Sception

It really was, yeah. I miss the old FW style campaign books. If I had to guess at the future for the Old World, I would guess that it looks a lot like the present for Middle Earth / Hobbit / Lord of the Rings. Occasionally new 'edition' updates that don't really change the rules much, faction rules mostly condensed in two big books rather than individual faction books, massive model range of almost entirely ancient releases - much of it entirely unavailable and significant portions out of stock for years at a time, with only rare occasional new releases. Balance updates extremely rare, in contrast to the constant tinkering AoS and 40k get. The main difference being low cost, slim, paperback, relatively frequent faction arcane journals vs. the less common but chunkier and hardcover narrative themed supplements that middle earth gets as their new book/rules releases. If I'm right about that then it's sad in some ways, but on the bright side the 'unsupported' pdfs will remain good-as-new for a long, long time. Regardless, they're going to need 2 to 3 years to get out arcane journals and model re-releases just for the 'supported' factions. Heck, they haven't even fully re-released Brets or TKs yet. So we have a long time before they can even try to expand past that, and imo there are other factions more likely to get bumped up from legacy or appear brand new before vamp counts/coast, including dark elves, daemons, kislev, and maybe even cathay. IMO vampires will be in homebrew hands with only the pdf to guide our way for a long, long time, and if I'm wrong about that and an official release appears to derail this project, well honestly I'd be thrilled.

A petition is not how you get this sort of thing changed. The main thing you'll need to do is gather some like-minded beastmen die hards - preferably including as many tournament vets as possible - with long running gaming groups who like them and are willing to go out of their way to keep playing against them even if it means allowing homebrew content. Once you've got a decent set of people behind you, you'll also want to talk to major independent AoS event organizers to ask for their player data. Fortunately you've got a year of promised active support from games workshop - not just playable 4e ruleset, but one that will be matched play legal and will receive balance updates the same as anyone else in that time. That's time you can and should use to attend as many events with your Beastmen as you can manage, and get as many online beastman player contacts as you can to do the same. DO NOT bin your armies, you want to be actively and visibly playing them, both to demonstrate visibly that there's still a player base for them and because going to events is how you meet the tournament vets and event organizers you need. So that's a year's grace period to gather the people you need to pick up where gw leaves off. When the year is up and you get kicked to legends. After that point you'll need to put in your own effort to produce: 1) a balanced homebrew battletome in line with the official battle-tomes of 4th edition, something that's not just fun to play but that looks actively fun and cool to play against, so that people who read through it casually think 'oh, that's cool, I want to see how that plays out on the table'. You'll need to have this thoroughly tested against various opponents, which is why you need a bunch of existing AoS beastmen players with active gaming groups they can draw on for that. To make this look professional, you'll need pictures of people's models and armies as well as battlefield pictures, so again multiple beastmen playing project contributors with active player communities are key. You'll also need some new art - ideally you'll get an emotionally invested artist contributor willing to donate work, but more realistically expect to have to collect a few hundred US dollars at least for commissions - which is difficult since you can't charge for anything or even collect donations without risking getting slapped with a C&D. You'll also need at least a few people with access to and at least basic experience with software capable of producing professional looking PDFs. IIRC open office has tools for this, and that's free. There may be other better alternatives. A homebrew battletome is a major undertaking - I've bogged down on them before trying to do them solo. You'll want multiple people on this, and you'll want them to be willing to commit to the slow, hard, difficult, unfun parts (page formatting, artwork/minis photos, lore write ups, COPY EDITING, people who can work on that stuff without getting hung up on exactly what the rules should be, which everyone will have an opinion on and all of them will be different. 2) regular balance updates each time GW releases their official ones. In order to make this happen, you'll need player data, and that's where independent aos event organizers come in. Many of them may be willing to keep allowing the pdf beastmen rules for a while after they officially go to legends so you'll need their numbers, and those are the people you need to appeal to once you have your homebrew battletome in order to try to get them to allow people to use it at their events, and you'll then need numbers back from them after .... This was the route taken by Chaos Dwarf players in old Warhammer Fantasy after their faction was squatted, and they were successful enough at it - in particular getting enough independent events to allow their homebrew book as though it were a real faction - that GW eventually relented and released their own revised chaos dwarves. That faction looked little like the homebrew stuff, but it did mean a first party revival of their faction, which is what they wanted in the first place, even if a significant portion of their existing armies got retired in the process. Things will be harder nowadays because events in general are more formal and GW themselves are more involved in them, able to put more pressure on organizers to follow official formats, with players who kind of expect that as well. It's a bigger ask to get modern AoS events to allow homebrew than it was for warhammer fantasy events back in the day. Even so, the fact that many Old World events are allowing the 'unofficial/unsupported/not-matched-play-legal' legacy pdf factions should be a positive sign. Many of those who care the most about AoS and are most excited for 4e - including event organizers naturally, you've really got to be passionate about a game to put in that amount of work - don't like these culls, ESPECIALLY the beastment cull (most of the removed stormcast are probably coming back in thunderstrike sooner or later, very few people played bonesplitters and those that did still have other orcs they can run, so it's pretty commonly recognized that beastmen are the worst done by), so there will be some emotional impetus to support you, and you'll need all the wind at your back that you can get. If, a year from now, you're ready to pick up where GW left off and can get at least a few major events to allow your rules, and if two years from now and three years from now you've been able to maintain the project and events are ~still~ allowing beastmen, then that's what puts pressure on GW to come back in to fill the space with an official alternative.

