Grimrock
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Posts posted by Grimrock
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4 hours ago, Hollow said:
Funnily enough, I have never had any problems (At FLGS, Warhammer stores, Game clubs, or even tournaments) using conversions or well-thought-out and easily identifiable proxies. This is using matched play rules against people I have never met.
What kind of person would go to a store, meet someone who goes through their list and models, all of which are nicely painted, based, and easily identifiable, and say "No way, put those in the bin, I refuse to play against anything that isn't the exact current model!"
Perhaps I am lucky? I've just never encountered people like that IRL. (Out of thousands over the years) I only encounter this thought process online.
I was thinking about this last night and trying to figure out my stance on it. I don't think I would ever tell an opponent they couldn't use old models or proxy or whatever. Certainly I haven't said 'no' yet. If someone has cool models they like and painted or a list they want to try out before they sink their money into it who am I to refuse? Plus honestly I'm usually just happy to get a game in for once. I think my restrictions with models are mostly self imposed. Apart from a conversion or two, I don't want to confuse my opponent with too much or have to spend a bunch of time saying 'this model is that, that model is this etc.' and then have to repeat it 10 more times throughout the game. The pre-game dialogue is long enough already trying to make sure they aren't going to be caught in any gotchas or rule interactions they haven't seen before. If I was playing against a buddy that had seen my army before then sure, it's easy enough. But against a stranger it feels hard enough just trying to get going without the extra preamble.
I would definitely hesitate on house rules because the lack of familiarity with the opponent. Like if I played with a person for a while and I kept winning and it feels like there's not much my opponent could do then I'd be happy enough to tweak something to make it more balanced, but if it's a first or second time then house rules don't really make any sense. I don't know how good a player they are and they don't know how good I am. Tweaks and changes could be entirely unnecessary and skew the game too far one way or the other. Legends rules are similar, I have no idea what the balance is going to be. If I can look over the rules and get a decent feel for them quickly then sure, but again that just adds to that pregame preamble.
So I guess it just comes down to that invisible social contract when I go to play a game. Trying to make it a fun experience for my opponent and not bogging it down too much. That can change easily depending on familiarity but when you're going in blind it becomes much trickier.
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42 minutes ago, Hollow said:
Surely in that time, you have seen just how redundant "rules" for models actually are. They are just abstract made-up ideas and concepts that can be changed with a simple sentence between friends. I struggle to understand how it's possible anybody could buy these models for anything OTHER than a pure Hobby perspective, it's the only thing that actually lasts. In my world (40k at least) there are 10 editions worth of rules and the same models all have different rules in each of them. The rules come and go. The models stay forever.
It takes all types and people just have very different experiences. The people I know consider this hobby to be very value-driven generally. A few hundred quid and you have something that can literally be used for decades.
See that's exactly what I'm talking about. You can play with your friends in a tight group where you can modify and tweak rules and use outdated models all you want. For me the game is played entirely at a LGS with matched play rules where the majority of the time I have either very little or absolutely no prior connection with the person I'm playing. For you having models rotated out isn't a big deal, your friends don't care if you're using Lorenzo Lupo in a City of Sigmar army or any other kit from 20 years ago for that matter. For me having a unit get moved to legends could mean it literally never sees the table again. The rules may be abstract concepts for you that hold next to no meaning, but for me they're the only thing that holds the game together.
edit: also, you're not wrong saying it's tough to believe anyone could be interested in the game when you depend on the rules. Like I said in my post, it's an extremely tough sell trying to get people interested in the game over here because the value really just isn't there for most people. I really love the hobby and game aspects so I can stick with it, but the vast majority of people I know wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
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I think geographical location is really important to remember when having discussions like this. Price and population density can massively impact the perception of the hobby and those vary wildly depending on where you are in the world. I've been in the hobby for nearly 25 years now and I struggle to understand how it's possible anybody could buy these models from a pure hobby perspective with no care for the rules whatsoever. In my part of the world they're just too expensive to consider for me if I'm not going to get the full enjoyment of modelling, painting, and gaming. If I lived in the UK with their prices then maybe I could imagine a world where I didn't care that my models were suddenly unusable, but as is it's just mind blowing to hear.
