The "mortals redesign" Discussion

[Myrmidox]

After i read through the leaked Cities book and after i watched summaries about Dawnbringers Book 1, i must say i am not really interested in this faction anymore.

Rulewise it's not only the cutting of some cool units, with the sole reasons reemerge with the old World or we don't want duplications, no now we have a clear segregation of the the three main races in the so called "cosmopolitan" cities.

I mean the 1 from 4 unit rule doesn't exit anymore, so no more coalition Golden Boys and so on, but plain allies.

Yeah Settler's Gain was founded with the Lumineth together, from now on, the upper class elves will have as little to do with you as possible, because reasons.

Every old city is founded around a Stormcast Keep, looks like the stormcasts aren't invited to the crusades. But hey lorewise they can still rescue your little mortal butt, whom am i kidding, i am sure they will only show up after you died a most terrible dead, gain the whole glory, for the God King and so on....

Annother example is that the buff wagons only affect units with the human keyword, aren't elves and dwarfs allowed to look at the wagons anymore? Sorry knifeears and beards with legs, no buffs for you, because reasons.

I understand from a economic point of view GW interest to bring new human models to the table and i had no problem at all, if the Dawnbringer Crusade, was just a human centered subfaction of Grand Alliance Order. But this.....?

It doesn't end there, no, traits and artifacts are separated between the three races. No interracial cooperation, only work side by side. That include even the Cogsmith, who doesn't affect artillery anymore.

I have no problem with grimdark High Fantasy, i like my fantasy settings with many variations of the colourless colour grey. But this, hell no, Age of Sigmar Cities of Apartheid or what? But to top it all off, we have now a growing , what looks like a mostly human movement, of religious zealotism. Which solves city intern problems with the old fashioned methods of throw it on the pyre and pray harder. What do you mean we have problems here in Hammerhal, just minor setbacks, we see no reason to delay our plans to go on a crusade? Oh you didn't pray hard enough, then we have two options for you: Option one die horrible while burned alive. Option two join the crusades "voluntarily" and die horrible later. I like this new approach of the absolutely Not-Ecclesiarchy, if it works in the rotten and decaying realm of a certain immortal corpse emperor it must work in the Cities of Apartheid as well, right...right...?

You can call me doomsayer, but the worst outcome i see for Cities is the complete breakup of humans, dwarfs and elves. Darkelves and old dwarfs could go the way of all mortal, legends war scrolls. If they form new Order subfactions the question remains how this will happen lorewise. Malekith and the Ancestorgods invite them in their new factions and they emigrate peacefully. The other possibility is that they are gone with not so peaceful means. Maybe outright expulsion. Hey it's your boy Geedubs, i heard you all like this gritty Witcher franchise, so in my immeasurable wisedom i give you the new Cities of Apartheid, where all Non-humans a  at best second class citiziens and at worst scapegoats for all problems, huzzah! And no, some ogres here and their and mutated critters are no replacement for a proper unified old school order tide.

Btw i must say the new models a really good, really good for some nice dioramas where they are horribly and cruelly killed.

And remember the Emeror protects, i meant the God King protects, i meant he protects if your human, i meant he will protect if you pray and crusade hard enough.

And remember this "What is satire allowed to do?Everything!", then in my eyes this is the only way i can answer to the new Cities releases. Have a nice sunday everyone.

( some time later: where did i put my copy of liber chaotica again?.... )

 

 

 

 

[Sete]

19 hours ago, The Lost Sigmarite said:

. I think I'm going for a homebrew city, I don't want to be coralled by an official color

I feel ya. I'm doing the same. 

Mine are going to be religious, fortunately there is a trait that gives your hero the priest keyword and a prayer which fits right in.

Also throwing in an "apparition" of a minor Stormcast hero (very sanguinor style of thing using Knight Azyros or the new Winged Hero rules) that answers to their prayers and joins combat with them.

"Santor the Wyrmslayer"

Edited August 6, 2023 by Sete

[Freemeta]

1 hour ago, Myrmidox said:

After i read through the leaked Cities book and after i watched summaries about Dawnbringers Book 1, i must say i am not really interested in this faction anymore.

