Moldek

@Myrdin you have to admit that, even if you didn't mean it like that, implying that your interlocutor might be "blind, stupid, or have an agenda" comes across as insulting in most contexts. I recommend keeping that in mind because that doesn't help constructive discussion about toy soldier games. I'm not weighing in on the issue itself, as it seems that you and @Sleboda just have a different definition of power creep. It's funny how often this type of discussion ends up with people either mad or completely boggled by each other's opinions. Personally I don't feel too affected by power creep as I don't play competitively, but I feel that the issues get somewhat exagerated on the internet. In my opinion, a thread about counter strategies to OP armies would be a much more interesting read; although I do enjoy reading about more seasoned players' experiences

I agree, but my point was that that problem is exacerbated by people's expectations. If you bought a 2000 point army over time, based on the models you like, and go to the store to play against who enjoys list building, and has spent a lot of time studying synergies and weighing his options before buying his units, this guy is gonna crush you. You're going to feel like the game isn't balanced, because after all you both had the same point values. GW has to balance both ends of this spectrum when designing their games, which is pretty hard I think. It's easier for a MTG player to toss their weak cards in a shoebox and get a new deck. When you see someone complaining that there's power creep, it's sometimes hard to tell if that person is salty after losing to a better player, is actually disavantaged in their local meta, plays an old Legends army or is just parotting what they've been reading on competitive forums while their last game was in 2017 😁 So the conversation is hard to pin down because everyone's ways to play are so varied, and their expectations so different.

I think AoS tournament play is a different game than narrative, open or even casual matched play. It's probably futile to hope to reliably score high in tournaments with a single army that you've kept for 10 years, true. But a lot of people still have great fun games with "low tier" armies, and a lot of people are able to have decent win rates with fluffy unoptimized lists. Most people who stick to the hobby do so because they enjoy the visual spectacle, the social interaction and the craft of painting and building. It takes a lot of investment to have even one fully painted army. So while I have zero problems with the way you approach it, I think you're part of a tiny minority. Changing armies twice a year to place at tournaments and not having any attachment to the miniatures is pretty far from what most player's experience of AoS is. I think one of the problems is people have different expectations and they don't often match. If you main regular opponent enjoys cheesy "broken" lists and you only play unoptimized compendium wanderers or pure dispossessed, you're gonna have a bad time. The rarest, most precious resource in wargaming is not books, minis or terrain : it's a good gaming group that match your playstyle, that you like and are available!

Cool story! I think you could probably write it in a much more condensed version, say starting with the girl hiding in the woods with the baby, trying to decide wether she should run away or go to the stormcast who are currently raiding the village. With a few dialogues and recollections you can deliver the story piecemeal as you reveal what exactly she’s hiding and why...

I’m pretty happy they are implementing the full faction deck thing. That’s what has stopped me from buying more warbands, since I’d probably be lending them to friends to play, and I don’t want the hassle of building a bunch of decks balanced against each other. Deck building requires a lot of investment into the game, I’d rather use that time to paint or play!

I agree that they should keep the setting coherent; I want freeguild rules to be able to convert all kind of weird treasure hunters, but I don’t see it as essential.

My bad; yeah I agree that they could include those in the core box

I had a previously written piece that I was thinking of submitting, but it didn’t really fit the prompt (I posted it on the narrative forum a while back). I had a couple other warcry ideas, but didn’t really have the time to work on them. So next time I guess

Also they do actually sell the tokens separately, a bit pricey but still a reasonable purchase if you do want / need them : https://www.games-workshop.com/fr-FR/Beastgrave-Counter-Set-2019 it’s true that it would be cool if they sold / gave away the rule book though...