Even the concept of playing purely with friends in a basement is a little bizarre to me. I first got into the game with a friend, but I've never been able to convince any other friends to get into the game and stick with it. Models are too expensive and there's too much time commitment. After high school my friend couldn't afford the game anymore and I was left with playing at a LGS exclusively. That hasn't changed in the last 18 or so years. Nobody I know has even the slightest interest in dropping thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours. Again maybe in a part of the world where the game has more general popularity and is more affordable I could see basement gaming being more prevalent, but here it just seems impossible.
Alternate gaming systems are also almost laughable for me. I've seen a few come and go, and played a number of them myself, but the only one that's sticks is Warhammer plain and simple. There just aren't enough people where I live for there to be any type of regular gaming on a variety of systems. Just for an example, the population density of the UK is about 280 people per square kilometer. The density in my province is about 6.7. I live in one of the biggest cities in my country with a little over a million people. The next closest city around that size is a little over 3 hours away by car. The next is about 12 hours away.
I guess to bring this on topic, people experience the hobby if vastly different ways around the world. If you bought some models with some pocket change and got dozens of games in with your mates then yeah you'll probably feel like you got your money's worth and won't mind too much when they get rotated out. If you had to save for a month to buy a single infantry kit and you can only play at a gaming store that's a 40 minute drive away once a month then your perception of value will be wildly different.
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1 hour ago, Thalassic Monstrosity said:
Doesn't anyone think Beasts will not be filtered out of AoS in exchange with The Old World? I hate to think of it but Beasts frankly have a negligible narrative presence in the Mortal Realms. I love the faction so much but I think of all the factions listed between TOW and AoS they're by far the most likely.
I'd be surprised if they were removed completely. They did get a model for the current book as well as a terrain piece and endless spells in the previous one. I don't think GW would be likely to give them new kits if they were planning to delete them a little while later. I think they're just in a similar position to Skaven, large existing range with some newish stuff but a lot of painfully ancient things as well and deeply in need of a proper refresh. Big batches like that don't happen often and the more GW drags their feet the more people seem to get excited when there finally is an update (and the more excited they are the more likely they are to buy models...) so it's anyone's guess when we'll see it.
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1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:
A Duardin leader would not work, because they would need to bring a stepstool to see over their pavise which is logisically impossible given the tech level of AoS, actually. 🤓
He could always get an elf friend to describe the battle to him. Or possibly get him a box?
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Points seem pretty nice to me. Don't think we'll be launched to the top of the meta or anything but it gives some breathing room to daemon armies. Glottkin in particular seem great, I figured they were overcosted by 100-150 but I don't think I ever actually expected gw to drop their price that much. The way the game has evolved might mean they still need to come down another 100, but they could be interesting to play around with. Only thing left I kind of want to see now is a drop on blightkings by 20 or so.
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I'm sorry to hear that a number of factions are having issues, but the changes for the factions I'm playing are pretty spicy. Maggotkin got some significant drops on units that really needed it, primarily the daemon side. Pretty much my whole befouling host list went down in points and I've got room for a whole extra unit now. The Glottkin going down another 50 points is surprising as well, when I first saw them I figured they were about 100-150 points too expensive, but I never really thought that GW would actually drop their points that much. I'll definitely need to give them another run.
Hedonite changes are minor but well targeted. Most of the stuff that's pretty good got a slight nerf and a number of unexciting units got decent price reductions. The changes will drop a reinforcement off my list which kind of hurts but doesn't seem too bad.
