Sception
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Posts posted by Sception
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I liked CoS as a mixed fantasy race faction simply because you /never/ see that anywhere else. Every other fantasy game and series and whatever always has the dwarves off in dwarf society, elves in elf society, humans in human society, orcs in orc society. Where they're mixed, it's always one subjugating another and mostly segregated regardless (see elves in dragon age). Sometimes the dwarves/elves/whatever have novel and interesting societies, usually it's the expected cliches. Either way though, you'll have a mix of fantasy races in the protagonist lineup or player party, but in the world everything stays separate.
Cities in AoS was a very rare exception, with modern Azyrite society born from refugees of all the realms fleeing chaos, collectively turning to sigmar to protect them as their own gods fell to Archaon or were driven into hiding. What kind of society does that produce? How do people live and work together when their neighbors might have lifetimes far shorter or many times longer than their own? Are all the captains and guild leaders elves out of seniority alone? Or are retirement ages mandatory, with humans living out their last days with their family while dwarves are obligated to take up a second or third career and elves a seventh or eighth? How common are cross-species relationships, do they increase or strain social cohesion, and do they ever produce offspring? I mean, even if not naturally, there are gods are right there, physically present in Azyr, theoretically you can go to their house, knock on their door, and petition for a miraculous exception. Speaking of, Sigmar and Grungni are there, but do the former followers of other gods regret their abandoned faiths, or resent the gods that failed or abandoned them? We know the humans, elves, and dwarves, but are there other, rarer, stranger folk who are also part of Azyrite society? halflings, gnomes, greenskins, faries, sylvaneth? undead, even? Did no vampires or wights escape to Azyr and, with Nagash's apparent demise, pledge themselves to Sigmar? We know Sigmar's stolen the souls of some undead to forge them into stormcast, were none freely offered? And if there are any Sigmarite undead in Azyr, how have things changed for them in the modern age with Nagash back, but now as Sigmar's enemy?
I'm not saying these kinds of stories are ~more~ interesting than those you could tell with just humans in azyr, just dwarves in their sky cities, just treelves in their forests. But they are different stories, and ones you just don't get in most settings.
I'll live with overwhelmingly or entirely human cities of sigmar, I don't think it'll ruin the game or setting or anything, I don't think it reflects a negative worldview by the creators or whatever. Heck, I don't even play the faction. But I liked what the previous version did for the game and the setting, and even with fantastic new models I can't help but feel the new version is a bit dull by comparison.
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Ok, so looking at the Total Warhammer Vampirates unit selection, and ignoring the subfaction-specific stuff, there are several units that translate over from the grand army fairly directly
- vampire admiral -> vampire count
- vampire captain -> vampire thrall
- fell bats -> fell bats
- scurvy dogs -> dire wolves
- zombie deck hands -> zombies
- syreens -> banshees*
- terrorgheist -> terrorgheist
*yes syreens are a unit in Total Warhammer, while banshees are a character in Old World, but these are basically the same thing lore wise and I think it's fine to just say the AoI can take banshees and have done. Maybe compromise with a looser restriction on them than the grand army list?
There are also some basic vampire counts units that /aren't/ included in the Total Warhammer vampirates army, but that I think maybe should be available to the army of infamy? These include:
- bat swarms: with access to medium bats (fell bats) and big bats (terrorgheists), I don't see why vampire pirates would also have plenty of little bats roosting under the deck or amid the rigging. one could imagine a swarm of them blotting out the sun before a vampire pirate crew raids some harbor or attacks a vulnerable vessel at sea.
- regular skeletons - do they absolutely have to be /zombie/ pirates? some people like skeletons more, I'd rather stay open to that, though I'm open to arguments against.
- spirit hosts - vampirates aren't without ghostly options, with both syreens and mournguls. I don't see why they wouldn't have the most basic ghostly unit. And again, ghost pirates are also an iconic thing.
