Sception

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.

Teratic Cohort are NOT part of their associated army fully. Lore-wise they're failures and exiles re-shaped for final use as expendable scouts to send into areas too dangerous to risk more valuable ossiarch soldiers, ie they don't fight alongside regular OBR armies at all. Model wise they're a haphazzard collection of ramshackle warriors that don't really make sense as a single unit (the birds can't fly because they're in a unit with grounded stuff, the birds, centaur, and dogs can't be fast because they're in a unit with foot infantry, etc). Some Warcry warbands are clearly just AoS units - eg the gorgers, or lumineth water temple warrior monks. But some are very clearly warcry warbands first and foremost, as recognized by being a weird mix of guys with very different arms & equipment, and the Teratic Cohort very much fall in this latter category. Per the article, it sounds like the warcry warbands that are sticking around - presumably not including those who are just AoS units and thus don't need separate warscrolls anyway - are getting Legends only warscrolls right from the start. If I'm understanding that correctly then Teratic Cohort won't ever be a matched play unit in 4e, they'll be legends from the get go. ... I have to say that I'm surprised we didn't see a bunch of Cursed City stuff getting shifted to Legends for the Gravelords. They're definitely a faction that needs some winnowing of their own. Maybe todays article wasn't an exhaustive list of the stuff getting dropped? Or maybe the Soulblight winnowing won't happen until they're due for a 4e battletome?

The more I think about the cull, the harsher it feels, especially with stormcast . Like, the entire 2nd edition Stormcast line? ALL of it? That's not even that long ago. Will every stormcast model released in 3rd edition be similarly purged when 5th edition came out? Bonesplitters and Beastmen are bad enough as legacy old world factions that never got meaningful AoS support, but Stormcast are supposed to be the poster faction for the entire game. Huge oof.

Personally I don't mind ditching bonesplitters (I disliked their core concept and felt they'd need to be reimagined to the point of becoming something else entirely to be worth keeping around), and winnowing stormcast was desperately needed, though I would have preferred it to take the form of combining warscrolls - eg 'evocators on dracolines now use the fulminators warscroll' - rather than keeping them as separate units that are simply no longer legal to play. But ditching Beasts of Chaos feels wrong. They never got the spotlight they deserved, but they were such an integral part of the setting's background lore. regardless of what I think about the stuff getting dropped, though, Ouch. It's always painful when factions are dropped. I felt this back when Tomb Kings were dropped from Grand Alliance Death, and a minor version of it when my Legion of Sacrament were sacrificed in the transition from Legions of Nagash to the Soulblight Gravelords - though at least there all my existing models stayed playable, albeit not in the same army anymore. At least Beasts of Chaos and Bonesplitters can pivot into Old World? Not necessarily great consolation, depending on personal game preferences and the local player makeup? It's a fun game, though, and closer to the one those models were originally made for. If you're a player of these armies please try a few games - just cut out some cardboard rectangles to put your models on - and see if you enjoy it enough to be worth keeping your armies and rebasing them rather than getting rid of them. But yeah, players of these armies, especially any new player who started with the Beastmen vanguard in the last year or so, or who built up armies of beast of chaos or the beast-hunting ork bonesplitters thinking they'd be relevant in the 'age of beasts', absolutely have grounds to be big mad about it.

