I think it makes a lot more sense to use common names and hope someone stumbles across your product because it is a common name rather than use some silly made up in house names. GW's products do still come up as the top search option for some common names, like "Imperial Guard", the first 4 search options are related to GW.
That's likely because Google already knows you like warhammer so bumps them up higher on the list than other search results. Google does all kinds of metric studies on search histories to try and provide you with more of what you like and look for in the past. So someone who plays a lot of DnD and never warhammer might well get more DnD results for fantasy terms than someone who only searches for warhammer and not DnD
The search term aspect is more that if you are searching then you already know the "snowflake" names. The key then is helping ensure you find GW's products and not Raging Heroes or the other 3rd party alt brands
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: I'm baffled they decided to tease this Warband with undeniably the worst model out of the four.
Deny, deny, deny.
I actually like her a lot more than winged guy or even mace guy. Not sure on sword guy, but that's mostly his face.
None of them are _bad_ though. Not even mediocre.
I love that the winged one actually has both feet on the ground. I'm honestly shocked by that.
----
I'd put this down as a contender for kit of the year. Maybe even the last decade, and I'd thought Rice, Meyers and White Wolf had permanently put me off vampires.
Theophony wrote: Probably won't be zombies, they will get some sort of branding name change, they'll be original like walkers . They might be a dual kit with walkers/thralls. Maybe thralls will get weapons and walkers will just be cheaper. It could help flesh out units, having thralls move quicker and have weapons while having walker/zombies be harder to damage/remove as they are too stupid to die fully.
Yep. Zombies will get a name change. That's a given. Plague zombies in 40K suffered one as well. Educated guess of mine:
THE WALKING DrEAD.
Vampire models:
Seems to me the winged fellow will always be incarcerated by the other three out of shame whenever relatives come to visit for a cup of blood.
Theophony wrote: Probably won't be zombies, they will get some sort of branding name change, they'll be original like walkers . They might be a dual kit with walkers/thralls. Maybe thralls will get weapons and walkers will just be cheaper. It could help flesh out units, having thralls move quicker and have weapons while having walker/zombies be harder to damage/remove as they are too stupid to die fully.
Yep. Zombies will get a name change. That's a given. Plague zombies in 40K suffered one as well. Educated guess of mine:
THE WALKING DrEAD.
Don't fleshy dead things have a name in AOS? I know the unit is called deadwalker zombies, but I thought they had another title. I'm just overall impressed GW went with vampire lord for the bat-hair person. Not even "vympire" or "Vampyre."
Speaking of vampires, I love this warband. I'm 100% buying them, though I'm a bit worried about mold lines. I picked up the Nurgle warband and the lines were pretty terrible. . I wonder if they're any better once they get a separate release, sans cards...
Vampire prince? Fantastic model
Count Orlock (Nosferatu)? Even better. I wish Mannfred's head looked as good as this guy.
Winged dude? Ace. Can't wait to see if we get a unit of these, like the DoK Khinarea(?) but even cooler
Hair lady? Still great.
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: I'm baffled they decided to tease this Warband with undeniably the worst model out of the four.
I'd put her ahead of Guy with Mace of Overcompensation...
Really? I think he's my favorite of the lot. Even with his Mannfred/GSC face bumps. But I also love the Nosferatu movie, and this dude is just Count Orlock's brother who went to the gym a lot.
I love the little details on these guys. I can't tell with Vellas, but the other three are all carrying blood vials. These guys can't be released soon enough
Thing is that mace makes perfect sense when you consider that
1) He's a vampire and has superhuman strength and speed. So he can use a weapon far larger than a human could ever use.
2) In the AoS setting there are plenty of really big really heavily armoured things that are worth hitting with an oversized mace. Dragons, bone constructs, stormcast etc...
He's got the capability and the need for hitting things with a massive metal rod
I'd argue that the chick is bar far the worst of the 4, but that she is still an awesome miniature. They all are, freaking amazing warband, usually the Underworlds warbands feel like named veteran mooks from the faction, but any of these vampire models could easily have been Hero/General class figures and cost $35 by themselves, getting all 4 in a warband is bonkers.
Absolutely loving everything coming out so far this year for Underworlds!
Honestly, I hope people like Nosferatu (technically it's Orlock, but Spongebob made a big impression on people) the least. Makes it easier to pick him up for cheap (or at least half price on ebay) haha.
What's the deal with all these vampires with maces, by the way? We got three in a relatively short period, and I don't think any previous Vampire Count character had a mace or bludgeon weapon. I guess it'll be easier to swap bat hair out with Nosferatu or Wingman, though if the bats in the hair really do have rules, Nosferatu is out of luck.
Edit: I guess none have shields either, but hey, whose counting
GaroRobe wrote: Honestly, I hope people like Nosferatu (technically it's Orlock, but Spongebob made a big impression on people) the least. Makes it easier to pick him up for cheap (or at least half price on ebay) haha.
What's the deal with all these vampires with maces, by the way? We got three in a relatively short period, and I don't think any previous Vampire Count character had a mace or bludgeon weapon. I guess it'll be easier to swap bat hair out with Nosferatu or Wingman, though if the bats in the hair really do have rules, Nosferatu is out of luck.
Edit: I guess none have shields either, but hey, whose counting
You can cave their chest/head in with the mace and still keep (most) of the blood contained in your human juice box! No one likes being messy after all!
Really looking forward to seeing how the hunger mechanic works with these fanged folks.
GaroRobe wrote: Honestly, I hope people like Nosferatu (technically it's Orlock, but Spongebob made a big impression on people)
I think its more that the title of the movie did. (And RPG nerds, once White Wolf happened and called the 'ugly clan' with that look the 'Nosferatu'). I can't even begin to guess where the Nickelodeon abomination factors in to the discussion.
GaroRobe wrote: Honestly, I hope people like Nosferatu (technically it's Orlock, but Spongebob made a big impression on people)
I think its more that the title of the movie did. (And RPG nerds, once White Wolf happened and called the 'ugly clan' with that look the 'Nosferatu'). I can't even begin to guess where the Nickelodeon abomination factors in to the discussion.