Rulewise it's not only the cutting of some cool units, with the sole reasons reemerge with the old World or we don't want duplications, no now we have a clear segregation of the the three main races in the so called "cosmopolitan" cities.

I mean the 1 from 4 unit rule doesn't exit anymore, so no more coalition Golden Boys and so on, but plain allies.

Yeah Settler's Gain was founded with the Lumineth together, from now on, the upper class elves will have as little to do with you as possible, because reasons.

Every old city is founded around a Stormcast Keep, looks like the stormcasts aren't invited to the crusades. But hey lorewise they can still rescue your little mortal butt, whom am i kidding, i am sure they will only show up after you died a most terrible dead, gain the whole glory, for the God King and so on....

Annother example is that the buff wagons only affect units with the human keyword, aren't elves and dwarfs allowed to look at the wagons anymore? Sorry knifeears and beards with legs, no buffs for you, because reasons.

I understand from a economic point of view GW interest to bring new human models to the table and i had no problem at all, if the Dawnbringer Crusade, was just a human centered subfaction of Grand Alliance Order. But this.....?

It doesn't end there, no, traits and artifacts are separated between the three races. No interracial cooperation, only work side by side. That include even the Cogsmith, who doesn't affect artillery anymore.

I have no problem with grimdark High Fantasy, i like my fantasy settings with many variations of the colourless colour grey. But this, hell no, Age of Sigmar Cities of Apartheid or what? But to top it all off, we have now a growing , what looks like a mostly human movement, of religious zealotism. Which solves city intern problems with the old fashioned methods of throw it on the pyre and pray harder. What do you mean we have problems here in Hammerhal, just minor setbacks, we see no reason to delay our plans to go on a crusade? Oh you didn't pray hard enough, then we have two options for you: Option one die horrible while burned alive. Option two join the crusades "voluntarily" and die horrible later. I like this new approach of the absolutely Not-Ecclesiarchy, if it works in the rotten and decaying realm of a certain immortal corpse emperor it must work in the Cities of Apartheid as well, right...right...?

You can call me doomsayer, but the worst outcome i see for Cities is the complete breakup of humans, dwarfs and elves. Darkelves and old dwarfs could go the way of all mortal, legends war scrolls. If they form new Order subfactions the question remains how this will happen lorewise. Malekith and the Ancestorgods invite them in their new factions and they emigrate peacefully. The other possibility is that they are gone with not so peaceful means. Maybe outright expulsion. Hey it's your boy Geedubs, i heard you all like this gritty Witcher franchise, so in my immeasurable wisedom i give you the new Cities of Apartheid, where all Non-humans a  at best second class citiziens and at worst scapegoats for all problems, huzzah! And no, some ogres here and their and mutated critters are no replacement for a proper unified old school order tide.

Btw i must say the new models a really good, really good for some nice dioramas where they are horribly and cruelly killed.

And remember the Emeror protects, i meant the God King protects, i meant he protects if your human, i meant he will protect if you pray and crusade hard enough.

And remember this "What is satire allowed to do?Everything!", then in my eyes this is the only way i can answer to the new Cities releases. Have a nice sunday everyone.

( some time later: where did i put my copy of liber chaotica again?.... )

 

 

 

 

thanks this is how i feel. every coalition unit got kicked from the city and lost their citizenship (even if you are the first magister of your city 😂).

[madmac]

15 minutes ago, Freemeta said:

thanks this is how i feel. every coalition unit got kicked from the city and lost their citizenship (even if you are the first magister of your city 😂).

Yeah honestly I'm less bothered by the sudden erasure of Wanderers and Phoenix Temple (although that doesn't bode well for the remaining non-humans) as I am losing the coalition options. It's just not the same army anymore, it's a small selection of human models with some still-around-but-probably-doomed elf and dwarf sidekicks, and that's it. I like the new models, mind you, I like most of them a lot, but now that it's basically just it's own thing like every other army instead of something neat I can easily branch out into using my other Order armies, a lot of the fun is gone, IMO.