I would absolutely love for GW to expand the Old World from the currently minimalistic approach to something closer to the original scope of the project when it was first previewed, not just with more of the legacy factions brought into active support, but also (especially even) entire new factions. The new lore in the Old World core book dramatically expands on both Kislev and Cathay, for instance, and it feels clear that both were at some point intended to be new factions introduced to the game. As for Vampire Coast specifically, IF the game does expand to the point of adding to the current roster lineup, I could see Vampire Coast being introduced as a faction unto themselves, kind of sort of bringing back vampire counts while also not technically going against their statement that vampire counts wouldn't be supported. While such a hypothetical future move would obsolete a big homebrew project I'm just starting up, I would still be thrilled. That said, just following through on the current scope of the project, re-releasing nine factions each with returning models, re-sculpted kits, at least a few new releases, and arcane journals is going to be a multiple years long endeavor, and if when all that was done they did start re-canonizing legacy factions or even introducing new ones, I don't think Vampires, Counts or Coast, would be on the short list. If we do see the long awaited Shadow Elf release in AoS, along with the expected dropping of non-human options from Cities, then most of the existing dark elf range will fade out of AoS, which potentially frees up those models to re-introduce Dark Elves into the Old World without profit & loss sheet conflicts with AoS, just in time for Malekith's big canon invasion of Ulthuan to possibly take center stage in a 2nd edition tOW launch featuring dark elves vs. high elves. Other factions I'd expect to appear/reappear before vampires of any sort include the previously mentioned Kislev & Cathay and Chaos Daemons. And that's assume the Old World could even handle so many factions. They'd pretty much have to go to a made to order business model with potentially very long waits on cycling production runs. Anyway, yeah, I think we'll have a long time to play with the current old world rule set and factions - both official and pdf - in their current incarnations. For better and worse, since as a new game there is a lot of jank in need of working out that if I'm right we'll be stuck with for a long while. Adding wizard level to casting and dispelling rolls in particular feels like more of a mistake the more of the game I play.

I wouldn't call stormcast safe, not until GW demonstrate an ability to show some restraint when it comes to stormcast releases. Every edition so far has seen an entire new factions worth of entirely new stormcast models on release, plus additional stormcast releases down the line, leading to older stuff being obsoleted by new versions of essentially the same units every few years, and when old stuff isn't just obsoleted the result is painful bloat that makes army building a chore. Now we've seen outright culling of what are in the game-wide sense very recent models in order to combat that bloat. IF GW starts cutting back on new stormcast stuff then this could turn around, but we see no sign of that so far, so there's every chance that the 3rd edition stormcast stuff could get kicked to legends to make room for an entire army's worth of brand new 5th edition stormcast units a few short years from now, with the new stormcast they're about to release for 4e dropped a few years after that.

