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Lucky Snake Eyes

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Posts posted by Lucky Snake Eyes

  1. 7 hours ago, Joseph Mackay said:

    I’m seeing a lot of people taking issue with Teclis autocasting spells, which brings me to Nagash: although he doesn’t ‘autocast’ he does have enough buffs that he mostly can’t fail and/or you can’t stop his spells. Why does nobody take issue with him? it’s because of a bias against Aelves that a lot of people seem to have lately

    Nagash is undeniably competing for best caster in the game, but keep in mind the 200+ point difference between him and teclis meaning a significant difference in chaff hanging around to protect him (for argument lets discount LoN as they're being replaced with an army we don't know enough about yet and use bonereapers as our example) Sure points aside both have crazy casting in two different flavours, but Nagash also has the caveat of his casting weakening as he brackets, which is easy to do with some shooting. Melee armies will have a harder time at bracketing Nagash but that logic also applies to teclis. I feel while nagash can be a game changing caster in the early game his overall effectiveness is hampered by the spells he has access to, Nagash gets one spell list in OBR consisting of mostly single target debuff spells, a buff spell for their exploding 6s, a mortal wound save that doesn't stack with existing saves and is only applicable with units with shields, a spell to give himself a 5+ negate that doesn't stack and a teleport if he lives and a spell fro d3 RDP which he'll be religiously casting as taking him cripples the armies RDP generation. And we don't know what or how may he'll get in gravelords if he makes it in it. Meanwhile Teclis has 3 spell lores at his disposal, sure he can only cast 4 at a time but he's got a tool in his toolbox for every occasion and all he needs is a spell portal for the harder to reach spells.

    I feel people are failing to articulate that the biggest difference between nagash and teclis as spellcasters isn't the quantity or reliability of their casting, but the quality of spells they can cast. Yes 8 acrane bolts can wreak some havoc, but doubling CP costs, mass bravery debuffs and now a teleport spell can be pretty game changing. I do feel nagash could use some tweaking but honestly if he's playable in gravelords and they have some strong spells then even current nagash will be drawing the same ire as teclis, possible even more.

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  2. 28 minutes ago, madmac said:

    When an army is obviously OP its also almost inevitably tearing up the tournament scene, which is very evidently not the case with LRL, who are played heavily in tournaments to mostly middling effect. They do above average, nothing really special. They are far from being the strongest army in the game, which is why even this thread is full of "Power doesn't matter!" disclaimers from the people venting about Lumineth,  and why seemingly 90% of the anecdotes in this thread about their horrible play experiences end with the LRL player losing for some mysterious reason.

    I think the most you can say about LRL balance-wise is that even if one or two units are arguably OP or undercosted in a vacuum, it's not enough to elevate the army to being truly OP overall. As it is, I suspect that just nerfing Sentinels and/or Teclis would cause their competitive performance to nose-dive into lowish-tier.  The new units they are getting may allow them to adapt, or not, none of them that I've seen seem particularly scary. 

     

    Yeah something can be underpowered and still feel like ****** to play against. Personally for me it's how lazy vanari are with their sunmetal rule. I mention in my initial post in this thread that the reason they drain the fun out of the game for me isn't because of their mediocre damage output, it's because I'm never rolling saves when my opponent is running teclis and all vanari. Sure high rend exists but it's never across an entire army. Meanwhile Vanari don't care how much you debuff their to hit or wound, they only care about rolling a 5 or 6 anyways and it's just lazily copy pasted across enough units to form a cohesive 2000pt army. It's just taking a mechanic that removes defensive options (armour, hit/wound debuffs and in the case of sentinels line of sight) and giving it to an army's worth of units that kills it for me. Several ways to play defensively are removed in favour of "just don't get hit".

  3. 7 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

    1. DMG isn't compensated by range, doing 4 wounds to a warchanter means you are eating the dmg from his buff. Either an attack kills something or it doesn't. And, most of these heroes are cheap enough to take a spare, and good enough that even if the model isn't killed 2 provides some tangible benefits. This is the adapt and overcome phase of the game, lists don't get to remain static. Lambent light is an 18" spell meaning you are putting your vulnerable piece in range of the spell more often than not. This is what I mean by player accountability. 

    2. Well models have relative value. If you buddy plays LRL maybe take warchanters instead of Spell Casters, if you are going to a tournament you are hedging anyway there are lots of situation in which a teleport isn't useful and many that you can't be sure you'll get the spell off. A lot of armies can spec into a magic dom if they so choose, its just by their nature that LRL rock a lot of Unbinds and potentially several at +1. Teclis only has +1 to unbind, and requires range. I don't think he could be much worse at unbinding than that and remain Teclis. The Warchanter needs to be within 12" at the start of the hero phase which means it could be anywhere between 18" and 21" away from the unit that you want to hit with the buffed unit. But, what is the alternative here? That these sorts of great buff pieces should be invulnerable and risk free? Don't just say of course not, offer a tangible alternative.

    I don't know what to make of your example. How else could a Hammer v. Anvil game go? In the end the Hammer won. Again, what is the alternative that is preferable here? I play Orruks I have probably about 4000 points sitting in my flat. I'm not sweating about hand of gork mate, it is nice but the faction is pretty fast. It also can include 2 free Might Destroyers moves, and has lots of CP generation available. No one should cry for poor Orruks. 

    3. The more you lean into a gimmick the harder the snap back is, that is a fundamental principle of building into a skew. What you are advocating for is a lack of consequence. You as the designer of your army get almost complete design freedom, what comes with that freedom is the consequence of writing yourself into a corner. If you build to rock you necessarily will have an uphill battle against paper. The game doesn't have to be that way, YOU chose to be that way. The game does need to have reasons not to skew though and besides a few corner case most skew lists aren't very good.

    I utterly reject the notion that a game of AoS is against your opponent's army. You are playing attempting to gain as many VPs for yourself and restrain how many your opponent is gaining. You each use your models and rules in creative ways to achieve this. Sure it is narrative for Orruks to charge headlong into their opponents, Orruks also mostly lose in the lore unless they have armies much larger than the enemy. So if you play that way... guess what the game mostly follows that narrative. It sounds like your friend was cunnin' and used his models creatively and won the game, that is what they are supposed to do. 

    4. This is just it, people want to spam the most "efficient" units in their book. Here is the stark reality you need to fill roles, or you won't have the tools to play against proper armies. Monsters are good, they don't take Battleshock and you can clip units reducing attacks. Some monsters have bad warscrolls, this is also true. Cheap chaff is good you can secure objectives for a low investment. The answer here is to grow, learn, and read not to moan that the game should move to you.