Edited August 6, 2023 by madmac

[Sonnenspeer]

My plan to use my Lumineth together with some CoS stuff is not working as 400 points would just be the twins and some blade lords...

[Chikout]

17 minutes ago, madmac said:

Yeah honestly I'm less bothered by the sudden erasure of Wanderers and Phoenix Temple (although that doesn't bode well for the remaining non-humans) as I am losing the coalition options. It's just not the same army anymore, it's a small selection of human models with some still-around-but-probably-doomed elf and dwarf sidekicks, and that's it. I like the new models, mind you, I like most of them a lot, but now that it's basically just it's own thing like every other army instead of something neat I can easily branch out into using my other Order armies, a lot of the fun is gone, IMO.

Yeah, I definitely agree with this. It feels like something that was done for the sake of balance but at the expense of fun. I think this is a much bigger problem than the removal of old minis. Only being allowed 400 points of Sylvaneth in a living city army seems like a needless restriction. I’m overall very positive on the new book but this is the biggest mistake they’ve made. I’d love to see it changed in a faq in the future. 

[Myrmidox]

Two last points of criticism from my side:

1. You can convert and proxy as much as you want, what is with the wysiwyg rule, what with some more stricly tournament rules?

Oh yes, fine looking army, cool conversion, btw. half of the army is not rule conform. Listen the models a great, but to avoid confusion and delays we have strict rules about that... and some of these models and bits are so old that even some offcial GW employees couldn't tell with a first look if they are offcial GW models at all.

2. I find the lack of proper mustaches disturbing. Full beards don't count here, no wonder the Cities have internal problems.

Everyone knows, the sole reason the empire of warhammer was successful was their glorious mustache wearers. I know Karl Franz is depicted with no mustache, but he was surrounded by so much of glorius mustachness that it compensated for this shortage.

On a personal note, why i dislike the new book even more is following:

I started recently to play Warhammer Age of Reckoning again, after 13 or 14 years . ( Btw. it's now a fan project, complete for free. If you haven't problems with outdated graphics and game mechanics, try it out. It's a fun pvp clusterfuck experience, which you can combine with the exploration of the Old World in third person view.) The order faction which consist of dwarfs, high elves and empire is excactly what i imagine what the cities should be. Open world pvp warband consisting of only one race would have deficits and less options than a complete mix of all classes and races. And this is exactly what i imagine for the cities, i want a strengh in unity approach, i want a the whole is greater than the sum of its parts approach, with the new book i don't see this at all. A stronger cooperation shouldn't mean that all old wounds and bad blood between the races should be forgotten in an instant, but instead to overcome these old obstacles.

Side note theory: The game was no succes in the end, but maybe GW was inspired by the ingame lore for their superfactions and the whole endtimes stuff.

 

[CommissarRotke]

On 8/5/2023 at 1:57 PM, Ejecutor said:

What about one of the two references I attached? I had them back when I was thinking about my SC color scheme.

bless you for helping me solve the dilemma of how the heck to paint the banners from Dominion 😍 that looks amazing

[CommissarRotke]

8 hours ago, Myrmidox said:

The order faction which consist of dwarfs, high elves and empire is excactly what i imagine what the cities should be.

Warhammer Online is amazing but... the game very much was an idealized vision of Order working together. WHFB Order was never as interlinked as AOS.

edit: technically it was an idealized vision of Destruction working together too.

Edited August 7, 2023 by CommissarRotke

[The Lost Sigmarite]

On 8/6/2023 at 2:11 PM, Sete said:

I feel ya. I'm doing the same. 

Mine are going to be religious, fortunately there is a trait that gives your hero the priest keyword and a prayer which fits right in.

Also throwing in an "apparition" of a minor Stormcast hero (very sanguinor style of thing using Knight Azyros or the new Winged Hero rules) that answers to their prayers and joins combat with them.