As a legacy faction, if Vampire Counts are to get an Arcane Journal, we'll have to do it ourselves. Here are my thoughts so far: 1) Bloodline Rules or no? Old School vampire count fans tend to miss these, though the last two warhammer fantasy vampire count army books both dropped them, preferring to let players customize individual vampires in their armies as they wish without having army-wide bloodline choices pushing all your vampire heroes in the same direction. Dropping Bloodlines also removes the need to have four different ranges of vampire models, but the unsupported legacy status of vampire counts in the Old World kind of negates that as an issue, since vamp counts players will generally be relying on 3rd party and 3d print options for their models, and there's plenty of different vampires to choose from then. On the other hand, Age of Sigmar brought back bloodlines and feels more flavorful for it.. I'm not sure which approach is the best one. An obvious alternative is to do bloodlines as Armies of Infamy rather than a rules layer, but doing an army of infamy for each bloodline would require far more than the 2 armies of infamy that Arcane Tomes have as a standard. Here's an example of what a bloodline rules layer might look like: When you build a Vampire Counts roster, you may choose for the vampire characters in your army to descend from one of the infamous Vampiric Bloodlines of the Old World. If you do so, then choose one of the following bloodlines below and apply that bloodlines rules to all Vampire Counts and Vampire Thralls in your army. Von Carstein: no additional changes Lahmian: +1 weapon skill and initiative, but cannot wear normal or magical heavy armor or shields Blood Dragon: +1 strength and may dispel spells even while wearing armor or locked in combat, but cannot cast spells. Necrarch: +1 bonus to cast and dispel rolls, but may not use normal or magical weapons, armor, or shields apart from a single non-magical hand weapon. (note: Strigoi vampire heroes are represented by entirely different units, and thus do not get bloodline rules). The Alternative to explicit bloodline rules is to include more new vampiric powers that are clearly themed to the old bloodlines, but without being explicitly tied to a bloodline system. Ideally these should come with both benefits and drawbacks so that players don't just put all the best powers on a single hero. 2) Special Characters: Arcane Journals generally add two special characters. Unfortunately, most of the classic vampire counts special characters, in particular those that had models in 8th edition, are not active in the Old World's time frame. The Von-Carsteins are dead (apart from Mannfred, who's sleeping off his latest defeat under a bog), Kemmler either isn't born yet or is currently a hermit with amnesia, I forget, but either way he's not doing anything. Krell is still stuck in a Burial Mound. So either we break from the official Arcane Journals to include heroes who aren't active in the Old World's specific time frame, which I'm not inherently opposed to, or else we go with special characters who don't have 'recent' official GW models. Options then include: Neferata/Abhorash/Ushoran: these bloodline founders are in theory alive somewhere in the world, but they're not directly active at this time and also they're of a legendary power level that I feel disinclined to represent in the game mechanically. Still, I'm open to the idea of including them, especially if we bring back bloodline rules Melchior: As with the bloodline founders, Melchior is alive but not iirc super active in this specific time frame. Also there is a canon conflict over whether Melchior killed W'Soran or whether W'Soran's spirit killed and possessed Melchior, so Melchior could just literally be W'Soran, which runs into my feeling that bloodline founders are at a power scale I'm disinclined to represent directly. Dieter Hellsnicht is alive and causing trouble, still riding around on his undead manticore. He seems an obvious choice, especially since as a necromancer he could be included in any army regardless of Bloodline. The downside for Dieter is that I'm not aware of a currently available model, print file, or even an easy conversion that we can suggest to represent him. While imo 3rd party stuff or simple conversions are fine, we're in homebrew land anyway, I'm disinclined to include a special character with no readily available model us use for them. the Red Duke is still haunting the forest of Chalons in Brettonia. Given the prominence of Brettonia in this edition he seems like a good choice, but in canon he's not very active and his mind is kind of broken. Having him lead any sort of significant campaign would be a major canon divergence. Arkhan the Black is alive and doing his usual thing - collecting artefacts, trying to revive Nagash. One imagines that with Settra away on vacation Arkhan would likely be causing some particular troubles in Nehekhara, and while that's not an official part of canon it wouldn't be