Sception

Dogs are ok, I like the chickens, the beefy guards half way between mortek & immortis look like they're the stormcast scale soldiers that I imagined mortek guard would be before they actually released and turned out to be the short kings they are. The centaur is closer to the kind of weird bone amalgamation I always want to see out of this faction, and spine whips are always great, so of course I like him. Fluff wise, failures demoted into bestial forms and sent as expendable vanguard and scouts into the deadliest territories of the realms, such as the gnarlwood, works well imo. In Warcry this box should open up a whole new way to play OBR with a bunch of smaller, faster moving options. In AoS... I would love to eventually be units in their own right. As a warband unit, I think putting them all in a single unit probably undercuts them a fair bit. The chickens can't fly because the rest of the box doesn't, the hounds and centaur can't be fast because they're tied to the infantry dudes. The guards & centaur can't be particularly tough because they're the same unit as a couple chickens. I'm not saying the unit can't be good unit in AoS, but they can't be a good representation of what the individual models look like, the way they probably will be in Warcry. Sadly this de-confirms the long hoped for morghast hero, as that rumor engine turns out to be an ossiarch chicken wing. I gave up hope of that after it wasn't in dawnbringers 4, so I'm already over my disappointment, but I imagine some will be feeling that pretty shortly.

I would have replaced the head & neck with like a regular mortek guy's face, sunk a bit into the boney shoulders like a suit of high-collared armor. Then put some mantis-folded limbs on the back with curved nadirite blades in place of forearms pointed forward as the weapons. The human-like mortek face emphasises that there's an actual (composit ossiarch) person in there, not just a beast. Have their fluff be that they were mortek soldiers who demonstrated excessive aggression/insufficient discipline and the mortisans decided 'if you're going to fight like a dog, then you might as well just be one'. Then subvert the usual 'Nagash is a ****** who likes punishing people and the undead suffer under his tyranny' narrative by having these dog guys be super happy with the new bodies that came with their 'demotion' and revel in the unrestrained violence of their new battlefield role. But that's just me. Again, these guys are still cool as they are, and we don't have their fluff yet so there may be an interesting twist in there. Plus, if it's a bespoke warcry warband as I expect then it won't be a whole unit of these dog guys, just one or two of them plus a bunch of other, potentially more interesting stuff in there we haven't seen yet, likely including that thing with the morghast wing - which could just be a new morghast, but I think might be something smaller that just has morghast-style wings. Of course, the downside is that, while a warcry warband would be playable in aos, they'd all be crammed together into a single unit that wouldn't really work as well as bespoke rules for separate specific units. And while we might see separate units in the future, the wait could be a long, long time. After all, we still don't have those mortek archers implied by the underworlds guy.

New OBR! WHOOO!!!! Preview coming at adepticon. This almost assuredly won't be a direct release for Age of Sigmar, surely if OBR were getting a direct AoS release it would have been tied to Dawnbringers 4? I suppose anything's possible, but this is overwhelmingly more likely to be a Warcry release. It's probably not an Underworlds release, because those typically have pre-molded bases, where this looks to have a normal base with normal basing applied. That said, warcry is a cool game and obr are a fun faction in it, and it'll be nice for them to gain an option for some faster fighters that aren't as expensive as cavalry or morghasts. Otherwise, I'm a sucker for OBR aesthetics so I generally like this guy, but it is probably my least favorite ossiarch so far. the wide bone shield plates on the back of its neck and front of its forlegs feel like they should have been proper armor plates, and that's before we get to the overall bodyplan of 'just a dog/cat' being a bit dull. Yeah, the ossiarchs have 'just dudes' and 'just horses', but their narrative concept allows for wild monstrosities with atypical numbers of limbs, human-like faces on bestial bodies & vice versa, multiple separate faces & personas integrated into a single creature, weird blends of ghostly spirit and boney corporeal form, etc. This design isn't bad at all, but it is a bit tame when you consider the weirder possibilities implied by the stalkers, crawler, and harvester. Still, I'm definitely excited for new ossiarchs no matter the form, and as I've only recently been getting into warcry with models already painted for AoS, this could be the first warband I paint specifically for the skirmish game.