That leaves the following total warhammer units to consider as potential new units:
- Gunnery Wight: this is a light armored zombie hero with blackpowder weapons, so regular wight lords & kings don't really translate here.
- Mourngul Haunter: maybe we keep Mournguls, maybe not, but even if we do I don't think they need a hero version
- Depth Guard: infantry blood knights. In TW they have two hand weapons or halberds, though in terms of available models and conversions we might want to allow sword & board or great weapon as well, and also might want to come up with a more generic name since we're likely to want to use the same unit again in future projects, eg blood dragon AoI.
- zombie pirate gunnery mob: too different from regular zombies to port over, we basically need at least one generic undead pirate unit able to wield muskets or something. In game they've got a bunch of ranged weapon options, but I don't want to go overboard on shooting stuff given the base army's complete lack of it, especially since timeline wise blackpowder weapons aren't super common or advanced right now.
- deck gunners: a zombie pirate with a heavy machine gun, this is the kind of advanced blackpowder weapon that I think we can safely avoid by saying it wouldn't be around yet, at least not in heavy use.
- deck droppers: fell bats carrying around zombies with handguns or cartoon blackpowder bombs. A neat and funny idea, but potentially awkward conversion. I'm inclined to leave them out on the principle of not adding /too/ much shooting/blackpowder
- animated hulks: zombie ogres, a classic conversion, I'm inclined to add these.
- Mournguls: I'm not sure of the justification for attaching these to vampire pirates specifically? But they're there in the game, and there was an official model for them, which hasn't been supported by the core vamp counts factions, so it might be nice to throw these in just so that people who have the old model have somewhere to use it.
- rotting prometheans/leviathans - giant undead crabs. Cool, but I want there to be easy first party conversion options for all the new units, and there isn't one for this. Unless we re-magined it as a more generic 'any sort of giant undead sea monster' sort of thing, such that people could use like the dark elf Kharibdyss?
- necrofex colossus: a giant walking shipwreck with a skeleton of torn timbers and muscles of drowned crewman corpses lashed together. An absolutely amazing monster, iconic to the faction, and it kills me to say it but once again I don't think there's an easy enough conversion from mostly first party parts. If we make 'rotting leviathan' a generic undead sea beast concept, maybe these could fit in there, for those willing and able to scratch build them?
- bloated corpse: exploding zombie giant/big ogre. cool and gross, but I think monsters are kind of over-covered already, and kind of overlaps with the animated hulks
- cannonade: well, yeah, they're pirates, they should have a cannon
- mortar: I don't see the harm in mortars as an alternative to cannons?
- queen bess: a super strong giant cannon. As much as a signature huge cannon is on brand for a pirate faction, and as cool as conversions based on the chaos helcannon or ogre ironblaster would be, I'm inclined to say no here? on the same not wanting to add /too/ much shooting & not wanting to go overboard on blackpowder reasoning. I am open to being argued otherwise though.
As important as what gets added are the units dropped. Armies of Infamy are supposed to be relatively narrow themed lists, after all, far more focused in their unit selection than the grand army lists they are drawn from. Here's the grand army stuff I'm inclined to say vampire pirates just don't get:
- wights: (apart from the 'gunnary wight' above, which is a different sort of thing). No wight kings, No wight lords, no grave guard, no black knights. Wights are raised from their earthen barrows, and while perhaps not magically bound to them the way vampires are to their coffins, they're still creatures of the land rarely found at sea.
- ghouls: No ghoul kings, no crypt ghouls, no crypt horrors, no varghulf, no vargheists (which the grand army associates with ghouls). while most undead hunger for the living, ghouls alone will starve if they don't feed that hunger. Trapped on a ship for months at sea ghouls would eat the provisions, then the crew, then each other. Plus Ushoran's progeny are subject to terrible sea-sickness, everybody knows that.