contrary to it either. But while Arkhan is associated with some vampire count units, he's really more of a Tomb Kings character. Luthor Harkon: this is probably the best option, and one could even argue that he has a model in the old Sartosan Vampire mini, though it's particularly hard to come by these days. He's currently ruling over the Vampire Coast and is relatively active. If we include Luthor Harkon, though, then that's a reason not to include explicit bloodline rules, since Harkon's specific vampire lineage isn't known. We could do both, and just specify that Harkon can only be taken in a vampire army that doesn't draw from one of the classic bloodlines. On the other hand, Luthor's vampire pirates are fairly distinct, arguably an army in themselves. Someone new? The Arcane Journals thus far have used the specific setting of the Old World as an opportunity to explore new characters. So maybe we could introduce a new named necromancer, wight, vampire, or ghoul king. A ghoul king especially might be worth considering, what with the recent Flesh Eater Court expansion providing some models we could steal, and strigoi ghoul armies being one of the existing vampire count army concepts that isn't super well supported in the current book and those is prime for an army of infamy I'm currently inclined towards Luthor Harkon and either Dieter Hellsnicht or a new named ghoul king hero using either the Gorewarden, Archregent, or Cardinal model, but I am open to opinions & suggestions. 3) Armies of Infamy - arguably the most exciting element of the Arcane Journals, so far each faction gets 2, and I'm strongly disinclined to stray from that precedent, which means not doing Armies of Infamy for each bloodline. At least not here, if we actually get this homebrew arcane journal together I'd be open to then doing separate narrative campaign supplements straying from the official time period of the Old World to tackle specific wars of the undead with the heroes and armies particular to them, with the Von Carstein wars being the obvious first choice there. In the mean time though, just 2, and ideally these should enable armies that are otherwise poorly represented by the core vampire count Grand Army composition. That Grand Army is currently pretty broad and versatile, well representing classic vampire count armies, necromancer & wight led undead armies without any vampires at all, and can even use allies to represent mixed vampire and tomb king forces fitting those of Neferata or Arkhan. Ideas for Armies of Infamy that the current Grand Army arguably doesn't quite do well include: Strigoi/ghoul armies. Not a lot of units to choose from, no strigany human mercenaries, no hero-level ghoul king, weird choices like horrors vs. fell bats when both are on brand for the army make Strigoi armies much harder to build out of the current Grand Army than other classic vamp count archetypes, so a Strigoi Army of Infamy could be a good choice. This is particularly attractive as an option since additional units are easy to model - Strigany can be represented with empire free company while new ghoul and strigoi vampire units can be drawn straight from the AoS FEC range, with crypt guard and morbheg knights in particular are obvious additions. Vampires entrenched in human society - whether blood dragons corrupting a knightly order, von-carsteins or lahmians infiltrating the courts of human nobility, or necrarchs taking over an institute of arcane learning, this is a common vampiric trope in both genre fiction broadly and warhammer fiction in particular, one that needs some degree of access to mortal mercenary units. Though it doesn't need much more than that, if we simply added some empire mercenaries to the Grand Company as an alternative to Tomb Kings allies (perhaps tied to a 'master of mortals' vampiric power) then there might not be cause for a whole army of infamy for this. On the other hand, if we made this concept slightly modular, with variants for different bloodlines, then we could ~sort of~ do an AoI for each bloodline without breaking the 2 AoI per Arcane Tome limit All Cav Knightly Order Blood Dragons. You can sort of put this together with dire wolf core, black knights in core (using wight king heroes) and special, and blood knights in rare, but it's a hassle and doesn't come together as well as you'd like. Then again, if we loosen the Grand Army's restrictions restrictions on cavalry just a little bit, say with a vampiric power that lets you take a single unit of Blood Knights as a Core Unit, then this might not require an entire Army of Infamy. Overlap with the 'entrenched in human society' concept above if combined with mercenary empire or brettonian knights. Pirates of the Vampire Coast - Luthor Harkon being probably the best option for special character makes this probably the best choice for Army of Infamy, with obvious additions, many stolen from total warhammer, that are easy to model in zombie pirates (mix and match empire free company with zombie bits) and cannons (take