JPjr

Waiting for someone to try and teleport him, first turn, into the middle of several 40 model horde units and claim Unstoppable Battle Fury allows them to keep going again and again and again until he solos the lot in one go.

obviously this is clearly something that you feel strongly about, but on the plus side if GW are hiring people to go around to all their existing customers houses and monitor what models are used in their basements that's got to be good for the unemployment rate. think of the economy!

I'm glad they've gone for something OTT and epic for the Mortarch, I think the Lady Olynder model is great for instance BUT when you actually see it in the plastic and alongside other models from the NH range she's actually a little underwhelming in terms of size/grandeur.

oh no need, I've seen and touched plenty of medieval junk defenders. I seem to remember Henry VIII's one, currently stored in the Tower of London, is a particularly priapic triumph!

Honestly though the really big question I'm left with is, in canon is this a Godpiece or a Codbeast?

Ha, the way I’ve fought in the past you’d think that sometimes I do, explains how my profile pic came about...

No I don’t personally believe they’re the same. I had originally thought that was the plan but theres enough titbits of info across the community pages, recent WD articles, the forbidden power book etc to say that from the past few things I’ve read I’m pretty sure that they’re not, just the timing of releases has conflated them. This dude is obviously a player for real but the Lethis escapee is, I believe, a much greater cosmic level threat type being. Saying that the new Mortarch is a stunning model, like some classical artwork come to un-life. I’m not quite all in on the full range just yet but I’ll get him just to own and paint even if I don’t pick up anything else. EDIT: actually one small thing, it took a second to figure out what felt wrong but as someone who actually does 2 handed longsword as a martial art the way these boneboys are holding their weapons is doing my head in, poor form skeletons, Master Lichtenauer would not approve.

god I would love a nice tidy little fantasy naval (with air support) game, funnily enough I kickstarted one last year that looked really interesting with some quite innovative looking mechanics but they pulled the (almost certain to be successful) campaign after a couple of weeks and nothing has been heard of them since (cue conspiracy theories!)... so many factions (already existing in the main game or referenced in lore/novels) that would come into their own in that. seems pretty locked on to me that Aeronautica Imperialis will be followed next year by a tanks and troops expansion with unifying rules pulling Adeptus Titanicus, Aeronautica & that together for a full EPIC game (and hey whilst we're just making stuff up they could throw in a rebooted SpaceFleet/Battlefleet Gothic and then you can really go to town with full system wide conflicts). obviously would be easy to replicate that across to AoS for a fantasy variation with Godbeasts, ships & airships and little troops and war machines, though I imagine we'd be waiting a while, 2021 at least probably. honestly though I think something more contained like a Man'o'War would be better, no need to exactly replicate what they do in 40K in AoS and vice versa. of course what I'd really, really, really, really, really love is AoS:Mighty Empires rather than AoS:EPIC, my god I'd love that, the 1st edition of that is/was one of my most played GW games 'back in the day', never got to use it as the basis for an actual WHFB campaign but even on its own it was so much fun (caveat I was probably about 12/13 so my idea of fun might not be exactly the same as it is today).

just to repeat what literally everyone else is saying, I wouldn't bother with all that though respect to any person who has just started AoS in 2019 and decided to run a Brettonian army, I'd be inclined to give them some kind of bonus as lets face it they're probably a danger to themselves in everyday life let alone when playing toy soldiers. 1000pts meeting engagements, requires much less hassle to get up and running and also just less mental stamina/tolerance for boredom if you're new to tournaments. If I was going to monkey around with the rules at all it would be just to make it more narrative based. Could be with a very light touch just to encourage them to explore that, get more involved with their army and, hopefully, get some satisfaction just from playing the game rather than just the outcome. Or really lean in, after all there's all these fun rules for playing games in fantastical cities, magical realms, dark and dingy caverns and above the clouds, games which actually acknowledge and build upon all the fantastical stories and lore and where results build to something interesting over the course of a day/weekend rather than someone ticking another 5-0 off on their spreadsheet of dreams. Introduce and normalise that, it's much more interesting for all concerned.

