Melcavuk

I have just finished putting the last touches onto my Not-quite-battletome (I cant source art) for the Suneater Tribes ogors, designed to play radically differently to Gutbusters is has a full compliment of 17 warscrolls, 4 battallions including some nice mixed destruction ones, prayers, spells and relics galore along with a smattering of background written by yours truly. If anyone wants to look it over, play with it or generally use in in any way I would be honoured. For me this is the final product of a long time and alot of hard work but I'm happy with the end result. It is light at 52 pages total without major breaks for artwork throughout, but I'm proud of the end result PlayersCompanion.pdf

Edit log: - Bloody Banquest is now called The Ravenous Maw - Oracular totem has been removed and replaced with the following: Carnivorous Companion In the heart of Ghur the parasitic Maw Wyrm tunnels its way through a host, consuming them day by day and seeping the raw magics of the Maw in its excrement. Some butchers endure the pain to ultilise the magics. In your hero phase you may elect to inflict 1 Mortal Wound on this Butcher, if you do so you may cast an additional spell in that phase. Note this cannot be a spell they have already cast this turn, a Butcher may only utilise their Carniverous Companion once per turn. Will work on Batallions and looking at Scraplauncher and Ironblaster scrolls later in the week.

I like to assume the maw is an aspect of Gorkamorka in the same way that the Firebellies are meant to worship the Suneater as an aspect of Gorkamorka, for me the Maw is the great balancer in the realms, where other gods trade souls as though they were currency the Maw exists only to consume them, to devour them in their entirity so that new life flourishes (food chain, circle of life etc), it isnt some logical, petty politicking god searching for souls, but the cosmic equivalent of an alpha predator eating its way through the metaphysical.

To be honest i was dicey on some of the relic option for the butcher, I wanted to add a degree of reliability without going too... ordered but your feedback makes alot of sense, one of the options that didnt make the cut was the ability to cast an additional spell a turn in return for taking a mortal wound, it was to be depicted as ritual scars dug deep into the flesh that bleed magic when utilised. It added a degree of potency whilst having a drawback but felt it moved the butcher into a two spell caster with no points increase and could have been considered OP. And yeah expanding options for the butcher definately makes sense, currently butchers with cauldrons seem (to me atleast) an autoinclude over those without. i feel this could be better balanced with warscroll options rather than neccessarily relics (A Butcher carrying a massive bell around to ring to sound the feast for example giving +1 to hit for ogors that charge that turn within range) Very true, removing once per battle and instead making it "until your next hero phase) on the Meathook might be less... offensive to an opponent and requires that butcher to still be alive. The other option would be to have it contingent on the butchers survival (so kill the butcher and the cursed caster gets their spells back) With D yeah.... there are better spells, there are worse. With a restricted number of spells I'd hope most a more flavoursome than arcane bolt

Airbrush, so much airbrush, all the time. Honestly I get the same fatigue but for me it is on hordes, doing to same colour for hours on end whether on a a single of many models can be mentally exhausting, best way of breaking it up is to have other things to paint to give yourself a creative palette cleanser that way you can hit back at the original model refreshed and enthused.

Cheers guys, appreciate the feedback and the time taken to read through. As a quick summary the rules were designed to reflect the key attribute I know gutbusters for which is the endless, ravenous and all consuming Maw and move that into an Age of Sigmar focus where it is fed the souls of those who die on the field of battle, in doing so sharing some small portion of power left over from those souls (its a messy eater) with the Ogor below. Thanks for the detailed response, cracking through I'll try and give my opinions on why I did things: A) You're right I may have approached this from an out of game decision rather than neccessarily straight from a fluff perspective, I approached the army that only had one mid tier wizard (low spell numbers, not a monster, not a named character who dispells everthing) and made that wizard more effective/reliable statistically on the field rather than more volatile but unreliable. This was more of a tactical balance thing in my own head than directly linked to theme. The strengths of the army is still focused toward hitting like a freight train and tried to encapsulate the momentum of a mountain of flesh and muscle piling down the hills into the enemies whilst avoiding things like boosting saves, extra hit buffs etc instead adding momentum and damage when they made contact B) Again right, this is something to me that could be accomodated by more hero variety than specific relics etc. This is only because when going through other armies relics I found few that buffed the army but instead buffed only the individual character, the army command trait was designed to help hit more rather than harder (frenzied etc) and I tried to avoid replicating but renaming existing destruction traits as I wanted more flavour than that. Would you suggest to do this through spells or relics? C) Its great or useless with no inbetween, it relies on: A caster being at the front of the enemy army to be charged (no outflank mechanic), the butcher getting down the field, making the charge, hitting and wounding (but not killing) and then releasing the power to be effective. Essentially its a big gamble taking it that when it does eventually pay off it goes off big. D) I'm surprised you found this strong, the increased casting value (7 vs 5) and reduced range (12 vs 18) makes it on average worse than the old arcane bolt but arguably better than the new one, but its random mortal wound output means there's a chance even in its ideal situation it could only do a single mortal wound. What casting value would you feel suitably mirrors the effect? E) Yeah this one is on me, variety in a unit build is something I feel most units should have in terms of a "special" weapon in there somewhere, since you can make ogors out of the Guts kit adding a two handed tenderiser was logical and its always bemused me the guts come in 4s but are fielded in 3s (one of the few gw kits not sold in multiples minimums of AoS unit sizes Ah the puns To be honest that ability went through about a dozen names, I went with Bloody Banquet as it sounded flavoursome (see its possible) but evocative, trying to toe the line between Gutbusters, FEC and Bloodbound with naming was challenging, other contendors for name were: The Ravenous Maw The Endless Hungering Feeding Time Thanks again guys!

I’d reword the barrow armour to the more common place “Halve the damage characteristic (rounding up) of attack’s that target this model” Otherwise looks solid

Saw the word conversion, had to come look But yes as above the grave guard weapons are pretty tiny on a Stormcast scale, the stormcast are nearly twice the bulk of the graveguard and their normal weapons are massively hefty. That said you could always rough up a stormcast weapon to match what you want as opposed to trying to move the weapons from the graveguard across. I'm pretty sure you're never going to fit the SCE model onto the right base size for the Graveguard though as the wide stance makes anything below 40mm alot of effort.

As part of a recent thing (not to be dwelt on) I produced a number of Gutbuster abilities, relics, spells as part of their battle traits. Entirely fan made ofcourse but it helps bring them in line with some of the more recent Battletome'd factions, would love to know how people feel about them.

I think at this stage the physical editions of the book should come with access to the PDF variants, with the latter always containing the most upto date errata and FAQ content. That way people can pay at a premium for the combined edition (Hardcopy and PDF) or at a reduced price the rules edition (PDF only), I personally love hardback rulebooks, they feel substantial and I like have something tangible in exchange for my money but do agree that rules changing so rapidly can decrease the value on these books sometimes within days of having recieved it.