Ok, first of all, big thanks to everyone for the feedback so far, even the feedback I've opted not to go with. I am at this point firmly committed to Luthor Harkon being one of the two special characters, and Vampire Pirates being one of the two Armies of Infamy in the Arcane Journal. Points in support: We are post Von-Carstein wars, post-revenge of the red duke, indeed post-cleansing of Sylvania, but not by so long that the Empire, Brettonia, and the rest of the old world aren't well familiar with Vampires and the threat they represent. Vampire activity in the old world is at an ebb. But Vampire activity in the new world remains strong. Luthor has ruled openly over his little empire on the coast of Lustria for over a thousand years now. Though his mind was broken by a Lustrian Artefact, costing him his prostigious arcane abilities, he has still successfully maintained and grown his territory for centuries despite frequent conflict with both High Elves and Lizardmen. One could make a case that Luthor Harkon is the most successful vampiric warlord over the entire history of the Old World and certainly the the most successful one acting openly in the target time period. Reading up on him has definitely justified the rank of Mortarch he was eventually granted in the End Times. For those who prefer to keep their focus exclusively on the Old World: "1127 IC - By this point, Luthor Harkons Zombie Pirates are known and feared by the sailors of the Old World." (from the fandom wiki timeline) - that's, again, well over a thousand years prior to the games time period, and nothing in that time has happened to reduce his influence or renown. And while the canon does not include an invasion of the Old World at this time period, as a trans-oceanic naval power Harkon's vampire pirates certainly ~could~ have done so. Luthor Harkon isn't the only Undead Pirate captain, just the most well known and successful. We're still two centuries before Count Noctilus and the Dreadfleet, but his existence in the timeline shoes that Vampire Pirate fleets significant enough to have a major impact on the course of Old World history are not limited just to Luthor Harkon. Vampire Pirates - whether loyal to Harkon or otherwise, have been tied to Sartosa off the Tilean coast multiple times, both by games workshop themselves (Vampire Captain of Sartosa and Vampire Pirate of Sartosa GW models, Drekla - Luthor's right hand during the End Times, was a Sartosan vampire pirate captain), and by third parties working with their permission, of course most notably Total War. From Total War II: Aranessa Saltspite is contemporary with Noctilus and so still a couple centuries off, but was a prominant sartosan pirate queen of her day who had both living and undead pirate crews including vampires working openly for her), so while I haven't found specific canon confirming an undead presence in Sartosa at the time the Old World is set, it is if anything more likely than not, and provides ample justification for Vampire Pirates to be be active along the coasts of the Old World as well. Straying from vampires to undead in general, Total War also introduced also Cylostra Direfin, a Brettonian Banshee pirate queen. She's active at the time of Noctilus, but it's unclear how long she's been around, so she could already be a thing in the Old World's time period. Her particular pirates included ghostly brettonian knights, who maybe we wouldn't want to include because they're kind of specific to her and hexwraiths already exist as ghostly cavalry, but on the other hand they'd be super easy to represent in game. Vampires at this time have been largely hounded out of the noble courts of The Empire and Brettonia, and those that remain will be looking for refuge away from witch hunters and the like. If vampire pirates are a known thing and pirate havens in general are by definition outside the influence of rightful authorities, then it makes sense that more vampires will have taken to the seas. Lore Justifications aside, Total War also provides ample suggestions for what a Vampire Pirate army of infamy could look like, including new units, most of which should be easy enough to convert (or have ready enough third party alternatives) that they could easily be incorporated, though others, like the giant undead crabs, are maybe a bit much. As they were a full faction of their own distinct from Vampire Counts, there are, if anything, ~too many~ new unit ideas from Total Warhammer to choose from, so they'll have to be taken with care. In particular there are a lot of black powder options, and while black powder weapons do exist in the Old Worlds time period, they were rare enough that we probably shouldn't go overboard on them. In addition to lore concerns, there's also the balance concerns of adding ranged firepower to a faction that's normally light on shooting. The Brettonian exiles army of infamy should provide a useful model here - though of course brettonians are known to have more shooting than vampires normally. At the same time, shooting provides a clear and obvious way to mechanically distinguish the Vampire Pirate aoi from the grand army. between out of print first party models, 3rd party options, and easy conversions, even a couple nighthaunt models that could port over, there's a lot of model support for this concept: That's on top of basic models like zombies, skeletons, dire wolves, fellbats, spirit hosts, etc, which should port over well enough without needing conversion or substitution. Yeah, I'm pretty married to this one, if that's a deal breaker for anyone who was interested in this project, I'm sorry. The next steps for the Vampire Pirates part of the project will be going over the Total Warhammer implementation for ideas that can be stolen, since that's the most in-depth (har har) version of the faction we've seen, and had the blessing of the GW design studio. ........... But that's just one of the two special characters, and one of the two armies of infamy. The other is still open. Walach Harkon was mentioned above, and at this point in the timeline he's suspected to be ruling a remote keep in the boarder princes. That's more or less center of the action of the Old World core game, so is a strong contender, even if in the canon he isn't too active at this particular moment. cav heavy blood dragon lists ~can~ be built from the current book, but they're not the best fit for the grand army, so there's some value there. As for the thought of a Named Strigoi, there are few that I could find in the Canon who aren't super-dead right now. Gashnag - lord of a boarder principality, a sort of parody of the beast from 'beauty and the' fame. He's a neat enough character, but he's active in the old Warhammer Fantasy Battle time period. As an undead creature he ~could~ already be around in Old World times, but he wasn't noted as being centuries old, at least not in his semi-public persona. The Old One - an especially old and large Varghulf who would eventually come to rule Mousillon for a time. Sadly, it's too soon for him to be at his height, but he could be haunting the darker outskirts of Brettonia already, whether as a Varghulf or as more traditional Ghoul King who had yet to deteriorate into such a monstrous form. Rametep - this guy hangs out under Miragliano, a city in Tilea, and again he's known in the old WHFB time period but easily could be older, especially since the name implies he's on the older end of vampires. Not much of a canon personality, but that does make him free for us to flesh out, we could have him more active in Old World times with the idea that he 'retires' to Miragliano later on. Brand new guy - The FEC range for AoS have several models which could be appropriated as old world named heroes, including crazed strigoi priest wandering between ghoul courts with the aim of unifying them, prophesying the rise of a true heir of Ushoran to refound Strigos, judging individual ghoul kings for their worthiness and in the process inspiring them to take more open action than their bloodline is normally inclined to? Or maybe prophesying the return of Ushoran himself in a cheeky nod to Age of Sigmar, with the question of whether he's actually having visions of the post-end-times or whether he's just full of it left open? I kind of like this idea. Model-wise, I think this guy's the best option, as he shouldn't be too hard to fit on a base and rank into a unit and he has a distinct look that makes him feel like a specific individual dude, setting him apart from the usual naked ghoul kings without being too goofy (like the intestine-wig judge) to fit aesthetically in the Old World. The Warcry warband leader also has enough decoration to feel really unique, although the somewhat splayed feet on what I ~think~ is a 32mm base might make him difficult to fit on a 25mm square. Anyway, he's a very cool looking guy, though maybe a touch over the top with the spike-hand and hand-knees and all. Almost a bit piratical himself. Anyway, the viscera chains and furred cloak give this guy an air of authority I think, if we wanted to go with Strigoi boarder prince - maybe a young Gashnag or just an earlier figure in the same vein, or maybe someone who has literally taken residence in the ruins of Mourkain in the Marshes of Madness and is trying to pass himself off as a rightful heir to Ushoran, I think this guy has the right look for it. Model-wise, this guy just looks super cool, though he doesn't necessarily stand out as being too distinct from just a generic ghoul king with the 'Flying Horror' power, and if I were to take a flying horror ghoul king right now, this is the model I'd reach for. But while he's a bit generic he does look cool as heck, and we could do something lore wise with the keys I guess. Keys to the city of of Strigos? That's just re-hashing the idea from the last guy, but I like the idea of a lone Strigoi hero - someone who doesn't gather and rule his own ghoul court but rather visits other strigoi vampires with the purpose of uniting the bloodline and reclaiming their lost glory, maybe even appearing out of nowhere when they're in danger green knight style. I'm far less married to Strigoi as the other army of infamy than I am to Vampirates. But there are some interesting concepts we could spin into it. Particularly with vampires hounded to the outskirts of human society, where the Strigoi already dwell, we could have Ghoul Kings taking revenge on vampires of the other bloodlines in their time of weakness, stalking and preying on once proud vampires now isolated and vulnerable without their minions and sycophants. Sort of a 'hunted become the hunters' situation. If that's what we want to go with, then wingaling or spike-hand guy might fit better as the special character given the more passive feel of the priest. Again, though, I'm far from married to Strigoi for the Arcane Journal. Misfire had mentioned a all (or primarily) ghosts as a potential army of infamy. I do find that somewhat tempting - it's a strong theme, and as with ghouls there's a lot of AoS models to plunder there. On the other hand, I worry that an all-ethereal army would be mechanically obnoxious given how that rule works in tOW. Anyway, strigoi is currently my leading thought for the second AoI, again mostly due to the ghoul army being possible but a bit of a pain in the grand army, and it being a fairly easy theme to do. But yeah, not yet married to it, still considering alternatives.