Except based on the preview article these 'siege rules' seem tied to the specific range of AoS terrain pieces GW currently sells, and sadly those piece are not very conducive to setting up a siege scenario. no walls, no towers, no moats, no palisades, etc.

Wanderers were a faction unto themselves before cities of sigmar were a thing. But that was the elden days and things weren't really set in stone back then.

Some good looking marauders. Nice.

It's probably just that I play Death factions, but the description for Dawnbringers 5 feels really light on content compared to book 4. Hopefully we get a preview on the strongpoint assault rules this week, that might turn my initial impression around.

Same thing happened with the tomb swarms a while back. They showed up on the UK store several weeks before the US store had them.

Vyrkos definitely has an edge on skulpts (more unique Vyrkos units, more generic units that aesthetically fit vyrkos better than the other bloodlines). Mechanically Vyrkos favours larger hoard armies thanks to options like Torgilius and the Phylactory, though from a competitive perspective those aren't the strongest Soulblight builds these days. They were for a while, but hoards of skeletons and especially zombies were overtuned and got hit with some heavy points cost increases and nerfs to some of the faction traits for reviving summonable units - be sure to read our FAQ pretty thorougly, a lot of our book has been rewritten at this point. Post those nerfs I prefer skeletons to zombies for chaff & filling out battleline, along with some wolves because I mean if you're playing vyrkos you kind of have to, as you get an extra unit of 10 for free via the faction traits. That said, Zombies are fine if you happen to have some already. The leading edge of Soulbight last time I checked was monster mash lists with a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon plus at least one of Neferata, Mannfred, or Vordrai, though I'm not sure if those builds have survived the most recent battlescroll update. As with most soulblight factions, the Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon is a strong option for Vyrkos, though for us it's more of a techy piece using its high movement and the hunter's snare command ability to steal objectives and units of dire wolves, fell bats, cavalry, or infantry raised up from grave sites to shield it from enemy units, and only engaging with enemies that are already engaged in combat so they can't bring their full offense to bear on your dragon. In comparison, a Legion of Blood VLoZD has options to ramp up both its offensive and defensive power, making it serious melee hammer even on its own. It's up to you whether the near 500 point cost of the zombie dragon is worth it. Compare to Radukar the Beast, who is slower (-6" move & no flight, but can run & charge), and more fragile (12 wounds 4+ save instead of 16 3+), and doesn't hit quite as hard, but he buffs nearby friendly summonable units when he charges (especially brutal with grave guard), and like the dragon can swing objective control with hunter's snare due to the ability to give vyrkos unique generals command abilities. He plays a lot like a Vyrkos zombie dragon - you still have to be cagey with him, avoid letting him get charged, only throw him against an enemy that's already engaged with something else, but when you do throw him in he adds an impressive bit of damage - while costing nearly 200 points less. Radu-beast also looks cooler than the current official zombie dragon model and is a lot easier to paint. Cado's a solid hero option. Sadly no faction bonuses, but that's not super critical for us, as long as you have at least one proper Vyrkos vampire hero in the army to call in your free wolf pack. Again you want to avoid him soloing enemy units, he won't survive that, but he's pretty mobile, has a nice spell, and can chip in a respectable bit of damage on a unit that's stuck in with one of your tar pit units. You will want some hammer units. Ideally, especially with Vyrkos's support for hoardy undead, you'd like to use grave guard, but the models are really old and look particularly weedy next to the current skeleton warriors, when they're supposed to be the the elite skittles. If your vanity, like mine, just won't let you field the current grave guard models (I kicked all of mine back to square bases for Old World), then Blood Knights, Vargheists, or the warcry warband, askurgan truebloods/trueblades/whatever they're called are decent. Sadly the Vyrkos specific Cursed city units that you'd like to be good for this - the Blood-born & Vargskyr - kind of aren't really. At least they don't cost many points? Even so, they're very fragile. Things might be different if the Vargskyr were a monster, letting you get some utility out of Roar. Or if the Blood-born weren't single, letting you reinforce them up to a unit of 6. As is, the blood-born at least are still a decent utility unit thanks to their low points cost, high movement speed, and pre-game move, letting you capture objectives early or gum up your opponent's first turn movement options if they make you go first, but they'll die the moment an enemy unit looks at them funny, and while they hit decently hard per model you can't take enough of them in a unit to call them a real hammer. .... If you want to mix factions, there's also the 'Liche's Hand' regiment of renown from the recent 'Mad King Rises' campaign supplement, which gets you Arkhan the Black plus two units of Morghasts out of the OBR tome for 750 points. Mixing them into a Vyrkos army gives you a bit of the old Legions of Nagash feel - the faction Soulblight Gravelords used to be before Arkhan and the Morghasts joined the Ossiarch Bonereapers. Adding Liche's Hand to Vyrkos lets you use elite morghasts as your hammers while filling out your battleline with soulblight chaff buffed with Vyrkos support options, which is at least interesting in theory. The Morghasts are fast, and boast solid reach, rend, and damage on their halberds, plus good healing from Arkhan, plus impressive utility tech in their ability to shut down enemy command abilities and a 2+ spell ignore from the regiment of renown. But all that said their total damage output is on the low end for a hammer unit due to their low model count per unit (same problem as blood-borne really), so you'll probably want at least something hard hitting on the gravelords side as well. Also, while Arkhan has good healing for himself and the morghasts, strong antimagic, and a bit of combat ability (though less than he looks), as a triple caster with no lore access he's not really shining to full effect here. Maybe consider one or more endless spells? That's really cutting into your points for actual soulblight units though. Honestly I'd only go this route if you intend to pick up a full OBR army in the future, as the Regiments of Renown rules probably aren't sticking around long term. Just something I've been tinkering with lately anyway.