Slaves changes are kind of wild. They seem to be pushing pretty hard to get people running despoilers by slashing monster costs pretty dramatically and giving us 70 point battleline units again. Not sure if it'll do the trick, daemon princes are pretty meh even with a 20 point drop, but 160 for a slaughterbrute or vortext beast and 240 for the manticores is definitely interesting when they all get +2 wounds. Big point drops on the endless spells combined with a couple little drops on heroes can effectively make the endless spell specific grand strategy pretty close to free which is interesting. The only thing I don't really like is the increase in points for chaos marauders combined with drops to a number of the cultist units. The marauders were already too expensive, and now they're also 20 points more expensive than units that are just strictly better than them. Really seems like GW is trying to soft delete them from the game.
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2 hours ago, Twisted Firaun said:
Man, as a Chaos player seeing SIGMAR of all people get a manticore before me is kinda funny. The new lady looks interesting, and I bet we’ll see a lot of her in painting competitions and conversions.
Makes me kind of nervous actually. They don't usually share these big centerpiece models across factions so I'm more than a little worried we'll be seeing the chaos manticore sailing off to legends in the next book. Maybe they take the opportunity to give slaves a new big centerpiece mount kit like a chaos dragon. Beautiful model though, if I'm wrong and they resculpt the chaos one I'm sure it'll look amazing.
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7 hours ago, Jazzbeaux said:
The new rules, 190 points now. Seems improved, and is finally a Priest. Does feel like they gave us half the rules in the battletome, waiting for the model to 'improve' him.
Yeah better but man he still looks like hot garbage for that point value. Damage output is only slightly better than an 80 point foot hero and that's if he doesn't take the bell. Prayer is kinda awful and we don't even have a lore for him to take an extra one. I guess GW is still making him pay for being such a key piece for so many years. It's a shame because that model is absolutely gorgeous.
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Apparently I'm in the minority here, but I kinda hate skinny ogres like this one or cursed city. The model looks great, don't get me wrong, but why call it an ogre? The gut is and has been a defining trait for Warhammer ogres back to their first battletome (which was my first Warhammer Fantasy army) and has been intrinsic to their lore. An ogre with no gut is both figuratively and literally wrong and should be saved for gorgers. It's not like guts are all fat and if only an ogre ate better and lived in a proper society it would go away, it's a critical part of their biology. It's not fat, it's a huge slab of muscle that helps with their prodigious digestive capabilities. It isn't like living in a city for one generation just suddenly changes a creatures whole biological makeup. I get the desire to give them a distinct appearance for the human armies but getting rid of the gut is absolutely the wrong way to do it.
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Speaking of weapon profiles, one of the things I liked about the 40k changes was the shift towards homogenizing some weapon loadouts. For example changing Tyranid Warriors to having all one melee weapon profile regardless of what they're modelled with. I know we've seen a bit of it in AoS (for example with skullreapers), but I'd like to see it changed over for everything. I know you lose some flavor, but all the various weapon options do is create feel-bads when a new book is released. You might initially pick a weapon type because it's stronger or maybe it fills a specific role like armor cracking or infantry blending, and then next edition GW completely changes what it does or tweaks the stats to the point where it's useless. Obviously keep making kits with weapon options because it lets people people build what they think looks cool, but make all the stats the same so people don't feel like GW is trying to rob them blind.
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4 hours ago, Big Kim Woof-Woof said:
Greetings, spiky-armour-type people!
I'm a deep-rooted Hedonites player who has recently realised he's invested in a veritable shipload of coalition models... so much so that he could be running a whole Slaves to Darkness army too! I've got loads of Chaos Warriors, Marauders, Knights, a Warshrine, Chosen, and a plethora of suitable hero models. Almost enough for a 2000 point force.
My question is this; what allied Slaaneshi unit/s would fill out my Slaves army nicely? I've got the models of pretty much everything in the book. Thoughts?
Normally I'm not a huge fan of coalition units, but thinking about it Slaanesh has some pretty solid picks. Off the top of my head the masque should be pretty great since she has all the pertinent rules on her warscroll and usually dies before the depravity bonuses kick in anyway. Taking a couple blissbarb units and a lord of pain should also work pretty well. Slaves is really lacking in ranged abilities but blissbarbs can be devastating with that +1 to hit/wound buff. Blissbarb seekers could be good as well but they're pretty pricy. Seekers could work since they're just so ridiculously fast but I think marauder horsemen fill a similar role well enough while also being cheaper and more resilient.