"Santor the Wyrmslayer"

I found my colour scheme. It's going to be cream for the uniform like Exelcis, with a white trim with touches of yellow and blue for the heraldry. I got inspired by the colours of a certain Spanish football club known for displaying white as its primary colour...

(When you have trouble at finding your own colour scheme, my advice is look at sports teams, they have some great ones.)

[Pick]

really wish there was a heavy elite infantry unit, like foot knights with sword and board or greatsword options. think old greatswords combined with the new cavaliers but on foot. 

the warhammer community post said the full range is revealed, but what are the odds that there is another wave coming in a year or so? or is this not like the lumineth, seraphon, etc?

 

[Clan's Cynic]

Could be six months, could be ten years. Who knows with GW?

Fyreslayers and other mini-factions are still waiting on their second wave, but that's no indication CoS won't get another wave sooner.

Edited August 7, 2023 by Clan's Cynic

[Hollow]

I'd love to see WARCRY warbands representing different cities from each of the realms. Hammerhal AQSHA/GHYRA, a Lethis Morrda cult, a Duardin heavy band from the Chamonite city of Vindicarum, Hunters with Ogre support from Excelis in Ghur, an elf-heavy group from Settlers Gain and a band of duplicitous cut-throats from Misthaven. 

[CommissarRotke]

It seems likely Warcry will end up having more dual-use Cities kits for Realm-specific elites and specialists. Whether those are tied to a CITY more than a realm I think is the real question.

Steelhelms can "include a battle priest" in their unit and the new Huntsmen have dogs, so there's precedent for more crossover that doesn't require 10 of the same model.

[Hollow]

9 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

Whether those are tied to a CITY more than a realm I think is the real question.

Oh for sure. They would be realm representatives, I was just thinking in terms of cities as it could be an interesting narrative direction for WARCRY to go in. (A large gladiatorial-style tournament, with various cities from across the realms sending their representatives to duke it out in huge colosseums!)  I would really like for the actual cities to get expanded upon. Where 40k's scale deals with planets and systems which is great for Sci-Fi. AoS dealing with cities and continents is great for fantasy IMO. 

Edited August 7, 2023 by Hollow

[CDM]

2 hours ago, Pick said:

really wish there was a heavy elite infantry unit, like foot knights with sword and board or greatsword options. think old greatswords combined with the new cavaliers but on foot. 

the warhammer community post said the full range is revealed, but what are the odds that there is another wave coming in a year or so? or is this not like the lumineth, seraphon, etc?

 

I think they'll be another wave in 18 months but I'm erring on the side of it being about Aelves mostly with Duardin thrown in perhaps. I really thought there would be a greatsword replacement in the vein of Emelda Braskovs aesthetic

 

1 hour ago, CommissarRotke said:

It seems likely Warcry will end up having more dual-use Cities kits for Realm-specific elites and specialists. Whether those are tied to a CITY more than a realm I think is the real question.

Steelhelms can "include a battle priest" in their unit and the new Huntsmen have dogs, so there's precedent for more crossover that doesn't require 10 of the same model.

I also speculate on more Warcry bands for cities and I think they'll be fairly soon, before a wave 2

Edited August 7, 2023 by CDM

[Ejecutor]

3 hours ago, The Lost Sigmarite said:

I found my colour scheme. It's going to be cream for the uniform like Exelcis, with a white trim with touches of yellow and blue for the heraldry. I got inspired by the colours of a certain Spanish football club known for displaying white as its primary colour...

(When you have trouble at finding your own colour scheme, my advice is look at sports teams, they have some great ones.)

Real Madrid? 😁

[RyantheFett]

On 8/6/2023 at 6:54 AM, Myrmidox said:

If they form new Order subfactions the question remains how this will happen lorewise.

I have not read many books, but the stuff I have seen seems to laid a lot of work for breaking up the races (or in a lot of cases showing that they never got along or lived together in the first place).

