JPjr

I have a fix for the Seraphon spawning issue... Picture the scene... The vast templeship drifts through the inky Azyr void, the frost rimed ziggurat slowly following a millennia long orbit tracing ancient star-worn paths laid down in aeons past. Inside the ship slumbers, corridors of stone and gold bifurcate, splinter and rearrange themsleves into new shapes and patterns as upon his throne the ancient Slann star master Cuahutéemoc dreams. All is quiet, just the background hum as magic courses through the veins in the rock walls, the occasional primal sound emanating from the vast jungle that is spread out on the templeship's lowest levels. Silent, scarred Saurus stand guard at the spawning pools whilst a few hand picked Skink priests tend to the rituals that maintain the vast city sized structure's course through the heavens. You could lose yourself for days amongst the ever shifting maze of tunnels, corridors, bridges that stretch across yawning chasms but with careful patience Chiclub navigated the ever changing route to the Great Orrery with practised ease. The small Skink starpriest's claws broke the unearthly silence as they tapped out a regular rhythm on the black stone corridor. Flashes of azure energy pulsed through the stone walls etheric veins, illuminating his way but in truth Chiclub had made this journey a thousand times since his spawning and despite the starcraft's labyrinthine nature could find his way blindfolded if required. -------------------------- Fancy writing over lets power through this... so imagine that thanks to the energies unleashed by the necroquake an ambitious Tzeentchian magister Fluxus Capacitus has completed a ritual opening a portal inside the sacred space of the templeship from which a maddening legion of gibbering daemons erupts. Queue insane battle taking place inside the ship as hordes of capering pink and blue horrors, avian terrors, screaming creatures of the abyss rip through reality and straight into a load of obsidian club wielding dinosaurs. On a narrow bridge, suspended several hundred metres above the ship's jungle floor, that leads to the throne room a Lord of Change brutally leads the charge smashing his way through ranks of Saurus guards. Bathed in pink and blue eldritch energies, the cackling daemon discharges blasts of change magick, stripping leathery skin from bone, transmuting the stoic seraphon into metallic puddles. With a mighty roar a huge Carnosaur charges the greater daemon, it's mighty jaws snapping and fastening around the daemon's neck. Fast forward and the forces of Tzeentch has pushed on to the throne room and the LoC strides triumphantly towards the Slann, still seemingly dreaming upon his dais. But suddenly the Starmaster's eyes blink open and oh ******, IT IS ON. Epic battle just got MORE EPIC. Cue several pages detailing just how epic this battle is, like truly truly EPIC, come on you've got an imagination, magical nuclear war basically. -------------------------- hmmmm, this is taking me longer than expected, apologies to anyone stuck reading this, let's try and wrap it up... -------------------------- OK! So, end result the LoC lies a bloody pile of fizzing feathers and pulped daemon flesh, the Slann lies broken upon his throne, slowly breathing the final few breaths of a life that has lasted millennia, his attendant skink starpriest, staring on in horror as the light goes out in his eyes. With that the templeship lurches horribly and begins to fall from the heavens, a blazing falling star that rips its way through reality and visible to people in every realm. Falling through the realms the ship appears as a giant fireball tearing the night sky of Ghyran apart. Just before the templeship crashes into a diseased, Nurgle tainted jungle the Slann uses up the last of his spirit to slow the ship's fall, preventing an extinction level event, and instead the templeship crashes into the jungle, breaking into 2/3 giant pieces but generally maintaining its form. The next day the sun rises over the verdant landscape, the highest levels of the mighty templeship's pyramidal structures rise above the canopy. The few Seraphon survivors are at a loss, their slann master is dead, their star treading home now buried deep in the Ghyran soil, dead dinos litter the jungle alongside the bubbling remains of daemons, that thanks to the vast levels of arcane energy within the ship's walls have remained in the material world. Days & nights pass, the Skink starriest Chiclub tends to the remains of his slann master, preparing his body for death in a ritual no Skink has had to perform for 1000s of years. An ancient, dying race one step closer to total annihilation. Anyway to cut an extremely long story just a little bit shorter (sadLOL), the vast magick in the templeship interacts with the life giving energies of Ghyran and the mercurial change magick bound within the Tzeentchian daemons remains to cause something wonderful, and unexpected, to happen. The first full moon after the Slann's remains has been interred the spawning pools deep in the lower levels of the now jungle bound city begins to foam and bubble, a furious maelstrom of roiling energies erupt and from the pool emerges a young Slann, the first of their race to be born since the early days of the world that was. Unlike his elders who have lived for thousands of years bound by arcane patterns laid down in the stars, and who are tired, ancient creatures fighting a rear guard action this new slann is an impetuous, life filled being, the union of different magicks and forces, brought together. Throwing the stinking shattered body of the Lord of Change into the spawning pool, it reemerges as a new being, a giant iridescent feathered serpent, the legendary Quetzalcoatl which the young Slann takes for his mount. As the life giving properties of ghyran merge with the ancient slann spells, the new Seraphon spawned from the pool take on a more physical space than their star born peers, and from this remote jungle base a new kind of Seraphon empire begins to emerge. Where the ancient Slann were content to dream their schemes and follow paths and plans laid down at the dawn of creation, this new breed are ready to take the fight to the primordial enemy and play a more active role in the mortal realms. -------------------------- Bloody hell... This was supposed to just be a note. -------------------------- So basically, there are now a branch of Seraphon who are now physical imbued with the life magicks of Ghyran, and we get an amazing new centrepiece model of a slann riding a giant feathered serpent (incidentally the old WHFB rules for Coatl gave them an ability to change the landscape beneath them as they flew over, so there's the nod to it being a reborn lord of change). We'd also have an amazing setting, a ruined jungle magical city, for Warhammer Quest or Skirmish style games. I seriously cant believe I just wrote all that ****** nonsense. Please don't let any of my clients see this.