empire cannon models and just stick zombies or skeletons next to them as the crew), damned knights (brettonian knights painted in ghostly colors), Mournguls (no longer sold by GW, but still available on the secondary market), maybe even undead sea monsters (paint dark elf charybdis or hydra with dead flesh, maybe convert a bit of battle damage), etc. They also have a history of allying with Dark Elves, which could make for some interesting allied armies with extra pirate feel from coursairs and the like. The only downside here is that Vampire Coast might eventually get to be its own official faction in tOW, but if that does happen it won't be any time soon. So yeah, my leaning for Armies of Infamy goes heavily to 'Strigoi Ghoul Court' and 'Vampire Pirates of Sartosa', though, again, open to suggestions. 4) New Magic Items and Vampiric Powers - these have been discussed a bit above, but IF we do explicit bloodline rules THEN there should also be at least one unique vampiric power per bloodline. EG: Blood Scions (Von Carstein only, may only be taken on your army's general): If this model is slain (and not returned to life via the Carstein Ring or similar effect), then you may choose another vampire character in your army that is still on the field to immediately become your general. Your general is not treated as slain for victory points purposes or the 'Death of a General' rule. If the chosen model is later slain then your opponent gains victory points for defeating your general and your army suffers the 'Death of a General' effects as normal. Quickblood (Lahmian only): This vampire has the strikes first rule. Dread Knight (Blood Dragon only): this vampire is equipped with Full Plate armor. In addition, whenever an enemy character or champion refuses this vampire's challenge, this vampire gains +1 attack until the end of the turn. Necromantic Mastery (Necrarch only): this vampire knows one of the spells from the Lore of Undeath in addition to the spells they roll for their chosen lore of magic. They may still trade one of their rolled spells for their chosen lore's signature spell or for a second spell from the Lore of Undeath. Some of those - particularly the Necrarch one, would work well as generic vampiric powers if we don't bring back explicit bloodline rules. There are other classic generic powers that should be brought back (albeit in reduced form), regardless of whether we do bloodlines or not, notably including: Red Fury - This vampire gains the hatred (all enemies) and Frenzy rules, and cannot lose them during the game. Additionally, vampiric powers could be used as mentioned above to make slight adjustments to the Grand Army composition, allowing for some additional build concepts without requiring entire Armies of Infamy. Examples: Master of Mortals (Vampire Count Grand Army only, may only be taken by your general) - your army may include Mercenaries taken from the following: Empire State Troops, Empire Missile Troops, Empire Archers. While they are within this models command range, these mercenary units are Immune to Psychology and do not suffer the Misbehaving Mercenaries rule, but if this model is slain all such mercenary units are immediately removed as casualties - they come to their senses and flee the field as the hypnotic domination is broken. Your army may not include allies. Circle of Blood (Vampire Count Grand Army only, may only be taken by your general, who must be mounted on a Nightmare) - your army may include a single unit of Blood Knights as a Core Unit, and may include Mercenary units taken from the following: either Empire Knights or Brettonian Knights of the Realm, but not both. While they are within this models command range, these mercenary units are Immune to Psychology and do not suffer the Misbehaving Mercenaries rule, but if this model is slain all such mercenary units are immediately removed as casualties - they come to their senses and flee the field as the hypnotic domination is broken. Your army may not include allies. Obviously there would need to be new magic items as well, but I haven't even begun to think about them yet. ................ So, any thoughts or feedback on the direction so far? In particular: Should there be an explicit Bloodlines rules layer, or no? I'm leaning no at the moment, but have been waffling back and forth since tOW's release. Are Luthor Harkon and a new named Ghoul King the right special characters to go with? Should Hellsnicht be there instead of one of those, and if so is there a model or easy conversion available to represent him? Should we ignore time frames and just bring back the Von Carsteins? Are Vampire Pirates and Ghoul Courts the right choices for Armies of Infamy? If not, what do think is a better choice? Is it ok to use bloodline powers to make cheeky adjustments to the Grand Army composition, or is that a bad design direction? Are there any particular new or returning Vampiric Powers or Magic Items that you think a Vampire Counts Arcane Journal needs to include, or should avoid?

