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Colonic

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Posts posted by Colonic

    The Rumour Thread

    in Age of Sigmar Discussions

    Posted

    9 hours ago, Sception said:

    The only exceptions I'd be willing to entertain are for minor characters who never really got the chance to shine in oldhammer, or for characters you could do something radically different with in AoS.  Neither is something we're likely to see, since the characters fans tend to ask for are the big popular fully established ones, and if you change those characters in any meaningful way the people who wanted them back in the first place will get mad.

    For example, I'm mostly into the undead factions, and I regularly hear calls to Bring Back Vlad or Bring Back Abhorash, even though they are so fully grounded in the old world that they'd make little sense in AoS while simultaneously sucking all the air out of the room, so to speak.  And especially in Vlad's case, his death in the End Times was an especially effective close to his character that I for one would hate to see undone.

    But, by contrast, consider Isabella.  She was always a background character in her own life, the mechanism by which Vlad gained political power, the woman he loved to give him character depth, never a character in her own right.  Her End Times story saw her level these criticisms at Vlad - you never really loved me you just wanted power, I never really loved you I was simply dominated by the monster who killed my father - but only in the context of Isabella being possessed by Nurgle, so she still didn't get to have her own agency.  In the end Vlad proved the sincerity of at least his side of the relationship by dying to free her, both from chaos and from himself.  That's a very satisfying close to Vlad's character, but it's an even more compelling *beginning* to Isabella's story - a story that can finally actually center her choices, her character.  She can't just follow Vlad back into death like she did the first time he died, that would be ignoring all the very real flaws of their relationship that had just been laid bare, the fact that no matter how strongly she feels love for Vlad she can never again trust that it was sincere and not just something he did to her.  And even if she decides that love was real, killing herself now would be spitting on the sacrifice Vlad made to save her.  So she lives on to honor that sacrifice and does...

    Nothing.  She does nothing, because the world ends two weeks later.

    Isabella as the 'Mortarch of Shadow', filling Vlad's empty boots, could be a darned compelling character in AoS in a way that she was never allowed to be in WHFB.  You could have her taking revenge on Mannfred both for his betrayal of Vlad and for the way he treated her directly.  You could have her allying with Neferata as peers, playing into the novels portrayals of Neferata.  You could have her playing a particularly rebellious or subversive role towards Nagash as someone who at this point is fully sick and tired of being controlled by others - which could also be used to explain her absence up till now, using her 'mortarch of shadow' powers to hide until Nagash was out of picture, probably establishing a kingdom in that realm of shadow we've heard so much about but that's been strictly in the background so far.  You could even do a gender-swapped version of the Bram-Stoker Dracula thing where she starts to suspect that some dashing Stormcast hero might secretly be the soul of long lost Vlad reincarnated by the storm god, and examine her own internal conflict over whether she even wants him back.

     

    But this will never happen.  Partially because I think GW knows that AoS really doesn't benefit from putting even more emphasis on characters and relationships grounded in old world lore, and mostly because, I mean, it's Isabella.  Nobody cares about Isabella, nobody's asking for Isabella to come back.  Because the main reason for GW to bring back old world characters is to cash in on nostalgia from old fans, but the characters old fans feel nostalgic for aren't the ones that have room to do anything new or interesting with.

    ...Now I absolutely want this to happen!

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    Warhammer - The Old World

    in Warhammer: The Old World

    Posted

    7 hours ago, JerekKruger said:

    Checks copy of Lost and the Damned. Huh, What's that on page 133, is it a beaked beastman? Why yes it is.

    And on page 137 we have a Khorne marked beastman which has a hound's face, something the blurb about khorngors explicitly calls out.

    The idea that GW lore is this well established, concrete thing that they've never changed is nonsense. GW have always been very flexible with their lore and very free about changing it. If GW were being truly honest to their oldest lore about beastmen, a very large proportion of them should have one or more mutations (and all Tzaangors should), and about half should be bull hybrids rather than goat hybrids.

    But, as mentioned, GW changes they're lore happily, and beastmen essentially became goat only, with the vast majority not being mutated beyond the standard goat/human hybrid. GW could quite happily greenlit CA's beaked design, and if have preferred it if they did. You wouldn't, and that's fine, but please don't tell me (and others) that we're wrong because the unchanging lore doesn't support it, because honestly, the original lore doesn't support current beastmen either.

    Yes there were beaked and dog faced beastmen, mutations given (with more frequency when marked), but far from ubiquitously. No they were not subraces. No you did not get them presenting uniform appearance like AOS Tzaangor. Yes they should all have mutations. Those should be random and chaotic. It was a d1000 table (or d100 if they got a reward) - this is impossible in a TOW game. Almost everything you say is correct*, but "AoS tzaangor fit Total War/the Old World" is not correct and what you say does not support it. You are in fact a classic example of what I mean about people misunderstanding the original presentations of Tzaangor, because you think the existence of beaked beastmen = AoS style Tzaangor. They share little but a name and a patron god. There's as much support for tentacled beastmen, or beastmen with their eyes on stalks. 