@pseudonyme yeah it's annoying, the Marshall does make a great unit leader for my Skeleton spear mob though and the one climbing out the ground is a decent marker but definitely feels like a waste as they're great.

@Chikout unless I'm getting it all wrong, that's saying that allies do not get access to the main armies spells/prayers, not that the spells/prayers cant be used on allies.

I dunno, whilst I have no idea if Slaangor will be a thing at all (and tbh have little to no skin in this game) I think you could quite easily do Slaanesh worshipping beastmen by just leaning into satyr myths. I'd be down for a mob of drunk, lascivious and priapic goat/horse headed beastmen assembling in the wilds under a sallow, gluttonous moon to play eldritch pipes and beat out ecstatic rhythms on crude drums as they cavort lewdly around a ****** and balls shaped herdstone.

I have been thinking about this on & off, and the one thing that did occur to me that could in some way, shape or form hint at a possible new, or relaunched/redesigned, Death Battletome/Faction is the fabulous (model wise at least) WH Underworlds: Sepulchral Guard warband. Firstly literally every single other WHU warband from both 'seasons' has been from a BT faction (or got one in the case of Skaven). Then we know that a lot of the decisions on who gets model/time/attention is predominantly led by the design team, so obviously someone there was not just thinking about Skeletons quite some time ago but actually designing models (and great ones at that). And right now The Sepulchral Guard are in a weird limbo as it stands as you can't actually take them in a LoN army except as allies so they're a bit stuck on their own (unless I'm getting that bit totally wrong) with a pretty underwhelming AoS warscroll. Plus The Soul Wars book featured, reasonably prominently, a Deathrattle prince and his army so that's one in their column (of course same book did also feature a Zombie Queen so...). - - - - - - - Where I do have a problem fitting in Death factions into these games is their reliance on magic and especially the bringing models back after they've been wiped out mechanic that is so baked into the very essence, and so points values, of Death factions. In a smaller, tighter games like in the new WD Skirmish rules where constantly bringing back models might be off the table, so to speak, that puts them at an inherent disadvantage. Obviously they can create special rules for them to either mitigate that or incorporate it into the game but if you just take them off-the-peg I'd have thought you'll have some issues.

ah that's really great to hear, glad to have helped in some small way. I'm looking forward to trying a few different variations next time I get to play a bit.