    5. Nagash has a the same number of Wounds as Teclis, a 3+ save, 4+ against MW, a 6+ DPR from the word go , cast 8 spells at a value of >10 often than not, and can Heal. I would say they hit about the same in combat. Nagash is also generally in armies that don't have issues with bodies, and such needs to impact the ability of those armies to hold objectives. He also has the problem of having to go into multiple books at the same time. To get anywhere near Nagash Teclis needs to cast a spell, and use a consumable resource. Nagash is firmly and obviously objectively better, he also has access to about a million endless spells. 

    1) spell portal is in like most LRL lists going around the local meta, so teclis isn't exposing himself most of the time to lambent light and searing light. Sure there's a chance the 5 wound buff hero only takes 4, but in my experience it's rarely that low. Yeah lists aren't static, but some armies don't have a lot of options to vary up those lists.

    2) risk free buff pieces is not what I'm advocating for but you said yourself the warchanter by the end of the turn is at best 21" away from the unit he buffed, and if your using said unit to hold back the enemy castle from an objective that means the archer with 30" range is probably in range or a short move away from hitting that warchanter. I'm not saying support heroes need to be harder to kill, but I am saying there should be a better way of keeping them alive than staying 36" away from the fight, because many support heroes don't have that kinda range to buff. Yeah my buddy that i used for the ecample won his game by walling out the enemy but at the same time isn't it kinda strange when he had to master the movement phase and pray to the dice while all his opponent needed to do was move forward and "point and click" targets with impressive range with no worry for unbinds or his opponent getting cover or saves?

    3) Sure ****** is gonna suck when your gimmick is broken, but man do some armies just not have the option of dodging gimmicks. Fyreslayers is a good example, another friend of mine runs them and the army is so reliant on heroes in general that sentinels have a field day. Sure there's a relic for a 4+ save against spells but once the slow moving heroes are riddled with arrows the lumineth player can start taking the fight to the duardin. And yeah I never implied the game was about fighting your opponents army, it's always been about scoring? At what point do I say you need to kill off your opponents army to win? All I'm saying is you can find the game unfun despite the win.

    4) Not every army has good monsters and not every army has cheap chaff, and sure cheap chaff is great but if their bravery sucks all it takes is a few dead from sentinels to force a battleshock that hopefully isn't made worse by mountain call (i'm bad at remembering spell names but it's the bravery debuff one) and now your forced to make a decision (provided a hero is close enough) to spend 1-2 cp keeping them around. This is actually the niche use i see dawnriders in, archers damage objective holders to force a battleshock while dawnriders double move onto it. Didn't even need to charge and risk other combats because the battleshock gave them the model count to take it.

    5) he doesn't get the 4+ and 6+ against mortals, his casting degrades unlike teclis, LoN has no problems with bodies but like i said CP is a problem for them and nagash isn't the fastest old man in the realms. As for OBR sure 40 mortek is only 440pts, but they're slow and need RDP to go faster or use their rerolls. RDP being a resource you only get 1 of from nagash (plus d3 if you cast arcane command) when you take nagash in OBR you actively are making a choice to hinder yourself when it comes to access to teh resource that makes OBR as good as it is, Nagash is antithetical to their design by nature of eating up points that are better used on more cheaper heroes or katakros. Nagash doesn't even get direct damage spells in OBR, he gets some decent to great utility spells tho. As for endless spells... newsflash teclis gets access to just as many and is more likely to have the points to spare for them.

  4. 11 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

    I have a basic question:

    What out of the new stuff is as bad or worse than Light of Eltharion, Teclis, or Sentinels for gameplay experience?

    Nothing is worse at least not in my own opinion. But I can see where at first glance the hurikan movement shenanigans feels like it'll make them untouchable. Which it won't but people will still see a 24" move and shout broken. Personally I find giving an army of all wizards more ways to buff casting can be a bit of a feels bad, especially for armies who don't have many unbinds, they'll save them for things the wizards are casting because teclis' 10+ cvs are too high only to have every wizard rolling high thanks to better reliability. Loreseeker is gonna definitely cause some salt tho if him getting 40k style obsec is true since it's a concept that hasn't been applied to aos before.

  5. 2 hours ago, Kurrilino said:

    They look like Bonereaper Stalkers to me

    The exposed bone to metal ration is definitely giving me bonereaper vibes, maybe this is finally the mid size infantry unit we always wanted as a battleline option? Or maybe it's just skeletons or a new graveguard sculpt. It would be kinda interesting if a gravelords sub faction or battalion took some obr stuff tho.

  6. 55 minutes ago, BaylorCorvette said:

    I won't retype out what has been stated in this thread several times. But I will echo the biggest problem with LRL is the NPE they bring. Last weekend I competed in a two day, 5 game tournament. I ended up finishing 6th overall which is a bit better than I was anticipating, one of my wins was against LRL. There were three LRL lists, one finished 2nd, one finished 4th and the other finished in the lower half, but that list was both running Teclis and Eltharion and such was very light on bodies. 
    The annoying thing with LRL is the opponents inability to interact with the game, ranging from auto cast spells to dishing out mortals (via spells or just about any unit on 5 or 6 to hit), the ability to Hero snipe without LoS and not caring what negative modifiers To Hit you have because you're just looking for mortals is very frustrating too. All of this is amplified by getting double turned by LRL. You basically don't play AoS for 30+ minutes if that happens.

    Fortunately from all of the LRL leaks it looks like most of the new models that are coming aren't ridiculously powerful, so adding in unit variety will be a step away from the NPE. Obviously the meta lists will still exist and it will be very annoying to play against but LRL players that want to play something more casual will have a lot more units to pick from which is great.

    Lol I've heard some complaints locally that a lumineth double turn is 30 minutes of hero phases and I'd laugh if LoN hero phases didn't take just as long for all those invocations.

  7. 18 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

    1) What this argument continuously fails to address is where is the accountability of the player base to learn something new and evolve. I would also point out that once arguments persistently break down to nebulous perspectives on on abstract ideas that the thing itself is probably fine and it is the viewer that must evolve and contend with reality. The reality is that nothing, and no combination of "NPE" in the faction in question is wholly new in itself and that what is happening is that people are letting their feelings bleed across multiple discrete aspects of this faction. How can you have a lack of agency but have outcomes which match your desires? Are you seriously arguing that LRL players are losing the game by their own choice? A "fair" distribution of rules? Who cares mate, factions get the rules they need to implement that narrative the designers want to show. 

    2) You realize of course that Archaon and Nagash are better than Teclis and therefore cost more. This discussion has just continued to highlight for me that most people don't  know the warscrolls outside their primary faction well at all. The previous play who said Archaon was "Locked down", that's a ridiculous statement not only is it basically impossible, but what value does such an extreme corner case bring other than to colour a discussion which requires a deep understanding of the game with ill-feeling? And to be frank, I don't believe these things happened.

