Sception

I'm in the US and I order txarli factory designed 3d printed plastic bases and movement trays from Covetedforge.com. They come pre-fitted for 5x1mm disc magnets, which is nice, they're not too pricey, turnaround time on orders is like 3 weeks give or take. If you have your own 3d printer you can buy the print files from txarli factory instead. The one word of warning i'll give is that some of the new Old World base sizes (60x100mm bases, bases and unit trays for 30x60 at least, I haven't tried any 30mm square bases or trays yet but probably those too) were re-sized from smaller bases without fixing the magnet slots, so the slots themselves are oversized and/or oblong. You can still glue the same magnets in, the depth of the magnet slots isn't messed up, but you've got to be careful about centering to get the magnets in the bases and the movement trays to line up. So there's a fair few caviats here, most of which I'm sure will get worked out in time, but imo these are still the best bases & movement trays you can currently buy for a reasonable price.

That's absurd, half of old world is stuff gw doesn't sell at the moment. Thankfully my local guy is more reasonable.

Good news! The plastic Blood Knights fit on 30x60 cav bases just fine - at least in a single rank. They do hang over the front & back, so making two ranks work might rake some extra effort. The champion's mace extending way out to the side obviously won't fit, so give him a sword or lance instead. you can even still use the cape if you clip the mace arm off & trim it up a bit.

Had my first game of warcry just last week. Was a lot of fun, & yeah, way more manageable game size to paint/play. I just hope the current season wraps up soon & we get a different theme for terrain.

Corpse Cart back in stock on the US online store. Now if only Black Knights would come back in, I need like 4 boxes of those.

Not a fan of the 'of renown' stuff, but I've ranted about that elsewhere. As for Sekhar, she's ok. Not great, but not actively bad. It's frustrating to get yet another named infantry vamp hero when vamp hero on nightmare and new grave guard are so desperately needed, but she at least looks kind of weird and cool, and it's nice to see something specific to legion of blood. I'm disappointed at the lack of OBR both in releases (I let myself get my hopes up for that rumored Morghast hero) and in the lore (I thought an ROR with Arkhan meant he was getting revived in this book - sadly not). ... On the more positive side, the lore developments with Ushoran are neat, really have him shouldering his way into the ongoing story of the game and in particular the death factions in a big way. I've been complaining that FEC needed important named heroes to establish and drive their place in the narrative, and that's finally really happening. Kind of a shame to have Legion of Blood taking the L over it as Neferata's been forced into the roll of the jobber once too often in AoS, but as long as she comes out on top in the eventual showdown between her and Mannfred I'll be ok. Also, Triumph and Treachery looks fun. So even if I'm not keen on Sekhar or any of the 'of Renown' stuff, I'm still pretty hype to pick this book up. Otherwise, imo 4th edition can't come soon enough, as I'm pretty sure this is it for Undead content (rules, models, & narrative) in 3rd edition, apart from that one nighthaunt group for warcry. I'm not expecting anything else for the undead in the remaining Dawnbringers books, certainly not in terms of new rules or model releases. I'm not exactly complaining, mind. The FEC refresh really is impressive, and Ushoran's arrival has made a major mark on the setting. Can't complain there. And plenty of undead stuff happening in Old World, Warcry, Underworlds, etc to keep me occupied until we start seeing 4th ed battletomes.

Honestly, neither do I. Cannons feel problematic at first glance, especially if we want big cool monster heroes to be viable. However, most factions don't have access to cannons, and even for the armies that have them they aren't exactly cheap to spam, and they're coming out of special points, so spamming cannons really limits what the rest of the army can be in a way that spammed glade guard for example really don't. So in practice, I could easily be worried over nothing.

Fair enough i guess, but I'm not sure I see how 6 units of glade guard in a 2000 point game is a bigger problem than 6 great cannons. Not a criticism of you and your group specifically, more of the current semi-official rule of 3 as it is currently worded.

Are you applying 'rule of three' only for otherwise unlimited stuff, or are you also applying it to units that already have discrete limits but would allow more than three? eg, if something is '2 per 1000 points' would it be limited to 3 or to 4 in your group?

Those are only my thoughts, and they're only backed up by a single game. Even if we count oldhammer experience, i didn't actually get to play all that often and never competitively. I'm more than happy to write out my process to help anyone struggling to get a beginner list together so they can start building up their own experience, but there are others out there who are more qualified to present actual competitive advice. Some good examples worth looking at include Russ of Facehammer TV and Vince Vinturella on youtube, both of whom recently put out Tomb Kings army overviews: this one's a bit meandery, but the chapter list will help you find comments on specific topics ... ... These both rate some options pretty differently than I do, and where there are discrepancies between my advice and theirs both of these guys are speaking from positions of considerably more authority. Especially worth noting, both of these videos rate the skeleton chariots a lot higher than I do, and in particular recommend mounting kings or princes on chariots to put in the unit, so that's probably a better option than I made it out to be. Where they disagree with each other, that I leave to you to work out who has the better take. Regardless, if you're interested in Tomb Kings, both of these videos make good background listening while doing hobby work.