Of course. Definitely crossing my fingers, but I'm not going so far as holding my breath. 😛

Seems like yeah, I think we're going to see spells as a hero phase thing as current and not getting spread through the turn like old world. Thankfully, imo. I like old world, but I think it would have been better served with a magic system much closer to that in AoS - magic distributed across the turn is a mistake imo. It makes it difficult to track how many spells a wizard has attempted to cast or dispel, which in turn is why tOW currently lets wizards attempt to cast all their spells, and unbind any spell cast in their range. Which in turn makes adding wizard level to casting & dispelling rolls, in itself another mistake imo, far more painful, leading to the 'take a level 4 or lose' pattern that's starting to develop in the early meta. Maybe it'll work itself out and prove not to be a problem in the long run, but for the moment AoS's limits on total casting and much more limited availability of casting & unbinding bonuses seems like a better call. Even nagash only gets +2 to cast in 4e, and no bonus at all to unbinding rolls. The color implies a start of turn effect, but the text implies a more continuous effect. That it's just always the case whenever the condition applies. It gets confusing if those factions can be mixed via allies or regiments of renown - the latter at least we know are staying around in some form. The devs need to take care that the same unit can't appear in the same army with two different warscrolls.

Sadly it really does seem like bonesplitterz and beasts are really and truely super gone. Some vaguely similar concepts might appear again in the future, sure, but doesn't seem like any specific plan to do so at this time. That stuff really is just shifted to old world. Sacrosanct stormcast on the other hand will probably be back in thunderstrike armor in some future edition, though why they didn't leave the existing guys in place until they were ready to replace them is beyond me. Like yeah, the stormcast line needed winnowing, but imo they went way overboard. It is what it is, and a lot of this is the inevitable result of bad ideas and poor foresight in the past - eg, the faction culls going into age of sigmar should have been far harsher than they originally were, stormcast shouldn't have been expanded anything like as rapidly or as carelessly as they were, etc. But still, the corrections could have been much better handled.

If you wanna try spearhead than you're probably safe to pick up the vanguard and get it painted in the mean time so you're ready to go with spearhead from day one.

there has been a trend recently of eliminating full unit-wide weapon options. Like, they're still there on the sprues, but don't do anything in game. Eg: spears vs. swords for skeleton warriors, lances vs. hand weapons for blood knights, hand weapons vs. halberds for crypt guard, etc. Shield vs. no shield on liberators does feel a little extreme, but still. As long as the options stay on the models devs might change direction in the future. In the meanwhile I don't mind being able to pick these options based on aesthetic preference without feeling like I was nerfing my unit for no reason (eg with spears on kavalos deathriders or mortek guard).

Target unit does need to be wholly within 18", so you can't spread out ~too~ much. Notably wholly within applies to the enemy as well. Spread out and it's harder to offensively invoke all your stuff.

I really like this version of Nagash. Much clearer than past versions, brings him back into keyword alignment with his faction (with separate scrolls for each faction he can be taken with). He does the things Nagash should do - high end casting power, super versatile signature spell (I like its ability to shield against the double turn - if you make Nagash go first there's a good chance his entire army will come out of the top of turn one with 5++ on everything), solid reanimation from both the repeatable spell and his big 1/game revive, decent offensive power, can at least threaten to kill anything that dares come within reach. It also removes some of the most annoying aspects of previous versions of nagash for opponenst. EG - nagash being on the table no longer effectively negates the enemy magic phase (presumably he can attempt to unbind up to 9 times, but he no longer does so with a +3 bonus to the roll), hand of dust is a special ability now instead of a spell so he can't cast it through spellportals to one shot models at range, he can no longer heal himself so opponents can wear him down over time (though other healing affects from core or faction rules may still apply). He no longer has an ability to bounce mortal wounds back at enemies that target him (that was already removed in the current version, but still). The only change I'm sad about is the removal of his 'gaze of nagash' ranged attack, I liked the idea that Nagash could kill folks just by looking at them (again, that was already removed, but was present in the versions I have the most experience with). Whether he's terrible, too good, or just right will of course depend on the points cost and how everything else in the game balances out in comparison, but just looking at it, yeah, this is a significantly simplified and streamlined warscroll that should still absolutely capture the feel of Nagash on the tabletop. Really good job, imo.