    3) Dawnriders are good unit, a very specific unit that is good at the things its good at, and not very much else. The problem is people play on autopilot, fall into traps and then call the traps "NPE". That's unacceptable and we should be holding each other to a better standard than that. LRL aren't Tau, they don't put out that much range damage at all, its hyperbolic internet hearsay. Also, Ta'u are terrible in 40k. 80 Sentinels puts out 25 dmg for 1120 points, that is pathetic in this game. It is ridiculous that I have to keep debunking all of these objectively untrue statements. LRL just barely have enough to play the game (As in the game on the board, scoring points to win the game), their thing instead of dmg is constraining the opponent which if people here are to believed about their playing results seems to fail more often than not. Examples like "I couldn't do all the things I wanted to do, but I won the game regardless." Come on you must be having a laugh, that statement includes the premise that you don't need to do those things. People just lean on this they aren't OP statement so that they can't be held to task for providing actual evidence beyond their own alleged emotional state at the alleged time of play.

    4) Some degree of people choose to build around a gimmick, but that isn't what the game is about. Most gimmicks are easy to dismantle, which is why most netlists only go 3-2 the majority of the time. They come up against a competent player and swiftly lose. If you build to a gimmick then that choice includes the assumptions that you can lose to gimmicks. As to how to interrupt LRL? Single model units, measuring ranges, thinking of ways to score points so that the LRL has to come out of their shell, force 2 Battleshock tests. You know... play the game. Frustration usually is the precursor for learning, and frequently passes when a person finds a path to their objective. 

    So imma address some of this because i believe you're both missing some of the nuance the other is bringing to the discussion. I'll get the 40k comparison out of the way first because it's only tangentially related and because i used to be a tau player back when i played a lot of 40k. Tau where really good in 8th edition because competitive formats favoured killing power and killing based objectives, the edition change completely changed scoring to favour objective control (something tau struggle with) and made the board size significantly smaller making getting into melee easier, which also works against tau. Tau are bad because the game literally changed around them and besides comparing 40k and aos shooting is a poor comparison when in 40k almost everything has a ranged weapon and, cover is more readily available and look out sir outright denies shooting heroes instead of a -1 to hit (which sentinels don't care about since they fish for 5 and 6s anyways). The damage output of sentinels may be small but it's compensated by the range, ignoring line of sight and a good support spell (guiding light) to let them do that damage reliably to whatever they need to target. In a game where you can't outright deny their shooting you can kiss your support hero goodbye. 

    As for player accountability to learn something new and evolve, what's their for say an ironjaws player to learn? They can only reasonable fit one or two single cast wizards in a list... against an army of all wizards. Their warchanta is great... but he has to stay close to melee units to buff them meaning he's within range of sentinels who don't care about line of sight or look out sir... The entire army has mediocre bravery so those 10 brutes are eating despair plus mountain call then cathalar shut down. It's not like ironjaws can't win, they can and do but what counterplay is their for an army that just has tools you yourself have no tools to counter? I've seen the ironjaws win, it was purely a game of using pigs to hold the lumineth back and scrape by a win on VP with next to nothing left alive. A win is a win but ****** what more could the man have done to not give up every auxiliary to his opponent? You imply in point 3 that people have no right to complain if they win, but that's a false notion. People enjoy the game in different ways, not everyone has fun in an uphill battle and for some people the fun is in making combos happen. So win or lose, watching your combo or even the basic mechanics of your army fall apart because of a matchup your army has no real tools against can be very disheartening. Things can feel bad without dominating a game man, some things just feel bad to play against, you can look to my earlier post where I rant about vanari for being copy pasted trash and praise the creativity of the temple units for my own feelings on lumineth. And yeah, their emotional state is arguably the most important factor, this is a game after all, the point of a game is to geta positive emotional state out of it.

    as for point 4) yeah people choose to build around gimmicks... gimmicks that gw purposefully puts in and encourages us to use. But here's where I'll start agreeing with you more. Your right that a competent player can beat some scrub running a netlist, we saw a lot of that on the 40k side during the rise of the marine meta. It was pretty wild seeing the second market for marine stuff go wild. As for your tips against LRL? Well aside from the battleshock tip in which case you're gonna be eating a battleshock in return which is just bad for some armies, yeah this applies to most castles, it's just a shame most of these castles include enough damage to force your hand and enough chaff to walk onto objectives. Lumineth is on the weaker end of castle lists but seraphon is the prime example of this being a hard thing to beat. Sure measure ranges, but 30" covers a lot of the table so you gotta make sure that's damage your willing to take. Personal advice for anyone going against sentinels, have something scary in your army be a distraction carnifex as we say in 40k. If you have means of giving it MW saves or healing then use it to pressure the opponents bubble and just be a pincushion while literally anything else takes objectives. Sad truth is sacrificing key buff heroes is necessary to score points in this matchup and as unfun as that is for some people it's the cost of beating lumineth in their current state. Lando needs to understand that yeah some armies require a playstle you might not enjoy doing if you want to win. But on the other hand approaching teh game with a "get good" attitude can be pretty toxic to a community and the skill gap required for some armies to reliably beat lumineth reaches a point of kinda being unreasonable in a casual setting.

    And man as someone whose used nagash in both LoN and OBR, he is not comparable to archaon or even teclis. Nagash has the melee output of a 300pt hero, fair enough he's a wizard hero, and hes casts 8 spells at a good casting bonus. But he's less wounds than teclis with a worse after save (6+ compared to 5+) his spell list is smaller than Teclis', his casting degrades unlike Teclis', his save is better that much is true and he does have a table wide heal... but your left with not many units to heal due to his cost. His command ability is decent so at least there's that... in LoN who are starved for cp and would rather use it to revive a unit or OBR where taking him vastly hampers your RDP generation and reroll 1s to hit and save are readily available by other means...  Nagash seems like a good warscroll until you realize Teclis does the whole mega mage thing consistently despite any damage he takes and archaon has a warscroll that slots more elegantly into the multiple factions he can join. Nagash tries to do both but is kinda kneecapped by still following aos 1.0 design philosophies. Nagash just needs an update to make him less antithetical to his factions and suffer less for his low wound/point ration so he can be impactful for longer in games and I hope that comes either in BR: Teclis as part of headline fight or in the upcoming gravelords book.

     

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  8. So I'll preface by saying I don't play LRL, but I have played against them a lota s there are 5 LRL players in my local area + a couple that come from out of town for tournaments when we could still have those. Personally I play OBR, have been playing slaanesh for a few years and used to run LoN.