I'm curious how they'd justify this in the narrative. Beastmen are a pretty significant part of the AoS lore, even if they haven't featured heavily in the ongoing story to this point. That said, 3rd edition, the supposed "age of the beast", coming and going without a significant refresh to the Beasts of Chaos model range makes this feel sadly plausible. Kragnos, very clearly a Beasts of Chaos model, being released for not the beasts of chaos, would also be a pretty terrible sign in retrospect. On the other hand, chaos warriors get to be an army in both games, so... shrug.

I like that he's off the table (in terms of narrative) for the moment, letting the Mortarchs follow their own fun little plots and squabbles, but I wouldn't want him gone permanently. Partially because I just don't think the GW lore writers are capable of coming up with a 'lord of the undead' style character who would be at all better or even meaningfully different from Nagash, but also because Nagash is just active and dynamic in ways that have fun impacts on the narrative even if you don't think much of him as a personality. Like I said, I'm glad that he's in time out, but let's be real, Age of Sigmar's narrative was never as active - the story changes never as big or coming as fast - as when Nagash was in the ascendancy. It didn't have to be this way, there were plenty of dangling threads left by Broken Realms and there are plenty of characters in the game who could have been doing stuff. And yet it seems that without Nagash around to Make Stuff Happen, stuff just Does Not Happen in this setting, and for that alone he's the best and most important character in Age of Sigmar and I hope GW never ever gets rid of him - at least not permanently.

FAQs might change things, in the past look out sir was explicitly about war machine hits. I agree that a (single) waystalker, while good, wouldn't exactly broken if they did bypass look out sir, though against tomb kings in particular multple waystalkers could potentially be pretty oppressive, especially in lower points games where theoretically a hero level heirophant is supposed to be a viable build choice. And players can still roll ones, look out sir isn't the same as immunity. All that said, against enemies that can't pick out lone heroes (no waystalker style snipers, no stone thrower type war machines), walking around on their own next to big units is a pretty ideal location for most wizards, so forcing them into (or behind) units, limiting their sight and potentially having to deal with being in a fighting rank, exposing them to melee attacks and potentially silencing a lot of their abilities if you tag the unit in melee, is still useful to do. It's good to limit your opponent's options. And sniping champions, even if that's all they do, is still good. Even as a wood elf player you typically will need to resort to melee combat to wipe units out and get the the victory points to win games. Taking out unit champions lets your own champions reliably absorb the attacks of powerful enemy melee characters for a round, leaving the rest of their unit, and any melee heroes of your own, free to put all their own attacks on the enemy unit even if that hero might have otherwise out-initiatived you. With your fragile melee units, a fighty lord with strikes first can otherwise be a major problem. So yeah, I still don't think waystalkers are bad. But fs look out sir does apply - and I can't see anything in the text that says it doesn't - then they're *a lot* less powerful than people were thinking at first glance.

Characters in units of 5+ get look out sir of 2+ on hits against them in the shooting phase. Unless I'm missing something the waystalker mostly just functions to force lone heroes into units, once there they're as safe from her as they are from war machines. She is very effective at sniping out unit champions, though. No look out sir there, and unlike standards and musicians other models in the unit don't replace them. Thankfully tomb kings can bring our champions back from the dead.

On the other hand, undead units without their faction rules tend to be bad and/or confusing. Will olynder even be ethereal? Will Arkhan even have spells worth casting? Will Katakros's OBR be subject to battleshock, making his personal guard the most cowardly bonereapers in the game? Doing the mortarchs' personal forces as regiments of renown, with the usual 'not in your own faction' restriction, was a mistake. The mortarchs should have been armies of renown, and the snake lady's entourage should have been a regiment of renown - I mean, the entire point is that they're operating as allies to the FEC. I'll still get the book, for lore and whatnot, but honestly this design choice is so woefully backwards as to be mind numbing. When death in general already seems to be getting sidelined in the dawnbringers campaign (only really present in one book, only a single new model outside of the stuff that would have been coming with the FEC update regardless and didn't need a campaign to justify its release - and that one new campaign model, while kind of cool, is literally the last thing anybody needed at this point, another vampire infantry special character), with really only the 'of renown' rules in book 4 to show for ourselves, the fumbling of these rules at the very starting line of which should be 'regiments' and which should be 'armies', before the designers even had a chance to mess up the unit selection or special rules, is just... it's exasperating. But whatever! I don't expect armies/regiments of renown to survive the coming edition change anyway, so it's probably not worth getting worked up over.

Tomb Kings Mortuary Cult (out of Arcane Journal: Tomb Kings) 210 - High Liche Priest, Level 4, Lore of Necromancy, Warding Splint*, Earthing Rod 163 - 23 Skeleton Warriors, light armor, spears, shields, nehekharan phalanx, full command 70 - 14 Skeleton Skirmishers, warbows 147 - 3 Ushabti, greatbows 200 - Necrosphinx, envenomed sting 75 - Tomb Scorpion, ambushers 135 - Casket of Souls *option from Arcane Journal: Tomb Kings Characters.......210 points - 21% Core...................380 points - 38% Special..............275 points - 27.5% Rare...................135 points - 13.5% Total................1000 points Does this forum still have spoiler blocks? Didn't there used to be an eyeball icon for that? I used it in my previous post, but it's not there now... I'm going to try and sblock the in depth explanation and example tomb kings army building thoughts, if it doesn't work I apologize for the overly long post. EDIT: there it is, the option just disappears if I'm not zoomed far enough out I guess.