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4 hours ago, Adammck66 said:
Hey, got a game tonight with my finally fully painted army.
Quick question, if I roll on the eye lf the gods and get the 6+ ward one, then get that again later, do I re-roll or is it wasted?
Also Illt try get some pics later
It's essentially wasted, there are no rules for re-rolling anymore if you get duplicates. It's nice for stuff like Slaughterer's Strength, but yeah kinda lame for the wards. Does make the undivided mark more interesting at least.
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10 hours ago, GhostShark said:
I think the main target audience is pretty clearly old players, with a smaller emphasis on "new" players who missed out on WHFB the first time but were always curious and an even smaller emphasis on genuinely new players.
I suspect that nearly a decade of old WHFB players loudly saying they wanted the game back and would play it if only GW let them led GW to believe that they wanted the game back and would play it.
Whether or not GW is too late or overestimated the demand is another issue of course.I think this is correct and the limited scope is probably good evidence for it. They're investing what appears to be the absolute bare minimum into the game to see what happens. Bring back all the old kits, sculpt a couple heroes, and see if older players actually buy things. The old kits are pretty much pure profit at this point anyway, so I assume they can break even on the cost pretty quickly. They watch the sales numbers on the new models they actually produce as that should give them an idea of interest, and then if they hit a threshold on sales they start proper production on new models. If they don't then they just keep putting in the bare minimum as long as they make a profit on older kits. Once the profit dries up they just pretend like the game never existed and stop releases all together.
The main question is whether or not the cautious approach is going to actually hurt potential sales or not. Starting out with a limited number of supported factions and pretending like Kislev or Cathay don't exist isn't a great look and it's definitely going to hurt sales a bit, but then going full bore into it and supporting everything with a whole brand new faction on launch day would've been a massive investment on a totally unknown market.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see because honestly who knows, but it's best for anyone who's actually planning to buy into the game to do it with their eyes open. Evidently GW doesn't seem confident in the game and isn't willing to invest heavily into it, which means they're ready to pull the plug if it ever has issues. Don't go and buy a full army expecting lots of support and campaign books and whatnot. Buy the models if you like them or you wish you hadn't missed out previously (there are certainly a few kits I always wanted to paint that could tempt me for a purchase here or there) but the future of the game is still a big unknown.
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4 hours ago, Austin said:
I think based on today's announcement and the latest news from Warhammer Fest, it is time for me to really put hope to bed on this project. Sad to say. I will take a look much more closely at Kings of War.
I just can't get over the vanishing of Kislev. What in the world happened.
I think the only thing I was actually excited for was to see the new Kislev and Cathay models. It wasn't super likely I'd buy in on the older factions or re-base my last existing warhammer fantasy army, but if I liked the new rule set and enjoyed the game I could have absolutely been pulled in on a brand new faction with bear riders or sky junks and dragons. Saying those factions were coming and then just quietly pretending like that never happened is an absolutely bizarre choice to me.
I get that they probably want to make sure the game sells well enough to justify the financial investment on a totally new faction, but It feels like a situation where they're being over cautious. Like they don't want to invest too much until they know the game will take off, but that hesitation is going to lead to poor sales because so many people already have the old models. Then the poor sales make them think it's not popular and then they don't make the new factions. Who knows though, I'm not running a multi billion dollar corporation so who am I to say, but I think the last snippet of hope I had for the game is pretty much dead. I guess if the game works out, generates a following in my area, and against the odds they do end up making Kislev/Cathay a couple years for now I'll take another look.
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2 hours ago, Neverchosen said:
I feel like 40k will have the growing pains of these rulesets and we will get the more refined version. Which works for me as I prefer AOS.