    I'll start by saying I like LRL in a general sense, all wizard armies are a cool gimmick, the encouragement of rank and file is nice and it's satiated the cries of at least have the old high elf nerds (as someone who witnessed the white lion+alariel list in action i'll admit to some schadenfreude). LRL power wise are on the better half of the scale but aren't KO or a seraphon kroak goon squad by any measure. But unlike KO or tzeentch or even non kroak seraphon (kroak deserves a rant of his own) I can't help but sigh whenever i see a vanari list across the table from me despite having a good personal win rate against them. Now my issue is purely with the vanari core of the army, the cathalar IMO is fine albeit i can see why people who play armies with low mobility or shooting hate her. Teclis is cool and I've had the Teclis Vs Nagash smackdown before which was fun, it did make me feel like nagash should be costed similar to Teclis but similar to my opinions about the new slaanesh book, some point changes are all that's needed (except fiendbloods, their a universal disappointment). The new stuff that's coming looks cool and I like the movement shenanigans hurikan is getting because similar to slaanesh it makes list that make or break in the movement phase (which is a playstyle i personally enjoy). People are kicking up a fuss over LRL getting fast units that can bounce out of combat without realizing that they can just charge into or shoot them when it comes around to their turn, the hurikan stuff is made of paper but hey that's nothing new to slaanesh so welcome to the club you knife eared nerds. And free CP? Sure, they'll just spend that on... rerolling 1s for archers? Autorun 6 on their first turn? The army has no good commands outside of syar and the free cp is only for the wizard on a stationary terrain piece. The magic buffing effect is a little cutting tho, you guys already have casting buffs and everything is a wizard do you really need to double down? But ****** do vanari sap all the fun out of an otherwise cool army. It isn't just that they do mortal wounds and can buff that rule, but that it's so lazily copy pasted across an army's worth of units.

    I'm being hyperbolic when i say this because of course it's mathematically close to impossible but it feels like I've had games where I never rolled a single save. Not only has GW created an army that can do a build where everything does mortal wounds, but it's due to the same lazily copy pasted rule. No duh it's the only build you see at tournaments and it will probably continue to be the better build after this update because as cool as the new stuff is, pure vanari with teclis require less skill and you don't have to worry about a matchup where your opponent is fast enough to catch your speedy hurikan units when you bring reliable mortal wound spam instead. It's not even that powerful, it's just irritatingly consistent that no matter what you do your gonna be eating mortals from something.

    Man I pray to the god of failures that is Teclis that people start using Hurikan stuff, I wanna experience wild cat and mouse games between windchargers and slickblades. Double activations make windcharger pile aways pretty good but lets see it save them from 6" follow ups from my own cav. The temple units just all seem to have that "high elves with blackjack and hookers" feel that vanari are missing from having the animal influences and the cool rules. Even if the mountain cows are just objectively better than a keeper of secrets for the same points I'd rather face 3 of them than any amount of vanari.

    My vanari rant aside, a lot of the salt around the army in general seems to be from this "all that and a bag of chips" mentality. LRL have doubled in size in only a year and are quickly usurping stormcast as the jack of all trades army. Of course they haven't hit that point yet, they still lack stuff like heavy cav or core units with actual variety, but they're getting there fast and I can see people getting a similar bad taste space marines have been giving people from sheer amount of support GW is giving them. Seriously GW we've seen the next two BR books titles but we still have no previews for what the other 3 armies in BR Teclis are getting? (aside from the now teased bilepiper changes) Honestly I believe GW only have maybe 5 more new armies in them at best and that we'll eventually reach a point where every army has that sense of depth most 40k armies do. That comes from decades of support tho and LRL are just getting there faster than others.

    At least the bilepiper changes show there's stuff that wasn't in the FB "theories" and means there's a possibility these "theories" aren't as true as they seem. And I'd hope so because the battalion for obr they "theorized" is just an objectively worse kavalos lance.

    Anyways TL;DR LRL are cool, temples are cool, vanari are lazily designed wastes of space and we should get more fun temple stuff. People are viewing these rules in a vacuum and not looking at the more complex picture of how they interact across a 3 turn game. 

    Yes there are bad matchups that get stomped by lumineth, welcome to a meta where fyreslayers exist and man let me tell you they the joys (/s) of fighting seraphon with the kroak squad and solar engines before I had mortals for my slaanesh.  Yes it can give a bad impression when every warscroll card is going to be 2 pages to account for all the rules but man I can't help but look at the lore seeker and see a lord arcanum who traded their CA, warscroll spell, revive aura, flasks and better arcane bolt... for 40k obsec?

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  9. So I sold most of my LoN (aside from my actaul vampire models from wfb because nostalgia) and have been playing obr for a while now (and slaanesh who I've been playing since i got into aos) and while gravelords won't be anytime soon for me they'll probably be my 2022 project so I'll give my two cents on some of the topics I've red in here.

    So to start, returning characters: we already have 6 vampire characters confirmed including the cursed city crew, throw in the non vampires and we're at 8 or 9 named characters before we even consider nagash or arkhan (arkhan will probably stay obr tho since his legion was recycled into null myriad) But while I don't think we need more characters I'll admit a returning Von Carstein would be an instant buy for me. Abhorash is cool and all but if he ever descends from his damn mountain he should be a nomadic hero as death's equivalent to gotrek or the new aelf twins. My pick for a returning character would be Isabella WITH Vlad in a more limited form. Vlad was the mortarch of shadows when he died so how cool would it be to have Isabella on a 60mm base with the shadow/ghost of Vlad looming over her protecting her? It'd be s sick smaller scale diorama piece.

    As for the discussion regarding the invocation tax working against elite builds you can solve that by taking a seraphon style approach. Split the dynasties or whatever the sub factions are called into two groups, call them the "lords of death" and the "midnight aristocracy" or something. The former plays like a polished LoN, their shared allegiance abilities includes invocations auras on all heroes, access to nagash and can take nighthaunt allies or something. The latter group represents more martial vampires/vampire rebels if mannfred does go mask off traitor like the recent short story implies and gets blood knights and/or vampire infantry battleline, access to vordrai,  bonuses to charge or a better version of the red thirst rule and maybe a deep strike from being less tethered to their undead puppets. Universally I'd like to see a traits list for vampires similar to mount trait tables. I'd expect at least 4 dynasties as well, hopefully following themes similar to the underworlds warband as they all look like their from different dynasties with the armoured blood dragon, the heavy yet regal Von Carstein, the fast and stylish Lahmian and the wild and bestial fourth dynasty.  This is all wishlisting but having an army with two shared mortarchs it'd make sense to split it in a way to make each ones respective force feel different while sharing a unit roster.

