ninjaDance

I've tried convincing others to play narrative games, but have had little success (so far!) Doesn't mean I won't stop trying, though, I really enjoy what they've created and want to try it out. I'm actually writing a campaign using some of the materials they have out there and have one person interested, so... fingers crossed!

If I'm totally honest with myself, I don't have nearly as much fun with AoS as I did WHFB, or several other games I've tried since. That said, it's as much circumstance as mechanics. When I played WHFB, I mainly played one group of friends that all wanted to play for similar reasons; for everyone to have a good time with their cool armies and personal stories we worked up. My buddy usually won as he was the better strategist, but we all had a good time. We all moved before End Times hit. Now it's AoS and, since GHB 1 dropped, the about the only people playing AoS here are ultra-competitive. I've tried to fall in line in order to have a fun game, but there's really only one guy I've found not dedicated to wiping me off the board turn one. And he's really moving more toward the competitive scene as well. I have three kids (two pretty young) and the other players are all a couple of hours away, so... I get to play maybe once every couple of months if I'm lucky. Not a lot of practice just makes it worse. Combine this with some aspects of the game that make a bad time worse, like the double turn mechanic or abilities that let deathstars fight twice without a reaction and I've been finding lately that I'm just not enjoying the game. Which is a shame, because the lore is fun and it's really fun to build and paint armies for it.

So, I'm battling humidity to hopefully get a chance to paint up my Wardens as hailing from the Great Nation of Syar and was picking through the rules, including an artefact they get that I enjoy, The Perfect Blade... Unless I'm mistaken, the only two who can (and, in fact, must) take this great combat artefact are... The Scinari Cathallar and the Alarith Stonemage. Both of whom aren't exactly raring to go in close combat. Every other hero is a Unique, which is quite a bummer. Am I missing something, or are we pretty much just stuck giving our mages (probably the Stonemage) The Perfect Blade, ideal for hunting monsters and dangerous combat heroes?

You may be right, but I wasn't necessarily looking for or advocating a 'pure' Dispossessed army, personally; just one focused on them. I think a Cities army with a Dispossessed core can be fun to play and hold its own, although they like the other city forces to lend some support. It makes for a more varied and interesting playstyle than the pure Dispossessed allegiance, I think (which, if I'm honest, I've never been that crazy about to begin with). Especially now that we've been robbed of Warriors, Quarrelers, Thunderers, etc

You're doing the ancestors' work, longbeard! Love the guide and your commentary. The only correction I'd like to make is that (sadly) Armour of Thorns, the Sisters of the Thorns' signature spell, doesn't work on Dispossessed, assuming that's what you were implying. It's wutelgi only.

For some less expensive OOP options... You could build up one of the old high elf chariots and maybe top it with one of the Middle Earth eagles, painted in a phoenix manner, or kitbash it with the (also OOP, sadly) Empire war altar, which has a nifty gryphon statue. You could probably find the high elf prince on gryphon model from Island of Blood out there for not TOO much, too. Sorry, a lot of OOP things come to mind. Maybe could get the box of Middle Earth eagles (comes with two, I think), and have a wizard on some sort of platform (chariot of some sort, gunhauler, open top steam tank...) under them. So many options for it! One of the coolest conversion opportunities in the army.

Tempest's Eye is something I keep coming back to, but my hobby side hasn't gotten on board with the mechanical, hahah. I might paint a test mini and see if I can get a colour scheme I like out of it that's at least fairly similar. I may go in a different direction, but I'm trying to use this as an opportunity to actually use one of the canon cities rather than making up my own. AoS has such a flighty feel that I think having my army be 'grounded' in an existing city will help keep me interested. I need to try them, get a feel for it on the table and see how fun it is. It certainly would be useful for all my favourite units (I even have about 30-40 Shadow Warriors hanging around somewhere that could work their way in eventually). That's a really good summary of the cities and a few things I hadn't thought of. I also absolutely love that Hallowheart list. They Hallowheart list I've been playing (which is about half and half Dispossessed and Freeguild troops) is more endless spell heavy and reliant on the mages. This looks like it would distribute the love more evenly from a subfaction perspective and not having to take 'Veteran of the Blazing Crusade' because you have an oathstone and hammerer core will be great to get the additional command points. I'd be a little worried about only having one 'battery' for the Hallowheart command ability, but the list won't exactly fall apart if they manage blow up the Hurricanum with or without help from me, lol. It'll be great while it lasts. I'm definitely going to have to try that Hallowheart list. Thanks!