The first thing to be aware of is that 4th edition Age of Sigmar is set to launch this summer, and when it does all the current rules, including all faction rules, will be replaced. As such, there's really no point picking up the current OBR battletome. If you pick up some OBR models and want to play with them in the mean time, look for a website called Wahapedia. If you want to catch up on OBR history and lore, search for wiki articles and youtube lore videos. In addition to articles and videos about the bonereapers specifically, you should also look for background on Nagash and Arkhan the black, on the Malign Portents (Nagash prepares a ritual that results in the Necroquake, which dominated 2nd edition and led to the emergence of the Nighthaunt and later OBR factions) the Soul Wars and the Seige of Sorrow (the campaign where Olynder the Nighthaunt mortarch laid siege to the Sigmarite city of Lethis to free the soul of Katakros), on the Wrath of the Everchosen (Katakros & Olynder take the fortress of Gothizzar, break into the 8 points, claim and fortify the Death Gate there, and briefly seige the Varanspire - Archaon's fortress - before they're repelled and forced back to the new OBR fortress around the Death Gate, where Katakros remains today), and on Broken Realms: Teclis (Lumineth attack Ossiarch positions in Shyish, Nagash counters by sending Arkhan and his Null Myriad to invade Hysh, Arkhan is outmaneuvered and slain at the realms edge, which drives Nagash into a blind rage which Teclis is eventually able to use to destroy the death god's body and temporarily banish his spirit). That should bring you more or less up to date on OBR lore. Which, yeah, means they haven't been terribly active in 3e since Nagash and Arkhan were taken off the field, with Katakros mostly playing a holding pattern to defend their 2e gains. ... It's worth pointing out that Age of Sigmar, at least in its current form, is primarily balanced around 2,000 point games, and doesn't scale up or down especially well. Larger games tend to take forever to move, position, and measure each individual model, by comparison big games of Old World play much faster despite the far more complicated ruleset, so there's not too much reason to build a collection beyond 2,000 points other than just to have options to swap out with each other. Smaller games run into balance problems as its just not possible to incorporate answers to everything you might run into, because the double-turn mechanic becomes difficult or even impossible to play around (you can't double up screens if you can't fit screens at all, you can't counter-punch with your second wave after losing the first if the first wave was your entire army, etc), and because the official board size for smaller games tends to put armies in charge range of each other from deployment, which means games can be effectively over before there's even a chance of a double happening. I'm not saying 'don't play small games' - of course you'll play small games as you build up your forces, just don't put too much weight on them. They're for learning the rules, they're not real competitive experiences. 4e is trying to change that with a separate format specifically for small introductory games with modifications to both the game rules and the rules of the units involved in an attempt to balance them out. This will be called 'Spearhead', and instead of building your army out of whatever units you want you specifically use the models in your faction's "Vanguard" or "Spearhead" box. These boxes are meant to be a starting point for new players, getting you a hero, a couple basic units, and something cool at generally a pretty decent discount compared to buying those units separately. The Ossiarch box comes with a Mortisan Soulreaper, 20 Mortek Guard, 5 Kavalos Deathriders, and a Gothizzar Harvester. It's not worth getting too hung up on their current rules since they're being rewritten from the ground up in a few months, but a brief summary with eyes on the future: Soulreaper: extremely cool model, bad in game. The rules are completely changing in 4e so maybe it will become good? That said, don't get your hopes up, as the Soulreaper's core concept - small infantry wizard who fights in close combat - is kind of fundamentally bad. Small wizards are good because they can contribute to the battle without risking themselves in combat. Small melee heroes are mostly bad actually, heroes who support your troops from behind the front lines via spells or command buffs tend to be more what you want from small heroes. As such, the Mortisan Boneshaper (small wizard who also heals your units), ossifactor (small wizard who buffs your big stuff), or soulmason (small wizard who doubles down on being super good at magic) tend edge the Soulmason out of lists. When small combat heroes are good it's because they can chip in some extra damage while being real cheap and expendable - which they manage specifically because they don't pay extra for luxuries like spellcasting. GW might square this circle in 4e, and I hope they do, but I wouldn't count on it, and the odds are that outside of Spearhead games this model will be a pretty piece for your display shelf. Or if it does see the table it'll be because you have points spare for another hero but just barely not enough points for a better hero than this. Mortek Guard: kind of fallen by the wayside in 3e due to the stacking buffs they relied on in 2e getting limited - shifting focus to our larger infantry units, and also due to changes to their key support piece, the harvester. But these are supposed to be our core backbone unit, the basic concept of strong and tough infantry with access to buffs and healing is pretty solid, so while you don't see them too much right now odds are good that they'll be good again in 4e. Kavalos Deathriders: fast and tough, an odd case of heavy cavalry that are somehow more anvil than hammer. That might change in 4e, but I don't really expect it to as the army has other units that more naturally fill the hammer role and I think the devs have been more or less happy with how deathriders have played out so far. OBR on the whole are slow, so the faster stuff we do have matters a lot. I can't imagine a world where you wouldn't be happy to have at least some of these in your collection. Gothizzar Harvester: part beat stick, part healing support - mostly for mortek guard. It's rules have gone through heavy revision - in 2e it was much more about healing mortek guard, in 3e with mortek guard a bit weaker and the harvester's healing much weaker its been more about the beatstick. Hard to say how good it will be in 4e, but healing in general is strong so I'd say the odds are in its favor. So the Vanguard may or may not be the units you really what for 2k games of 4e, but between the discount and the separate spearhead format it's still maybe the best way to go if you want to start buying and painting stuff now in preparation for 4e instead of waiting for the full release. .................. Alternatively, you might want to wait for the full release of 4e's rules to buy any physical models, and in the mean time go through the bother of buying and setting up 'Tabletop Simulator' (TTS) on your computer. This is a program that lets you simulate a tabletop to play any sort of board or tabletop game online, and it can be used to play full sized games of Age of Sigmar while you're still building up your physical army. This is arguably the smartest way to go, letting you try units before you buy them to be sure you're getting an army you enjoy playing - though the fact that balance adjustments are made in the game faster than a person can reasonably buy, build up, and paint a whole army from scratch means pre-playing only goes so far. You might decide to build around a key unit based on playing with them in february only for a march balance patch to hike their points cost way up or errata away some key rules interaction of their warscroll that knocks the ground out from under you. Which is frustrating, but it's just the nature of the game. .............................. Of course, you could go the far opposite direction, ignore the rules altogether and just buy and paint the models you like, and how they play on the table just is what it is. This is more what I do, but I don't have much free time for games, so the hobby to me is mostly building and painting and games are a once in a blue moon thing more about showing off my work than actually trying to win. And if you follow this path, then you don't need anyone else's advice OR to wait for the new rules to come out, you just need to look at what's available then buy and paint the specific models you think look cool (preferably one box at a time, big piles of unfinished stuff will drain motivation something fierce. ................ A final option is to not worry about the AoS game until 4e is out and in the mean time play warcry instead, a small scale skirmish game in the same universe with rules for most of the same models. These games are fast and fun and use up to about a dozen individual models instead of several entire units. Much easier to get a painted team together while making progress towards your eventual AoS army, and you can spend time learning this other side game instead of learning a version of AoS that's about to get replaced anyway. A specific Warcry warband for OBR is coming out soon, but you don't have to wait since there are rules for the existing obr units. In fact, since you want to expand into AoS I'd recommend you /don't/ start with the coming warcry warband, as the AoS rules for warcry warbands tend to be a bit of an afterthought and they might not even be matched play legal in 4e. Instead I'd recommend picking up a box of mortek guard, a box of stalkers/immortis, and either a boneshaper or a soulmason, whichever you think looks cool. Your chosen mortisan, a mortek guard hekatos (unit champ), a pair of stalkers or immortis guard, and as many mortek guard with shields and swords or spears as you can fit in your remaining points makes for a solid warcry warband - not optimal, but plenty good to play with, and all of that stuff should prove playable in an eventual full size AoS army. Just as there's Wahapedia for AoS rules, you can find the Warcry rules on a site called Warcrier, though if you do get into the game you should eventually show your support by picking up the core rulesbook at least. ................ So yeah, that's my advice. Choose one of: Just get the vanguard box and start painting that in preparation for Spearhead in AoS 4e, and if you want to get in some small demo games in the mean time get the rules from wahapedia - or - Buy TTS and go through the bother of setting it up to play age of sigmar - lots of google searches and resource hunting and download involved, it's going to take a whiel - so that when 4e comes out you can play test full size 2k point games online until you know exactly the real world models you want to buy, and in the mean time play some online games of AoS using rules from wahapedia just to make sure you've got the system set up. - or - Just buy and paint whatever OBR models you think look cool, one box at a time, and don't worry about how they'll play in game since the game stuff is constantly changing anyway - or - Check out Warcrier, maybe pick up the Warcry core rulebook, and find or start a local group of players for warcry, buying and painting obr models for that and building up the start of an AoS collection in the process, starting with some small infantry, big infantry, and a small hero. And on top of whichever you choose, search up some OBR lore videos on youtube to listen to while you hobby, to fill you with appreciation for the faction's personality and history.

