Sception

Test models done for my revised obr color scheme. Keeps the blackened bone outer skin & bleached white bone trim from my previous scheme, but with a variety of bone colors for the internal body structure to add a bit of variety. green glowy magic bits & black-to-green cloth bits to fit with my nighthaunt. Purple nadirite armor & weapons with gold seals of office are the biggest break away from my prior 'green and green alone' scheme, chosen for the royal connotations for Nagash's most favored faction, and also to emulate some of my favorite obr artwork: Thankfully I never made much progress with the old scheme, so there's not too much to repaint. Unfortunately, one of the few things I did paint in the old scheme is my precious Arkhan conversion, and just painting overtop won't be an option, at least not on arkhan himself, as that model suffered a varnish frosting disaster that I painted over once already. I'll have to strip paint from at least parts of that model, & I'm not looking forward to it.

Yup. Yet another reason why the mortarchs tend to be the way to go. I heard somebody was doing well with an Arkhan list featuring two reinforced units of Archai. That's something I'd like to try out, though it doesn't leave room for much else.

No firm rumours that I've heard yet. If you're worried about it, then I'd just hold off on the Archregent for now. Its not going anywhere.

I personally hope they don't pin an entire edition to a single realm again. I vastly prefer 2e's approach, taking a wider hollistic view of the realms and letting individual battletomes, campaign books, and matched play seasons focus in on whatever interesting is going on regardless of what realm its ins. Let the attention shift at least on a yearly basis along with the matched play season, and put out a new game board & terrain box (including reprints of oldhammer and 1e terrain as appropriate, some of that stuff still holds up) each year to match. Just try to line up the matched play, narrative campaign, and war-cry focus so the same terrain fits everything, and have them all switch to the same new realm/location each year.

If you trade deathriders for a soulmason instead of trading the liege that does come with a couple of drawbacks. First, you drop below minimum battleline, so you'll need to either find room for another battleline elsewhere (maybe trade the crawler), or else split the 30 morteks into 20 and 10 (in which case drop the spears for swords). Alternatively, you could make one of the mortisans the general instead of the liege, and trade the archai for either immortis or stalkers. Probably immortis to help shield that soulmason from getting sniped out by early shooting. You'll also add a drop, going from 1 to 2, since the above list is already maxing out hero slots on the ossiarch cohort. ... Going for null myriad with the soulmason with hoarfrost is definitely a strong choice, particularly with the big spear block, but I'd be inclined to swap out the liege instead of one of the kav units, to keep the single drop and not have to mess with the other units. But I'm no expert, so I could easily be wrong there. The main thing is that there's reasonable options to tinker and play with even if you don't want to field any mortarchs. Doing so might not be optimal, but I do think it's viable.