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  10. 19 minutes ago, AngryPanda said:

    In all honesty, it’s a pretty bad report; they made a lot of mistakes (gameplay and rule-wise) that really worked against Slaanesh; it was extremely frustrating seeing the Slaanesh player not use the exploding 6s, and seeing Sigvald’s sword not ignore the deathless minions rule. However, even with thre mistakes, they performed better then I expected, despite almost being tabled at the end. 

    MWG never played AoS correctly, they handwave rules and ****** stuff up all the time. Which while normal for your average person is a little disappointing if it's supposed to be your job. They where prime amongst the butthurt when fantasy was replaced by AoS and the gap in quality between there AoS and 40k content is drastic. MWG are a joke among the AoS community here in Canada.

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  11. 16 hours ago, PiotrW said:

    My general problem with AoS lore is that the whole setting is so big, crazy and cosmic that it's a bit hard to engage emotionally with all of this. There's so much magic everywhere, the world seems impossibly big (I mean, Hysh has what, ten continents? And it's only one of eight realms...) with only a few locations defined and everything is so surreal... As much as I don't like to admit it, when I read about the old WFB / WFRP fluff, I find the world more engaging. It's just more... tangible and cohesive.

    I mentioned it over the Lumineth forum, but I'd really love for GW to publish something in the vein of "Guide to the Mortal Realms": a thick book dedicated solely to presenting the setting. An in-depth exploration of the realms, with more detailed chronology, some more info on which areas are controlled by which faction... Also, a closer look at the important characters and their personalities, as well as the factions and their philosophies. Not saying GW should define every single piece of the land etc., but a kind of "setting bible" for the players really would be great.

    And coming back to the Hedonites - any ideas on how to make them sympathetic... or, at least, how to connect with them emotionally? They are so twisted it's a bit hard for me to put myself into their heads, work out any motivations for them etc...

    I play slaanesh armies in both AoS and 40k, and have a hard time sticking to consistent colour schemes due to my painting skills vastly improving and acquiring second hand models with paint jobs too nice for me to strip. So I flavour my armies around that. For my 40k army I play emperors children and creations of bile and to represent that I have the bulk of "generic" units in different colours and schemes to represent the mercenaries that work for Bile, while my important stuff follows the horus heresy emperors children colours as clones of fallen marines, including discount versions of dead named characters like Eidolon and Rylanor. The army lore is sort of a twisted tragedy of this particular bile clone longing for his long gone brothers.

    For my hedonites I like to lean into the civilized and tragic aspects of the army. Slaanesh can survive off of base pains and pleasures but they are at their apex when in a civilization that enables more complicated excess. Slaanesh has an entire subset of daemonettes called muses that urge mortals to pursue their passions to the point of self harm and tragedy. Musicians pushed to a breaking point of being willing to do away with any taboo to perfect their music and seek new sounds. Chefs looking to otherwise forbidden food sources for new flavours, warriors driven to be the best and master their martial arts. Twisted tragedy is the logical endpoint but you can find sympathy by focusing on the path to tragedy. My daemonette units are various different colours from pale skinned to vapourwave and represent the forsaken and discarded servants of other keepers serving a new master who takes joy in spiting the previous masters of their followers. My blissbrew homunculi are alchemists who where driven to the point of self experimentation, now finding kinship with the disenfranchised and the rookies that make up the ranks of blissbarbs. My myrmadesh are warriors who took their training too far and killed their sparring partners, now convinced to double down and take up the way of the painbringer, but hide their faces in shame. The twinsouls are the opposite, revelling in their sins and continue to try to stand out. My slickblades are hellstriders who grew to accept their fate and developed a bond with their seeker, aiding it in growing into an exalted seeker and earning a place amongst the elite knights of their master. My lord of pain takes pain not only in masochism but because he doesn't want his companions to get hurt in a twisted saviour complex.

    There's so many ways you can flavour your hedonites to be ****** up people who mean well. The road to hell is paved with good intentions after all.

    • Like 2
  12. 2 hours ago, Sorrow said:

    I know, The Garden of Mortal Delights does play on that idea. A Slaaneshi Lord using Sylvaneth to cultivate plants for food.

    Nevertheless, I do have a question and I was hoping people with more experience could answer. As I said above "I do wonder how rules for him will work out. Those two mutants (ogors?) with purple crab claws look like they could potentically be melee monsters of Glutos. That Painbringer guy on the left will be a melee combatant. That leaves that guy with whip, the guy holding a platter with food on the right, halfling? and Glutos himself".

    Do you reckon all models on palanquin will have rules or just some?

     

    I suppose they will all be represented as a combination of weapon profiles and special rules. Palanquin bearers, myrmadesh and glutos will probably have weapon profiles while whip guy, platter bearer and halfling servant will probably be referenced as part of special rules for the unit like whip guy buffs units like a bloodstoker, platter bearer and halfling collect and prepare "food" for their lord.  

    • Like 2
  13. 1 hour ago, Sorrow said:

    For the record, I sincerely doubt that we will see any more new Hedonite models for years to come. This was our big release. Let us hope Emperor Children get a rich codex like the Death Guard got. Could be wrong and we get a second wave of Hedonites, but that would be truly unfair to other factions.

    They are really pushing Lumineth a lot, which leads me to suspect that initial wave was not as popular as they hoped it would be. Once again, I could be totally wrong. But yeah, I did expect rules preview by now. At least something.

    Like half of the old HE players I know love Lumineth, the other half hate them but most of the Lumineth players in my area never played HE or even WFB at all so it's interesting to see that the army appeals more to people with no connection to their older incarnation. 

    And man as someone who plays Emperors children I really hope we get a codex within the next year or two. Me and the local world eaters player have been stuck trapped in a bad generalist codex for years now.

    • Like 1
  14. The more I look at Glutos the more I think he'll work like Katakros. He starts off as a melee monster but becomes a better spellcaster as his retinue dies and he becomes less distracted. Maybe he gets a buff to spellcasting or the chance to cast an extra spell if a unit died near him as he samples their flesh/marrow/bark to discern the taste.

    • Like 3
  15. You know I feel like a lot of these complaints could be mitigated by a 6 month road map updated on the first of every month? Like I feel that's a decent level of transparency and not seeing your army on the roadmap 6 months after it's release is probably a good indicator of whether or not to continue with the current range or wait for more.

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  16. While I feel it's a bit off topic to steer into the debate of affordability and piracy I'll toss my two cents in anyways. 