I got to say, it's a cool look for vampires. Inspired the look for things like 'Salem's Lot, White Wolf, and countless other bloodsuckers. Plus, it's the movie that came up with the concept of vampires dying in sunlight (since they were plagiarizing Dracula, but still wanted to make it "different." Dracula in the novel is only weakened by sunlight. Also, Orlock notably has a reflection in a mirror in the climax.) One year shy of a hundred years old, and the film's still relevant. I like that Warhammer has both the ugly Nosferatu and the more noble look for vampires. Really let's the player decide which one works best for their army's lore.
Unrelated to Vampires, but the statue the Prince is standing on is really interesting. Some Sigmarite woman, but not stormcast. Sisters of Sigmar, maybe?
What's the deal with all these vampires with maces, by the way? We got three in a relatively short period, and I don't think any previous Vampire Count character had a mace or bludgeon weapon. I guess it'll be easier to swap bat hair out with Nosferatu or Wingman, though if the bats in the hair really do have rules, Nosferatu is out of luck.
Most other companies produce vampires with swords I suppose, GW wants to be different for different's sake as usual.
Continued lack of sleeve/dice for the new warbands is interesting. They might not have flown off the shells like other game's sets but the one print run certainly always went eventually.
Chopstick wrote: It was never great, from boring characters to fail Slambo cosplay.
But the art is good.
They looked okay to me, although pale in comparison to the much superior and Insta-buy Vampires. Slambo's cape hand is super unnecessary though, but I was willing to give it a pass. Until I noticed he was wearing two different boots Bad Slambo, bad.
I don't know, admittedly I'm a big fan of the resculpted Chaos Warriors, but I'm really looking forward to the new Chaos warband (though Slambo Jr. is going to be getting a different helmet head....no Top Knots on helmets for me).
I'm personally looking forward to them much more than the Vampires, despite the Vampires being more characterful and arguably better sculpts. To each their own I suppose.
That's not to say the Vampires aren't excellent and that I won't be getting them. Their gameplay mechanic sounds like a lot fun too.
The price. Seriously. For GW, they’re actually bordering on cheap.
Assuming for the moment no price increase, is there anywhere else you can get four models of equivalent quality for the same price?
Yeah, I'd agree. The prices for Underworlds bands are very reasonable, especially considering they also have all the cards and everything you need to play the band in one package. You certainly get more play out of single Warband for Underworlds than a single unit for 40k/AoS.
I will say I started playing Legion recently after getting out of 40k and AoS and it is absolutely baffling how much cheaper it is. I wish GW priced more of their products like Underworlds bands.
I like them for decently-priced and self-contained skirmish warbands, or at least most of the core of one. I have been using the rules from Brutality: Skirmish Wargame for my Warhammer skirmishing, and I'm definitely going to get the Vampire warband and add something like a giant wolf or a bat swarm and I'll have a complete "small but elite" warband. I was going to do something similar with the Chaos Undivided warband coming out (maybe with a couple of Ungors for ranged support), but I love the vamps so much more now that they have been shown.
They are still more per-model than a traditional unit box, but they benefit from having an entire box of completely uniquely-posed models. Even better with the ones which have been re-released in grey plastic without the cards for a lower price.
I would do a Underworlds warband subscription for a slight rebate, not gonna lie. Make it 25% off and I'd sub my brother as well. Between us we're just missing The Eyes and the witch elves (I thought I'd get them for christmas).
That there are four Vamps surprised me, I'd have pegged them as super strong dude(tte)s and maybe some minions or alt-models for shapeshifting. Maybe one or two vamps. But I'll take four nice ones as well. Probably the "models then rules" philosophy strinking and giving us rather wimpy vamps in-game.
I remember when they were £17.50 (well, it wasn’t that long ago!) I don’t think they’re a bad price still, but it stings a touch knowing what they did cost.
I think the difference between the Chaos Warrior team and the Vampires is that the Chaos Warrior team is a band of warriors being warriors, whilst the Vampire is a team of characters being individuals.
So you're comparing what are basically named troops - grunt infantry - to named characters.
Furthermore the Warrior set is basically the same armour and structure - they are warriors, they have a uniform; with a vampire team which has no strict uniform design between them.
It's also likely because we don't have any vampire units that any of the new vampires fit into, so they really stand out. IF GW had rank and file units of vampires with big maces and twin sword duellists etc... then they might not look as "unique" as they do now.
It's like the Slaanesh team has a unique gor, until the new gor set was revealed and now its one of the band.
Underworlds, Warcry and Killteam are all games GW is attempting to use for two purposes
1) To target board game customers outside of their normal remit. Underworld especially since it features pushfit models through the entire range in coloured plastic - perfectly ideal for book shops and toy shops to sell on to new customers.
2) To target those new to GW games who are perhaps younger or on budget and don't want to commit to the big costs of a "proper army" game. So they tempt them with a single purchase Killteam or Warband or such to get them into the game with one purchase.
Warcry and Killteam work great at this; one box gives you a functional force; two and you've got options. Three or four and suddenly not only have you a big diverse team but you are well on the way to 500 and 1000 point forces for the big games. You've built an army without realising
Those two markets should in theory, keep the prices on those from rising and rising. That said yes if the Underworld teams were priced as GW prices characters they'd be around £100 for a 5 man character team
Some really interesting faction cards, and the Inspire condition is interesting. The fighters stats are fine, but doesn't give me the 'wow' factor which really draws me to a warband.
I do find it interesting that the wizards ranged spell attack action causes backlash if it is unsuccessful. That's a pretty big drawback.
Might pre-order the chaos warriors, they're not as cool as the vampires, but I've always liked chaos warriors and I have been wanting to jump into Underworlds for a while.
Sad to hear about the price increase. It does put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm. But I guess it is still normal character price for 4 awesome vampires anyway. I really like how "warhammer" these guys look as I have said, GW have carved out a great aesthetic niche with their vampires that makes them obviously vampires without going the Hammer Horror route. A great evolution of the earlier, slightly cheesier, undead sculpts.
Tyranid Horde wrote: Might pre-order the chaos warriors, they're not as cool as the vampires, but I've always liked chaos warriors and I have been wanting to jump into Underworlds for a while.