I mean, they're both pretty expensive, and we have other good units and heroes to get instead. If you're going to and hoping to win tournaments then yeah I think you should be building around one of our mortarchs, but if you're mostly playing pick up games in a local scene or just hoping to win more games than you lose at events then non-mortarch OBR can still make good use of a liege or mortisan boss plus an extra 200 or 300 points of dudes. The extra unit or two you could fit in would certainly make your relentless discipline more reliable. Typical OBR lists with Arkhan or Katakros will often start losing bonus command points after a single unit goes down - though admittedly it takes a lot of effort to bring a single unit down with katakros around. Still, I think you could make a decent go of it with something like: Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers - Legion: Mortis Praetorians - Mortal Realm: Shyish - Grand Strategy: Overshadow - Triumphs: Inspired Liege-Kavalos (180)* - General - Command Trait: Mighty Archaeossian - Artefact: Lode of Saturation Mortisan Boneshaper (140)* - Lore of Ossian Sorcery: Drain Vitality Mortisan Ossifector (120)* - Lore of Ossian Sorcery: Empower Nadirite Weapons 30 x Mortek Guard (390)* - Nadirite Spear and Shield - Reinforced x 2 5 x Kavalos Deathriders (190)* - Nadirite Blade and Shield 5 x Kavalos Deathriders (190)* - Nadirite Blade and Shield 4 x Morghast Archai (440)* - Spirit Halberds - Reinforced x 1 Gothizzar Harvester (160)* - Weapon: Soulcrusher Bludgeons Mortek Crawler (180)* Bone-Tithe Nexus *Ossiarch Cohort Total: 1990 / 2000 Reinforced Units: 3 / 4 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 123 Drops: 1 And there's a lot of fenangling you could do with even just the enhancements on the heroes. Like, I made the liege the general and gave him the artifact for that super difficult to kill jammer liege set up because it seems like a particularly solid tactical option, but both the mortisans have very good signature artefacts. You could give one of them an artifact and go for a more supportive command trait on the liege - say diversionary tactics or aura of sterility - though you'd have to play more conservatively with it then. Or you could swap it out for yet another mortisan, maybe a Soulmason with dark acolyte, and use the points saved to pick up a cheap endless spell like a malevolent maelstrom or suffocating gravetide. You also might swap the more aggressive reinforced archai for a more defensive unit of immortis guard to help keep the soulmason healthy. If you do that, then instead of the endless spell you might swap the ossifector for another bone-shaper. If you do swap the liege for another mortisan, then maybe swap subfactions to Null Myriad for the magic protection. There are options to tinker with is the point. Regardless, you get a huge and intimidating Mortek Block with character and harvester support to overwhelm the middle. multiple kav units plus maybe a liege to claim objectives, score some tactics, & block enemy advances. A big monstrous infantry hammer unit to break enemy formations (the anti-CA ability of morghasts is particularly disruptive these days). Even a catapult to keep the opponent honest, and all as a one-drop. And, I mean, aesthetically, that's a lot of visual variety, plus enough dudes to look like an actual army, which you don't often get from lists with Arkhan or especially Katakros. .... Again, this sort of army isn't as strong as lists you could build with one of the mortarchs, but imo it's perfectly playable, especially if you aren't making serious runs at tournament top tables. I'd happily run an army like this myself, if my biz were painted anyway.

I'd like narrative games to be more in the stye of the end times books, or old forgeworld campaigns. Like there's a canon story, and the book tells that story along with the battles and what characters and units were involved, and then there's scenarios to recreate those battles yourself, along with ideas for changing the scenarios up if you want to stray from the canon by changing the factions involved or the like. Dawnbringers, at least after the first book, have been a bit closer to this in that there's at least been a canon narrative instead of just an open ended 'tell your own story' set up with no follow through, so I'm looking foward to seeing whether this sort of direction continues in 4e. I think the stories and battles could be a bit more detailed, but mostly the main change I want now is for the GHB matched play season and the narrative campaign stuff to be linked - ie with the same setting and story focus, instead of completely isolated from one another. Like, what's actually going on in Andtor? Does anyone care? Will there be any sort of fallout from that that matters to the wider setting? Nah, cus that's matched play, which in 3e seems to mean its divorced from the game narrative and just doesn't matter.

Technically possibly but highly unlikely, as that's the sort of thing that would usually be highlighted as part of the reveal.

IMO Dawnbringers and FEC effectively are new armies, plus the Dawnbringers series is bringing significant mini updates to several existing factions. There are new armies I would like to see - the shadow elves (possibly as an expansion to DoK), Kurnothi elves (possibly as an expansion to sylvaneth), chaos dwarves, etc, but at this point I'd rather they wait for the new edition rather than disrupting the momentum that the game finally has after feeling a bit stagnant through much of 3rd edition.

I'd prefer year long GHB seasons with both narrative campaign and matched play rules in different sections of the same book, or separate books released together. Each new yearly season would also see a box release with a table board, a few pieces of matching terrain (at least one new piece, but the rest could bring back some of the better older stuff to save dev time), and seasonal gimmick models if any. Like the thondia box, only not quite as many pieces and at a slightly lower price point. That way there's always a terrain box available that matches the theme of the current season for new players to build up their tables. The same box could serve a matching war cry season. Let seasons jump around so over time we eventually get boards & terrain for all the realms.

They really are knocking it out of the park with this fec release. The lore, the art, the models, the flavor & tone, just really great work all around. I suppose they could still drop the ball on the rules, but even if they did it would hardly matter, as we're due for a new edition update soon anyway and faction rules & points get tweaked multiple times a year these days.