I'm also confused why the Old World can't function as a 'specialist game' for AoS like warcry - or for that matter why 30k can't operate as a 'specialist game' for 40k like killteam. Accountant conniptions & department fights over who gets credit for what sales clearly don't prevent them from releasing a new model kit for 40k as a kill team (Eldar Striking Scorpions) or a new model kit for AoS as a warcry warband (Lumineth Riverblades). Underworlds teams get rules for AoS and Warcry, 40k units get rules for Kill Team and Necromunda, corporate can't definitively know what game to credit for the sale of any given genestealer magos blister, and yet somehow the sky doesn't fall. I'm not saying the product line segregation isn't happening, it clearly is. Just that it's dumb and not even universally applied.

Certainly. But even if true this would be a dumb thing imposed from above by management, not the actual devs trying to sabotage each other except in so far as management has forced them into competition.

Very much this. I'm not trying to defend GW or especially its management, I just don't think there's need to reach for malice against old world specifically when the same sorts of problems are plaguing the entire company.

I mean, there's also the same production issues that have plagued all the other GW games. When big new products for your flagship games are getting pushed back 6 to 12 months because you just can't get enough stock together to release them, and essential existing products for those games are unavailable for literally years at a time because you just can't spare the capacity to make more, it kind of makes sense to scale down production plans for side games. There was that rumor that their new factory in the uk couldn't be run at capacity, or even at all, due to the local electricity infrastructure not being able to meet the increased draw, and the nearby hospital getting priority. I'd be more inclined to blame that than any conspiracy of gw hobbling old world on purpose out of spite against their own employees & customers.

They were clearly intended at some point, we were told as much outright for Kislev in early development articles, and both feature heavily in the lore sections of the big rulebook, at least as much so as the currently supported factions. Long term, if the game doesn't fail* then I wouldn't be at all surprised to see one or both factions being released some time in the future. * Launch sales were clearly above expectations, but there aren't really any factions that are easy to collect right now, even bretts & tomb kings have several key units that haven't even been re-released yet. Insufficient supply could easily drain the interest out of the game before they're able to solve the availability issue. Honestly, GW's best friend right now for Old World is 3rd party proxies and 3d printers, because they can at least get people playing games and keep the community growing and attracting new players while GW catches up.

