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Neil Arthur Hotep

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Everything posted by Neil Arthur Hotep

  1. For 20 new foot knights it's whatever. I can justify paying GW prices for models that are actually at the cutting edge of quality and offer a unique aesthetic. I can't justify it for generic, blobby 20 year old skeletons.
  2. Bone dragon for 80€ seems cool. Might have to do that Corpse Rippa/Bone Dragon mashup some time in the future. 60€ skeleton warriors: lol, lmao
  3. I'm sure we will get there eventually. I am actually very happy with the new direction of the Freeguild, and I hope if and when we eventually see a Cogfort or new steam vehicles, they keep using the same design cues. They have so many cool and interesting direct references to medieval art in the new design. "Medieval, but high tech" would be an absolute banger of an aesthetic for new Ironweld stuff.
  4. So weird that the Cities of Sigmar have stuff like this in the lore and then on the tabletop we only get guys with hand-cannons.
  5. The best gargoyle in Cities is obviously the butt gargoyle from Zenestra's palanquin:
  6. You are right, I had it in my head that it only prevents negative modifiers for some reason. Might be better off stacking bonuses to saves in that case.
  7. If you are just talking about you own dudes, they can always be the exception. There are a lot of "natural" undead in the mortal realms, your guys don't have to be huge Nagash fans. For the official lore, though, I'd like to see canon examples of anti-Nagash undead as well, though. I think that is a pretty likely direction for the development of 4th edition, as well. We have been hearing a lot about other death gods recently.
  8. Generally good to remember that events are never caused just by a single thing. There are so many factors that likely played into the development of TOW during the last 5 years that picking out one thing and saying "this is why TOW is how it is today" is 100% going to be overly reductive.
  9. Loremaster of Sotek has at least some credence from me, but I will wait for an actual video that actually explains how he supposedly know this inside info before I give these new "revelations" a lot of weight. That video might be interesting, though, if he can substantiate these claims. I would love to hear a bit more about the GW internal circumstances that led to the change in scope/vision the TOW project pretty clearly went through at some point. The reddit post itself, however, reads a bit too much like "GW hates WHFB and tried to kill it again when TOW looked like it might become a success", which is conspiracy garbage that strongly plays into the biases of r/warhammerfantasy.
  10. It's hard to say. Vindicarum, Hallowheart/Settler's Gain and Hammerhal Ghyra would have been my first picks. Vindicarum for rally into combat like you describe. Hallowheart and Settler's Gain so that you can make Blazing Weapons a reliable part of your game plan rather than just something nice that might happen sometimes. Also, the human lore spells have a lot of potential. Since Steelhelms are pretty slow no matter what, I think the game plan should probably be to take a charge and counter-punch. Pha's Protection would help a lot with that. A 3+, 5++ unrendable is not unreasonable to expect with that set up. Hammerhal Ghyra helps with battleshock, which Cities has no easy way to negate completely. It would also help you get off the Freeguild Marshal's "count as two models" ability. I don't know how big of an upside that really is, though. So far I have not been having trouble contesting points with Steelhelms without it. I personally feel that Steelhelms are more attractive as an anvil that can counter-punch rather than a hammer. So I think I would not be leaning towards subfactions that help them offensively. Making Steelhelms defensively strong is pretty easy. Making them both mobile and offnsively strong at the same time seems harder.
  11. I can't substantiate this with any inside knowledge of GW, but generally I read phrases such as "currently no plans" and "no plans for the foreseeable future" as "these are not currently part of our project planning". If GW works like most big companies, they will have 3-5 year plans for projects they are working on which need to be greenlit and budgeted for. If GW now puts out a statement that there are "no plans" for legacy factions, Kislev or Cathay, that probably just means that these factions are not part of their current project planning and won't be until the next round of budget negotiations at least. It is very likely that including Kislev and Cathay were tentative goals of the TOW project at an earlier stage, and that the project was scaled back at some point, potentially after it became clear that they could not meet all their planned mile stones midway through, or when a project extension had to be negotiated after the first 1-2 years of exploratory work. It's GW's own fault that people are disappointed now, though. They did not have to announce that they are working on the TOW project as early as they did.
  12. You can think of acrylic as transparent, colourless acrylic paint. You can use it in every way you could use any other kind of paint. It will make a glossy surface less glossy, but might not get you back to a matt finish in one coat.