- cavalry/chariots. No black knights, no blood knights, no hexwraiths, no corpse carts, no black coaches. You can take horses on boats, but they don't like it - not even the undead ones. Any vampire worth their salt who lives and fights at sea will tell you it isn't worth the bother. And transporting a chariot by sea is just awkward. Maybe we make an exception for character mounts? Or maybe not?
- Cairne Wraiths: I don't know, we like banshees here. I can't have fun fluff reasons for everything.
- necromancers. no master necromancer, no necromantic acolytes. Seawater and rocking waves wreak havoc on fragile paper tomes of arcane lore and careful alchemical mixtures.
Yes, that means no level 4 spellcasters for this Army of Infamy, the strongest available spellcaster would be a lv3 vamp count. It wouldn't be the first AoI with no lv4s - Settra's Royal Host is limited to lv2. It also pretty much guarantees that this homebrew AoI won't be outperforming first party content - legacy or otherwise - on tables that allow it.
Tentative composition then looks like:
Characters (some percentage)
- 1+ Vampire (must be the general)
- 0-1 Vampire Count per 1000 points
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Any number of Vampire Thralls, Drowned Quartermaster (gunnery wight)*, and Banshees
note: 1 vampire thrall or drowned quartermaster may be the battle standard bearer for +25 points
Core (some percentage)
- 1+ Drowned Pirate Crew (light armor with options for pistols, handguns, or paired hand weapons)*
- Any number of Skeleton Warriors, Zombies, Bat Swams, and Dire wolves
Special (some percentage)
- 0-1 unit of Spirit Hosts per banshee
- Any number of Fell Bats, Drowned Pirate Ogres*
- 0-2 units per 1000 points chosen from: Drowned Pirate Cannon*, Drowned Pirate Mortar* (basic cannon or mortar but with low BS undead crew)
Rare (some percentage)
- 0-1 Terrorgheist or Mourngul* per 1000 points,
- Any number of Blood Knight Infantry*
Allies: most Armies of Infamy don't get allies, but I feel like Vampire Pirates should
- Vampire Counts Grand Army
- Dark Elves Grand Army (or corsair-specific army of infamy, if we link up with a dark elf homebrew project working on one)
*new unit, rules to be worked out, name subject to change
For the drowned quartermaster, pirated crew, etc, I I know 'Zombie Pirates' is the most firmly established, but I kind of want to leave it open to the player whether to represent/convert them as skeletons, zombies, or ghosts. Maybe fluff them as the drowned crews of sunken ships revived at first as zombies, but if they last long enough the flesh sloughs off without any change in their abilities, and under the light of morslieb they take on the ghostly countenance of the people they once were? Just leaving them as open as possible for hobbying & the most options possible for 3rd party models.
That leaves out a lot of fairly cool and iconic vampire coast units - the colossus, the crabs, the deck droppers, etc. It also already has /6/ new units, not counting any special characters, which is a lot for an Army of Infamy, arguably too much already. IMO if we wanted to add more than this, in particular if we wanted to add things like the necrofex colossus, then what we'd be looking at at that point is an entire separate homebrew faction, not an Army of Infamy for an existing one.
But maybe trade the Mourngul for a 'rotted leviathan', which could be any big undead sea beast, maybe including the mournghul? The problem there is base size - mournghul wants to be on a 50mm square, would be awkward on a 60x100, and positively drowning on a 100x150. kharibdyss wants to be on a 60x100, won't fit on a 50x50, and would look weird on a 100x150, most of the necrofex colossus conversions I've seen seem like they'd want to be on a 100x60, legs splayed wide knight titan style. most conversions & 3rd party stuff I've seen for giant crab style rotting leviathan look like they wouldn't fit on anything less than a 100 x 150.
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So far I've mostly been using 5x5 for skeletons & zombies, 6x4 for tomb/grave guard - but I'm switching those to 7x3 or 8x3, 5x1 for blood knights (though I could see 6x1 or even 7x1 being good for them), 3x1 (or 4x1 with hero) for light chariots & necroknights. 40mm monstrous infantry (ushabti or crypt horrors) I haven't really nailed down, waffling from 3 to 5 wide, 1 or 2 deep.