I expect unit imports from warcry and underworlds will always be auxiliary units, specifically to discourage them mechanically so boxed side game content doesn't impact core game competitive balance.

I mean, that's what the sprues have, the warscrolls might be simpler than that. EG: the current skeleton warriors sprue has the option to give the entire unit either spears or swords, plus the champion can have a halberd. But their warscroll has only a single weapon entry. Likewise blood knights can be armed with either swords or lances, and the champion can have a mace, but again only a single weapon entry for the warscroll. Over in FEC, the cryptguard sprue comes with bits to give them either miscelaneous hand weapons or big two handed halberds, but the warscroll has only a single weapon entry so they fight the same regardless of how you model them. The new stormcast liberator kit has options to build the unit with either hammer & shield or dual hammers, plus one great hammer, and in all likelyhood the warscroll will have separate rules to reflect these options, but it's entirely within existing precedent for the models to have multiple weapon options but the rules to simply not care about them.

Then I wonder how OBR will work. Since their introduction getting extra command points (and extra commands to use them with) has been a defining mechanic for the faction, representing their supernatural discipline and the multiple lifetimes worth of leadership experience blended into their commanders. We already knew every faction was getting re-imagined from the ground up, but for OBR especially whoever is tasked with their 4e index won't be able to draw much insight & inspiration from their previous mechanics. Probably necessary what with battleshock no longer being a thing, though I do hope some starting sizes get re-considered. Skeleton Warriors, for instance, were always supposed to be pretty hoardy, so I hope their unit size goes up to 20 (matching their box size) instead of staying at 10. Reinforcing them to 40 would be pretty crazy with their current rules, but I can't imagine their current recursion mechanics are going to make the transition into 4e. ... from a fluffy/narrative perspective I like the idea of heroes bringing their own particular units, and of just associating units with particular heroes in general. I wonder if we'll start to see rules for heroes, whether on their warscrolls or as 'heroic traits', that specifically affect units in their regiment, preferably without having to worry about ranges (especially 'wholly within' ranges). Mechanically I'm not sure this system is a good idea. People tend to need chaff in their armies, but a lot of players, especially new players, if left to their own devices will skip the little guy units that do 'boring' things like win you the game via scoring objectives, blocking out deep strikes, screening linchpin units from charges, tar pitting enemy hammers, absorbing 'unleash hell', & so on in favor of spamming big monsters and elite glass hammers that, without any chaff to support them, do 'fun and cool' things like hit hard then immediately die (or just die outright if you go first and just mindlessly push your stuff forward into a turn 2 double). Battleline requirements seemed to be there to ~force~ players to eat their vegetables run some chaff with the idea that if players have to run these units regardless eventually they'll learn how to use them Then again, there were so many exceptions letting you run monsters or elite stuff as battleline already that maybe removing the concept entirely doesn't matter.

I don't mind Kharadron. Like obviously their faction needs expanding, but their core concept imo has room for it. Fyreslayers are a trickier prospect, because while they need to be expanded, their concept is by comparison super narrow. What are you going to give them other than more half-naked dwarf dudes carrying different weapons, when like every unit in their too-narrow range is that already? Maybe you give them like a beast-tamer plus warbeasts unit of younger salamander warmachines like lizardmen have? Maybe bound fire elementals, like as what the chaos dwarfs of Taumarkain (sp?) had? Assuming we're not about to see Chaos Dwarves in AoS taking that concept anyway. And that's kind of it. 'Dwarf Slayers' were a cool idea for a ~unit~ in warhammer fantasy, but at no point has anything convinced me that there's enough there to make for an entire faction. Unfortunately, adding them to Kharadron makes very little sense since the two cultures don't really live or interact with each other? Mostly sticking to different realms, having wildly different dispositions & home terrain, etc. Heck, you took the chaos dwarf aesthetic and personality but made them a destruction faction instead of a chaos faction then you could probably roll Fyreslayers into that more easily than Kharadron. The mercenary disposition of Fyreslayers arguably fits better with the attitude of destruction factions like mawtribes or sons who will fight for anyone who pays them and readily abandon, even actively sabotage, allies who can't afford the agreed price, while the 'chaos' dwarves have their own deities distinct from the chaos pantheon, were known to employ greenskin units who live in destruction now, and their sarumon-style aggressive industrialization grinding up the surrounding natural landscape for resources can be seen as a sort of indiscriminate destruction for its own sake, which altogether would make it pretty easy to recontextualize them as a mercenary-type destruction faction themselves, albeit one more likely to offer their services to chaos factions than order ones. So yeah, if it were up to me I'd expand Kharadron & maybe tie them into azyrite dwarven populations, and then roll Fyreslayers into a re-named and re-allegianced destruction faction based on the old chaos dwarves. But just what I would do, which means it's almost certainly NOT what gw ~will~ do.