    So to that regard, yes I will tell you that lore does not support AoS Tzaangors in the Old World, and never has.  I never said Beastman lore was unchanging, in fact its implicit in my post that it did. But just because lore changes that doesn't mean anything is supported. 

    What I did say was the concept of a Tzaangor is in the Old World was and is exactly what CA quoted. a marked beastman given mutations that may have a slant towards a god but not a stable race of beaked beastmen , and what came from GW itself I imagine.  Yes, GW could have retconned AoS Tzaangor into the setting (despite their thematic differences). But it would be a retcon IMO.

    What there would be room for is having some beastmen in a unit manifest Tzeentch like mutations including beaks, feathers, tzeentch's symbol and so on, but without any uniformity. It is far away from whole units of beaked beastmen adorned in finery like you have in AOS. 

    *

    Spoiler

    The early minis for Beastmen were a right mix of bulls, goats and dogs and turnskin style mutants without one style dominating. Bull heads are last seen in the 1989 catalogue but aren't in the 1990 catalogue. They must have been available though as I got them about that time. Lost and the Damned introduced Gors, Ungors, Brays and Bestigors as the main castes. The scope of beastmen was always much wider than the miniatures represented in the early days for sure, but the importance of horns was established pretty early and the 1990 beastmen miniatures were predominantly goats, with some dog heads marked as khornate. LATD is chock full of goat beastmen imagery as well while not disallowing other manifestations, especially given the existence of turnskins and the like. So by 1990 lore and miniatures are emphasising goats, and it should be remembered that the very concept of beastmen was really only codified in 1990.  The dog heads disappear by 1994 but we are well into 4th edition by that point. Khornegor when we get them are back to being goaty.

     

     

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    Warhammer - The Old World

    in Warhammer: The Old World

    Posted

    Like I say, GW saying "lose the beaks" is actually them just sticking to the lore of the last 30 years. Whether it also separates the franchises and that is a relevant thing or not is up for debate, but I would expect (and am glad) that GW stuck to beastman lore as it was.

     

    I like the Tzaangor in AOS but they are not old world beastmen. There weren't whole armies of beaky beastmen in the old world setting barring specific geographic regions but there are tzaangor all over.

     

    I guess this sort of thing is the problem with beastmen being pretty fringe and playing second fiddle to warriors of chaos, some of their older lore gets lost.

    Warhammer - The Old World

    in Warhammer: The Old World

    Posted · Edited by Colonic

    I don't think what they said about Tzaangor was misleading at all. 

    Tzaangors have been a well established part of the lore since the Lost and the Damned book. They've always been regular beastmen who have been marked by the gods, and they shared the same outlook on existence and background as other beastmen. All beastmen had mutations, yes, and tzaangor were no exception but they were very random with some god influences. There were some common traits like having the rune of Tzeentch somewhere on the fur/formed in the horns etc. 

    The mentions of different kinds of beastmen in 6th edition and onwards were geographic. You got entire populations of non-goat beastmen in a given region, not that all beastmen could appear in different stableish forms all over the world. The problem with that always was that the miniatures were all goats or goats with mutations.

    Meanwhile the Tzaangor of AOS are a subrace crafted by tzeentchian magic, many of them humans who are malformed. They wear finery and crafted goods in a way regular beastmen would not, both their aesthetic and what it reflects about their outlook is unlike the beastmen, or the tzaangor of the old world. 

    I really would have disliked avian beastmen from AOS being put into Total War without a significant overhaul. To me what is there now is much closer to lore. 

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    AoS Cities of Sigmar Battletome 2023 Discussion

    in Cities of Sigmar

    Posted

    Something I am wondering. The Steam Tank has the Keywords STEAM TANK COMMANDER but not STEAM TANK. His Division Commander special rule allows him to issue orders two times to friendly STEAM TANK units. Does his STEAM TANK COMMANDER keyword let him benefit from that? A lot of people seem to be posting as if it does, making two steam tanks the sweet spot, but it seems to me like he has to order other tanks, not himself. The fluff for the rule even refers to other tanks. 

    What am I missing?

    AoS Cities of Sigmar Battletome 2023 Discussion

    in Cities of Sigmar

    Posted

    Hammerers, Scourgerunners, Drakespawn Chariots + Knights and the Tenebral Blades spell are what I tend to think of when people say that the rules of non humans in Cities are undercooked. 

    I actually think the book is just designed to give non human forces supporting roles that require less (not zero) synergies. The best tanky infantry are the duardin and even irondrakes shine when supporting holding a point with their better unleash hell. The best offensive punch is found among the aelves. That is not a book that is cycling those units out of use.

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    The Rumour Thread

    in Age of Sigmar Discussions

    Posted

    9 minutes ago, Trugg the Troggoth King said:

    AoS designs tend to bring love or totally dislike for them, and that´s really good because nobody is indiferent to them. We can talk and discuss about models from totally diferrent points of view. Learning and appreciating details we could overlook.

    Well put Sire!

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