pretty sure that's actually something that's been hinted at a few times, there's definitely a little bit of fluff in one of the books with a couple of Stormcast talking about realm gates and something along the lines of the more Sigmar can control the tighter the realms can become knitted together with some ultimate goal of uniting them all. as for why they're not globes now, I think of them as more like dimensions than planets, each with their own weird crazy topographies, sub realms, pocket dimensions and the like, some fixed, some mutable and coalescing into new forms. the way I've always thought about it is (and this is hugely simplified but I think juts about holds up) the old WHF world was a 'human' world with magic in it, whereas AoS is a magic world with humans in it.

Not AoS, obviously, so sue me but holy ****** absolutely massive offer for (originally FFGs now Cubicle 7's) WH40K Dark Heresy RPG up on Humble Bundle right now, I just picked up something ridiculous like 20 books for €18. Can't say I've ever had any intention of playing/buying it before but for that paltry sum it seems rude to say no plus I'm always interested to just read different games & see their mechanics in play (plus of course the hundreds of pages of lore to dig into). https://www.humblebundle.com/books/warhammer-40000-dark-heresy-rpg-books

Just a heads up for anyone, like me, with a head full of unrealised dreams and stories about Grot eco-terrorists, communist space miners and rabidly in-your-face, barely disguised political tales of refugees fleeing their home and facing persecution, bigotry and war in the mortal realms... the BL submissions window is open again... https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/08/14/your-chance-to-write-for-black-library/ Really can't wait to ummmmmmmm and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh and forget to submit anything on time.

I'm genuinely amazed Raging Hormones models are more expensive than GWs. You'd think if all you had to do was wait for the market leader to come up with the ideas and then remove some clothes and enlarge the ****** on the female sculpts your costs would be much reduced and you could pass that on to the customer, I guess it all comes down to economies of scale in the end.

Hey if no one else has proffered to help with the fluff I’m in the midst of a work lull so have some spare time, happy to have a crack over the next week and a bit. Just picked up the WC set so only just reading it but should be able to create something ok in a similar theme to the official ones.

just building my terrain now, very happy to have seen that Waywalker article beforehand! That mild gripe aside I can totally see why they've included core set terrain in some of the plans in the Mausoleum and Stormvault sets, it's a pretty fair bet that most people who will be playing this AND who have bought one of the Ravaged Land sets will, if they don't own it themselves, have access to the core set amongst their group. Anyway I look at it this way, you get 24 terrain cards for that set and then a bonus 12 for creating more expanded games and are use of all the frankly pretty great terrain. I mean even 24 cards when combined with deployment cards and twists and the like gives you more than enough options to be getting on with. The 3" height thing is again something that whilst yes I can imagine it annoying some people I think you just need to be sensible about, the terrain was always going to have to work with existing kits and I can't think of any rule in AoS that deals with fractions of inches. I think people just have be reasonable and take it as read that each level of the terrain counts as 3". One thing I will say is that I've literally just put the bell tower together and the first thing I did is go on Ebay and buy a second sprue of it for a tenner. What I'm going to do is take the smaller highest platform (and its struts) from the new sprue and attach it to the side of the belltower jutting out from the middle platform where the long ladder goes. That creates about an inch or two more space where the ladder rests and will look a lot better I reckon. Then I'm going to build the 2nd tower but cut and mangle it around where the bell is (with the bell having fallen off and resting on its side on the platform), so I'll an extra 1 level platform and have a spare pair of ladders too.

@Duke of Gisoreux Such an insane collection... But made me think... NASA detects a giant warpstone meteor heading, bizarrely, on a collision course with your house. You have time to save 5 models, what makes it out alive?