Maybe not feasible but I’d love to see them release warband boxes for the non-chaos factions at some point. Just so that you have an easy point of entry for beginners / low budget. For instance the gloomspite gitz could get their underworlds warband sprue + a couple of aos sprues + the cards. Also release cards for easy to build models like sequitors and banshees! Faction wise if I had to pick, hmmm : sylvaneth & KO could be interesting, or the new kurnoth-centaurs from beastgrave. A multi-race free cities warband would be really cool. aren’t trolls a bit big for a warband? If not I’d say something weird, like troll(s) + wild squigs a la Mollog’s Mob. And ogors, with a few options for very cheap grots chaff. Bonus points if you have a leader option that allows you to field a full on gnoblar waagh. For death, ossiarch bonereapers seem like the obvious choice, but I’d love to see a « living » shy’ish death cult. Could be lead by a vampire priest

I feel like if you’re mostly reading about it online, it’s easy to feel like the only way to play is full competitive... But that’s just not true. I only have the nighvault core set and I play like 1-2 games a month. The game works really well as a self-contained boardgame, no expansions, no rotations, nothing. you don’t have to buy anything more to have fun. You can even bring your core set deck to a tournament and play! Probably won’t win every game, but could win some. If you’re invested in it you’ll easily find info about the rules change from beastgrave. I think the main problem is the fear of missing out. When I see all these cool warbands released that i really would like to have, or think of all the possible strategies I could access with every card, It can feel frustrating. But 90% of players are like us, they have a couple of warbands and play with friends, without worrying about the meta etc. How many games have you played? How much will your games be affected by beastgrave? Not hypothetical games but actual ones? I’m sure you can work together with other players to have interesting matchups. Just play a bit and get your money’s worth on nightvault, it’s a great game

@sigmar is scottish have you thought about kairic acolytes too? They could give some interesting bodies as they are pretty muscular but still have some agility to them.

You really have a great setting with this scenery and background! Very atmospheric. I think it could look nice if you had some kind of very small vegetation (flock, small grass tufts, dead leaves, bits of moss) in red-orange hues to help your grass tufts blend in more with the rest. Vegetation always looks best with a lot of variation in my opinion.

Had a great warcry game today, my stormcast were able to snatch victory, thanks to one gryphound who managed to carry the treasure out of reach with only a couple of wounds left. The game is great fun, especially with a bit of narrative flavor.

beautiful warband and terrain! Will you be using warcry, skirmish rules or some homebrew system?

Oh yeah I’d love it! I don’t get to play much so I’ll enjoy your batreps You’re right about deluge; it’s supposed to slow down climbing. But the player with the initiative does get to chose who starts, as said p.39 in the « combat phase » paragraph (not sure if correct term since my book is in french).

Cool battle report. I like that you go into the tactics going on, seems like a fun battle! I also liked the narrative flavor you gave in your introduction, I hope a bit of that makes it into the next batrep I think the main « problem » with objectives in narrative play is that they can feel a bit abstract. I plan to use idols and treasure chests in my games, maybe even stuff like food rations so it gives a reason for the warbands to fight over them.

Trust me I totally share your preferences! But I also think they are aiming this game at beginners or people who don't have the time for Mordheim style book keeping. I loved the brokenness of mordheim, I remember a beastmen shaman who had his legs severely mangled and could only move 2''; he had to rely on a spell to get anywhere. That's fun. If they do release an "advanced campaign" supplement I'll be all over that, and I'll check out every fan expansion as well as write my own. But I still think you can have a nice campaign with their basic structure, as long as people stay in the narrative spirit, like @Yoshiya said. I do wish we'd gotten a bit more to chew on

@Lior'Lec it could be something as simple as roll a D6, on a 6 choose a group and swap it with another, on a 1 your opponent choses one of your groups and swaps it with in another, on 2-5 proceed as written?

Yeah that's true. I like your idea of randomizing the battle group. I think I'll either do that or have the players choose their battle groups for the whole campaign, and make sure that the deployments are diverse enough so you're incentivized to keep them balanced. I don't expect this to be a problem with my opponent but I'd like to make the campaign reasonably fair so that I can share the final document for other people to use.