Malal, the chaos god of people that have been into this hobby too long and like to moan about how things aren't as good as they used to be in 1986

am I going mad or wasn't there an almost exactly identical rumour engine a while ago (without the upside down face) that turned up on a recently revealed model. this is doing my head in but I'm positive something was shown recently with that kind of staple-esque stitching, either that or I'm stuck in the universe's most underwhelming and really, really boring temporal anomaly.

A big thing that could determine the available factions at the start, and this could especially be the case with Death, will be how the game handles magic which in a small model, melee focused game could be problematic.

Spitballing ideas here but since it can be such an important factor in a game it feels like rather than binning it maybe it’s worth keeping it but giving players more agency so it becomes a tactical decision rather than just blind luck. Maybe something as simple as both players start with a pool of, let’s say, 10 dice and they can choose how many dice they want to use up each turn when rolling. That way you can attempt to force the issue on certain turns. Or similar but with a pool of points (or even use Command Points) to modify the results. On a related note I thought an interesting, thematic Allegiance Ability for Tzeentch would be that you can secretly (obviously with someone checking in comp play) roll all your priority dice before the game and then rearrange them into whatever order you want before the game starts, so you have some idea how things might shake up and can plan appropriately.

@HorticulusTGA good shout. Though TBH I would be amazed if it’s not SCE, it would be cool and different to with Devoted but as I’m also pretty sure the non-chaos factions will, at least to begin with, be made up of existing models I think that rules that out. And really if they were bringing out new models for these warbands then I’m pretty sure we’d be getting new Stormcast of some stripe (my ****** bad bet would probably be on scout/reiver types). Also let’s face it, if this is going to be a major new system for GW they’re not going to ignore the main protagonists, no matter how much a few people online moan about them. The one that really interests me is the missing icon, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just left out for aesthetic reasons. Likewise I think it’s for a Death faction, and whilst we have 3 Death factions available to fill the slots you have to think there’s a reason they’re leaving one mysterious. You have to think at some point Skeletons or Zombies are due a redo, could be pointing to that. Or just something totally new.

Ha, I can well imagine, though I doubt many attendees are there specifically to see their favourite DJs take the crowd on an emotional yet educational musical journey... Been a few years since I’ve been to one but thankfully fetish clubs (in the uk anyway) used to opt for a more palatable, to me anyway, mix of techno, synth pop and industrial. If i have to be in the presence of lots of horny men I want to at least enjoy the music...

it sounds like the kind of music they'd play in a bad '00s Hollywood film where someone goes to a 13 yr olds idea of an 'edgy underground rave' and lots of people that look like they're from LA engage in performative acts of hilariously mild social taboo busting. so yeah it works pretty well TBF.

Point: Counterpoint: Hmmm, that didn't format correctly so that 2nd quote was from @Sleboda in the power creep thread FYI. EDIT: it did format correctly, all praise the omnissiah or whomever its fantasy expy is.

@xking, @Skreech Verminking

From what I can gather it's something to do with the stormvaults that Sigmar locked all these new endless bad boys away in. It's either an actual stormvault itself or some kind of key or controller that either gives you access to the other stuff or gives you more control over them or something along those lines. 🤷‍♂️ But anyway whatever it is, it seems that any army can take it, so it's not just limited to SCE.