I had a similar hope with the terrain rules or crusade from 9th edition but they never really seemed to materialize when 3rd was released. I don't know what it is, but the 40k guys seem pretty happy to grab ideas off of AoS (like they did when 8th was released and massively simplified) while the AoS team doesn't seem to do the same. Maybe it's a timing thing... like 9th was released a year before 3rd so maybe they didn't have time to incorporate the good ideas. I guess there's still a chance we'll see some of 9th used in 4th when it drops next year, but I'm not really holding my breath.
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2 hours ago, Adammck66 said:
How do chaos allies work?
If I bring plaguebearers into my legion of the first prince, do they lose their ward?
Yes. Allies lose any allegiance abilities they would get from their normal army because they're not being taken in that army (so for Nurgle they won't get their ward, built in healing, or disease points) and also normally don't get access to any allegiance abilities in the army they're allying into. Legion of the First Prince is an exception to that for the marks of chaos rule, but they still won't get things like artefacts or command traits.
In my opinion it's almost never worth it to use allies unless there's something particularly amazing that doesn't need allegiance abilities to work or the unit fills a particular role in an army that you absolutely can't fill with native units. In your example the plaguebearer gains access to the mark of Nurgle rule, but they're extremely squishy if they don't have access to their ward and will do almost 0 damage without their disease points. It's tough to justify paying their pretty steep points cost for what you'll be getting when you could grab chaos warriors instead.
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On 5/17/2023 at 6:19 AM, Beliman said:
- Units can pass over terrain that has heigh of 2" or less.
I think this highlights an issue that AoS has had for a long time that 40k seems to be way better at. The integration of terrain in such a way that it provides benefits to armies without unduly hindering the active gameplay. Another big part of this is the breachable rule in 9th edition (although this may or may note be gone in 10th). This has been a problem going all the way back to fantasy where you would get a couple pieces on the perimeter but very little in the center because actually playing a game with terrain was a nightmare. It's better now than it was then, but it's still really annoying to actually try to use big line of sight blocking terrain. A little more nuance and small rules like this one or breachable would go a long way to encouraging the use of lots of terrain.
Just to clarify I'm not saying 'I don't want to have to think tactically about moving around terrain and using it to my best advantage', my issue is the way models interact with terrain is unintuitive and awkward. An infantry model climbing a tree or a building is fine, but why is it possible for my Exalted Bladebringer Chariot to do the same thing? When I move through that patch of fallen logs why do I have to measure up one inch, over 1.5 inches, down a half an inch, over 0.25 inches, up 1 inch, etc. How does it work when I want to climb a building with an overhang directly above my models? Why can't I use that doorway on the building that is the same size as my model when it's slightly thinner than my base? Having a few rules that clean up interactions and make terrain more useable was one of my favourite parts of 9th edition and hopefully will continue into 10th.
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1 hour ago, willange said:
Wait, people don't like the plastic bloodthirster? I LOVE that model. I bought and painted 3 of them plus Skarbrand lol.
I love the kit as well, my only issue is relative size. They were the first ones resculpted so it makes sense, but if you ignore the wings and compare them to the other greater daemons they're way too small. I'd love to see a new kit where their body size is closer to the keeper or lord of change.
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1 hour ago, Beliman said:
Btw, I really like the new Combat Patrol system. If it can be a bit balanced and fun, it could be really good for the whole game with faster and cinematic gameplay:
Totally agree, the new combat patrol system looks like a great take on small points games. Fixing the lists and customizing the rules for internal balance makes so much sense, and combining that with free rules online and cards solves so many issues for newer players. I don't think it'll be a mode for veterans to play over and over and there are potential flaws, but it's the best system I've ever seen for introducing new players to a game over my 20+ years of varied wargaming. I'm super excited to see all the rules and try it out.
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4 hours ago, rattila said:
Well, about mortal wounds spam. The ossiarchs have only one unit who does it, only on the charge, and then the wizard. So its almost an army without mortal wounds. Same for rerolls (to hit or to save): not one anymore. Dont the other books also go that way?