If you do, be aware that you will need a board. Part of how Underworlds is set up is that each of the players set the board halves up.
Tyranid Horde wrote: Might pre-order the chaos warriors, they're not as cool as the vampires, but I've always liked chaos warriors and I have been wanting to jump into Underworlds for a while.
Absolutely fantastic game. You'll want to get Direchasm as well, as that has the rules, tokens, boards, dice and a heap of extra universal cards for customizing your Objectives and Power Card decks (Unless you have a friend who already has those).
As a general rule of thumb if you like something for Underworlds you need to pick it up, it doesn't stick around forever. I guess because the cards/tokens/boards etc are printed overseas.
Billicus wrote: As a general rule of thumb if you like something for Underworlds you need to pick it up, it doesn't stick around forever. I guess because the cards/tokens/boards etc are printed overseas.
Once the season rotates out, they stop manufacturing those kits with cards. You can always get the models still, but not the cards which go with them. I guess this helps new players getting into the game, and being stuck with a heap of universal cards they can't use in tournaments.
I wish they'd at least sell a card pack of each seasons faction specific cards once the season rotates out.
Tyranid Horde wrote: Might pre-order the chaos warriors, they're not as cool as the vampires, but I've always liked chaos warriors and I have been wanting to jump into Underworlds for a while.
If you do, be aware that you will need a board. Part of how Underworlds is set up is that each of the players set the board halves up.
jaredb wrote:
Tyranid Horde wrote: Might pre-order the chaos warriors, they're not as cool as the vampires, but I've always liked chaos warriors and I have been wanting to jump into Underworlds for a while.
Absolutely fantastic game. You'll want to get Direchasm as well, as that has the rules, tokens, boards, dice and a heap of extra universal cards for customizing your Objectives and Power Card decks (Unless you have a friend who already has those).
Aye, I understand what is needed for the game, I've just been waiting for a warband that piques my interest enough to justify another game. Direchasm is a tougher sell as I think the Lumineth are a let down, but ultimately I need the boxset at some point.
Tyranid Horde wrote: Might pre-order the chaos warriors, they're not as cool as the vampires, but I've always liked chaos warriors and I have been wanting to jump into Underworlds for a while.
I havent seen before, but the Community site has previewed ALL the cards in the warband box.
Having that information and allowing myself to become giddy with usng some of the generics in other warbands..
You can also MAYBE find older starter sets that have had the warbands looted thus leaving boards, and tokens and rules.. on the worlds largest garage (boot) sale.. Ebay
Plenty of people selling individual cards for fairly gougey prices on eBay, yeah. I mean... it isn't gougey, it's fair enough... but buying the warband cards will end up costing more than buying the warband would have
Anyone know what the deal with the dice is this season? They've released two larger generic packs instead of faction specific ones, which makes me think we won't get faction dice?
deano2099 wrote: Anyone know what the deal with the dice is this season? They've released two larger generic packs instead of faction specific ones, which makes me think we won't get faction dice?
I’m guessing when the Vampires come out we’ll get a death set, and when the savage Orruks come out we’ll get destruction, but no warband specific ones this time for whatever reason.
Is it possible it was Civid related. Where are the dice made?
Were things getting behind so they cancelled half of the dice sets, and set up packaging for larger sets (if that’s possible).
I mean, the order dice are for sure the lumineth ones right? They fit them.
Not really, GW tends to be rather haphazard with accessories for their game both in what gets ordered and in how long they might stock them for. Even core parts of the game can be only one time ordered.
Heck Tyranids didn't get dice and yet almost every other 40K army got dice during the last edition updates.
Fair enough.
It matters not to me anyway, I don’t get the dice.
I found out that the faction dice aren’t biased towards rolling well for their own warband, so there’s no need for them
I do have the Eyes dice though, but only because I got a steal of a deal on the warband. (£15 for models, cards, their dice, magic dice set and a WHU carry case).
But generally, the starter set dice will do me fine.
I got Beastgrave to play with my Nephews, And Grymwatch for me. NEver got a chance to play with with him(He said miniatures are kinda lame, he prefer scale models)
But im soo getting the Crimson Court just for how cool they are.
The dice and sleeves are third party, which given Covid might have had an effect on their usual suppliers.
Death Guard didn't get any new dice despite being one of 40k's more popular armies now. The Underworlds dice typically sold out relatively quickly as well - they didn't go overnight or anything, but they usually went away within a few months, certainly quicker than some of the Necromunda sets.
I think they were stocking the generic Underworlds sleeves for years until recently as well?
I think they were stocking the generic Underworlds sleeves for years until recently as well?
They were, in a huge pack of plenty of Power and Glory sleeves. Very useful.
I'm hoping they bring sleeves back for Season 4, I really like having the custom sleeves for my cards. The Season 3 sleeve packs were a huge improvement too, having a few extras incase you broke some.
Yeah I assumed the idea would be to have these larger dice packs for the entire season, but they already seem to have vanished off GW's website.
Having Death and Destruction ones makes sense though, as there's two sets of dice plus magic dice in each pack, so four of these packs would leave you with one set for each faction as per usual.
Yeah. This sucks. I think you’re in the same state in the US but in Canada this is the third price increase on warbands in a single year. Last January in Canada our warbands cost $35 plus tax. Then they upped the price to $38 for Nightvault warbands and $39 for Beastgrave warbands. Then the orcs and the witch elf warbands came out and they were $45. And today this latest warband is $50. A 43% price increase over the course of a year. Sales tax in BC is 12%, so if I want to continue supporting my local store through this pandemic I’ll be paying $56 (£32) at full retail. WTFGW? You’re making record profits, but you’re continuing to put the squeeze on just because. And just to be clear, before any white knighting begins, I’ve been a GW sucker since 1988 so I’m not stranger to their policies. This just happens to stand out even in thirty years of gouging as being particularly bad.
Cronch wrote: Pre-brexit price rises, post-brexit price rises, coming next: Aquarius in conjunction with Jupiter price rises.
Back in MAH day we didn't get no reasons fer ou'r prises rise'n! It just happen'.
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AegisGrimm wrote: Well, I guess instead of buying the Chaos Warriors and the Vampires, I choose one. Your loss, GW. 20 years of price hikes are getting tiresome.