As I understand it, so other views are available but... 1. If you go for a Grand Alliance as your allegiance then yes you can use any units with that Keyword with no restriction amongst to points or listed alliances (there may be some very specific examples which explicitly don't allow it, but I can't think of any off the top of my head and if they were it would say). And so yes in. GA:Order army you could have Sylvaneth and DoK fighting bark to chainmail bikini. 2. Probably, certain people will find any excuse to act like dicks. Personally I like to create nice fluffy armies with vastly convoluted back stories that ties everything up with a nice bow, but no one else is under that obligation. If it's a match play/pitched battle and it's legal in the rules then they can play it. 3. With Open/Narrative games then in theory no. Of course a lot of people who play what they would happily describe as Narrative games use points and will generally speaking go by the matched play army composition rules, just because generally speaking they have been thematically chosen and works with what you have in mind and means you just build one army to play across all forms of the game. Setting up these kind of games actually requires more nuance and discussion between players before playing, and people might create their own impositions and the like to suit the kind of game they have in mind but the heart, for me, of narrative games is telling a story and that means things like army composition, whether that's the specific units you can pick, allegiances etc can be ignored/edited in any way that helps you tell that story. 4. Certainly in matched play they are. But again in Narrative or Open you're using the tools the game gives you to create the kind of game you want to play. Maybe you want to recreate a battle where Vampires and Stormcast make a desperate last stand together against a larger chaos force, it's totally lore friendly and has happened in several stories. Now again your only restriction is what you agree to beforehand, of course if that's how you're playing then there's a pretty good chance that the story your game is telling is as important to you as the result. So in that case I would imagine for the sake of telling ap articular story or enacting a certain battle most people would find reasonable reasons why Order/Death/Destruction might on occasion team up, and perhaps when Chaos might just in an edge case ally with a Destruction horde. 5. Sadly I think she's homeless except for in a GA: Order army, there's a few units/models like this that have originated in sidegames and have for various reasons been left a bit high & dry (Sepulchral Guard was another example).

@Tropical Ghost General 99.9% of that sounds great, though, personally, I'd have some minor concerns with some of the points in your final paragraph. I think having a CoC reveals a depressing state of affairs BUT sadly it seems like it's probably needed even if just to set the tone, so no issues there. But I'd be less sure though about being expected to 'gently remind' a player that he's might be putting himself in a bad situation. In friendly games, of course if that's what you both decide (I can imagine some people not appreciating armchair quarterbacking, especially from their opponent, no matter how well intentioned). But in a tournament? Telling someone what your units can do if they ask is one thing, but actively warning them off? I mean if the point of a unit is that they can do this particular thing and you're advising your opponent how to avoid them doing it then you're potentially making that unit worthless and actively making life harder for yourself. I can see how it might be perceived as a 'Gotcha' moment, but the alternative way of looking at it is that this is a war game between (in theory) two evenly matched sides so ultimately winning should be about your strategy and tactics in game (and lucky dice rolls). Playing so as to (legally) trick your opponent into doing something which you can take advantage of is surely the point? As I said nearly everything else sounds grand, that one point just strikes me as something that could end up annoying more people than not if it's presented as an explicit way you're supposed to behave.

Please drive carefully...

1) I'd say it's doable, of course, but will probably be a full on mass pub brawl from the off with much reduced scope for doing much more than just smashing into what's in front of you. You'd probably start to run into a few issues that need a light rules touch in regard to battleplans setups, objective and terrain setups. 2) New GHB has a whole new section to devoted to 1000pts 'Meeting Engagements' games played on smaller tables (30-36" x 40-48") plus other fun rules for close quarter battles and streets of death games set in cities which could be good for smaller table games. As for viability frankly I'd take what a lot of people here, myself included, say with a large pinch of salt. If you're playing at home with friends that gives you so much more leeway and scope for experimentation and having fun than having to play in a shop with some random weirdo or at a tournament. 3) Jan WD Skirmish rules are ok, not a huge advance on the previous published ones. As ever with these things some bits work, some don't, but they're not a huge commitment so again if you're at home, playing with people you know you'll soon figure out what bits maybe don't work for you and can be fixed. Underworlds is a great, tight game and I'd definitely recommend it (though wait a month or so for the new box), it's a very different game though so it's a nice side dish to AoS rather than a replacement. Warcry, I'm waiting for my set to arrive but by all accounts it's great and could potentially be more suited. One thing if you're playing at home then two Warcry boards is pretty much the perfect size for a 1000pt game, grab the starter box and one of the ravaged lands box sets and you'll have a really lush setup covered in cool terrain to play on at home.

