JPjr

Yeah it's weird that the Maledictions cover is good* with a cool folk horror vibe but then the cover for the Drachenfels reissue (which I recall being pretty good when I last read it**) looks like some cheap Fighting Fantasy knock off from 1988 that your mum bought you by mistake. * and very unlike Black Library's normal covers. ** Full disclosure I was 12 so it might need a re-read before I go all out and declare it the best piece of literature ever.

Can't believe we're at 4 pages now discussing a little picture of some coins and a pot. Incroyable... No wonder most editorial websites that cater to this hobby are so ****** awful & borderline illiterate, to quote Roger Mellie "Why bother feeding the pigs cherries when they are happy with ******?" Anyway on further reflection it's clearly the base for a new centrepiece model Halfling warlord who will lead the revamped Ogor army when they get a Battletome.

Not sure what all you fools have been smoking but it's clearly the first hint of a huge new Zoat army.

@Bradipo322 pretty sure they both say ‘required’ not ‘included’

certainly they would if they had a rule that if you charge a unit of spear/pike men then before you get to attack you risk getting stuck like a pig yourself.

Yeah, Free People/Cities/Guilds/Whatever only lags behind Flesh Eater Courts in the great-concept-that’s-screwed-over-by-using-old-fantasy-models league. Much as i’d love to see a really interesting new range of racially (in every sense) & sexually integrated units to totally redefine the look it feels like it might be a way off. I’ve said it before but I’d just take all the Empire models from FP to Ironweld to Collegiate Arcane, combine with all the stranded Aelf factions and Dispossessed. Weed out a selection of older or less useful, poor selling, bad models to streamline the selection,rewrite what warscrolls needs to be rewritten so they work together and present it as one force. Make it so your choice of general determines the, rough, overall composition of your army and what battleline and allegiance abilities you have, combine that with some rules for creating a city and a handful of new units and you’re done. People want an all Aelf army then they can still do that, same with Duardin or Human but with options to add in what they need without using allies. Stop-gap measure, and I’d much prefer to see a purpose built force with a new distinctive look but it’d keep em viable for a couple more years whilst they do roll out new stuff (and means they can make new Light/Dark Aelves truly unique without trying to shoehorn old units into them).

You read interviews with the background writers, like Graeme Davis, going right back to the 80s and the story is the same. They'd get a model dumped on their desk and often told to come up with a story and background for it to go in an advert in the next WD or on the back of the box. Sometimes they'd get a steer from the designer, but sometimes maybe just a name for the model if that. In fact if I recall correctly, no guarantee, I think it was GD who actually at one point made an effort to go through the existing catalogue and create back stories and rules for loads of them as a large percentage didn't have any at all.

Yeah, kind of, with Tactics. I mean they're in the books so you don't need cards but it's quicker and easier with them. I just think, that especially with a small model count game that is focused on melee fighting, adding some additional element to the combat system makes it much more interesting and skilful but wouldn't slow things down intolerably. It just gives you much more agency as a player, and gives fights more of a duel feel, which when you only have a handful of models and want to make the game stand as it's own thing rather than just a quick version of the big game makes a lot of sense to me.

In the absence of anything as trifling as actual evidence I've now half convinced myself that Warcry will include some kind of card based play as well. Not necessarily like Underworlds in the gotta collect them all sense but just a way of making smaller fights more crunchy and involved, but without piling on loads of rules you need to keep looking up.

Giant chaos hound pulled Chariots. Light cavalry, maybe on something slightly mutated but not too much, zebroxes maybe. A shaman type hero. 3 witches around a cauldron. Maybe some kind of oversized melee hero. Beastmaster type unit with the eponymous whip handed leader and a pack of jaw filled frights. Some mix of archers/javelins/melee barbarian units. Maybe something like a unit of skin-changers that hide inside other units like goblin fanatics then burst out in bear/wolf form. A wicker-man style terrain piece. Chaos-undivided endless spells.

I think post-'Plague Garden' there are now enterprising Azyrite tour operators organising weekend city breaks to the Realm of Chaos. You might need to check your insurance coverage but it's certainly not a guaranteed one-way trip...

In the grand tradition of taking some minor, probably inconsequential, detail and running wild with it has anyone else noticed that the seemingly random new Underworlds board that's just gone up for pre-order is titled the Forbidden Chambers. Coincidence maybe but, in regards to the lore at least, it might end up having some vague connection to the upcoming Forbidden Powers expansion.

But how important is intra-party power balance really? If it's basically something like Warhammer Quest with a few more rules then maybe but if it's an actual roleplaying game then should it matter? Sure your normal sized, looking and powered human might want to make himself look busy at the back of the party if you're up against a rampaging Bloodthirster but if you're writing interesting adventures then there will surely be plenty of situations where they can do a lot of things that your 8ft tall murder monk or a sentient tree can't. I saw this come up on a board the other day, someone complaining, at excruciating ****** length (of course), that Cubicle 7 had ****** the bed with 4th ed. WFRP because Elf PCs were stronger than humans, who could never catch up on power levels. Seriously if that's what matters shouldn't you just be playing something like Witcher or Dark Souls? Like I'm not sure that a game where you can start off as a Halfling beggar or a High Elf Noble is really worrying about that kind of thing. Plus it ignores all the interesting stuff it throws up, sure that Elf Noble might be all kinds of badass in a fight compared to your pox ridden human rat catcher but if 90% of your games are set in and amongst a backward, superstitious, fearful human population then again that throws up loads of situations where ol' pointy ears might find himself constantly getting stiffed, distrusted or even attacked.

absolutely howling that this is a sentence that can legitimately be written in English. 😂 but anyway yes, as I understand it the Slann who had been hiding on the orb secretly keeping all the daemonic powers there infighting got killed but was then brought back by the time cannon, so they're all rucking away on the orb again apparently.