Oh ho! You're completely right! I did forget the herald, since he's not in the app. Kind of surprising that he's not there, since he's been around for a couple months now. That means between existing units and new we're actually one over on the total number of units, and I'm pretty sure the herald is sticking around since he's specifically mentioned in the new FEC lore article today. So that means at least one unit is getting dropped or folded into another scroll. Hard to say what I hope for most. Sadly -1 scroll isn't enough to get rid of all three generic courtiers (I was hoping they'd be downgraded to unit champs so we could stop splitting boxes). Likely options include: 1. folding Duke Crackmarrow into the Grymwatch 2. merging infantry Ghoul Kings and Archregents. 3. dropping just the generic ghoul courtier to be replaced by the herald, who can fill the 'ghoul courtier' roll while having a bespoke model and a more coherent identity. EDIT: Battle report confirms they're not dropping the bone throne

I was hoping that would be the case, but based on the warscroll count it seems unlikely.

I hope so. The old world has a long, long timeline full of exciting events. The elven civil wars, the chaos incursions, the vampire wars, plenty of smaller but perfectly compelling engagements. I always thought it was a mistake to firmly ground the game in a time period when, frankly, nothing much was happening, with the idea of slowly building up to the great chaos war. Why slowly build up to something cool happening, when you could have instead dived straight into the cool bit for maximum hype and excitement, and then next season / year / edition moved on to another cool bit featuring another 2 to 3 returning (or, if engagement and sales justify it, new) armies?

There's a trade off to it. On the one hand, yeah, if you don't remember what 'terror' does you need to look it up separately (though in practice you'll likely be looking at the unit entry in some sort of app or 3rd party army builder or wahapedia page where the word "terror" will either have the terror rules printed next to it or will be a link to what the rule terror does. The benefit of the trade is that the terror rule will work the same for every terrifying unit. You won't have one concept with half a dozen different subtly different rules implementations across various units in different factions. If there's a core bodyguard rule, for instance, you won't have to remember that this one works on mortal wounds and that one doesn't, or that this one works on a 2+ and that one works on a 4+, & so on. If a unit causes fear, then that fear will work the same as all other fear, you won't have one unit's fear that imposes a bravery penalty (non stacking) vs. another that imposes a bravery penalty (does stack) vs a third units fear (no bravery penalty, but extra casualties if a battleshock test fails) vs. a fourth units fear (none of that other stuff but prevents inspiring presence), and so on and so on. In a keyword special rules system it's possible to actually memorize how all the special rules work, at which point you only need to know which special rules a unit has. In a bespoke special rules system there's no way to memorize how everything in the game works, so you have to take the time to carefully read what each of your opponents units does each game. ... I'm not saying the keyword route is better - I personally prefer bespoke special rules for the extra uniqueness and specificity they allow. But there are enough tradeoffs that I'm not upset that TOW is going back to the keyword system.

Ah, but then you have an incomplete beast-flayers unit, so you're back at the same problem. This also doesn't help with the horror or flayer courtiers.

my understanding is that significant portions of what was planned for the old world - including new factions, more significant model support, and potentially a more original ruleset - were ditched a good ways into development to be replaced with the much lower ambition version we've been seeing since the previews started getting more specific - supporting only existing oldhammer factions (and not even all of them), sticking mainly to existing models no matter how outdated, rule set that cleaves very closely to oldhammer design. That sounds kind of like I'm criticizing the version of The Old World that we're actually getting, but really I'm not. TOW is starting life as a side game, not a main game. 30k, not 40k, and honestly 30k's success early on was imo significantly attributable to the fact that it was marines vs. marines, basically a game with a single faction model range distinguished by faction rules and paint jobs rather than actual models, and only after actually establishing itself was it able to diversify with legion specific units and non-marine factions. It was probably never even possible to support TOW with a full range of new faction lines out of the gate in terms of production capacity, it also would have been a bad idea financially, setting it up to fail with way too much up front cost and, lets face it, a very uncertain player base. Will Oldhammer players really come back after what happened with AoS's launch? Will TW:W players really convert to tabletop players? Even if they do, that's a subset of a single video game series' player base. Starting as small as possible and only ramping up proportional to the interest the game actually generates is a much healthier approach, one much more likely to lead to long term success. ... I still wish we had gotten new skeleton infantry and horse sprues instead of the dragon, though. The dragon's grown on me, but those old skeletons just don't hold up, and the 8e TK plastic releases included big centerpiece monsters that still hold up perfectly fine. Honestly, a bone giant/heirotitan plastic kit would also have been preferable to the dragon, but that may still be coming, I don't think we've seen the old bone giant kit in the background of any TOW pictures or videos to de-confirm a new one. Going by the Brett release, we're probably getting at least exactly one other new plastic kit. Mummy infantry is depressingly likely, since that would be a brand knew unit like the infantry knights were. I've still got my fingers crossed for plastic ushabti though, as I never much cared for the last round of resin ones.