10 wide melee infantry sounds good but gets too unwieldy, too difficult to wheel around terrain or to fit into a battle line with supporting units, too easy for the enemy to multi-charge, which defeats the point of having so many attacking models by splitting their output between multiple enemy units. If you have some particularly nasty buff it can still be worthwhile, but otherwise even 8 wide is honestly a bit much imo.
In terms of units changing formation mid battle - drilled is good in principle, as are other units that let you redress ranks like the sea guard gimmick, but due to the physical realities of movement trays vs. loose models & such I prefer to avoid it altogether and just deploy units in the formation I mean to keep them in for the entire battle. Unless there's an easy way to manage things with multiple smaller trays - like 20 seaguard on 2 5x1 bases that can be put next to each other for 10 wide shooting then shifed to front and back for 5 wide combat.
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I think part of the point of divorcing the subfaction layer of rules from the actual subfactions in the lore is specifically so they don't need to come up with a different special rules for every different specific city, society, and army in the lore. Four - the number nighthaunt have, honestly seems about right. OBR have 6 and that's been way too many, I can hardly imagine the dozen or so cities working out at all well.
Honestly, mechanically, it seems like a good move, although there are some factions whose overall faction identity is hugely tied to their specific suite of subfaction rules - Soulblight is one, cities sadly is probably also one. Cases where subfaction is tied not just to a couple special rules but also to unit selection. Neferata and Mannfred for instance shouldn't be fieldable together without at least some amount of friction.
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I've seen a couple posts assuming every faction will get four faction battle traits. I don't think this is a safe assumption - the article doesn't say that, and even looking at stormcast, 2 of their faction abilities together would have been a single battle trait in 2nd or 3rd, you really can't count 'the ability that lets you put units in reserve during deployment' and 'the ability that lets you then deploy those units during the game' as separate abilities, so if stormcast are illustrative of any general trend I'd say ~three~ abilities per faction is more likely, though I doubt there's a general trend at all.
One ability per subfaction though seems very likely, ignoring split abilities like celestial realm/scions of the storm. That's how most of the recent faction books have handled subfactions.
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we're supposed to get the faction/subfaction preview today, right? Fingers crossed for a death faction. In particular I'd love to see how OBR have been re-imagined in light of the 'nobody gets extra command points' concept.
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color choices could have been better, yeah, but the abilities also say what phases they're used in (if they're limited to particular phases) and have symbols representing those phases, so they're more clear than they were in the past even for those who can't see color at all.
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Does anyone happen to have first hand experience with both the dark elf incubi and blood knight models sufficient to say whether the upper torsos of blood knights could fit on the lower torsos of incubi to make for infantry blood knights? I fear the knights would be just too big to fit.
I'm trying to figure out a decent first party conversion for infantry blood knights, a unit that would be relevant for both Vampire Pirates (depth guard) and Blood Dragons, maybe other AoIs as well. There are readily available 3rd party alternatives, and in theory that's good enough so it's not make or break. But just as a personal preference I'd like there to be 1st party counts-as or conversion options for any new units that don't require sculpting skills.
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I kind of wish 'all out defense' had been -1 to be hit instead of +1 to save. It would have had pleasing symmetry with all out attack, & more importantly imo save stacking is a bit excessive in 3e and I would have preferred to see some of the save buffs removed. Oh, well.
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I have mixed feeling on the whole 'different weapons have the same profiles' thing. On the one hand, as an OBR player who likes the look of spears, it's nice to be able to build my units to my aesthetic preference without worrying about making them worse for no reason.