• Wood Elves- Shown to be super racist against the humans and were mostly nomadic and kept away from the Cities. Looks like the new book just skips over them so I guess they could show up in Sylvaneth?
• Dark Elves- According to others who have read the book (hopeful get to that today) these elves most likely get kicked from the faction if their evil ****** is revealed.
• Dwarfs- Most likely get their own crusade when they go back to reclaim their land. My only issue is that the books I have read show how important they are with building the Cities as well as being in charge of a lot of the Stormcast armor................ but they live and fight separately from the humans in the few books I did read.
• High Elves- Their city will most likely get destroyed lol.

Of course this will not account for a lot of the books that mention them working together, but I am pretty sure 40k had a lot bigger retcons in the past.

[RyantheFett]

On 8/6/2023 at 8:43 AM, Chikout said:

Yeah, I definitely agree with this. It feels like something that was done for the sake of balance but at the expense of fun. I think this is a much bigger problem than the removal of old minis. Only being allowed 400 points of Sylvaneth in a living city army seems like a needless restriction. I’m overall very positive on the new book but this is the biggest mistake they’ve made. I’d love to see it changed in a faq in the future. 

Oh it was 100% because of balance issues. The amount of units they would have had to adjust on top of everything would have been insane (and GW is not known for being that good with internal or external balance). But ya the faction really lost a lot of its identity by these hits and I will always find it funny that the Cities don't really want to take any of the other factions lol.

Stormcast is the big one that just stands out as being funny, but I guess 40k does it with Space Marines and Imperial Guard?

[dekay]

On 8/6/2023 at 3:43 PM, Chikout said:

Yeah, I definitely agree with this. It feels like something that was done for the sake of balance but at the expense of fun.

Kind of, but when the best way to include Fulminators in your army was to take them in the Living city, and the best way to play the Living city was to include Fulminators it was fun neither for the Stormcast or the Cities players.

In the early days of the book, when an old Kharadron book was still in the circulation I got 'just include a 40 strong arkanaut blob' advice any time I tried to put together a *Cities* army. And no Cities unit could compare to their damage output in shooting back then.

I like the current concept of getting a bonus for taking thematic allies in the select cities. Having a faction that has de facto hundreds of warscrolls to choose from and more often than not, the best ones were from a completely different book was, pretty often, decidedly not fun.

Edited August 7, 2023 by dekay

[CommissarRotke]

@Asbestress there's a second header/preview image for today's article and it is Greywater colors for you

[Freemeta]

at least we can play a Stormkeep army with cities of sigmar coalition units 😅

Edited August 9, 2023 by Freemeta

[Pick]

On 8/7/2023 at 4:12 PM, CDM said:

I think they'll be another wave in 18 months but I'm erring on the side of it being about Aelves mostly with Duardin thrown in perhaps. I really thought there would be a greatsword replacement in the vein of Emelda Braskovs aesthetic

 

I also speculate on more Warcry bands for cities and I think they'll be fairly soon, before a wave 2

i would cream my jeans if we got a foot knight greatsword replacement in either hers or the new arch knight/ freeguild cavaliers aesthetic

[CommissarRotke]

gonna post this here as well https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/08/21/cities-of-sigmar-round-table-part-one-designing-the-miniatures/

IMO this is the most intriguing info in it

Quote

Sam: Tahlia Vedra was an interesting one –  we wanted a named central character and the obvious place was to go was a king or queen on a dragon, but we didn’t want to presume feudalism into the Cities of Sigmar –  so the design went in a different direction. It was quite an emergent process, and it opened up lots of doors for the lore of the Cities.

can't wait to see more of the lore revealed now

[Myrmidox]

59 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

gonna post this here as well https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/08/21/cities-of-sigmar-round-table-part-one-designing-the-miniatures/

IMO this is the most intriguing info in it

can't wait to see more of the lore revealed now

I still don't like the new models and the rules, but in regard the design of Tahlia, a dragon is somewhat of a noble beast, mount, fitting for nobles like we've seen at the elves. The manticor on the other hand is more fiercely and a beast with the features and the look of many animals, maybe an allegory for the still multiracial cities and a renewed fighting spirit to retake what is lost, kinda?

I shouldn't interpret to much in the design.