The specific time and place of the Old World published game is the space claimed by first party content. Homebrew content should respect that claim. Homebrew content is for everything that GW has said they don't intend to cover - the rest of the world (via homebrew arcane journals for those factions GW has said aren't active in the Old World right now), the rest of the timeline (via homebrew historical campaigns). My resolve on this point has only strengthened overnight. Homebrew arcane jounals for the legacy factions should embrace the idea that those factions aren't part of current events in the old world, and should instead be used to fill in the details of what else is going on in the wider warhammer world at the same time. Ogre and Chaos Dwarf AJs should cover what's happening over the mountains to the east. Dark Elf, Lizardmen, and, yes, Vampire Counts AJs should cover what's going on over the ocean to the West. I'm not saying the VC AJ should be exclusively Vampire Coast, but it absolutely should be at least a major focus.

old world has savage orcs as upgrades to regular orc units (trade armor for frenzy & war paint).

Haha, whoops! Like I said, I'm no expert in the old world lore. I had it in my head somehow that Sartosa was the proper name for the Vampire Coast. 😛

Krell: Currently Dead. Kemmler: either not born yet or still young or crazed and broken in the hills after his first round of apprentices betrayed him. Regardless, he isn't the guy we know him as until he finds Krell, and that's still a long time off Zacharias: if he's born yet he's either still a normal human or is still an acolyte of Melkhior, who might just be W'Soran by another name. Either way, iirc Melkhior's the current top necrarch, not Zacharias yet. Melkhior is an option. I'm inclined against, but could be convinced if anybody can point to particularly interesting lore regarding something he's currently up to, or point to a particularly compelling model currently available in physical or 3d print file form to represent him. Regarding the CoS manticore for Dieter: I've looked at this a bunch since the model released, and sadly I think it's a much more difficult conversion project than you'd expect. The chair is kind of built between the characters legs in a way that would force anyone doing it to largely resculpt whatever rider you tried to put there along with significant portions of the seat itself, and the manticore's feathered wings are much harder to properly tetter and undead-ify than if it had bat wings. There aren't really great bat wing options to replace them with. It could be done, but it would require more conversion skill than I'm willing to demand of a hypothetical random player who might convince their local club to let them use our book. I'm not otherwise opposed to Dieter, he's a good choice and as much as he's a blankish slate that just gives us more room to play around with him, but imo we'd need to find another more reasonable path to representing him on the table first.

Thanks a ton for your in depth reply! I will look at and respond to it in more detail when I have a bit more time later (its good to hear someone share my thoughts on bloodline rules, even if I spent hours trying to work on them), but in response to this particular point... Vamp Counts are a legacy faction, and it's not in our power to change that. We can't make Vampire Counts active in the Old World any more than a homebrew dark elf or lizardmen AJ could do that for their factions, and just as a homebrew arcane Journal for dark elves or lizardmen would instead focus on whatever they're doing where they are at that time (instead of in the old world, where they mostly aren't), so too IMO should our homebrew vamp counts AJ focus on where the Vampires are most active right now (as of the Old World's timeframe). And the place with the most and the most active vampires in the 'current' time frame is Sartosa, right? Unless I'm missing something, which i easily could be, I'm no expert on old world lore. Heck, if we find and link up with people doing the same for dark elves specifically, we could link up to talk about how we're operating in similar areas, sometimes allying with each other, list each others' AoIs as allies, etc, make references to some shared events in lore write ups, etc.

I'm very inclined towards this, but instead of putting them all in the arcane Journal (breaking the 2 AoI per AJ precedent) I figured we could do an arcane journal sticking to the most active vamp count stuff in old world times, then move away from the core game time period to do campaign books covering each of the classic bloodline's most notable campaigns, each with an Army of Infamy, special characters, etc targeted just to that bloodline in particular - as well as for whoever they were fighting against. It delays the classic bloodlines considerably, and makes it less likely their homebrew books would see wide adoption outside of local gaming groups. but I don't really expect that even for the initial AJ, and putting that stuff in a more detailed and focused campaign book instead of the more surface level AJ format imo would do them better justice.