When I first started warhammer way back in early 5th edition I was captivated by the Undead, especially the characters of Nagash and Arkhan who just seemed like fun villains with funny big hats. and I loved that. But then the vamp count/tomb king split happened, splitting my army in half with my favorite characters not appearing in either half. So I got rid of my undead (big mistake in retrospect, but oh well), and started over with Wood elves, who were about as far opposite as I could go thematically, and who had a really cool and unique play style to them. I stuck with Wood Elves until 7th ed vampire counts which pulled me back with the updated model range. Then End Times: Nagash happened, bringing back my proper unified Warhammer Armies: Undead type faction with Nagash and Arkhan back in the spotlight, so I abandoned my Wood Elves and expanded my vamp counts with tomb kings stuff to play proper Undead Legion again... just in time for WHFB to be discontinued in favor of Age of Sigmar - a terrible downgrade at the time given the awful quality of AoS at release. But AoS kept Nagash and it kept Arkhan so I kept with it as slowly over time the community stepped up to fix GW's mess, turning AoS into an actually pretty decent game by the time 2nd edition rolled around, just in time for Nagash to take over the narrative much to my delight. Now I mostly play Soulblight, since that's what I have most painted (legacy of my now defunct Legion of Sacrament plus a cursed city box set), but I've purchased small armies worth of each of the current undead factions in AoS and am slowly working on getting them painted up. Meanwhile I've dived right back into Warhammer Fantasy with the release of Old World, rebasing a bunch of my older Tomb Kings and Vamp Counts models back onto squares for the rank & flank game.

Yes I use varnish - usually matt through an airbrush, then pick out bits I want to be shiny/wet with a paint on gloss varnish (snow, gore, gems, shiny clean gold & silver, etc. If the overall model wants to look more shiny or wet then I'd go with satin followed again by paint on gloss where appropriate.

I kind of regret buying the last two, but not this one, because yeah. It does feel like more is going on, with consequences reaching farther than just the fate of these two crusades. Plus the Triumph & Treachery stuff feels like a meaningful bit of content that the previous couple books didn't have. Then again, I play death factions exclusively, so that might just be bias based on my factions featuring more heavily this time.

Bah, the Mannfred story had originally been described to me as reanimated undead rats, something that might have been a sign of arkhan returning. Seeing the actual story that's explicitly not the case, and very much a skaven thing, with rats that are diseased but alive, not undead. Oh, well. Still waiting on any sign of Arkhan's return. I'm happy enough to leave Nagash in time out for the medium term, maybe even rebrand his model as an 'Avatar of Nagash' (as an excuse to drop its power a bit and its points cost a lot) with his true self recuperating while slowly going mad in the Nadir. But I'd really like Arkhan back sooner rather than later.

For the Flesh Eater Courts in general, and the Knight-focused Hollowmourne subfaction in particular: "No, on second thought let's not go to Summercourt. It is a silly place." - what the leaders of the Ghyran crusade should have said

seems like more kroot to me.

Yeah, but in most previous editions cool big monster riding heroes were trash, easilly pulled down by a couple cannon shots or even some small arms fire. Combined statlines is the obvious solution to that, and imo they've mostly done a good job of it. The armor saves were combined in the wrong way, but even so imo they're closer to where they should be now than they have been in... forever maybe. Not counting AoS of course.

Eh, they're still the killier unit among the default battleline, a relevant choice for emerald host in particular (even if narratively they're more tied to hexwraiths). I don't like how many units are effectively locked down to or locked out of particular subfactions, but that's not something we can even hope to see fixed until a 4th edition book, and even then I'd call it a long shot.

The thing is, if you want that 'former chaos guy as undead' aesthetic back it pretty much /has/ to be a new guy. Because while Nagash could bring back Krell, by what logic would he bring back Krell's specific busted up suit of armor? Krell was a mortarch in the end. If he comes back, he'd get a fancy new set of deathlord armor in the style of the end times plastics or the Ossiarchs. Heck, he'd probably /be/ an Ossiarch.

