Deepkin

For many armies however, their battleline IS a tax. They are bad units you have to take a minimum of before you get to the good ones. Its fine to have preferences but youre tilting at windmills here. "Core tax" and "Troops tax" were a thing in 40k and WHFB parlance for a looooong time. Have heard them since i first started playing the game 15 years or so ago, and they werent new phrases then. This isnt so much a "dont let the language change!" thing as much as it is "the language changed a long time ago and im still grumpy about it." Which is fine, being grumpy is a tradition among wargamers. But its a bit silly to expect the phrase will change now, particularly when its often quite accurate in what it describes.

She's alive again three years from now anyways, when the REAL Warhammer comes back 😉

Its a grail. Bretonnians confirmed! But on a slightly more serious note, all the Grail Knights and Damsels did go somewhere. Is it possible that Tyrion and Teclis found their souls and mingled them with the elven souls they rescued from Slaanesh? They were the favored beings of an elven goddess, after all. Hysh elves as Elftonnians confirmed, calling it now.

I would argue that while you can spend an equal amount of time competing in unbalanced games, they are not equally competitive as balanced games simply because the less balanced a game is, the less your wins mean. If you win simply because your army is S+ and your opponent brings a B tier (in a game where there are 1 or 2 S+ choices and many more B tier choices) then you arent doing anything skillful. You just happened to play an objectively better army. Its like if you got to fight an MMA match against someone who is only allowed to use TKD kicks or something. Your win isnt remarkable under those circumstances.

I will second (third?) Dark Harvest. Excellent example of Age of Sigmar as a grimdark setting, and a great sort of hardboiled crime/folk horror genre combo as well! Got some strong Laird Barron vibes as well, which is only ever a good thing.

Have you ever checked your warscroll card to make sure you don't have a bubble aura of +1 to cheating? Make sure to note if it says "within" or "wholly within," naturally. Think about it. I know I haven't.

True Detective season 2 wasn't THAT bad, and thats a hill I will...well, not die on, but at least get mildly wounded upon. Vince Vaughn's lines like "it's like blue balls...for your heart" are pure gold, and we all know it 😂

Not the poster you quoted, but I alluded to chess, so let me explain. If your stated goal is pure competition, in my experience as a very competitive person, you'd want a reasonably fair and balanced outlet, with a large competitive community, and deep, engaging play. Chess checks all those bases and takes the form of "my army fights your army," albeit highly abstracted. Warhammer has a lot of other advantages, as both a hobby and a setting and so on, but in terms of competitive gameplay, its both very unbalanced (you can essentially "buy ELO" by purchasing a meta army because, all other things being equal, someone with an optimal HoS list versus an optimal BoC or KO list has an unmistakeable advantage) and has less competitive depth (less players, less history of the game, and more likely to encounter essentially noncompetitive players even in comp environments). So from my perspective, playing Warhammer as a purely competitive and abstracted wargame in tournaments only seems odd. As a competitor, it sounds unfulfilling to me. But that is why Im curious, because clearly people spend a lot of time and money treating the game as pure competition, and so I'd like to know their perspective and why they specifically chose Warhammer when there are, from my perspective, better options for this sort of competition elsewhere. Note: I don't judge anyone for competing in Warhammer, or bringing certain lists or whatever. If youre at a tournament, you know why youre there, and its to win. Cheating is not okay, and neither is being a tool, but building an optimal list is just the competitive norm and I dont view it as a negative.

Why did you choose Age of Sigmar as your competitive outlet as compared to something more skill-based like chess? Im not judging, just curious. If you dont enjoy the hobby aspect or form an attachment to any army and its lore, then Im kinda confused as to why someone would even play these games when there are far superior competitive outlets (IMO). I admit I am biased, as I havent played Warhammer competitively in a long time and my own competitive outlet is a variety of combat sports, and my wargaming is essentially all skirmish campaign games like Mordheim and Necromunda, or coop games like Rangers of Shadow Deep.

🙄

Im sure xking can speak for himself without outside interpreters. His posts arent the Bible, they dont need exegesis. He didnt say "less grimdark." He said "NOT grimdark," full stop. Less grimdark is still grimdark. Joe Abercrombies The First Law is less grimdark than R. Scott Bakker's The Second Apocalypse. Fantasy was less grimdark than 40k. Doesnt mean they are suddenly not grimdark just because something else has more of the same elements. Im fine with people focusing on the less grim elements of AoS. But when you say that it is definitively NOT grimdark, thats where I take issue. Any emotion you read into my responses is your own problem. I assure you, I am quite calm. We are talking about plastic toy soldiers and the words written about them. Im not worked up at all. If you're feeling emotional, then I dont know what to tell you.