On the other hand, a unit with two big hammers vs. a big hammer and a big shield kind of feel like they should play differently on the table. Like the former /should/ be a hammer unit (if you'll pardon the pun), while the latter should be an anvil. Plus it then gets confusing when dual hammers are the same as hammer and shield, but hammer and shield is a completely different unit with completely different rules from exactly the same models except armed with a spear and shield. If anything the hammer & shield and spear & shield units should be the same, while the dual hammers unit should be something else, no? Why are Liberators and Vindicators different units at all, when unnecessary warscroll bloat has already forced the devs into one embarrassing and premature cull of stormcast units? Why not take the opportunity of 4e's total warscroll refresh to consolidate units like this?
It's just weird when GW devs are saying "different weapons alone aren't enough to warrant separate profiles on the same warscroll" out one side of their mouth, while out the other side of their mouth they're saying "different weapons alone are enough to warrant separate warscrolls entirely".
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38 minutes ago, Mortal Wound said:
It's not, it is way easier to screen against because it now goes against the nearest unit, after movement is done but before charges. As a Slaves to Darkness player living in an environment oversaturated with CoS players that all love their fusiliers, this new command made me breathe a huge sigh of relief. Just put a chaff unit in front of my spiky lads and bam, no more getting shot off the table (or rather, no more getting shot off the table an additional time). Takes me back to Warhammer Fantasy days when the no1 rule of playing Chaos was 'you always put Warhounds in front of the Chaos Knights' 😄
I mostly agree with your other assessments, but felt I needed to point this out because I love this change.
I don't disagree, but in general the best chaff to screen this way with would also have been the best chaff to just sacrificially charge into the problem shooty unit before charging with your hammer anyway (furies, fell bats, etc). Granted, this now works to distract multiple shooty units at a time, but still, there ~was~ counter-play to the old unleash hell, it's just a bit easier to do now. On the other hand, in matches where both sides have shooting units, you now get to covering fire before the opponent can reduce your shooting unit with their own on their turn. There's give & take.
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1 hour ago, Beliman said:
The secon "move" is at the End of Any Turn phase.
There shoudn't be any problem.
You're absolutely right. For some reason I thought power through was end of the charge phase, not end of the turn. My mistake.
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5 minutes ago, Cataphract said:
Spend 1 CP to charge an Opponent’s screen in their turn. Then at the end of the phase spend 2 CP to get past the screen so at the beginning of your next turn you can move and charge something else.A unit can still only use one command per phase
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3 hours ago, JerekKruger said:
A fifth grand alliance, and then a souping of the existing four into a great resistance. Like the crowning of Malekith as Phoenix King (where seemingly all the High Elves just shrugged their shoulders at the centuries of war crimes and said "well I guess the fire says he's a goodie so we forgive him"), no one will bat an eyelid at Archaon working alongside Stormcast.
I mean, they did have a big civil war about it first, and only really stopped that because 1) the leader of the resistance went crazy and 2) the end of the world got in the way. The way it was left, if team anti-chaos had stopped the apocalypse the high elves would probably have gone back to civil warring about it.
also did the flames say he was good, or just the legitimate heir? because he honestly was the latter, and the real villain was hereditary monarchy as a political system in the first place.
but that's enough trying to defend a bad book. Yeah, end times khaine was a huge disappointment, as both a narrative and as a game supplement, and after nagash and glotkin had been such spectacular successes. real shame.
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18 minutes ago, EonChao said:
Just and idle thought, do you think that Beasts of Chaos, Bonesplitters and Sacrosanct Chamber will get Spearhead rules in their online tomes?
sacrosanct no (they aren't part of the current stormcast spearhead, nor the previous vanguard iirc, and while I expect a new spearhead for stormcast out of the 4e starter box stuff that won't include them either), beastmen yes (they have a vanguard box, and they're supposedly getting supported like any other faction for the first year of 4e), and bonesplitters no (while they're also getting that year of support, they aren't a faction unto themselves and aren't included in any current orruk vanguard or spearhead boxes - honestly we might not even get spearhead support for ironjaws for the same reason).