Already with you there! I love my Barak Thryng, although I've been toying with Fyreslayer accompaniment a little more than Dispossessed or Ironweld, but I might try to get them in at some point. That's good to hear! Go get some grudges settled on the urk! I'm curious about the movement, too. I've had a hard time not castling with Dispossessed lists ever since they took away miners and rangers. It's nice to have the Soulscream Bridge option available to us now, as well as some of the city abilities to help out. I wonder if there's a good way to convert a 'Spirit of Bugman' bridge... There's always Chronomantic Cogs and the Wildform, too. It'd be hard to leave the hold without a mage in a Cities list for me. You meant Hammerhal here, right? I've been really tempted by just that path, actually. It would be really command point intensive, but that's one of the two best cities for command points, so... Might work out really well. I might stick to just one Warden King (they're expensive as all) and take a battlemage with Bridge to fling units of Hammerers at the enemy from afar. True duardin artillery...

Those are pretty similar to my thoughts. Living City was really interesting initially because I ran the US Season of War campaign here and had a good time making up extra LC missions and playing GA: Order lists when the first GHB dropped. I'm still leaning this way a bit, but I know if I do, I'll be tempted to start acquiring Sylvaneth, hahah. I did originally call my Dispossessed the 'Oakhearts', so maybe this is their home. Anvilgard got a lot of thought, too. I was tempted to get some real mileage out of Ironbreakers with an unreliable-but-hard-to-kill 'secretive warlock' Warden King shooting acid among them. Kind of a one-trick pony, however, and I feel like the biggest strengths of Disp (high rend capability and reasonably easy battleshock immunity) are kind of overlapping with Anvilgard's tricks. Phoenicium is cool. I struggle to make a list with it that doesn't use up a million points in Phoenixes and PG, but... it's a nice idea? I'm tempted to use some old slayer models as duardin assassins one day for some fun, but definitely not a mainstay choice. Greywater, Tempest's Eye, Hallowheart, and Hammerhal all give interesting options. I've never been a gunline fan, but Greywater has an appealing colour scheme (I loved Averland, and have so much Empire, dwarfs, and halflings that it's tempting to do an homage) and frankly one of the most interesting lore backgrounds. If I choose to actually model off of a city, this would be a pretty interesting choice. Tempest's Eye honestly mostly appeals to be for the horse-centric Freeguild usage and for feeling like a good *moderately* strong pick that will still be fun for other people to play against. KO (which I have an army of already) and Freeguild cavalry would both be excellent helpers, I think. It does feel a little like it treads familiar territory with the KO playstyle, but I've played slow dwarfs for years, so maybe a little extra speed would be a nice change of pace regardless. Hallowheart and Hammerhal both fall into the category of being mechanically interesting and thematically a tad boring. I actually really loved the idea of Hallowheart from the intial blurb in Firestorm and, since Fyreslayers were my core army and my Empire is painted mainly in blue, planned to build up an army around the two. After HH got rid of the Fyreslayers and became the de facto 'tournament' option in the new book, however, it's lost a bit of its appeal. Hammerhal has pretty interesting rules, but I really cannot get into the city lore after reading a few of the short stories and the like. It might make a good contender if I give in and make up my own city. I might be getting stuck in analysis paralysis.

While I've typically been making lists with two or three majour faction components for CoS (usually Dispossessed, Freeguild, and maybe a pack or two of self-support aelves) up until now, I'm an old-hat dwarf played from WHFB. After breaking out Grudgelore this weekend and shedding a beardy tear into my beer, I've decided to work on true throng-centric lists. There's a nice thread on here about ranking Freeguild units, and while I'm not terribly concerned about ranking, I would love to hear some thoughts about the various Dispossessed units, which City you like to use in a classic duardin-centric list, and which of our non-duardin allies provide the best support in such a list. In a nutshell, if you want to make an army of 70%+ Dispossessed, which City would you use and which umgi and elgi make for good helpers? (Bonus points for how you would use 60 Hammerers... I really want to try this.)