In a couple of months I'll be meeting an internet friend IRL, and we are planning to have a small warcry campaign. I am designing 3 scenarios. The idea is that our warbands are searching for an ancient book called the Liber Oculus, hidden in a forgotten and cursed library. The power of the book is said to have turned everyone who read it insane, but surely that won't happen to our dear protagonists 😁 Here are the scenarios : 1 - After a long search, the warbands have found the old realmgate that leads to the cursed library. But a rival is here! They need to get their men to the library first. Terrain : lots of terrain, with a realmgate placed in the middle on a platform. 3 random doorways on the battlefield are marked with a token. Deployment : something like "bloodbath" (3rd one in the rulebook, p.154) Scenario : The realmgate is activated by killing a model next to it. For that purpose you can attack your own models. It has to be with an attack of range 3 or less. Roll a dice for each model that goes through the activated realm gate: on a 1 the realmgate malfunctions and the model is transported next to one of the marked doors, opponent's choice. On a 2+ you get to the library. The winner is the first player to get 3 models to the library. 2 - Books are scattered amongst the ruins of the library. Many contain arcane secrets and deadly traps, but only one of them is the Liber Oculus. The one who finds it and escapes will obtain tremendous powers. Terrain : not many platforms, but a lot of walls set up to evoke a twisted labyrinth. Deployment : Asymetrical, where the loser of the previous round only has it's dagger first round and has the shield and hammer coming in 2nd and 3rd; and the winner has everyone on the board. 5 treasure tokens are placed on the table, more than 4 inches apart from each other and the table's edge. 2 or them are traps (one invokes a chaos beast that attacks the model immediately, the other teleports the model anywhere on the table, opponent's choice), 2 of them immediately grant a randomly determined minor artefact to the model, and 1 is the Liber Oculus. When a fighter first takes a treasure, the contents are revealed immediately. Once the Liber Oculus is found, the winner is the one who manages to get off the board with it. The corrupting power of the Liber Oculus is such that the model carrying it has to roll on a random madness table every turn; that can cause him to drop it, run towards the center etc. 3- One warband has seized the book; but to harness it's power, a dangerous ritual must be completed. Terrain : An empty space or big platform around the middle to act as an altar / pentagram, surrounded by spikes and other dangerous terrain. Deployment : Something with the previous winner's forces set up near the center, with the attacker coming in from various table edges. The victory condition is similar to the card "The Ritual" : one objective token (the Liber Oculus), every round the defender scores 1D6 ritual points, with maluses if there are ennemies within 3 inches of the objective. If after the 4th round the total is equal or inferior to 12, the ritual has failed and a powerful demon appears, attacking everyone in sight. Then the goal is simply to get your warriors out of here. As you can see I'm going more for narrative flavor than competitive balance. I'm open to all ideas and feedback, especially if you spot stuff that could make the game to lopsided, or anything that could be improved. If that helps we'll be playing Cypher Lords (just a one box warband I think) vs Legion of Nagash (with a bit of every unit in it).

I’ve recently purchased the smallest GW case to transport warcry warbands. I can fit about 15 minis max in it, you kinda have to be careful when putting them in/out but I like that it fits in a small backpack. If I start moving my minis more often or playing larger games, I think I’ll go with a magnet case of some sort.

Yeah I’m definitely doing a beastmen warband as soon as I can, heavy old-school realm of chaos influences 🤓 also I have a bunch of chaos hounds I was planning to use as furies since I don’t have the starter set, but now I think they are getting their own profile!

@exliontamer I wouldn’t say the campaigns are garbage, but I agree they are a bit too light. I think I get why they went this way though, it makes the game more accessible for people with a limited time to play. From what I remember playing mordheim, the game itself could be broken quite easily (I read an article by tuomas pirinen where he said he intentionally prioritized narrative over balance), but the after battle sequence was always fun. There’s a thread on here about making Mordheim rules for warcry, and you can also check out this project on reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCry/comments/cyvxf4/killing_grounds_warcry_fanmade_supplement/ @Yoshiya I think you make some great points, narrative play is in my opinion best approached as you would a roleplaying game; not try to break it but try to make it sensible within the story

Honestly the review makes it seem like a decent book. The mercenaries look like decent additions and it won’t be too hard to print out their stats and make custom cards as needed. Plus the fact that it’s cheaper than the main rulebook, I think I’ll buy it as it adds some interesting stuff to the game.