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I think we can be confident that we've seen the end of entire faction culls, at least for 4th edition. We might see individual units culled when their battletomes release, eg losing oldhammer kits from cities of Sigmar, and I suppose souping together or splitting apart factions is still possible. But if they were going to drop Ogres or Fyreslayers outright in 4e they'd have already made that decision, and they'd be announcing it now along with the bonesplitters and fyreslayers in order to get the pain over with at once. They had to know the move would hurt confidence in the game pretty badly, and if they somehow didn't know it then they do now. It'll take time to build that back, and if they undermine it during the healing process they might never get it back.
Kind of surprised at the lack of another preview article today. They kind of need to keep a constant drumbeat of positive news going to get people past the disappointment, and there's plenty more to cover.
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1 minute ago, ScionOfOssia said:
Oh god, what dumb idea are they doing now? Dropping Idoneth into Lumineth? Souping Nurgle and Tzeentch? Making another bloody Incarnate?
Sigmar & Nagash kiss & make up, stormcast & bonereapers souped
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We're seeing a lot of movement on those charts just from more events being added. targeted balance adjustments seem premature until the data gets more consistent. People are still getting armies together, let alone figuring out how to make best use of them.
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On 4/8/2024 at 3:48 AM, JerekKruger said:
All ghosts is a very cool idea, with strong support thanks to Nighthaunt in AoS. However army wide Ethereal seems like a bad idea. Some armies have almost no access to Magic Attacks outside of characters, and they're going to have a miserable time fighting ghosts; others, like Warriors of Chaos, can have Magic Attacks across the board, in which case Ethereal is completely useless points tax. So yeah, I wouldn't say it's a good idea from a game okay point of view.
Yeah, I think we can rule this out. It's a neat idea, and I like that it's a thing in AoS at least, but with how ethereal works in the Old World it would just be too obnoxious.
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EDIT: Sorry for the lack of movement on this progress recently. It's taking me longer than I'd hoped to get a basic army table-ready for old world, especially with warcry, aos, and also old world tomb kings distracting me. Project's not abandoned, but I do feel I need to get some actual games in with the vamp counts as they are before I can move into the next stage of tinkering around with some actual rules.
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5 hours ago, Tonhel said:
Amazing posts @Sception
Just guessing, but even if Vampire counts stays legacy (what I don't believe), Vampire coast pirates could make an appereance in a campaign book like Warhammer Forge did with Tamurkhan, but instead an armylist for Chaos Dwarfs it would be an armylist for Vampire pirates.
I owned Tamurkhan, but sold it last summer. Lol, now I regret it a little bit. But I really hope that books like Tamurkhan is the way forward for TOW. Beautiful book!
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.
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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
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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.
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5 hours ago, Beliman said:
Even that, I don't think that the Legacy Factions are going to have any release in the next two years. To be honest, I expect a lot of Campaign Supplements (aka, Horus Heresy newBlack Books) for the existing Core Factions, maybe with a special guests (Kislev/Cathay maybe?). Whatever was "the scope of the project has changed" will start kicking hard in maybe 2 to 3 years.
I hope I'm wrong because all Vampire Coast posts from @Sception are a joy to read, and an Arcane Journal will be enough to start a new project.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
Spoiler
etc etc, really no end of examples.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Brand new guy - The FEC range for AoS have several models which could be appropriated as old world named heroes, including
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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.
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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.-
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4 hours ago, RocketPropelledGrenade said:
There are lots of ways they could change things to make it better with a full rules overhaul
Of course. Definitely crossing my fingers, but I'm not going so far as holding my breath. 😛
The Rumour Thread
in Age of Sigmar Discussions
Posted
really? That's AoS canon? There are half aelves, and half ogors? See that's a cool concept. That's the kind of thing I'd like to see in game and on the table, even if it's rare enough to be reserved for named characters.