  13. I use Vallejo matt varnish, but only to even out unwanted glossy finishes. I have never had paint chipping problems on plastic miniatures, so I don't see the need to varnish for that reason. I also use matt and gloss medium to mix up paints if I want to change the finish. Since acrylic varnish is just medium, I feel that is worth mentioning.
  14. I generally like Steelhelms. I think they have potential beyond being a screening unit. Although I feel like I have to mention that they are fantastic screens, with their 6+ ward self buff and ability to project All-Out Defense to other Steelhelms. People have so far not been paying attention to them because Cavaliers, Steam Tanks and Fusiliers looked better at first glance, but after the last battlescroll maybe it is worth considering Steelhelms and the absurd number of buffs they can receive a bit more seriously. I have yet to see anyone run a substantial number of Steelhelms, a Marshall and a Command Corps together like the rules seem to intend them to be run, but it seems like it would be solid. Especially if you also add the Alchemite into the mix. EDIT: I don't know how to put it, but in my experience with Steelhelms so far, they have tanked stuff I though they wouldn't tank and killed stuff I though they would not kill. I just run them as screens in groups of 10, but they just keep accidentally absorbing a bunch of buffs and then suddenly they are sitting at +2 to saves with a 5+ ward or +1 to hit and wound, mortals on 6s, +1 rend, +1 attack... I really wonder how far they could be pushed if I actually focused on supporting them.
  15. Thanks! I definitely went very liberal with the sepia ink on this one. The plan is to have most of the model in warm, desaturated colours while Zenestra herself gets to be the super-saturated focal point. For most of the model I am aiming for the kind of brown tint that is so common in the surviving mediveal art pieces that are the inspiration for the new Cities of Sigmar models. Here is a picture with more natural light:
  16. I have been running high drops, and so far it has worked out OK for me. But then again, I don't run pure Tank spam. I find that Cities, in general, can play well both going first and second, which is part of the reason why I personally feel OK going high drops. If they let you go first, you get all your buffs up. If they make you go second, you can probably take it, or else deploy out of range far enough to blunt the alpha strike. That has been my experience even with deep strike lists. It's good to remember that Steam Tanks have a huge threat range. 8" movement + 3" Advance in Formation + 12" minimum shooting range (+ potentially 3" extra range with the Macroscope). You should be able to back board them on most battle plans if you have to. High drops actually help you out here if you do go that road, because you get to react to the opponent's deployment more often. I'll have a match against an alpha strike Slaves to Darkness list tomorrow, on that one battle plan that limits visibility range to 12". This should be the worst-case scenario for my lists. I'll try some stuff and see if I can give some insight on how to survive that kind of game soon. Those are the kinds of considerations that led me towards running more of a mixed arms list. Two tank commanders, because the commanders are way more self-sufficient than the regular tanks. The weaknesses of Steam Tanks are high rend and mortal wounds, so being able to self-buff with All-Out Defense, Finest Hour and Mystic Shield (with Arcane Tome) is really useful. Commanders can also heal with Heroic Healing and self-order. A single Tank Commander can leave the buff castle and do work. A single Steam Tank, much less so. IMO the pure spam list has suffered a lot from the battlescroll. 5 Tanks + 2 Command Corps is +160 points. That probably means you have to just leave on Command Corps at home. And that means a lot less healing, more incentive to bunch up in a Death Star, less overall mobility... It has a bunch of big downstream effects. I think once you start not spamming the tanks, you fairly quickly get to the point that you end up running only two or at max three of them, because the incentives push you that way.
  17. Realistically, we know that one of the reasons why we have all those undead characters still running around is just because we got the Nagash and Mortarch kits in the end times and they were not about to throw the molds for those expensive centerpiece kits into the trash after half an edition. But more recently GA: Death has actually been pretty good about introducing new characters.