    As a games company GW isn't the best to my experience. While that experience only goes as far as a handful of different wargames across 5-6 years it's still worth mentioning how the quality of the game has affected my experience in wargaming as a broke high schooler/college student to gainfully employed and now unemployed. As a models company GW is the best I've had the pleasure to buy from, with Corvus Belli as a close second mainly losing out to their products being pewter. GW in the past 3 years has made some wicked sculpts and really started living up to the title of top dog in wargaming at least as far as models go. But as a games company both 40k and AoS are strictly inferior IMO to Corvus Belli's Infinity and Aristeia games. Warcry and bloodbowl however are super solid, but I can't speak to the quality of underworlds or necromunda as I never got into them. I can get into the specifics of why I think Infinity is a better game but for the sake of this argument I'll keep it to a few points: affordability, interactivity and quality of life. As personal examples a single infinity army (averaging 10-15 models since it's a skirmish game) with dice and simple terrain, literally all i needed to play, costed me about $100 in canadian monopoly money, for the same cost I got a single book and the new shadowsun model for my tau. I currently own 2 armies for each of the major games I play thanks to a decent market for used minis locally for GW games (Tau at about 70% second hand, chaos marines at 90%, hedonites at 70% and OBR entirely new) although my tau will probably be sold as I'm not playing 40k as often as I used to and it would allow me to buy the new slaanesh release without affecting my monthly budgeting. 

    Tangent about my collection aside, Infinity is a game that has very interactive turns where both players get a chance to react to their opponents actions, but most importantly all the rules are free online including a list building tool that allows you to tap any rules a unit may have and be taken taken straight to a reference for that rule. So any new release just gets added to the list builder, sometimes months in advance of the kit releasing, with references for all their stats and rules easily accessible. It sets a precedent for quality of life that more games should meet and shows the consumer unfriendly flaws of GW's rules release strategy. So I don't hold it against people who forgo buying books, I was guilty of it myself because I didn't have a car while I was in college and wanted to minimize what I carried to the hobby shop, so any book that wasn't my codex/battletome I just took pictures of on my phone, including new rules releases because like others have said before I would rather put that money towards plastic than paper. Lore and other goodies is cool and all, but what you can't fit in a battletome is better off expanded into a novel and rules should just be added to a digital rulesbase, making it easier to get rules makes it easier to get new people into games. It's how I got into infinity because I didn't have to worry about buying and combing over a rule book, i just got the basics from a friend and used the app to read up on specifics as they came up.

    As many have said books aren't GW's cash cow and don't make that much of their profits, so if piracy opens the door for people to invest more money into the bread and butter that is the miniatures then I'm personally for it. A significant dip in book sales might just be the kick in the shins GW needs to modernize the way they provide the rules and systems that they themselves admit are a mutable feature of their actual product: the miniatures.

    This brings us to the second issue I see pop up alot around these convos: "If you can't afford the hobby then it just isn't for you!". Frankly it's true, scummy and makes you sound like an ******, but true. GW can price their product however they please and if it prices people out then it becomes harder to legitimately participate. People can still buy used minis and books, but that at best only supports flgs's (support your local stores btw, best communities I've been apart of have all been from flgs) and doesn't produce another sale for GW unless the second hand buy-in gets you over the hurdle enough to but future product as it becomes relevant to you. There are cheaper games out there, but not everyone is going to have a local community for said cheaper games like I was lucky enough to stumble into. GW games are just so monolithic that they can push their product anywhere and find customers because they are the first thing that comes to mind when people think of miniatures games. Even higher profile games like infinity and Malifaux are obscure by comparison, hell legion only gets recognition outside of wargaming circles because of star wars as an IP. My personal belief is that if GW wants to hit mainstream appeal and not just be the game of nerds of the good old days, college kids and mid 40s men in need of a new hobby, then they should focus on finding a price point low enough to appeal to average people and not just those who acquaint themselves with the IP through other media and commit to the game or folks with the disposable income to buy a full army because a coworker or drinking buddy thought it would be a great escape from the wives on thursday nights. 

    Anyways as for the main topic of feeling cheated, I'm not a lumineth player but I'm loving the wind temple stuff, I fail to see how people can feel cheated by it other than the folks who are upset it isn't a lion or phoenix like the old days (which for the record, if they did the same style but with the classic animals it'd still be cool but it's refreshing to see them branch into stuff you wouldn't expect instead. ). the warscrolls will be on the app anyways, but will probably be in BR:Teclis instead of a new battletome with a nation of wind and wind temple battalion. I hope they continue to experiment and add new flavour to their factions, Grimnir knows Fyreslayers could use something to break up the monotony. As a slaanesh player I was playing long before the first book dropped, now we have a book and it's poorly designed to force a specific playstyle that caused a lot of grief. I'm happy to be getting long overdue mortals, but like I mentioned earlier instead of a whole new book it should have been a digital update of a rules database. I don't so much feel cheated as having a shadow of disappointment following glowing radiance of sigvald and co. Like I mentioned with lumineth, I'm glad they're experimenting instead of going with what's tried and true. Gluttony is a great addition to the visual representation along better representing the alchemy, drugs, pursuit of perfection and pain obsessions that while there to a degree, where very visually drowned out by sexual imagery and mild body horror.

    • Like 2
  17. 21 minutes ago, Neverchosen said:

    The cogfort discussion made me wonder do any of the books hint at any particular forms of terrain. I think it is so strange that in giving everything terrain rules that Legions of Nagash never got physical grave markers. That is beyond a unit being presented in lore but a literal gameplay mechanic.

    Well LoN or soulblight could get the actual crimson keep or a "crimson keep outpost" and it would work in lore and gameplay as the keep teleports wherever Nagash needs the blood dragons. Have it give an aura of bravery or buff vampires. 

    I know KO lore mentions floating lighthouses that could be a large sized terrain piece that gives movement buffs or specifically applies effects to flying units?

    Tzeentch is the only mono chaos army without terrain, but it could be reasonable to have gateways to the silver labyrinth as terrain pieces that let daemon units move between them like gnaw holes or let wizards swap spells by drawing on the labyrinth's secrets.

    For Ironjaws/bonesplitters I'd love for the rogue Idol to be the terrain piece, it sits idly and gives it's buffs and for a massive investment in waaagh points it can be activated as a unit.

    Nighthaunt could have the chained processions of captured spirits or the gallows as a terrain piece that plays towards the reaped souls and works with the bravery and fear mechanics that nighthaunt are built on.

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  18. 4 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

    I was talking about this with some friends last week, the concept is amazing & Soulbound even has a story mission based around riding one and helping the crew, but the sheer scale of them means I doubt we'll see them on tabletop. Maybe a mobile weapons platform or a much smaller fort. "Cogpost" is right there for a cog-mobile outpost.