Played my first game of Old World. Major victory for the Tomb Kings, but luck was on my side (one of the enemy's infantry blocks failed a terror test & fled off the board, and the necrosphinx made two max distance charges). My army also turned out to be a bit over-tuned. I ran my current default 'cram in as many cool models as possible' Mortuary Cult army: lv4 liche, spearleton block, bowleton skirmishers, 3 bowshabti, scorpion, necrosphinx, casket. The Empire player had two core melee infanty blocks (spears & halberds), two core ranged support units (handguns & crossbows), and a bunch of points in heroes (lv2 wizard, two war priests, fighty lord). no cannons, no organ guns, no monsters, no heavy cav, no lv4 wizard, no greatswords. In retrospect I should have recognized the mismatch during deployment, reduced the lich lord to lv3, and dropped the necrosphinx entirely. I could have filled the points with additional heroes & some warblade ushabti I had in my box. That would have made for more of a game, as the lv4 was kind of oppressive against only an lv2, and he just didn't have an answer to the sphinx. But it was fun regardless. Small games can often end up lopsided like that & we were both still new & getting a handle on the game, so no hard feelings I think. Some key things I forgot during the game that I need to try and remember going forward: fear (never once made him roll for it), and the -1 to hit from light of protection (ie, the most important part of that spell, and the entire casket).

forgive the blurry low res picture, snagged this from a corner of a page shown in the white dwarf preview. I just wanted to say that I didn't realize until now how much I missed battle reports with pictures that looked like this - they're just so much more legible than top-down pictures of loose models or clusters of circles.

I want that model for D&D. Perfect figure for a paladin/hexblade of the Raven Queen.

some classic vamp counts heroes I never got around to painting as Soulblight Gravelords, ready to be re-re-based back to squares for the Old World.

Thanks! It's been a major flurry of work over the last several days, taking up all my available hobby time and then some. They're not even ready for priming yet, I still need to apply texture paint first, and I might go for a round of paint stripping on the skeletons with bows. Then again, that celestra that's on them isn't too far removed from the vallejo grey primer I plan to use as an undercoat for the skeletons going foward, so maybe it's fine to just leave them as is. In the mean time, though, I'm way ahead of the local gaming group at this point - My room mate's still choosing his army, others have only just gotten their initial pre-release orders - so this lot's probably going back on the shelf for a few weeks to give people time to catch up. That also gives me time to finish some other painting projects that were supposed to be done before the big old world push. ... I do again have to recommend the txarli factory bases & unit trays, which I picked up from coveted forge. They're very nice. One minor nitpick - the magnet slots on the 60x100 bases were mishapen (looks like somebody resized a 50x50 to the new proportions but forgot to go back and tidy up the magnet slots back to 5mm circles), but it's really no big deal, the depth is still right and superglue holds the magnets in fine even if the slots aren't snug. ... Also, the metal bowshabti are great. Just, so, so, soooo much better than the resin they used to be in. Obviously I wish we got new plastic ushabti instead, but until that day comes these are very nice, and I'm absolutely on the email waiting list to get more when they're back in stock.

1k Mortuary Cult, all on their new bases.

Re: earlier discussions about Frenzy, the recent FAQ's notes about being allowed to attempt yo reform after wiping out & overrunning a unit makes feenzy a good bit better. Still as much a detriment as a buff, imo, but not as bad as I was making out before.

The first batch of Txarli Factory bases & unit trays have arrived from Coveted Forge. The arduous process of re-rebasing my Tomb Kings can now begin! These are the plain top design, pre-fited for 5x1mm disc magnets (which I purchased from Apex Magnets). If you have a 3d printer you can purchase the print files from Txarli Factory. If, like me, you do not have a 3d printer, then you can purchase them printed from Coveted Forge for a reasonable price. The prints are high quality, & the packing was efficient & secure, using environment friendly packing material. Pre-modeled bases in several styles are also available, which was tempting, but these were cheaper, plus I want them to match my existing AoS bases for some limited crossover use. It only took a couple weeks for this lot to arrive, which was faster than expected, though I suspect I got my order in just before the Old World rush, so if you place an order right now it might take longer. I'm very happy with these & will be ordering more soon. If you're looking for basing options for The Old World, Coveted Forge def has my recommendation. Some minor nitpicks: the 25mm squares are just a tiny bit shorter than the larger bases. Not a problem, but if you stick a unit filler on a 50x50 or 50x75 in the middle of a unit of 25x25s, the filler's base will sit ever so slightly higher than the rest. Also a few of the bases had some plasticy fibers around some of the edges. Again, no big deal, but you might want to rub the edges on some sandpaper to clean everything up. It's still less cleanup work than the old gw plastic bases with the sprue nubs.

They know in their hearts that they're in the wrong. 😛