So far the two most contentious bits of 3e are staying around - the double turn, which many new & casual players complain about because they feel like the game boils down to a single die roll - not very interactive or narratively engaging - and battle tactics, which some more experienced & competitive players complain about because they feel like the game boils down to some random unit you otherwise wouldn't even want to field because their warscroll sucks doing a backflip in some random corner of the board - not very interactive or narratively engaging. But the double turn is popular with veteran tournament players, and who are battle tactics popular with? Not new/casual players who general don't bother with them, and not old/competitive players who complain about them. No, battle tactics are popular with the devs because its the easiest and safest and most immediately effective way for them to tweak competitive stats. An army is doing too good? Make their faction battle tactics impossible and suddenly their win rate at events drops way down. Some other faction not doing good enough? Give them a free battle tactic or two and suddenly they're winning competitive games. A unit isn't being taken enough? Well fixing their points value or changing their warscroll would be hard and subtle and might not do enough or conversely runs the risk of going too far and suddenly making them too good, but if you leave the unit bad and just tie a free battle tactic to them suddenly people will take them even though they're bad, so usage stats go up without any risk of the unit suddenly dominating games out of nowhere. I could take or leave the double turn (though lean towards ditching it purely for the barrier to entry it puts in front of new players), but I actively dislike battle tactics. Both are staying around in 4e though, and being tied together even. Oh, well. I'll live.

This is an important point, and highlights that GW asking the most experienced players for feedback might be the wrong strategy entirely. Those players are already locked in with big expensive collections, you'd have to ****** up the new edition /incredibly hard/ to drive them away. Making the game more welcoming to new & inexperienced players specifically, even at the cost of established players, might have been the better call. Though they're not ignoring the new player experience. Again, still crossing my fingers hard that GW's devs learned enough from combat patrol for spearhead to be more successful.

I can't vote on this because my answer is completely binary based on game size. At 2k, which in theory is the standard game size and should get priority, then yes, I like the double, keep it, at least so long as we're keeping separate player turns at all. At anything less, though? In spearhead where new players are likely to first experience the game? or at 1,000 points which sees a lot more play locally than 2,000 points even among players who have 2k points painted for purely logistical reasons? then no, I don't like the double in those games, as armies just aren't big enough to fit the tools you need to play around it.

Yeah, warcry's a good game, very fun, but it's appeal isn't the same as what Mordheim offers. That said, you really don't need GW support for mordheim. Where Warcry is a pick up / bring and battle game, and thus needs some amount of current support to stay relevant, Mordheim is a campaign game where you need a regular group of pals to play with, and if you have that then the old Mordheim rules work just fine. Get together for a weekend, order some pizza, pull up the rules online, cut & scotch tape the empty pizza boxes into ruined building terrain, and play some games on the kitchen table. Even when it comes to minis support, if you have enough people to play a mordheim campaign, chances are one of them can get access to a 3d printer.