And THIS is why GW loses sales when they push things too far. Like seriously, were they just not getting margins off the 35? /s
Sabotage! wrote: In a year Warbands have went from 30 to 33 to 35 and now to 40? When GW is breaking all kinds of sales records?
This all nicely sums it up.
Customer sees high profits at current price levels and sees no reason to have them (the prices) increase further.
Company sees high profits at current price levels and sees a reason to increase them (both prices and profits) further.
It's a shame, but I suppose not unexpected. Whenever GW has a product that people say is pretty decent value for money, it rarely lasts for long...
I'm not really familiar with the game, isn't a Warband box basically all you need to play the game, or is there an expectation of expanding beyond that?
If a box is all you need to play, it can justify a higher price.
The Primaris release is much more egregious to me because not only are they expensive, they are no where near constituting a whole force.
But then I'm not really familiar with Warbands, I'm assuming the box is all you need or want to play.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'm not really familiar with the game, isn't a Warband box basically all you need to play the game, or is there an expectation of expanding beyond that?
If a box is all you need to play, it can justify a higher price.
The Primaris release is much more egregious to me because not only are they expensive, they are no where near constituting a whole force.
But then I'm not really familiar with Warbands, I'm assuming the box is all you need or want to play.
You need one of the starters really, but each warband box is all you really need for that faction (although there are upgrade cards and stuff that any faction can take in each warband box so to stay competitive you might need more warband boxes).
I do think they’re still not bad value, tbh, for a bit more than they charge for the average character you get 3-7 models and the cards. Just stings knowing they’ve gone up £7.50 in a couple of years.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'm not really familiar with the game, isn't a Warband box basically all you need to play the game, or is there an expectation of expanding beyond that?
If a box is all you need to play, it can justify a higher price.
The Primaris release is much more egregious to me because not only are they expensive, they are no where near constituting a whole force.
But then I'm not really familiar with Warbands, I'm assuming the box is all you need or want to play.
Still need board and special die, If you can't play with GW primaris battleforce, then you pretty much won't be able to play this game seriously with the card from a single box. Some of them you can't even play i,e : warbands has no spell caster but they give magic cards in the box.
This is not a miniature game, this is card game, usually there'll be 1 or 2 "good" universal cards from each warband expansion. If you don't have all the good cards of the current seasons you'll be at disadvantage and had to rely more on good dice roll and card draw to win.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'm not really familiar with the game, isn't a Warband box basically all you need to play the game, or is there an expectation of expanding beyond that?
Technically yes, but in practise it's one of the only games GW actually pushes as a competitive game (as opposed to everything else where they'd really, really, really prefer you just do narrative so they don't have to think too hard about writing the rules). It's often described as a 'LCG with models' and it's not that big of an exaggeration, as cards useable by every warband are included in every new expansion, therefore making them lucrative for those who play the game with a bigger circle than two of their friends.
Previously if you did want to keep up with Da Meta it wasn't too bad, because £17-20 every month or two (originally warbands came out in pairs every quarter) isn't bad by GW standards. The problem now is that price is being cranked up literally every year and those 'little' price increases add up (consider that in three years it's now £8 more expensive per warband, so you're looking at about £48 increase versus Shadespire). If this were 40k where the paypiggies will cough up money for literally anything and still have millions of players that'd be fine, but Underworlds is one of those games GW can very easily tank by their own ineptitude when the newblood dries up and the existing players get disenfranchised.
Yeah, it's definitely a game where you need to purchase more than one warband, unlike say Necromunda or Warcry. You can get by with less, but your experience will be increasingly diminished, and as that experience gets diminished more players drop out. They also get plenty of sales from people who just want the models for AoS, or anything else, but if they hit a rough patch where the releases don't wow those model collectors, and they've choked out a significant amount of their player-base, then the execs are going to see plummeting sales and declare the product line dead.
Wonder how the prices for the separately available models (released for AoS without the cards) will be affected. They previously remained the same when the Underworlds warbands went up, but either the full range or at least the newer releases may not stay that way for long then.
Coenus Scaldingus wrote: Wonder how the prices for the separately available models (released for AoS without the cards) will be affected. They previously remained the same when the Underworlds warbands went up, but either the full range or at least the newer releases may not stay that way for long then.
I could see them just keeping them at the 'with cards' pricing, especially now a lot of people are defending the price increases with, "w-well they're good value if you proxy them as Hero models!!!" which I started reading everywhere once people raised an eyebrow at the price increase.
Every time the price goes up, a few more people stop buying. It has happened before where GW realized they pushed things too far and had to step back. Every several years they forget and we go through the whole thing again.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Every time the price goes up, a few more people stop buying. It has happened before where GW realized they pushed things too far and had to step back. Every several years they forget and we go through the whole thing again.
Or they just keep pushing it as far as they can, take the losses, and steps back once they've hit that limit...
NinthMusketeer wrote: Every time the price goes up, a few more people stop buying. It has happened before where GW realized they pushed things too far and had to step back. Every several years they forget and we go through the whole thing again.
Well, pause, perhaps. And not for very long. I can't think of many (any?) cases where they actually walked prices back.
frankelee wrote: Yeah, it's definitely a game where you need to purchase more than one warband, unlike say Necromunda or Warcry. You can get by with less, but your experience will be increasingly diminished, and as that experience gets diminished more players drop out. They also get plenty of sales from people who just want the models for AoS, or anything else, but if they hit a rough patch where the releases don't wow those model collectors, and they've choked out a significant amount of their player-base, then the execs are going to see plummeting sales and declare the product line dead.
This is what I’m afraid of. Underworlds is my favorite game. Before the pandemic hit we were building a nice little game group meeting every week and playing in tournaments. Many of those players were quite casual fans of GW, they’re going to come back and see a price rise of 43% on the product line (in the same time period our starters have gone from $75 to $100).
Our local store still has Direchasm coins sitting on the shelf (afaik only 1490 of those were produced worldwide). It’s not hard to imagine a situation where half our players are already priced out and GW’s management ends up binning the game for poor sales. I’ll be heartbroken if that happens because our weekly meet ups used to be one of the highlights of my week.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Every time the price goes up, a few more people stop buying. It has happened before where GW realized they pushed things too far and had to step back. Every several years they forget and we go through the whole thing again.
