Sception
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Posts posted by Sception
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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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7 hours ago, 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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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.
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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. 😛
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Nagash only having a bonus to cast in the Hero Phase. Does this means that spells are going to be tied in to the Hero Phase?
Seems like yeah, I think we're going to see spells as a hero phase thing as current and not getting spread through the turn like old world. Thankfully, imo. I like old world, but I think it would have been better served with a magic system much closer to that in AoS - magic distributed across the turn is a mistake imo. It makes it difficult to track how many spells a wizard has attempted to cast or dispel, which in turn is why tOW currently lets wizards attempt to cast all their spells, and unbind any spell cast in their range. Which in turn makes adding wizard level to casting & dispelling rolls, in itself another mistake imo, far more painful, leading to the 'take a level 4 or lose' pattern that's starting to develop in the early meta. Maybe it'll work itself out and prove not to be a problem in the long run, but for the moment AoS's limits on total casting and much more limited availability of casting & unbinding bonuses seems like a better call. Even nagash only gets +2 to cast in 4e, and no bonus at all to unbinding rolls.
QuoteThe skull ability (passive) from Nagash makes me think that it triggers in the Start of the Turn. If that's the case for all other mosnters with the same degrading ability, they are not going to take the effect until the start of the next turn.
The color implies a start of turn effect, but the text implies a more continuous effect. That it's just always the case whenever the condition applies.
QuoteThat's funy: "while Ossiarch Bonereapers is a keyword here, Nagash has a separate Warscroll in each of the Faction Packs from Grand Alliance: Death". Btw, I'm completely fine with that, some units having a diferent warscroll depending on the army they join can open a lot of possibilies.
It gets confusing if those factions can be mixed via allies or regiments of renown - the latter at least we know are staying around in some form. The devs need to take care that the same unit can't appear in the same army with two different warscrolls.
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46 minutes ago, Gitzdee said:
Do we think Bonesplitterz and Beasts of Chaos are getting reworked?
Based on the regiments system i think its plausible that we could be getting them back some day as regiments instead of a subfaction. Bonesplitterz could get a hero + 2 or 3 units that can be slotted into either Ironjawz or Kruleboyz. The same could be said for Beasts and can be slotted into any Chaos army. It think it actually fits their lore too.
This way GW can still do the micro armies they always wanted without having to commit to a whole army + tome system and years of support that helps with limited warehouse space.
Sadly it really does seem like bonesplitterz and beasts are really and truely super gone. Some vaguely similar concepts might appear again in the future, sure, but doesn't seem like any specific plan to do so at this time. That stuff really is just shifted to old world.
Sacrosanct stormcast on the other hand will probably be back in thunderstrike armor in some future edition, though why they didn't leave the existing guys in place until they were ready to replace them is beyond me. Like yeah, the stormcast line needed winnowing, but imo they went way overboard.
It is what it is, and a lot of this is the inevitable result of bad ideas and poor foresight in the past - eg, the faction culls going into age of sigmar should have been far harsher than they originally were, stormcast shouldn't have been expanded anything like as rapidly or as carelessly as they were, etc. But still, the corrections could have been much better handled.
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If you wanna try spearhead than you're probably safe to pick up the vanguard and get it painted in the mean time so you're ready to go with spearhead from day one.
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2 hours ago, Vasshpit said:
Looks like having a shield and weapon or two weapons is irrelevant unless I missed something. If so I'm not the biggest fan of this and just seems overly watered down.
Is what it is....
Will definitely have to feel out how things go.
there has been a trend recently of eliminating full unit-wide weapon options. Like, they're still there on the sprues, but don't do anything in game. Eg: spears vs. swords for skeleton warriors, lances vs. hand weapons for blood knights, hand weapons vs. halberds for crypt guard, etc.
Shield vs. no shield on liberators does feel a little extreme, but still.
As long as the options stay on the models devs might change direction in the future. In the meanwhile I don't mind being able to pick these options based on aesthetic preference without feeling like I was nerfing my unit for no reason (eg with spears on kavalos deathriders or mortek guard).
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3 minutes ago, Poryague said:
No need to castle
Target unit does need to be wholly within 18", so you can't spread out ~too~ much. Notably wholly within applies to the enemy as well. Spread out and it's harder to offensively invoke all your stuff.
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I really like this version of Nagash. Much clearer than past versions, brings him back into keyword alignment with his faction (with separate scrolls for each faction he can be taken with).
He does the things Nagash should do - high end casting power, super versatile signature spell (I like its ability to shield against the double turn - if you make Nagash go first there's a good chance his entire army will come out of the top of turn one with 5++ on everything), solid reanimation from both the repeatable spell and his big 1/game revive, decent offensive power, can at least threaten to kill anything that dares come within reach. It also removes some of the most annoying aspects of previous versions of nagash for opponenst. EG - nagash being on the table no longer effectively negates the enemy magic phase (presumably he can attempt to unbind up to 9 times, but he no longer does so with a +3 bonus to the roll), hand of dust is a special ability now instead of a spell so he can't cast it through spellportals to one shot models at range, he can no longer heal himself so opponents can wear him down over time (though other healing affects from core or faction rules may still apply). He no longer has an ability to bounce mortal wounds back at enemies that target him (that was already removed in the current version, but still). The only change I'm sad about is the removal of his 'gaze of nagash' ranged attack, I liked the idea that Nagash could kill folks just by looking at them (again, that was already removed, but was present in the versions I have the most experience with).
Whether he's terrible, too good, or just right will of course depend on the points cost and how everything else in the game balances out in comparison, but just looking at it, yeah, this is a significantly simplified and streamlined warscroll that should still absolutely capture the feel of Nagash on the tabletop.
Really good job, imo.
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Thoughts on 4.0's New Rules
in Age of Sigmar Discussions
Posted
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.