Why? He's not even a person. He has no personality, no motivations. The most interesting parts of Krell were always tied up in his relationship with Kemmler, the open question of whether it was the ranting necromancer or the silent skeletal brute behind him that was really pulling the strings. What does Krell, especially devoid of Kemmler, bring to the table that a wight king or ossiarch liege grounded in AoS's specific lore and setting couldn't? EDIT: No, that's not fair. Krell does have some appeal in the 'silent hulking brute but you can't be sure what if anything is actually going on inside'. Like, is he just an automaton or is he an actual thinking guy. That's not nothing, it is a pretty solid archetype for a skeletal dude, and none of the AoS undead characters have that in that they all have motivations (albeit sometimes muddled ones) that they'll happily tell you about at length. They're all chatterboxes, none of them are just silent and menacing. So fair enough, I withdraw my complaint, I can see /why/ someone would want Krell back. I just personally would rather see a new take on that archetype and leave Krell himself back in the Old World. Though even then I have to admit that the decision to lock the Old World game down to a time period when Krell's still entombed and Kemmler probably isn't even born yet means we won't even get to see him there. So I guess I wouldn't object to bringing Krell back in AoS, at least not as much as I'd object to Vlad or Abhorash (seriously DO NOT bring back Vlad or Abhorash).

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 as sort of a hopeless sapphic. 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, maybe establishing a hidden kingdom in that realm of shadow we've heard so much about but that's been strictly in the background so far. You could 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, Partially because the Gravelords are already choked with named characters and the absolute last thing we need is yet another one, and mostly because, I mean, it's Isabella. Nobody cares about Isabella, nobody's clamoring for Isabella to come back. 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. EDIT: As another example, while I'm happy to see him again in the Old World, I would hate to see Settra in AoS. There's no room for him to change & develop, his character's all wrapped up in his kingly claim over a land and a people that wouldn't even exist anymore if you did do anything new and different with him - eg if you made him a Stormcast hero who couldn't even remember his history, torn between his loyalty to Sigmar and an almost imperceptible voice from deep within saying he should be in charge - that might be interesting, but IF they did that then Settra followers would get big mad and they'd have to retcon it all away. IF they did that. On the other hand, consider Khalida. All her life tied up in this hatred of Neferata, then we learn in the Neferata book that said hatred was never really reciprocated, Neferata had a crush on Khalida, sincerely wanted to share power with her, was bitter and upset when Khalida forced Neferata to kill her. And then in the end times Khalida chooses to bend the knee to Nagash in the hopes of preserving some portion of Asaph within herself, rather than be destroyed like settra and see the last shred of her god follow the rest of the pantheon into Nagash's gullet. But then in the shared battles against chaos that followed she's forced to fight at Neferata's side, and the hatred just sort of drains away? And they faced the final end together, the centuries long feud seeming suddenly small and meaningless as the world is torn apart around them, the last two survivors of a civilization and now a world lost... and while that works as an ending, it also could have been such a compelling beginning to the two once mortal enemies moving foward as friends and allies (and maybe more), the only to people in all the realms who remember and mourn their lost homeland. Imagine Neferata tipping the scales against mannfred, getting a bit powerful and full of herself, and so Nagash calls back her ancient enemy to help further balance out her growing influence over Shyish, only for Khalida to join Neferata's side, or to make a show of continuing the old rivalry while secretly they work together. But again, this will never happen, partially because Khalida is less popular than settra (though not by as much as Isabella is less popular than Vlad), but mostly because the fans Khalida does have are super invested in her hatred of Neferata, and a complete 180 on that, while it would open up new and interesting places to take her character, would be seen as a betrayal by those fans, who don't just want to see old world characters back, they want to see them back exactly as they were, preserved in amber forever unchanging even as the entire universe changes around them. EDIT 2: "Sception this post isn't about what actually makes a returning character compelling, is it? You just want GW to give Neferata one or more girlfriends to alternately make out and conspire with." A post can be about more than one thing at the same time.