This is the bare minimum. Honestly, I just wish 4e would do away with batch pricing. Give units a minimum, a maximum (increased through reinforcement), and a price per model.

Ah, frenzy. The most powerful debuff ever to pretend to be a buff. It's good to see it again.

This is a cool conversion idea, but only two of the fell bats in the box have wings that would be usable for this, which would lead to a pretty noticeable chorus line effect, plus the price point of the conversion would be fairly prohibitive. Six of these flayers would cost us$300, plus tax. Does anyone know of a decent third party or 3d print option for similar wings? Since the main body of the model would still be official GW stuff they'd probably still be usable in GW stores/events.

There are currently 20 FEC warscrolls in the App, not 18. New releases we've already seen: Ushoran Gorewarden Judge Executioner Bishop cryptguard knights varghulf (presumably replacing existing model/warscroll) 20 existing plus seven new is 27, which is how many warscrolls are in the new warscroll pack. There's a chance there's still new stuff unrevealed, but only if its new models for existing units (unlikely but desperately needed for the generic courtiers if they remain as units) or if by coincidence there are exactly as many old warscrolls going away as there are new units we haven't seen yet, which while technically possible seems tremendously unlikely.

My experience with oldhammer vs. AoS is that time lost to things like comparing stats & checking charts to determine hit & wound values or adding up & playing out combat results were more than made up for by time saved from moving & activating entire units as coherent blocks rather than individual models. You'll have twice as many models in your army, making for much more of a big battle feel, but in practice they operate as only seven or eight individual elements that you have to think about or physically interact with, which allows for the higher level of system complexity without adding much if anything to game time. my AoS games still take longer than my oldhammer games used to, and that's mostly down to moving blocks of units one model at a time in AoS while taking care to measure each one, moving around obstacles and other models individually, checking coherency and control ranges and aura ranges as I go.

"27 warscrolls" matches exactly the current count plus the new units we've already seen. Unfortunate imo, as I've been hoping some existing scrolls would be retired or merged. For instance, ghoul king on foot and archregeant are not distinct enough in concept, appearance, or function to warrant being two different units imo. And the Underworlds warband would make a lot more sense as a single unit than as a separate hero and unit. And, unless there are more new models coming that haven't been revealed, it remains positively criminal that the generic ghoul, horror, and flayer courtiers are going to remain as key support heroes that you're supposed to build one of the normal box models as when those units can only be fielded in exact multiples of their box size.

I agree at first look, but there's still a lot we haven't seen. Still 3 other delusions, plus it's possible some of the unit rules might be re-worked to encourage a more defensive play style that could fit with defend the realms. Plus there may be extra subfaction bonuses for particular delusions, etc. It's a long shot, but I'm hoping for some sort of option to change delusions mid game - like maybe a command trait to change delusions once per game, or maybe as a command ability on one of the heroes, which would allow you to start with a more generic aggressive delusion but transition to something more techy & situational mid game if the right opportunity presents itself.

It's dumb when a retinue runs too fast and the hero that goes with them can't keep up and falls out of formation due to two different run rolls. It's dumb when a character charges into combat and their loyal bodyguard fails the roll and just stands idle while they watch their beloved leader go of to their death unsupported. It is dumb that /so many/ of the units in this game are 5 wound infantry hero melee beatsticks that are almost universally terrible because they are so easily picked out and killed. And there are so many obnoxious rules - bodyguards, gelato champs, look out sir, sequential combat activations, short range "wholly within" bubbles - all of which are grasping and failing at the idea of heroes being attached to specific units. Regardless of your opinion of the 40k implementation, the game is suffering for lack of such a system.