There's already mechanics for AoI using cross-faction units, ie mercenaries. If we go for this sort of thing, then that's the mechanic you should use for Sylvanian human levies. There's already a vampiric power for calling bats & wolves - it heals rather than summons, but that's still a bit too much overlap imo. I think we should avoid messing with the limits on vampiric powers that exist in the grand army. Not sure what the +15 points is for? Ideally base modifiers for bloodlines should match advantages with disadvantages to net no points modification. Also we should avoid charging more than once (ie 1 points per vampire hero) for a benefit that only applies once (access to empire units in the army) Not sure where the reduced weapon skill is coming from? If anything, wouldn't Neferata's blood have superior weapon skill? Maybe reduced strength if we wanted a penalty. Leadership debuff also feels to strong to give out to every vampire - maybe a one off vampiric power? letting a wight pick a vampiric ability is interesting, but I'm not sure it's Lahmian. The base modifiers feel like way too much. Also, lance formation is a complicated mess, and is a brettonian signature thing where most blood knights aren't drawn from brettonian orders, they're more typically empire knights. Hard no there. I get wanting core black knights, but I'm not sure increased wight use is lore accurate. Do you have supporting references? What's the point of making them necromancers? Doesn't do anything. Again I'm iffy on messing with the grand army's restriction on vampiric powers, would rather add enough caster friendly powers to allow a few necrarch style vampires without repeats. By 'strigoi counts' do you mean ghoul kings? ghoul kings and vampires are different enough in options and rules that I'd be inclined to just introduce a separate unit entry for 'Ghoul Prince' rather than trying to turn thralls into one. IMO strigoi should be treated as its own thing, and not try to roll it into the other bloodlines. Wallach is an interesting suggestion. I'll go look at him some more If we wanted to try to do a single AoI for all the bloodlines (minus strigoi, they're just too different), then here was my most recent take, before I abandoned the concept in favor of vampire coast: 'Vampire Court' army of infamy. Throughout the Old World vampires are feared for their ability to raise vast armies of the dead and wage war on the living, but the true threat of the vampire is more subtle - their ability to imitate the living, infiltrate human societies, and dominate them from within. The 'Vampire Court' army of infamy represents a clan of vampires who have subverted and taken control over a local mortal population. This might be Blood Dragons who have subverted a knightly order, Necrarchs who have taken control of an institute of arcane research, or Von Carsteins or Lahmians who have infiltrated the local aristocracy. Characters - Up to 50% of the army's points value may be spent on: 1+ Vampire Count or Vampire Thrall 0-1 Wight Lord or Cairn Wraith per 1,000 points Necromantic Acolytes Core - At least 25% of the army's points value may be spent on: 1+ Bat Swarms or Dire Wolves Zombies and Skeleton Warriors Special - Up to 33% of the army's points value may be spent on: 0-1 Unit of Black Guard or Black Knights per Wight Lord taken 0-1 Unit of Spirit Hosts per Cairn Wraith taken 0-1 Corpse Carts per Necromantic Acolyte taken Fell Bats and Vampire Newbloods Rare - Up to 33% of the army's points value may be spent on: Black Coaches, Vargheists, and Blood Knights Mercenaries - Up to 25% of the army's points value may be spent on Mercenaries, including: Empire State Troop, State Missile Troops, Empire Knights (see the Empire of Man army list on page 59 of Forces of Fantasy) If you choose for your Vampiric Court to hail from a particular Bloodline (see the example bloodline rules in the initial post), apply the following modifications: Von Carstein: One Black Coach may be taken as a Special choice Lahmian: replace all instances of 'Cairn Wraith' with 'Tomb Banshee' Blood Dragon: One unit of Blood Knights may be taken as a Special choice. Necrarch: replace all instances of 'Blood Knights' with 'Hexwraiths' Special Rules: Vampire Lord: the general does not have to be a wizard, but must instead be the vampire character with the highest leadership in your army. If more than one vampire is tied for highest leadership, you choose which one is the general. The 'Death of a General' rules from the Vampire Counts Grand Army applies as normal. Blood Feast: during your strategy phase each of your Vampire characters may feed on a friendly mercenary unit within their command range. If they do so, roll a d3 - the chosen unit suffers that many wounds which cannot be prevented in any way, while the vampire heals up to that many wounds lost earlier in the battle. Blood Magic: whenever one of your Vampire Counts or Vampire Thralls attempts to cast a spell, they may choose to draw power from the blood of a friendly mercenary unit within their command range. If they do so, roll a d3 - the chosen unit suffers that many wounds which cannot be prevented in any way, and the vampire adds an equal bonus to the casting roll. New Units: Vampire Newblood: m5, ws5, bs3, s4, t4, w1, i4, a2, ld7, 30 points Troop Type: regular infantry (unit champion) Base Size: 25x25 Unit Size: n/a (see below) Equipment: Hand Weapon Magic: a Vampire Newblood may be a wizard (see below). A Vampire Newblood that is a wizard knows spells from one of the following lores: Dark Magic Illusion Necromancy Options: May take one of the following: - Additional Hand Weapon +1 points - Great Weapon +2 points - Lance (if appropriately mounted) +2 points May take a shield +1 points May take one of the following: - Light Armor +1 points - Heavy Armor +3 points May be a level 1 wizard +25 points May purchase magic items up to a total of 25 points May purchase vampiric powers up to a total of 25 points If attached to a unit of cavalry (see below), must be mounted on a Nightmare for +8 points Special Rules: Champions of the Night, Blood Scions, Flammable, Lore of Undeath, Regeneration (6+) Champions of the Night: Vampire Newbloods are purchased from the army's Special units allowance, but do not operate as units of their own. Instead, when you are selecting your army roster each Vampire Newblood must be attached to a unit of Skeleton Warriors, Zombies, Grave Guard, Black Knights, Empire State Troops, Empire Missile Troops, or Empire Knights in the army, where they are treated the same as a unit champion. If the unit already has a champion of its own, then they will have two champions. Each unit may only have a single Vampire Newblood attached to it. If attached to a unit with the Necromantic Undead keyword, then the Vampire Newblood gains the Necromantic Undead, Dark Vitality, and Indomitable (1) special rules. If attached to a Mercenary unit, then the Vampire Newblood gains the Fear and Immune to Psychology special rules, and the unit they are attached to is not subject to the Misbehaving Mercenaries rule as long as the Vampire Newblood is alive. Blood Scions: If you choose for your army to be from one of the Old World Bloodlines, then apply the same modifiers to Vampire Newbloods that you apply to Vampire Counts and Thralls. ..... Problems with this Approach: Obviously I put a fair bit of work into this approach, and I could be convinced to return to it if Bloodlines is 100% what people want, but there are reasons I set it aside. First of all, there's really no great way to represent all the bloodlines with a single army of infamy, even if we leave out the Strigoi. Either the AoI isn't really flexible enough to properly represent each bloodline, or else it's /too/ flexible and essentially becomes 4 different Armies of Infamy pretending to just be one, which defeats the entire point of sticking to the limit of 2 per arcane journal. This is a homebrew supplement, if we really want to break the rules and have more than two armies of infamy in the supplement we should just do that. Second, putting an 'every bloodline in one' army of infamy in the arcane journal kind of forecloses the possiblity of introducing more specific bloodline armies of infamy in future homebrew project. Again, I think narrative campaign supplements looking at events outside of the Old Worlds target time period is a particularly ripe avenue to follow. Sure we could do both, but if we do then once we've released better more focused AoIs for specific bloodlines elsewhere, the 'everything to everyone' AoI will be defunct anyway, as you'd never run that over a 'Sylvanian Levy' AoI if you were playing Von Carsteins or a 'Knights of the Blood Keep' AoI if you're playing blood dragons, etc. Third bloodlines force mechanical leanings in ways that don't really line up with the fluff. Like, Yes Neferata generally chooses women with similar dispositions and fighting styles for her personal court, but they also sometimes turn dashing warriors to use as pawns and bodyguards who mechanically are more like Blood Dragons. Or take Luthor Harkon - the most recent lore has his vampiric ancestry unknown, but earlier lore and still the most likely ancestry has him as a blood dragon, yet his personal strengths are in spellcasting, a master of both sea witch magic and necromancy. Or look at the most famous vampire family, the Von Carsteins. Just in the big four named heroes with models you have a balanced some-of-everything general, a graceful lady more at home in the court than the battlefield, an arcane prodigy equal to any the necrarch line has ever produced, and a bloodmad warrior who eschewed magic and subtlety in favor of arms, armor, and brute force. These are all in the same bloodline and at times fought together on the same battlefield. So are your supernatural talents and specialties as a vampire in the warhammer world inherited from your sire, in a way that concrete bloodline rules across a whole army imply, or are they down to the individual predilictions of the vampire in question, in which case army-wide bloodline rules are kind of contrary to the narrative? Fourth it's just an extra layer of rules on top of rules that feels a bit out of place in the Old World. Explicit subfactions are mostly gone in favor of Armies of Infamy, and those AoIs are, at least so far, super narratively focused and specific, in a way that, again, a single AoI trying to represent 4 or 5 very different concepts just feels wrong. Fifth, one of the key features of Armies of Infamy is new units, and there's just not a lot of obvious concepts for that in a bloodline AoI. Even my suggested 'newbloods' are just a different way to use vampire heroes. You could add a vampire infantry unit, but it would want to be wildly different from bloodline to bloodline, and there's not much in the way of good model/conversion concepts for it. Compare to vampirates, which have zombie pirates (free company + zombie parts), drowned knights (empire/bret knights with zombie parts and/or painted ghostly), etc, or to ghoul courts where you have all the new FEC stuff to draw from. ............................. So again, I'm open to folks trying to convince me to go back to bloodline rules and/or a multi-bloodline AoI, but at the moment I think it's probably the wrong direction. Greatly appreciated! I absolutely need people to bounce ideas off of.