I mean, no demographic is a monolith. There are tournament type players who don't like the double, and smaller game or more casual players who do like it. As a broader trend though the double turn seems to get more complaints from new players and from players of smaller game sizes and less from people who regularly play 2k point matched play, which seems to come down to there being more options to play around it at larger game sizes, and players being more aware of and practiced in doing so as they get more experienced. The tournament type players (broadly, there are always individual exceptions) seem to complain more about other stuff (blizzard, battle tactics in general being kind of unfun and non-interactive, etc). Shooting is similar, a lot of friction for newer and smaller points players, but generally less contentious in tournament type games - though again there are players who are exceptions on both ends... ... and all that's only if my impression of the general opinion trends are accurate to begin with. It does fit with the double being a major complaint in my local scene of mostly small point players, as well as it being a common complaint frequently cited by online figures who are somewhat new and mostly play at smaller points (by which I mean anything under 2k). A good example is this video by Miniac which lists the double as their biggest complaint: Miniac plays a lot of different minis games, which on some levels broadens his perspective, but it also means he hasn't really dived as deeply as maybe he thinks he has into the particulars of AoS, not playing all that often and most of his experience being in smaller games, where, like many new players, if he goes first in a battle round he has a tendency to just shove his guys forward, which basically sets himself up to get devastated by a double turn. That's not a major criticism, a lot of people play that way for a long time, and in smaller point games there's not a lot else you can do, you just don't have the points left over for extra chaff & screens or second wave hammer units or expendible units to run up and claim objectives that you don't mind dying while your real hammers take a more cautious approach or whatnot. If the double turn is such a common complaint, though, are the devs just lying in the priority article when they say they asked a bunch of players what should stay in the game, and they overwhelmingly said to keep the double? I don't think they are, but I do think the responses they got were skewed by the people they asked, because the most obvious place to ask questions like that is at tournament events, where they have a bunch of people in the same place to talk to and those people are presumably the ones who play AoS the most and who thus have the most informed and nuanced opinions on it. If that's what happened than I expect they heard from very few players like Miniac, and instead heard from a bunch of players like Heywoah, who made this video in part responding to Miniac. Well, first he made a direct response video that was a bit more snarky, but acknowledged that wasn't helpful, so he made this video trying to help people learn how to play around the double. Heywoah's not a top tournament player, but he does attend events, and he regularly streams TTS games on twitch, and the difference in perspective between somebody who plays a few mostly under-pointed games a month and someone who plays multiple full sized games every week is pretty stark. This is a guy who knows how to play around the double, and who enjoys doing so. If that wasn't possible he'd have burnt out on and abandoned the game before even getting into it. Heywoah cut his teeth on TTS - he was playing 2k games before he had the sunk cost of a painted army locking him in. That also means he skipped right over the small point games that most players are stuck learning the game on while they slowly build up their physical armies and struggle to arrange physical games at local stores against in person opponents. Heywoah's done a lot to win me over on the idea of the double, at least in full sized matched play games. But... most of his advice on how to play around it just doesn't work in smaller games - hence why the last serious bit of advice in the video is 'just don't play smaller games'. But I don't play on TTS, for me the real joy of minis games is meeting up with people in person to show off the cool models I painted. Full sized games are hard to arrange and fit into a schedule if you're playing real physical models at a real physical game store that you and your opponent both have to drive to and hope the table's open and finish your game in time to clean up before the store closes. Recognizing this, that AoS just isn't designed for the sorts of games I have time to play, has led me to start picking up Warcry this year (and warcry is pretty great, def worth trying out if you love the models and setting of AoS but don't have time to paint whole armies or play full size games). Hopefully 4e fixes the small game experience with Spearhead, and the like. My fingers are firmly crossed. But wile I may think Heywoah's opinion of the game is more 'correct' or 'informed' or whatever than Miniac's, if the devs have designed 4e based primarily on the feedback of players like Heywoah and not so much on that of players like Miniac, then the small game experience for new players on-boarding and old players who just don't have the time for full 2k point games is likely to remain kinda bad. In the end, GW is a minis company. If they make a game that's fantastic for people who stream TTS on twitch but kind of a pain for people buying physical models to play on a real world table, that's probably not what they were aiming for.

Pretty much yeah. There's so much potential for improvement of the small game experience just in designing battleplans specifically for it. It's why I have so much hope for Spearhead. Actually ~trying~ to design something specifically for smaller games instead of downscaling rules & scenarios meant for 2k games can easily improve so much.