Well, pause, perhaps. And not for very long. I can't think of many (any?) cases where they actually walked prices back.
They've always got their ways of evolving. After the DISASTROUS starting AoS releases came out ($33 for a slightly fancier Chaos Knight, $10+ for a naked dwarf) they just came out with more factions that were priced within what the market found acceptable, used the old WFB sculpts more, and managed to get some of that unselling stock of their hands with the Start Collecting kits. Necromunda came out split up into so predatory a style it would make Twitch girls cringe, so they spun it off as more of a high-end product with lots of Forge World releases and that ginormous $300 box set (not that those sold well, but it seemed like an idea to try). When their fancy new industrial 40K terrain was priced at around $500 to properly outfit a board, within a year they were repackaging that stuff into Kill Zone boxes and Sacristan Forgeshrines at around 50% off.
It could be Underworlds has fallen in popularity a lot since Shadespire, on the global scale, and they're just draining it for all it's worth now. I get the feeling their model is, once you've lost the iffy half of consumers, then you've only got the more dedicated half remaining, and they'll put up with significantly higher prices, because they're more dedicated. So you push the limits, the game eventually dies, and you come out with a new game.
It could be Underworlds has fallen in popularity a lot since Shadespire, on the global scale, and they're just draining it for all it's worth now. I get the feeling their model is, once you've lost the iffy half of consumers, then you've only got the more dedicated half remaining, and they'll put up with significantly higher prices, because they're more dedicated. So you push the limits, the game eventually dies, and you come out with a new game.
I believe every Underworlds event at Warhammer World proved more popular than the last one and a lot more places around my end were running dedicated Underworlds nights and tournaments, something I never saw prior to Beastgrave. Hell, I'd heard even some GW stores were running stuff for it, when to my understanding they pretty much never touch non-40k/AoS stuff for more than launch week.
I don't think it's the popularity of the game waning, I think GW just saw their profits skyrocket despite of (or perhaps because of) the Covid pandemic and figured that, if they could sell more stuff than ever IMMEDIATELY after a price hike (I think it came around April?) then they'd be willing to pay even more. One needs only look at the price of things like the Mega-Gargant, Lumineth and Primaris stuff - and it regularly going Temporarily Out Of Stock - to see why a GW exec would say, "Just crank it higher, they'll pay it lol."
Kanluwen wrote: Why wouldn't you use them as Hero models? The actual units tend to be exceedingly "meh".
Well yeah, my point was more that the price increase on Underworlds stuff tends to be defended as, "you can proxy them as Heroes, therefore Underworlds stuff is still great value even with [every] price increase!" ignoring that not every warband is suitable for that (Grymwatch) and that most people probably already have the 'proper' AoS model to represent it, making it redundant.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Every time the price goes up, a few more people stop buying. It has happened before where GW realized they pushed things too far and had to step back. Every several years they forget and we go through the whole thing again.
Well, pause, perhaps. And not for very long. I can't think of many (any?) cases where they actually walked prices back.
There's a couple of 'subtle' cases such as the Magmadroth and I think the Carnosaur where they cost the same as the initial Start Collecting boxes (prior to them being a thing) and just gave you the whole SC if you ordered one.
Based off this week's preorder video, are they going to show off one of the savage orruks? I don't know if they mean by "upcoming warband", they're just going to go over mechanics of the seraphon or soulblights, or actually show off something we haven't seen before
GaroRobe wrote: Based off this week's preorder video, are they going to show off one of the savage orruks? I don't know if they mean by "upcoming warband", they're just going to go over mechanics of the seraphon or soulblights, or actually show off something we haven't seen before
Have they previewed the Lizardmen cards/playstyle yet? If not I'd guess them.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Every time the price goes up, a few more people stop buying. It has happened before where GW realized they pushed things too far and had to step back. Every several years they forget and we go through the whole thing again.
Well, pause, perhaps. And not for very long. I can't think of many (any?) cases where they actually walked prices back.
There's a couple of 'subtle' cases such as the Magmadroth and I think the Carnosaur where they cost the same as the initial Start Collecting boxes (prior to them being a thing) and just gave you the whole SC if you ordered one.
Originally the Magmadroth was $110, which then then bundled with Vulkite Berzerkers ($60) into a SC box for $85. Literally half price overall, and a ~25% price cut for the Magmadroth even if one just threw out the infantry it now comes with. Other models, like you said, were reboxed to be SC boxes at the same price but with a bunch of extra miniatures. They also reboxed a number of early AoS releases to be twice the models per box but only 50% higher in price. And more importantly the new kits they were releasing suddenly had lower prices than equivalents from the previous year.
The prices of GW miniatures are a weird combination of "plastic value" and "in-game value" thats why you can buy a single Hero for about 60% of the price of a whole unit.
So for me the only way to decide if something is cheap or not is to compare them to similar products. And thats why I consider the "Start Collecting!" pretty cheap.
With the WU warbands we usually get a little less than half the miniatures of the AOS unit box for a little more that half the price. Add the cards and I guess even the prices for season 4 are kinda ok.
Whats annoying is that they raise the prices every year just because they are greedy.
WU at this point is a game like any online videogame that releases new characters.
They see what it costs to create an new warband and they decided on a price based on that cost.
So that price should not change unless something changes in the production or the product. I believe they did add more cards in Season 3 so that raise is kinda understandable but other than that i dont see a reason that explains the raises.
If they continue like this instead of 2 season 5 warbands you can get 3 season 1 warbands for the same price (of course they dont sell them anymore) and for many people I believe that means they are gonna skip more warbands.
In AOS they can sell the same miniatures in all kind of different boxes but the only thing they can do in WU is to sell all the season warbands together with a price cut but that is only good if you want to buy all the warbands of the season, so i dont see the prices getting any lower.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'm not really familiar with the game, isn't a Warband box basically all you need to play the game, or is there an expectation of expanding beyond that?