Fair enough

Says you. Look at Chaos, or the Deepkin, or the reality of Nagash, or the Daughters of Khaine. Sigmar literally has a secret police devoted to rooting out religious and political dissidents and murdering them. Look at the Knights Excelsior. There are sufficient grimdark elements to call it grimdark. If you want to ignore them, thats fine, its a big setting. But you don't get to define the setting for others.

Booker's book is not that great. It makes some pretty massive generalizations and then contorts all evidence to fit it. Its searching for some sort of universality to human art, when indeed art is particular and subjective, and always evasive of objective criteria. Its the same sort of thing Joseph Campbell did, repackaged in a slightly different frame. It takes one author's personal interpretations and cultural expecations, and assumes them to be universal by making claims so broad and vague that they can be tailored to sorta kinda fit anything (just like religion! funny, that). Its like the meme "all foods are either soups or sandwiches," except some people sincerely believe it and think its some sort of literary revelation. The Abrahamic religions are not the "foundation of modern man" (whatever that means), and particularly not when one considers most of the worlds population does not follow one of those religions, or come from an area that follows said religions.

Speak for yourself. MY AoS is definitely grimdark. So is the AoS of Ex Profundis, Gardens of Hecate, Josh Reynolds (read Dark Harvest) and so on. (also I agree with JackStreicher. god is dumb, hail Satan!)

I dunno if they even need to re-release Mordheim. It holds up really well, it has plenty of fan-created content like WyrdWars, and the original aesthetic is pretty different from GW's current stuff. Not that I would say no to new Mordheim, obviously. But I and my game group will still play it regardless of any updates.

I think the best version of the setting was in Mordheim and WFRP (2nd and 4th editions...3rd shall not be spoken of. 1st was wacky and cool as well) and its that sort of grittiness that I loved about the Old World. Magic is rare, mistrusted and ill-understood. Chaos is everpresent beneath the surface. The woods are dark and full of terror. The cities are rank with human greed and stupidity, with mutation and cults and religious fanaticism. The end is nigh, ignorance runs unchecked, and John Blanche illustrates everything 7th and 8th started to lose me as they went more high fantasy. Hell, I still play Mordheim. Best game GW ever made.

As long as it makes sense, I dont see why there shouldnt be more female models. At the same time, I dont believe there is any moral obligation to make them. I also think that certain armies or factions can remain essentially mono-gender (Space Marines/Sisters of Battle, f'rex) with no issue. Not every faction (even the largest ones) needs to reflect modern demographics. Though in all fairness, I think Primaris marines ruined the aesthetic of 40k marines waaay more than female ones ever would, so at this point I wouldnt particularly care if Marneus Calgar wore a wig and heels. Stormcast being women is a nonissue. They arent humans anymore, they are lightning golems forged by a god. And not all of them were warriors. Gardus Steelsoul was a doctor in his past life, not a soldier. I do wish they would produce female dwarf models. No beards either, make them look like actual women. Male elves would be nice too I guess, but why start making them now after 30 years i guess.

It's better than being dative or, horror of horrors, genitive. badum tish

Everyone I game with loves it. AoS isnt very popular here, but Warhammer is well loved.

^ This. A lot of AoS fans have this utterly baffling hatred/persecution complex for Fantasy. Relax dudes. No one is going to steal your toys. And all the people worried about "toxicity" aren't helping. Let people enjoy what they want and dont moan if what they want is different than your desires.

Yes but why do we need two fantasy systems? Why do we want to divide the community up like this? Why do we have to pull in people that hate WHFB and just let them play 40k or whatever is being played instead? My WHFB group has people that are going to be leaving WHFB for this and it sucks. -Scead Dribe, c. 2015

Because a) it will clearly make GW money and b) its an awesome setting that should never have been canned in the first place. It takes nothing away from AoS, so if you dont like it then dont pay attention to it. GW has plenty of games I dont like. Im glad they are adding one that I do like.

Weird, cuz all I ever see nowadays are AoS players talking ****** about people who like the old world. Odd how that happens. Let people have their things says I. No need to judge anyone for their tastes in plastic army man games

Lol I know dude totally, they released this thing called Age of Sigmar a few years back and its totally been clogging up the Fantasy release schedule, total bummer, glad we're seeing that situation rectified here.