Considering that deep pockets, short arms could be both a literal and metaphorical description of Duardin, I think the thrifty reusing of an existing model is pretty thematic really.

makes sense. I figure 3 from each faction and figure from the glyphs we'll have... Death / LoN/Soulblight | Nighthaunt | Flesh Eater Courts Order / Stormcast Eternals | Daughters of Khaine | Idoneth Deepkin Destruction / Iron Jawz | Gloomspite and then I guess Ogors of some kind (as you say top left) or possibly a much slimmer chance I guess could it could be Bonesplitterz

ah yes, skin stockings, this is exactly the kind of wholesome content that got me into WH back as a curious 10 yr old 3 decades ago.

ah yeah actually closer than I thought, maybe it was the addition of the base that threw me. still I think the arcane hazards are nice models, I got them as much for use in AoS as in WHU (in fact I think a couple of them err on the side of being a bit of a pain in WHU) and can't imagine they were a huge must buy for most people when released so might as well give them another chance to shine.

so the question I now have is does... does the Keeper of Secrets tuck its stockings into its hooves, somehow (?), or are they actually just wearing hoof shaped shoes, which in turn raises questions about the existence of chaotic cobblers. this is not something that I was expecting to contemplate today...

makes sense to me to limit what you can have, yes Kill Team gave rules in the corebook for all available factions but that only came to 16 factions, at present AoS still has around 26 identified different factions. With a good selection of the main factions represented I see no real harm in limiting what's available to start with in a different brand new system, allows them to create a tighter, much more flavourful game. Sure there will be someone narked their favourite army might not get a look in but looks like we're just talking warbands of around half a dozen models, so sorry but if you're not expressly catered for you'll just have to try something new, it's not going to be a major outlay in the grand scheme of things, or just sulk in your basement. I imagine you'll get rules for different factions in the corebook so you can play them from the start and then they'll release boxes for individual named warbands like Kill Team that come with some extra stuff, scenery, maybe some more chaos beasts and individual cards/rules/traits/command abilities/however it spins out.

it's similar, not 100% the same. like the Nagash head spell thing looks like the throne from the Arcane Hazards set juiced up. In fact it does make me think they could/should/might give AoS rules for all the models in the Arcane Hazards set, makes sense to me as they're very much just a novelty addition for Underworlds, so giving them a bit more purpose would no doubt shift a few more.

I'll be honest I was expecting something like Dracoth sized salamander cavalry for Fyreslayers whenever they were redone to add some diversity to the range and give them some fast moving units but hey ho. It's natural that in the mad rush to get lots of army books out some of them will have slightly lacklustre additions BUT if you want a silver lining think of it this way, there's nothing stopping them going back and adding bits and pieces into armies once this rush is over. Big push this year to get the BTs up to date with allegiances, traits, spells, terrain etc, so at least on a mechanical level all (or a very healthy %) of factions feel 'competitive' or 'balanced' or just 'cared for', then once that's done you can always add in new units at your leisure, especially as we'll have Underworlds, Warcry and maybe some board/boxed games through which they can release new models here and there. Might be utterly fanciful but you never know. I like the look of the Forbidden Powers models, they have that slight cartoony look to them that a lot of the terrain/endless spells have but still I think they're cool, very Shyish looking so far which makes sense but maybe more to come. So all cool. Slaanesh models are great, Keeper of Secrets is one of those buy whatever you collect models, great looking thing. Anyway as for the new paint...

I wouldn't exactly call them the 'focus of underworlds' they just got a war band. And then I just think of Warcry as part of the 'massive model and book release', in the way that Speed Freakz was really just part of the big Ork push last year (I think it will be clearly much more of a genuine standalone game that will be supported for a while unlike SF but it will do the same trick of getting models out there). As I've said before my expectation is we'll probably get Warcry pithing the next few months, a good few, if not all, of the additional war bands and then after those are released they'll do a combined StD/Everchosen/Darkoath battletome, at which point the accompanying model release wouldn't necessarily have to be ridiculously massive and you'll have lots of people already with the bare bones of a new army to reel in. Anyway I'm probably wrong about this, so we'll just have to wait and see!