    Imagine a cogfort terrain piece that's one side of a cogfort placed on a table edge. It could have some special rules for deploying out of it or having a hero nearby lets you fire it's guns. It'd a cool concept for it to represent a cities force showing up on one of these behemoths.

    • Like 2
  19. 2 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

    I believe reclaimed started with the 2017 "Shadows over Hammerhal" warhammer quest supplement in describing the hordes of refugees taken in from the over-expanding city and how much ground Order was retaking from Aqshy in between the Realmgate Wars and Seeds of Hope, the latter noting the Cogforts did a lot of the work as the mobile fortresses took so much ground from chaos.

    After that the term Reclaimed pops up in a number of books. We get to know one in "The Red Hour" novella as a golden tattoed Chamonian tribesmen works as a scout for an old Freeguild fortress. He tells of some harrowing tales living under chaos, his rebelling tribe on the run with light sleep to where any injured were mercy killed as they couldn't afford to ever slow down.

    Then came the Stormcasts that lightning'd down and freed all his people. Many then swarmed the freeguild offices stationed there to sign up out of gratitude. Their positions are mixed sometimes though as some freeguild generals don't fully trust tribal people that lived under chaos corruption for centuries.

    Edit: It's a good showcase of that Nobledark grey area AoS has. Things start horrifyingly, get better by heavenly saviors and then settle in a grey area of things being both good with some bads stumbling it but can get better and build towards a brighter future. :) (Or stay dark if you prefer, like in Shyish the weird time flows means there's still places unchanged since the Age of Chaos and won't move forward on their own)

    This would be a cool opportunity to give freeguild or cities in general a scout unit or some low armour but high damage unit of reclaimed warriors who are waaaay too eager to prove themselves to their peers. Maybe something like an elite flagellant unit in the vein of sisters repentia from 40k but clad in furs and wielding star soul maces or other weapon that trades safety for damage.

    Also cogforts need to be a thing like asap

    • Like 3
  20. 11 hours ago, MitGas said:

    Yeah, all I see are a bunch of people that have no idea what women look like apparently. Are you white-knighting

    The armor of Undivided suggests a man under it so strongly, it seriously makes me wonder if you've ever seen a girl in the wild or you're deliberately white-knighting cause you want girl Chaos Warriors to exist. I know the answer.  Women certainly don't look like CWs and even less so Varanguard. Not even men naturally do unless you inject them with huge amounts of illegal substances and they have the genetics for it. Yes, there are very few females like that too but they're fully outside the norm as they take supplements that aren't even meant for their gender (hell, no even men should take them). It's not a natural look. There's a ZEROOOOO (*Greg Doucette voice*) chance that Varanguard are women at the moment. Look at the neck. That is not a female neck. Of course you can imagine them to be women if you like.  Then you can also imagine the moon to wink at you at night too, though.

    The female WH:U leader was thought of by many as a dude at first, cause the overall body shape of a CW clearly doesn't read as female (else that mistake wouldn't have been made). And yes, they could change the armor slightly to make it look more female but that's messing around with an iconic look and I'm heavily against it. It would be like messing with Space Marines (that is out of the question due to background thankfully) or other iconic looks. Not a single piece of Warhammer art in the last 21 years (since I know them) suggested females under Chaos Warrior armor. Chaotic females had their own look (Yes, it was Chaos armor but the style was different, it was feminine) and they weren't part of Chaos Warrior units.

    Karic Acolytes: The single female sculpt looks clearly like a woman. I'd like more girl sculpts in there.
    Bloodreavers: No women as far as I know. Would you also argue there are women under the armor of the Blood Warriors? Cause those are also clearly male.
    Nurgle: The only woman is the WH:U witch AFAIK. Which looks like the part. Not sure anyone wants more Nurgle females. xD
    Slaanesh: The heavily armored units still look predominantly male in body shape and we all know Slaanesh blurs the line... they could all be hermaphrodites for all we know.
    S2D: The new Start Collecting box has no women in it. The helmetless head variants are ALL male. We got a single female leader in the upcoming WH:U warband.

    It's all good  to have women be part of Chaos but give them fitting spots and looks (what everyone is waiting for are Marauders). And don't change the look/feel of established units. There are a billion ways to add more women to Chaos without ****** around with things. A woman in Chaos Warrior armor is not a natural fit and I'm against it not because I'm backwards thinking and hate women but because I like the established look and HATE for it to change just because self-proclaimed enlightened kids think this is the way. And you're bending the gender's identity to make fit the CW aesthetic anyways as it's not a natural fit.

    A natural fit would be the Lumineth models, where the sexes are much closer in looks. Oh and please also argue for male models in basic DOK units. 

    Seriously dude? You're gonna pull the white knighting card? I won't linger on this point long because it says a little bit more about you than the rest of us and that's not the point of this thread or even this forum, but I'll address two points regarding this. First it's kinda hard to white knight something into existence when it already does, you can argue all you want that the head sculpts aren't feminine and i'd be inclined to agree with many of them because even many of the sisters of battle head sculpts aren't feminine looking, doesn't change that the sculpts are stated as female by the company themselves.  Second you said yourself the chaos warrior look isn't natural for women OR men, we're literally talking about formations of soldiers wearing matching cursed armour and roided out on daemonic power, there is nothing natural about them or the way they look nor does it change the look as GW sculpts them in identical armour. This goes for most warrior tier chaos worshippers and up, especially khorne and undivided where the point is being beefy enough to arm wrestle an orruck. As for nurgle females, i mean i don't exactly want to look at nurgle males either but being gross to look at is the point. 

    I think you're either misunderstanding the point of my argument or ignoring because my point is that it's fine for chaos warriors to be female since at the end of the day they're gonna be in the same armour as the males. Warrior is just another step on the path of damnation all chaos undivided worshippers take.  you go from cultist > warrior> knight/chosen> lord/varanguard> pray for apotheosis to prince. There's no weird split progression path for women because there's never needed to be. You don't know what's under all that armour until they either speak or take it off, because at the end of the day they aren't normal people and don't follow normal body standards, they're already outright mutated to be bigger than a normal human.

    As for your point on messing with things historically and bringing up space marines, first of all props for sticking with the hobby for 2 decades (only been in it 6 years myself but that also comes from being on the younger side of the community), but space marines weren't always exclusively male. GW cut their female sculpts to smooth production and just wrote the retcon to justify the discontinuation of the model. That's always been how GW operated, they design a model and write the fluff afterwards whether it requires a retcon or a new addition. A lack of female sculpts in the early decades of GW's production was a resource management decision.

    Oh and just a neat tidbit about males and females wearing the same armour, GW has actually been doing that for a while now with eldar in 40k, banshees for example all have sculpted boob plating but males wear the same armour because it's just how eldar tradition goes. 