Technically yes, but in practise it's one of the only games GW actually pushes as a competitive game (as opposed to everything else where they'd really, really, really prefer you just do narrative so they don't have to think too hard about writing the rules). It's often described as a 'LCG with models' and it's not that big of an exaggeration, as cards useable by every warband are included in every new expansion, therefore making them lucrative for those who play the game with a bigger circle than two of their friends.
Previously if you did want to keep up with Da Meta it wasn't too bad, because £17-20 every month or two (originally warbands came out in pairs every quarter) isn't bad by GW standards. The problem now is that price is being cranked up literally every year and those 'little' price increases add up (consider that in three years it's now £8 more expensive per warband, so you're looking at about £48 increase versus Shadespire). If this were 40k where the paypiggies will cough up money for literally anything and still have millions of players that'd be fine, but Underworlds is one of those games GW can very easily tank by their own ineptitude when the newblood dries up and the existing players get disenfranchised.
Ah okay, I didn't realise it was basically a card game, figured it was just a skirmish game.
So do people in general like and play the game, or more just buy it for the models?
Albertorius wrote: It's mostly a card game with minis as markers, which is something I don't really care about, so when I buy them is exclusively for the minis.
I disagree vehemently with this. There is a collectible aspect to the cards, yes, but the game isn't any less a miniature game than 40k is where you sometimes have to buy a new book to get more stratagems for your faction too. And the decks have been getting more coherent with time, I barely touched them last season.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'm not really familiar with the game, isn't a Warband box basically all you need to play the game, or is there an expectation of expanding beyond that?
Technically yes, but in practise it's one of the only games GW actually pushes as a competitive game (as opposed to everything else where they'd really, really, really prefer you just do narrative so they don't have to think too hard about writing the rules). It's often described as a 'LCG with models' and it's not that big of an exaggeration, as cards useable by every warband are included in every new expansion, therefore making them lucrative for those who play the game with a bigger circle than two of their friends.
Previously if you did want to keep up with Da Meta it wasn't too bad, because £17-20 every month or two (originally warbands came out in pairs every quarter) isn't bad by GW standards. The problem now is that price is being cranked up literally every year and those 'little' price increases add up (consider that in three years it's now £8 more expensive per warband, so you're looking at about £48 increase versus Shadespire). If this were 40k where the paypiggies will cough up money for literally anything and still have millions of players that'd be fine, but Underworlds is one of those games GW can very easily tank by their own ineptitude when the newblood dries up and the existing players get disenfranchised.
Ah okay, I didn't realise it was basically a card game, figured it was just a skirmish game.
So do people in general like and play the game, or more just buy it for the models?
I really like the game from the little I’ve played (mostly with my brother or friends, who aren’t into wargaming). It’s quite easy to pick up and fast paced, but fairly deep tactically I think. It’s pretty well received generally too, as far as I know.
I don’t think calling it a card game is overly fair either. The models play a big part. The cards are more to customise your models and for what objectives you’re trying to score. You can’t play it without the models or anything like that, and the models are doing most of the work in the game.
Albertorius wrote: It's mostly a card game with minis as markers, which is something I don't really care about, so when I buy them is exclusively for the minis.
I disagree vehemently with this. There is a collectible aspect to the cards, yes, but the game isn't any less a miniature game than 40k is where you sometimes have to buy a new book to get more stratagems for your faction too. And the decks have been getting more coherent with time, I barely touched them last season.
Deck building and card using was the most important part of it, in the games I played, by a significant margin. But of course, YMMV.
You can't win with a bad deck but you can't win with bad tactics on the board either - choosing who to activate when and what to do with them, target priority, deployment etc are all just as important. It's a really elegant little game.
It's a combination. So its has the good of both worlds and the bad of both worlds. If you dont like one of the two you probably wont like it. But if you like both like me it's really good.
You have the miniatures with their own stats (like any other miniature game(although you cant customize them at all)), but you also have the cards to upgrade your fighters (like magic the gathering and other card games) and to score victory points (cant think of a game that has this).
If you are playing for fun you can just but a warband's box and start playing with it. For competitive games I believe you need to make your own deck with cards from other boxes to have better/different strategy.
Technically you could replace the minis with cardboard standees or even tokens but that would look really dumb.
But the board position is just as important as your hand of cards so it’s more like a deck building board game. Except you prebuild your deck like a TCG/LCG.
I guess it depends on the warband as to whether they’d be bought just for the models.
Vampires for instance will be, great character models.
Some are just line troops so not so much.
I always prescribe to the buy the warbands I like the look of most. Then playability second, but I don’t do tournaments.
So we still use all season universal cards (just minus the few unusables), it’s not exactly unbalanced - but I see why for tournament play you’d need to streamline it and such
It's definitely a card based game with miniatures. Before the pandemic, it was thr game i played most regularly and attended events for. I'd always prefer an underworlds tournament over any other game. The models are important, as you need to tell which fighter is which, but painting isn't required and the models are all pushfit. I've bought a warband on release day, and then played them in a tournament shortly afterwards in the same day.
As far as I'm aware, it's fair to say the miniatures do play a limited role compared to typical wargames, in that you for instance don't need them to be there to check line-of-sight from or to them, so their physical presence or attributes are largely irrelevant aside from looking nice and being more clearly recognizable than a flat token.
Customization of the models is an interesting one. On the one hand, they're supposed to be specific characters that should be recognizable as such, and they have no options in terms of wargear etcetera. Precisely because they have no options, however, you are presumably free to convert them a fair bit: there can be no confusion about someone having more or less armour or a sword instead of a hammer, as their stats and rules are fixed anyway, so it's purely for aesthetics. As long as the various warband members are recognizable, anything goes (presumably? I'm only interested in the range for the models, which are largely great and very useful for Mordheim and the likes). I've definitely seen some nicely converted warbands around.
All miniatures are just markers. You could play 40k, warmachine, or napoleonics with paper cutouts or blank bases and they'd work just as well (besides the occasional poorly thought out los rule where an antennae is targetable). It wouldn't look as nice, obviously, and that would turn a good chunk of people away, but it wouldn't change the game.
I'd say Underworlds has more movement based tactical considerations than 40k does (granted, that's not a crazy high bar), if that's what you're looking for in a game. The cards are important, as they're the way you customize the warbands, both for what they can do and how you win, but it's not really any different from writing a list and choosing a game plan (or objectives) in another game. Minus the random nature of drawing, of course, but you can mitigate that a bit.
