribes/Beastclaw raiders. Basically, big fat dudes who may or may not also ride mammoths. The upside is that you can have a relatively small AoS army (6-30 models) and still have a full 2k army. The downside is that they work great as occasional encounters in DnD, but aren't really that great as a "big bad" for whole campaigns. If they appeal to you, go for them, but you are likely going to have limited use from them in DnD. Orcs. This is the Orruk Warclans, and if you are looking at this from a DnD perspective, you want the Big Waaagh! Orruks are divided into 3 groups - bonesplitters (aka, the naked fanatics), Ironjaws (aka, the heavily armored dudes), and Kruleboyz (aka, the more traditional looking orcs). If you run them as a Big Waaagh though, you can run it with any assortment of these guys, and collect whatever orks you want for AoS or DnD. Want to run an Ork Invasion? Cool, these guys are good for it. Use bonesplittaz as the crazy feral orks that are roaming around in warbands. Grab the Kruelboyz for a more cohesive midgame threat that also throws magic and missiles at you. And use Ironjaws as your end game threat with massive guys with heavy armor and an attitude, and then grab a maw-krusha to have a solid end game threat that you can face for a tier 2 to early tier 3 campaign. Generic enough that you can run these guys as the central baddy for a campaign, or just a wilderness threat as you travel. Goblins. This is Gloomspite Gitz, and they have a problem. They are best run as a horde army, which isn't really what you want for a DnD campaign, AND it also doesn't work too great in AoS right now. But this gives you generic goblins (in robes), trolls, squigs, and spider riders. The problem with them is the number of models you would have to collect to make them work in AoS is going to be drastically more than you would want to run in a DnD campaign. Overall, if you really like them, go for it... just be prepared to be getting a LOT of models ready. Finally, be prepared for the fact that they are only really good opponents for tier 1 DnD campaigns. Giants. This is Sons of Behemat, and you would probably want to buy 3 mega-gargants and 3 Mancrusher gargants so you have some different sizes to work with in DnD. Overall, they end up being rather one note, but it is also only 6 models (or 4 if you just go for 4 mega's), so you at least won't have a huge collection taking up space. Do be advised that the mega's are going to be much larger than traditional giants, and if you aren't running a campaign that uses a lot of giants you aren't going to be getting a ton of use out of them. But they are also really easy to kitbash around and get different appearances, and you can get some great 3rd party mini's to use for them as well. --------------- Finally, death. Flesh Eater Courts. These are ghouls, ghouls with wings, and dead dragons. Overall, an army of them is going to be a bit one-note, and you are also not going to get a ton of variety for DnD campaigning, but if they speak to you for AoS, you can make them work in both systems. Nighthaunt. Ghosty boys. The problem with these guys is they tend to be more hordey, and you also don't tend to face a lot of ghosts in DnD. So you will have a large collection of ghosts, and not a ton of reason to pull them out. Like flesh eater courts, if they speak to you you can make them work in both systems, but you will likely end up with a lot of models you don't use for DnD. Soulblight Gravelords. The ultimate death faction. Here we have vampires, necromancers, zombies, skeletons, wolves. Basically, if you have traditional undead in your DnD campaign, you can use them for a Soulblight Gravelords army. That being said, if you go the zombies/skeletons route, you are going to have a LOT of them... more than you would usually need for a DnD campaign. But as long as you are ok diversifying, you can get a playable soulblight army AND be able to use most of the models at least occasionally in DnD. Ossiarch Bonereapers. The bone faction. Like, literally, all skeletons and skeleton constructs. If these guys could ally or be allied into soulblight gravelords, I would say go for them. But they are a bit one-note on their own. ------------- Overall, we can break all of this down. For more "good" guys, you want the cities of sigmar. These would be mini's to represent guards, urban environments, bandits, and player characters. You can also use some of the coalition units (looking at you witch aelves) as "bad guys" for various sub-plots. Alternatively, you can do all of this with Slaves to Darkness, and more of them will be more easily usable as bandits. Otherwise, for "bad" guys you can go soulblight gravelords if you want undead, goblins or orruk warclans if you want greenskins, or you can go with your flavor of demon in the various chaos factions. Finally, random monsters can probably fit into a Beasts of Chaos army. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zilberfrid Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 Do note that Cities has their own dinosaurs in the Drakespawn Knights. But they aren't feathered, which would be weird for a theropod of these lines and their pronation is wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommissarRotke Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 For sheer variety I would say you should look at all of the Underworlds Warbands. They can fit both PCs and NPCs (friendly or otherwise). You don't need to spend 60$ on one box, and they come from all factions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rfkannen Posted February 22, 2022 Author Share Posted February 22, 2022 Based off of y'alls advice I bought a Soulblight Gravelords battleforce box that I found for cheap! ($150)! after I finish painting that I'll try building a Free Cities warband. If cursed cities is released when I am done with the warband I will pick it up. Between the zombie dragon I have, the battleforce box, and cursed cities I think that'll add up to a 2000 point army! After that I might flesh out the free cities army! I don't paint that often so it'll probably be a year or so, but it would be something to look forward to! Thank you all for the advice! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EccentricCircle Posted February 23, 2022 Share Posted February 23, 2022 Enjoy! I hope you have lots of fun using them in all the games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zilberfrid Posted February 23, 2022 Share Posted February 23, 2022 (edited) 22 hours ago, rfkannen said: Based off of y'alls advice I bought a Soulblight Gravelords battleforce box that I found for cheap! ($150)! after I finish painting that I'll try building a Free Cities warband. If cursed cities is released when I am done with the warband I will pick it up. Between the zombie dragon I have, the battleforce box, and cursed cities I think that'll add up to a 2000 point army! After that I might flesh out the free cities army! I don't paint that often so it'll probably be a year or so, but it would be something to look forward to! Thank you all for the advice! For PC's, look into models with more freedom like Frostgrave (especially both Wizard boxes, that is a good start for parts). Army boxes generally make only a few options, and PCs have different wants. GW heroes are growing to be overpriced models entirely devoid of any customisation, so that doesn't help. Edited February 23, 2022 by zilberfrid 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharkbelly Posted February 24, 2022 Share Posted February 24, 2022 Cursed Cities is an awesome box for D&D! Skeletons, zombies, large zombies, vampire and spawn, bat swarms, rat swarms, and a couple haemunculi... I plan to run a campaign with what I got from the box.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rfkannen Posted February 24, 2022 Author Share Posted February 24, 2022 Frost grave looks awesome! I'll deffinitly be picking them up! The warrior box would be perfect for having a bunch of bandits to swarm pcs. So in the end with Soulblight I will have the battleforce box, cursed city, a start collecting flesheater corpse and MAAAAAAYBE nagash if I am still in a skeleton mood after all that.. Anyone have any recommendations on what to build from those models? (aka lauka vai vs vengorian lore, should the zombie dragon have a prince on it, etc). Are there any other models that would help tie it together or should those work? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharkbelly Posted February 25, 2022 Share Posted February 25, 2022 (edited) If you build the Zombie Dragon/Terrorgheist right, it can be both. And this might sound odd, but the Necromantic Horror Blood Bowl team has a lot of great models too. Edited February 25, 2022 by Sharkbelly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Arthur Hotep Posted February 25, 2022 Share Posted February 25, 2022 8 hours ago, rfkannen said: So in the end with Soulblight I will have the battleforce box, cursed city, a start collecting flesheater corpse and MAAAAAAYBE nagash if I am still in a skeleton mood after all that.. Anyone have any recommendations on what to build from those models? (aka lauka vai vs vengorian lore, should the zombie dragon have a prince on it, etc). Are there any other models that would help tie it together or should those work? If I am not wrong, out of all your models only the Crypt Horrors, Zombie Dragon and Vengorian Lord will have build options. You will probably want to build the Crypt Horror kit as Vargheists for Gravelords. The most all-purpose Dragon set is probably generic Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon with lance. For the Vengorian Lord, the generic version is probably also the safer bet. However, if you plan to mostly play with friends anyway, just build them however looks coolest to you and use whatever rules are best for you at the moment. You don't really need to feel any pressure to follow "what you see is what you get" to the letter in home/casual games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EccentricCircle Posted February 25, 2022 Share Posted February 25, 2022 With the zombie dragon its pretty easy to magnetise the riders so you can swap them out, use it without one etc. I find they are less likely to break in storage when stored separately too! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nighthaunt Noob Posted February 27, 2022 Share Posted February 27, 2022 (edited) On 2/24/2022 at 6:36 PM, rfkannen said: Frost grave looks awesome! I'll deffinitly be picking them up! The warrior box would be perfect for having a bunch of bandits to swarm pcs. So in the end with Soulblight I will have the battleforce box, cursed city, a start collecting flesheater corpse and MAAAAAAYBE nagash if I am still in a skeleton mood after all that.. Anyone have any recommendations on what to build from those models? (aka lauka vai vs vengorian lore, should the zombie dragon have a prince on it, etc). Are there any other models that would help tie it together or should those work? Heads up that the re-release of Cursed City was just announced as an upcoming 2 week made to order event. EDIT: GW said it will also receive a full re-release later in the year so you don't have to jump on the order in March if you aren't ready. Edited February 27, 2022 by Nighthaunt Noob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nighthaunt Noob Posted February 28, 2022 Share Posted February 28, 2022 This new guy and the warband he comes with will probably make a cool one off dungeon. Expect the full reveal at Adepticon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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