Yes, I am talking about the three or four fantasy ones. 😛

Though I can't blame anyone for believing GW's denials, honestly the writing has been on the wall for Beasts of Chaos since Broken Realms saw Kragnos, who was very obviously designed to be a new faction big boss for beasts of chaos, released as a cross-faction destruction unit.

Did they? I didn't catch that. IMO they should have done that with all the dropped stormcast stuff, not 'here's legends rules' but instead 'here's the current warscroll that this old unit counts as'. They might have had to slightly change what stuff they drop, like keeping the bolt thrower around or whatever, but still. Far less bad blood that way.

I'm still shocked the're going with 'these are separate units and you just won't be allowed to play with your old ones' for the stormcast replacements, instead of 'these are new models for your existing units, feel free to keep playing the old ones if you want, but your army won't look as cool'. There's just no good reason for 'liberators' and 'liberators in thunderstrike armor' to have different warscrolls in the first place.

I highly doubt it. There's no reason to split vampires and necromancers into separate armies since they'd both be using exactly the same skeletons, wights and zombies as troops, EDIT: and even if you did split the faction, a vampire foot hero cull would still need to happen, especially since the faction kind of needs a new generic cavalry vampire hero. So yeah, the Cursed City stuff really does need to get kicked to legends sooner or later. As for new Death factions in general, we haven't even seen a second wave for OBR yet, FEC still have untapped potential for further expansion, and Nighthaunt have several older kits begging for a refresh. There's really no call or reason for a new death faction any time soon, and no hint or foreshadowing of one in the lore. IF death are in the starter box for 5e (big if, there isn't even a pattern yet to identify, much less one that can be relied on), then Stormcast vs. wave 2 bonereapers would be the obvious choice.