I used to make loads of pin badges to give away with various projects, and I just realised they could be a nice way of making tokens. you can buy a kid's badge making machine for something like $30 that would do the job.

There's a, no doubt apocryphal, story that's attributed to various august personages, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eisenhower etc etc, about when they were asked to plan a pathway across a newly developed campus. So the story goes rather than just lay down what they thought would make most sense they recommended seeding the area with grass, leaving it for a period of time and then laying the path down on the naturally developed, well trodden path that people had instinctively made. Not sure why but that story always springs to mind whenever the weekly call to respect the sanctity of the rumour thread goes up. 🤔 Anyway, back to the rumours, I'm looking forward to hearing that GW might be releasing a Battletome and some scenery for an existing faction at some point in the next 2 weeks to 18 months.

Idoneth & Maggotkin SC boxes up next week... https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/02/17/pre-order-next-week-start-collecting-sets-boards-and-a-very-special-commissar/ IDK 1 Soulrender / 3 eels / 10 namarti thralls Maggotkin 1 Lord of Blights / 2 Pusboyle Blightlords / 5 Putrid Blightkings

Yeah PCs weren’t cheap, I think my dad bought our first one around 92, I still remember having to spend about 12 hours installing Wing Commander III. weirdly actually this has just reminded me that one of the first computer games I ever had was in fact published by Games Workshop, ‘Chaos: The Battle of the Wizards‘, amazing game!

whhaaaaaaaaat?! wheel & come again selectah! 25 years ago... That's only 93! I'd say by then a huge % of (young) people either owned or had relatively easy access to consoles. we were only a year away from the launch of the first playstation and had already gone through 4 generations of Ataris, NES, SNES, Megadrive and the like. Even by the mid/late eighties loads of people I knew had computers of some kind whether they were Amstrads (shout out to the CPC464!), Commodores, Sinclairs etc and we were trotting off down the newsagents to buy Codemasters games for only around £1.99.

I think this is totally key, I think we'll see an increasingly aggressive drive to market GW products to people well outside of all our circles. There's this absolutely massive market of people out there that are about as far from us obsessive weirdos as you can get but who over the last ten years have happily gone to see all the Tolkien films, bought the DVDs, are obsessed with Game of Thrones, Marvel movies etc etc etc but would never describe themselves as 'fantasy' or 'Sci-fi' fans and I'd say that until now they haven't been great at marketing to (or just haven't bothered). We've seen Dungeons & Dragons start to tap into that market and whilst that's a lot of an easier sell than Warhammer they'd be fools not to try and grab this once in a bad moon opportunity to grow the hobby and reach out to the kind of people that would never normally consider it.

I would expect to see more actually. Boardgames are HUUUUUUUUGE at the moment, so these are a win/win for GW. Push out games that will appeal to the tonnes of people who might not be into big wargames but either enjoy straight up boardgames or are part of the equally large new wave of RPG fans who might just want something in a fantasy vein to play quickly and easily with friends. You sell a load of games, shift some more models, introduce the Warhammer worlds to new people and at least a % off them might start exploring the main games. Especially when there's now more of a natural progression available, like... "oh this was fun and I enjoyed painting these half dozen models, ah so you're saying I can take these models and also have the basis for a skirmish/kill team sized game, nice I'll try that now." and then 6 months later.... "so yeah here's my 5000 point Seraphon army and over here is my 4000 point Tau army and I'm just about to start a new Darkoath army, and my bank manager keeps calling me and I havent seen my real friends for 2 months"

it looks like at least some of the Stormvault models are already existing ones too. Pretty sure one is Whatsisname Stormsire from the Nightvault box. Edit: actually it looks like the 5 models you get are half from the Cursebreakers Warband and half from the Farstriders Warband.

Is it just me or are the Nighthaunt models for 'Dreadfane' just the Myrmourn Banshees?

Remember what they've just announced today is 'Stormvault', a boardgame. This is, I believe (could be wrong), something totally different to the teased 'Forbidden Power' expansion for AoS, which I still think will be some variation on the Malign Sorcery Endless Spells box (still thinking maybe magical terrain but we'll see).

They should just give all the Black Library books the equivalent of Warscroll keywords. Just listing the main factions, repeating main characters, series, timeline, etc. So just looking at the 2 in front of me you could have... SOUL WARS Keywords: Soul Wars, Shyish, Nagash, Sigmar, Stormcast, Nighthaunt, Balthus Arum PLAGUE GARDEN Keywords: Stormcast, Nurgle, Ghyran, Realm of Chaos, Hallowed Knights, Order of the Fly, Gardus, Gutrot Spume Obviously very rough and just off the top of my head but could make it easier to find books you want whilst tipping your hat to the actual game itself.