As for needing specific cards, GW has high-ish res pics of each card on their deck builder. Just print out the ones you want and drop them in the appropriate sleeves. I do that, and I own almost everything, as I just don't want to bother deconstructing and resleeving a bunch of decks every time I want to bring out a different warband.
It is interesting to hear miniature gamers characterizing Underworlds. It is boardgame, as there is no free flowing movement and the miniatures are superfluous (as others have mentioned, a token would be just as effective).
Yet, it is specifically a tactical arena combat game and is one of many games in this subset of boardgames. For example, there are Dungeon Command, Aristeia!, Wildlands, Puppet Wars, Blitz Bowl, Godtear and several others (including a subset of tactical arena focused on the MOBA genre - see https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/103860/reviewing-moba-series). Look them up on Boardgamegeek.com if you're curious.
And Underworlds is not the first one in this genre of boardgames to focus heavily on card usage. Dungeon Command from 2012 was the first to include deck building, and it also had warband building instead of fixed models for a faction. Aristeia! also allowed team building and uses a small deck of cards that depends on the models selected for one's team, yet the cards are not as dominant. Wildlands provides an assymetric deck for each faction (no deck building), but here the deck is the engine that allows one to operate one's models, both movement and combat.
In the end, all of these games are focused on maneuvering a small team of individual models on a limited, grid board. Except for Wildlands, these games could function without their deck of cards (though Underworlds would be hamstrung particularly from the absence of the Objective deck, which is WU's unique contribution to this style of boardgames).
callidusx3 wrote: It is interesting to hear miniature gamers characterizing Underworlds. It is boardgame, as there is no free flowing movement and the miniatures are superfluous (as others have mentioned, a token would be just as effective).
Yet, it is specifically a tactical arena combat game and is one of many games in this subset of boardgames. For example, there are Dungeon Command, Aristeia!, Wildlands, Puppet Wars, Blitz Bowl, Godtear and several others (including a subset of tactical arena focused on the MOBA genre - see https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/103860/reviewing-moba-series). Look them up on Boardgamegeek.com if you're curious.
And Underworlds is not the first one in this genre of boardgames to focus heavily on card usage. Dungeon Command from 2012 was the first to include deck building, and it also had warband building instead of fixed models for a faction. Aristeia! also allowed team building and uses a small deck of cards that depends on the models selected for one's team, yet the cards are not as dominant. Wildlands provides an assymetric deck for each faction (no deck building), but here the deck is the engine that allows one to operate one's models, both movement and combat.
In the end, all of these games are focused on maneuvering a small team of individual models on a limited, grid board. Except for Wildlands, these games could function without their deck of cards (though Underworlds would be hamstrung particularly from the absence of the Objective deck, which is WU's unique contribution to this style of boardgames).
By these standards Battletech is a board game, so I think we can stop splitting hairs.
callidusx3 wrote: It is interesting to hear miniature gamers characterizing Underworlds. It is boardgame, as there is no free flowing movement and the miniatures are superfluous (as others have mentioned, a token would be just as effective).
Yet, it is specifically a tactical arena combat game and is one of many games in this subset of boardgames. For example, there are Dungeon Command, Aristeia!, Wildlands, Puppet Wars, Blitz Bowl, Godtear and several others (including a subset of tactical arena focused on the MOBA genre - see https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/103860/reviewing-moba-series). Look them up on Boardgamegeek.com if you're curious.
And Underworlds is not the first one in this genre of boardgames to focus heavily on card usage. Dungeon Command from 2012 was the first to include deck building, and it also had warband building instead of fixed models for a faction. Aristeia! also allowed team building and uses a small deck of cards that depends on the models selected for one's team, yet the cards are not as dominant. Wildlands provides an assymetric deck for each faction (no deck building), but here the deck is the engine that allows one to operate one's models, both movement and combat.
In the end, all of these games are focused on maneuvering a small team of individual models on a limited, grid board. Except for Wildlands, these games could function without their deck of cards (though Underworlds would be hamstrung particularly from the absence of the Objective deck, which is WU's unique contribution to this style of boardgames).
By these standards Battletech is a board game, so I think we can stop splitting hairs.
I mean... Battletech is a boardgame. Among a lot of other things, but the core game is, very much, a board game. And I say this as a fan of it.
As to Underworlds, be that it may be, I did not care at all about the cardplay and deckbuilding aspect, whereas I did not have any problem with Aristeia (which, to me, didn't feel like a cars game), so, again, YMMV.
Mr_Rose does raise an interesting point, in that Underworlds is a (seemingly pretty successful) mash up for board games, TCG and TTG.
As a product, it was a cunning move to target the centre of the hobby gaming Venn diagram. Pretty enough models for those into that, whilst being low in enough in number not to daunt the other constituents.
I feel like I've heard every possible iteration of the "is this a miniatures game/is this is a miniature or token" debate on this site alone, not to mention every other tabletop forum. And people often come to exact opposite conclusions using the exact same evidence. I don't know that there's much to the debate. It is semantics.
The more important question is, are the contents worth the price, all included? $40 for four models and two packs worth of cards is definitely pushing it. I don't really agree with the idea that just needing to purchase one thing (like one Necromunda gang) means that you should pay a high price for it, though that definitely has leeched into the community as a reasonable idea. I've had people tell me some miniature games with terrible price-per-mini were still excellent value because you only needed to invest $250 or so to have a full army, and be able to play. But if I ask those people if they'd like to buy my old set of gently-used dominoes for $250 and get literally everything they'll ever need to play they no longer seem to believe their own argument.
I think over-paying for one thing is much easier than over-paying for four or five things though. And so it does feel like GW is playing dangerously with the game's future.
As a competitive underworlds player, I'd happily pay $40 for each warband if I was playing. However, as underworlds and events in general are not happening in my area due to covid, I won't be picking up anyway warband until I'm able to play again.