  18. Personally, I am have not problem with the WHFB characters that are already in the game. AoS is Warhammer after all. For most of the returning characters that we have right now, there is at least some amount of justification for why they are still around (Sigvald is probably the weakest character in this regard). I have not problem with characters like Tyrion or Malerion being added, either. There are good reasons to have them return to the setting. But AoS needs to be careful with this kind of thing. Among a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the game, there still is a prevalent misconception that "AoS is that game where everyone is a god and nobody ever dies". Coupled with the less-defined geography of the setting, I have seen people say they are not interested in AoS because they feel like battles have no impact on anything. I think having a lot of returning "immortal" characters contributes to that. I think overall, the switch from WHFB to AoS, painful as it was, was a big opportunity to for the writers to free themselves from the burden that working within a highly established, highly detailed setting like the Old World brings with it. Going back now and re-introducing a lot of characters that, while they might have been interesting in WHFB in their own right, are not that important in the grand scheme of things, I think would be a miss-step. It would just make the Mortal Realms even more about the relationships between characters that are actually from another world that died before any of the people in the setting even existed. The Mortal Realms have enough going on as a setting that they should be able to furnish most character archetypes natively, and in a way that actually interacts with the setting itself. Unless the relationships between these old characters are really important to what the writers are trying to do, I am strongly in favor of just introducing new characters.
  19. The argument that I have seen is that you can do it because drilled allows you to reform before the charge, rather than during. Because of that, the rule you quoted supposedly does not apply. The real answer is "it is unclear", though.
  20. From the breakdowns I have been seeing, that guy in particular is basically mathematically unkillable in combat, between all his saves and the possibility of healing.
  21. He is saying we are getting a Horned Rat model in the skaven update.
  22. Since there is not a post yet, I thought I would quickly go through the important FAQ changes for Cities: This affects the Command Corps healing ability, which you now have to spread out to three units. Contrary to what some people are saying, you can still heal the same unit(s) multiple times if you have two or more Command Corps. A clarification on how the rally ability works, because it was confusing before. We now know that it is the most restrictive interpretation of the rule: You need both units within 3" to get the 4+ rally. This entry looks like it might be redundant given the update to the Core Rules above, but since you are not actually picking units with Zenestra, but spell effects, it needs to be clarified separately. No idea what this entry does. Maybe just clarification, but it just amount to "the rule says what it says". I have seen claims that it means you cannot disrupt two command in a turn even if you have two Whisperblades, but it does not in fact say that. The rule is still clearly restricted to "each time a command is issued", so for different commands you can make separate attempts. This entry shows that Bring Full Arms To Bear works like we all thought it does. But it is a nice reminder that you don't need to destroy a suppressed unit in combat to get the tactic: You just have to suppress and later destroy it. Blazing Weapons changed to melee, as per the Battlescroll. Instead of getting their +1 rend for being "in cover", Wildercorps Hunters now get if for being "within 1 inch of a terrain feature". Probably because whether or not a unit is in cover depends on the relative positioning of the opponent's units. It is slightly easier to achieve now, but is a rules clarification rather than a buff.
  23. It's true. But even if you are a dumb-dumb like me you can just run 6 heroes and put a bunch of counter-charge orders down when you get doubled, see how it shakes out 😎 Some basic tech for it: Use Redeploy to move a unit closer to its counter-charge target Counter-Charge over your own screen with flying units Remove or soften up targets with impact hits on the counter-charge Move your auras around by putting counter-charge on Zenestra, the Alchemite, your Hurricanum... Finest Hour on the enemy turn to get +3" to charge with cavaliers. You can use this to foil alpha charges when the opponent gets a big bonus from it (deploy outside their range as much as possible, foil their reroll command with the Whisperblade, be aware that you can reroll your own counter-charge like normal). I am definitely having fun with it. It's really helps make the double turn more easy to survive for Cities. Oh, and unrelated, you can also Return Fire on Unleash Hell if you have the order up.
  24. I am planning to keep running my list with 20 fusiliers and 3 Steelhelm screens for a bit. Switching up the game plan from starting with Blazing Weapons to starting with +1 to saves. Steelhelms get to pass around all out defense to other Steelhelms, so 3+ save ignore rend 1 to start. Then Blazing Weapons is there for the counter punch. I recently had a really good interaction, actually. Got double turned, but managed to place some good counter charge orders. I counter-charged unit of 10 Wizard Finder battalion Steelhelms and an Alchemite with a still-active Blazing Weapons aura into a big enemy wizard model in a kind of pincer move. A cool 31 3+/4+ rend 1 attacks with mortal on sixes out of nowhere. Destroyed a key enemy unit while he was supposed to be double-turning me. Definitely a cool moment that makes me not want to give up on the Alchemite so quickly.
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