Probably depends on the book but there are a ton out there. Just thinking of a few armies I play... in Slaanesh the entire army does mortals on a 6 to hit once they've hit a cerrtain depravity threshold (should usually happen turn 2 or 3). In Nurgle the entire army inflicts disease points on a 6 to hit which then translate to mortals in the battleshock phase, usually on a 4+ per disease point but it can be 3+ or even 2+. There are also impact hit mortals from the flies, mortals from special monstrous actions, bloab pings a ton of mortal wounds throughout different phases, festus, sloppity, beasts, etc. etc. Tons of stuff. Khorne has mortals on a 6 to hit with all variants of bloodletters (foot unit, mounted unit, and... 4? different heroes) which pretty much all get changed to a 5+ in a specific sub faction. Then there are murder rolls, impact hits, skullreapers... There have absolutely been some reductions in some areas, but the spam is still going strong in a lot of places.
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5 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:
i think the Kroot runes look much cleaner and the tips don't necessarily match the low-tech weapons of the Kroot. we saw the Kroot get an "archer" in their killteam that does not have a quiver. Kroot do not seem to use any projectiles aside from the bullets(?) in their signature rifles. Even their blades have different shapes and angles.
Back in the day, like, waay back in the day, there was a whole army list for kroot. It was old school chapter approved where you essentially had to convert 75% of the army. It played on their lore of kroot eating their enemies and gaining their traits, so it had kroot that ate orks and got big and strong, kroot with wings, all sorts of things. Considering how nostalgic GW has been this could be a call back to those days through kill team or whatever. Another kroot team with all sorts of mutations and alterations based on that they've been eating. A big muscle-y kroot might get better use our of javelins than a gun for example.
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10 hours ago, Ogregut said:
Is nurgle meant to represent dispair and hopelessness? I've always seen it that nurgle is a god who sees the joy of the life cycle.
All life dies and decays and from that decay, new life emerges which in turn dies and decay.
For nurgle, the new life is that of rancid, horrific and terrible disease and plague, but that's by the by!
While the desperate may turn to Nurgle out of hopelessness and dispair and that could be in part what attracts his attention I wouldn't say that's what he represents.
Well like all chaos gods he's powered by specific emotions. For example Khorne is powered primarily from the emotions that come from murder and Tzeentch from the emotions in change and upheaval. Nurgle's primary emotion is the despair and hopelessness brought on by an inevitable death. That's why plague and sickness are his primary tools because they can fairly easily give you that slow painful death filled with lots of emotion.
However he is a chaos god so nothing is exactly straightforward or simple. Inevitable death can bring out a lot of emotions and I think he can really be empowered by all of them. So for his followers he can bring about contentment, like a dying man who has no regrets in his life, or the sad joy of someone knowing that their death will have meaning and benefit to the world, or the freedom of knowing your death is inevitable so you might as well live all out right now. So you have the mix of joy and mirth in the nurglings/GUOs and the despair of some the mortal side and plaguebearers (which are in fact just mortals that have been turned into daemons by Nurgle's Rot). The primary focus has definitely been on the joyous and loving grandfather giving gifts to his children, but that's really more of a mask for his true monstrous purpose and drive. He's not giving gifts because he loves you, he wants you to suffer and despair and experience untold horrors so he can feed off your emotion.
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3 hours ago, LeonBox said:
Oh really? It's been so long since I built her that I clean forgot about that!
I probably would have as well but I was digging though my bits box on the weekend to make a Lady of Pain conversion and just happened to notice it. Honestly not sure why GW figured it was important to include that particular option but hey, at least now I have an extremely esoteric bit that can sit in a box forever haha.
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The Rumour Thread
in Age of Sigmar Discussions
Posted
Neurogaunts too. I'm assuming they'll come out in a box like the royal court for necrons a few months from now. Super annoying because I'd love to pick up a unit or two of the gaunts but no way I want any more neurotyrants. Worst part of their monopose box sets and I really don't know why they're still cutting mixed sprues like that.