    Anyways I've made my point and I say we drop the gendered sculpts debate here before it veers too far off topic. To steer back to the thread topic I agree that the ball has been dropped when it comes to tzeentch mortals. Kairic acolytes and magisters are cool but I'd love to see a warrior wizard unit similar to the curseling. Some heavy armour, heavily mutated freaks throwing around spells and swinging sword-staves. They really need a warrior/BK/myrmadesh tier elite infantry.

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  21. AS a Slaanesh player I'm soon to be quite pleased with my faction. As a previous LoN player and current bonereapers player I'd love for more vampires. There's also a lot of missed opportunity with generic skeletons as they have entire deathrattle cities in the lore with their own government structures and monarchies. It's been stated before in this thread but mortals of shyish could also do with some representation. From death cults worshipping nagash to vampire's thralls and voodoo like tribes that manipulate the winds of death to survive. Oh and more vampires!

    But for real tho the wraith fleet got a lot of talk in early lore and some mentions in recent books along with grotbag scuttlers, sky piracy of the mad max and macabre varieties are just begging for models.

    • Like 1
  22. 9 hours ago, TheR00zle said:

    I'm going to be crazy here and suggest the following:

    Bring back Khalida, but.... corrupted by chaos!!!

    Since Asaph was the Nehekeran goddess of Magic and Beauty that opens the door to Slaanesh or Tzeentch corruption, then have her square off against Neferata.

    Following this topic, Daemon prince settra who just really wants to kick the ****** outta the chaos gods. Or role reverse the end times Vlad and Isabella story with Isabella as the new mortarch of shadows and Vlad resurrected in servitude as a daemon prince of khorne or nurgle. 

    • Like 2
  23. 3 hours ago, MitGas said:

    Don't care about the Gotrek novels... plus it's a champion. The same armor doesn't mean she looks like normal Chaos Warriors either.... As long as they look like all the artwork and current models so that nobody in their right mind reads them as remotely female looking *in body shape*, then fine, all cool. But if they start to dilute the iconic look just to include chaos girls, I sure as hell won't buy em. Thank God Marines will never have that discussion.

    I mean the armour of undivided worshipers doesn't really give any indicator of gender at all. They're all walking refrigerators with capes, the only way you could discern gender is if they're helmet is off and even then many are mutated beyond recognition or even need of gender. Now when it comes to god specific stuff it's a different story. Tzeentch arcanites are fit but not more so than a barbarian, Nurgles worshippers are all just kinda round and rotten, khornes are all built like brick ****** houses regardless of gender and it's implied that becoming a bloodreaver turns anything that isn't muscle into muscle. Slaanesh is the only one with variety and that's kinda intentional. You have beefcakes and slender doll like body shapes for both genders and with glutos now including fat body types as well. As for your prior example of varanguard, how can you be certain they're all male? Chaos lord isn't exactly a gender specific rank and they're all wearing thick enough armour to make anything short of stormcast blush. Some of the bodies have abs and beefy arms but those aren't male exclusive traits. The only argument in favour is the lack of a helmetless female head but we all know how GW struggles with good head sculpts in general until recent years. I don't think you have too much to worry about as the underworlds warband shows, if you aren't blessed by nurgle or slaanesh and made it to a warrior rank you're gonna be built like a brick ****** house wearing a fridge regardless of what you looked like prior to walking the path of damnation.

    • Like 8
  24. 14 hours ago, Sleboda said:

    I'm not familiar with him. Is he undead? If so, how can he rebel when Nagash has absolute control over all undead?

    Nagash's mind is kinda stretched thin as some have said undying king has good examples. The stress of a once mortal mind now trying to exert influence over all that's touched by the winds of shyish is showing. Dude basically has multiple personality disorder at this point and comes across as senile when he's trying to focus on too many things at once . His control over the greater undead of his empire is likewise scattered. He can directly influence mortarchs and vampires but only if he actively focuses on doing so, he can't passively keep them loyal like undead of lesser intelligence or bonereapers who are built to be loyal. Which is also why he doesn't share his plans with others aside from Arkhan, the other mortarchs and high ranking vampires only know what they need to know. Vampires specifically are still scheming, vain and ambitious so Mortarchs like Mannfred and Neferata are a double edged sword to have around because they're too useful to get rid of or dominate, but too dangerous to fully trust so he's constantly got to keep them on a tight leash and remind them of how strong he is. Vordrhai is a blood dragon vampire who was given charge over one of Nagash's fortresses, specifically the crimson keep which is a teleporting vampire stronghold and sort of religious site for blood knights. The other members of his bloodline kinda revere him as a "saint of blood" and he's kinda the top dog of the blood knights while Abhorash is away. 

    Anyways after Archaon sieged Shyish and nearly killed Nagash, Vordhrai tried to finish the job while his boss was too weak to assume direct control. He failed and as punishment he's confined to the crimson keep, only let out when Nagash teleports the keep to a battlefield where he needs everything excessively dead. Even gave the dude the title of "Fist of Nagash". The castellans of the crimson keep battalion is actually supposed to represent this as it allows Vordhrai and 3 units of blood knights to deploy off a table edge and reroll hits while within 12" of that same edge.

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  25. On 1/8/2021 at 11:14 PM, Sleboda said:

    They would have to retcon a bit though (which they can do, of course, but I'd prefer they didn't).

    At the moment, Nagash has 100% unbreakable authority over, and control of, all undead, even vampires (including powerful ones like the Mortarchs). The new vampires would have no ability to betray him, and thus there would be no need to have minders, so to speak.

     

    Now, if he wanted to test loyalty but still have control/failsafes, I suppose he could keep his order of vampire vampire-hunters secret, tell certain vampires that they have proven their loyalty and earned free will. Then, he has his secret hunters (who are still 100% enthralled) watch over the free vampire. If he continues to be loyal, then that sort of innovation that comes from free will can be used as an asset. If he gets ideas, well, here comes the hunter.

    Yeah I figure it would be something more along these lines especially after Mannfred constantly scheming and Vordhrai outright betraying nagash. Not all vampires have the power of a mortarch or blood saint that can be used as leverage to keep them around so a secret order to manage the vampires ambitions, possibly even led by neferata who loves the intrigue, would make for a useful asset. This would also come in handy near the tail end of nagash's plans as while I doubt the lore would ever let him win enough to make it happen, he seems like he's planned far ahead enough to realize that his end goal has no room for vampires that require living beings as food. And the vampires themselves are intelligent enough to eventually put 2 and 2 together if they ever learn the full extent of his plans or begin to find there isn't enough blood left to go around.

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