The Agony, Ecstasy and... The Ennui The devotees of the Princess of Excess are a cruel and mercurial lot, addicted to extreme sensations and driven into rapturous frenzies by the scarlet lash of the whip and the cold kiss of steel. As battle rages on and the delirious cries of pain rise to a deadly crescendo the veil between the mortal realms and the pleasure pavilions of Slaanesh is rent asunder and the scittering, hellish denizens of the Realm of Chaos descend to feast in an ecstatic orgy of pain and perverse pleasure. But a life lived without restraint soon blunts the senses and so the Hedonites of the Great Serpent must constantly chase new highs, seek out new depravities and push themselves to ever greater excesses to stave off the cold, spirit sapping boredom that haunts all those who walk this path and can make even the clamour of war seem a dull affair. TLDR: From turn 2 onwards all available depravity points must be spent at the the end of your movement phase otherwise they are lost* as the sensations subside and the ruinous powers' attention drifts to more exciting scenes. Means you can summon lots of stuff but you'd need to really go for it, and plan accordingly, to get something game changing on the board. * or 50% lost, I dunno. Or make it so DPs don't accrue against, for example, Zombies/Skeletons and then everyone starts bringing that Undead mercenary company along for the ride.

It has elements of that tombstone with the pyramid/rays of light on it. Chuck in the oblique reference to 'curry favour' and it's all but confirmed the new Death faction is going to have a heavy Indo-Asian aesthetic to it. Which, well... depending on whether anyone at GW's been on a cultural sensitivity course in recent years could be absolutely awesome or, let's say, less so. Or it's a new 40K White Scars model or something like that of course...

I know this is home-brew heresy and not really what you were asking for so obviously feel free to ignore with prejudice but the fact that you pre-set up scenery and pre-roll for their features does bring up something I've been tempted to try and that's scenery tokens are only flipped over and revealed the first time a unit goes within 6" of it (maybe more for a Wizard if you wanted to be extra-fluffy). Just to add a little frisson of fear and doubt to tactical manoeuvres. Apart from that, in my not exactly Tournament focused opinion, it all looks good. I like the Realm Rules but totally get why people don't like some. I think careful selection can bring them in without resulting in too many toys being thrown out of prams. One thing I would be interested in seeing tournaments do is mix up the formats a bit, so over the course of the whole thing you play a mix of 2000pts and 1000pts ME games (in a perfect world with all options available I'd throw in a Warcry round too but obviously not yet). It would help with fitting in all the games and less mentally taxing perhaps to play something a bit lighter at the end of the day. I'm sure this would go down like a bucket of cold sick with a lot of players but if you had to build your armies for all formats from the same pool of units it would add an extra element to putting together a list and hopefully encourage slightly more diverse, or at least less brutally optimised, lists.

Ah I didn't have the first Sylvaneth BT to hand to check, saying that looking right now in the Core Book Wanderers get one single paragraph at the end of the Free Peoples section, which whilst it briefly mentions their schism with Alarielle & the Sylvaneth spends much more of its limited space talking about their role and relationship with the cities. So, to me, it seems like they've ended up where they were always going to end up.

Another ‘archetype’ and pretty decent artwork to keep us going. Just, checks notes, 8-11 months till we get to play the game... 😐 https://www.cubicle7games.com/age-of-sigmar-soulbound-knight-venator/