With the releases spread over a few months, $40 a month to keep to up to date with my favourite game is very manageable. If you're trying to catch up and get them all in one go, that can hurt.
frankelee wrote: I feel like I've heard every possible iteration of the "is this a miniatures game/is this is a miniature or token" debate on this site alone, not to mention every other tabletop forum. And people often come to exact opposite conclusions using the exact same evidence. I don't know that there's much to the debate. It is semantics.
The more important question is, are the contents worth the price, all included? $40 for four models and two packs worth of cards is definitely pushing it. I don't really agree with the idea that just needing to purchase one thing (like one Necromunda gang) means that you should pay a high price for it, though that definitely has leeched into the community as a reasonable idea. I've had people tell me some miniature games with terrible price-per-mini were still excellent value because you only needed to invest $250 or so to have a full army, and be able to play. But if I ask those people if they'd like to buy my old set of gently-used dominoes for $250 and get literally everything they'll ever need to play they no longer seem to believe their own argument.
I think over-paying for one thing is much easier than over-paying for four or five things though. And so it does feel like GW is playing dangerously with the game's future.
It's not an idea that has leeched into the community, it's an acceptance that in addition to the raw price of plastic and manufacturing sprues there's a cost associated with development of a new SKU.
If it costs $2 to make a certain model in materials and time, but cost $20,000 to develop it and set up the machine to manufacture it but the rules of the game mean you're expecting to sell 20,000 units, you can sell them for maybe $6 each making 100% profit. If the rules of the game are such that you're unlikely to sell more than 5,000 units to the same number of players and you still want to make 100% profit on them, you need to sell them for (20000/5000+2)*2 = $12.
If your player base is buying whole armies, then sometimes the numerous models can subsidise the rarer models, and if you need to buy multiple boxes for the cards even if you don't necessarily want the models, then you increase the number of people likely to buy a single box and thus can lower the price. Likewise if you have a very large range of games, maybe one game can subsidise another another.
I consider WHU warbands a steal, even with the undeniably predatory sales tactic of packing cards that clearly work best with warband A in the box with warband B (a tactic popularized by the massively successful X-wing, so...) Each box is a brand new faction, and that means a new gameplay experince. I'd consider that worth the money even if they were out of scale for AoS, but obviously you usually also get one or more hero models for that and at that point the rest of the box is "free" compared to a clampack hero.
It's not an idea that has leeched into the community, it's an acceptance that in addition to the raw price of plastic and manufacturing sprues there's a cost associated with development of a new SKU.
If it costs $2 to make a certain model in materials and time, but cost $20,000 to develop it and set up the machine to manufacture it but the rules of the game mean you're expecting to sell 20,000 units, you can sell them for maybe $6 each making 100% profit. If the rules of the game are such that you're unlikely to sell more than 5,000 units to the same number of players and you still want to make 100% profit on them, you need to sell them for (20000/5000+2)*2 = $12.
If your player base is buying whole armies, then sometimes the numerous models can subsidise the rarer models, and if you need to buy multiple boxes for the cards even if you don't necessarily want the models, then you increase the number of people likely to buy a single box and thus can lower the price. Likewise if you have a very large range of games, maybe one game can subsidise another another.
Sure, my comment is made with an understanding that all sorts of caveats may apply, I didn't go into them because it was already a long comment. But I feel my point still more than stands. The HIPS plastic that goes into make the two mini sprues that go into this box is literally not even going to be 5 cents. That expense is so negligible it doesn't factor in, it's really the overall factory/b2b shipping costs (as the smaller share of expenses) and the overhead of your company, both in developing the product and just existing (the bigger share of the expenses). So if you're not buying much to play the game, your value will go down because overhead expenses are still there, upping the price disproportionately. That, like all reasonable things, can be taken WAAAAAY too far, and it's that way too far nature that I'm referring to leeching into the community.
Now of course they can charge what they want for it, and people can pay what they want for it, but within the discussion of reasonable costs, and within the discussion of not running a game into the ground, there are some limits before you're over-costing things. But people just use that concept of limited requirements to declare carte blanche on pricing, that value is basically out the window, and as we see from domino set sellers around the world, even they have a very tenuous belief in that principle when they aren't stanning for a company they love online. I think it's incumbent on companies to control costs and maintain reasonable value on their games. Which includes eliminating unnecessary overhead. All that's on them. And objectively poor value for a product is still fair game to point out, even in those circumstances, even accounting for the fact that such products can be expected to be more toward the poor-value side of things.
Even without GW running the game into the ground through sheer greed, does it have much of a future anyways?
Past season 4 there just doesn't seem to be much more they can do, unless they start releasing revamped older teams.
Easily. We've already seen examples of the same faction getting different warbands. It would be absurdly easy to do more warbands from the same races with different playstyles.
There’s still no Ossiarch band to round out the undead yet. Nor a proper DnD adventure band (y’know; fighter ranger wizard rogue) from the Free Cities. Or they could take from the background races that don’t have books (the kurnothi hunt sets precedent) so grot sky-pirates, the other half of the Lumineth, not-Morathi dark elves, some mad Disposessed artificer and his best golems, that sort of thing.
aku-chan wrote: Even without GW running the game into the ground through sheer greed, does it have much of a future anyways?
Past season 4 there just doesn't seem to be much more they can do, unless they start releasing revamped older teams.
Game has a lot going for it. Each expansion also intorduces new mechanics which shakes things up too. Magic, hunter/quarry, primacy, hunger. It's really exciting to see what will come next and how each warband plays.
Mr_Rose wrote: There’s still no Ossiarch band to round out the undead yet. Nor a proper DnD adventure band (y’know; fighter ranger wizard rogue) from the Free Cities. Or they could take from the background races that don’t have books (the kurnothi hunt sets precedent) so grot sky-pirates, the other half of the Lumineth, not-Morathi dark elves, some mad Disposessed artificer and his best golems, that sort of thing.
Indeed Ossiarch are May, and Idoneth June.
Possibly the last two battletomes to get one.
(Ignoring free cities as that’s a tricky one depending whether it’s a warband or several warbands.)
aku-chan wrote: Even without GW running the game into the ground through sheer greed, does it have much of a future anyways?
Past season 4 there just doesn't seem to be much more they can do, unless they start releasing revamped older teams.
We already have 4 Stormcast warbands, 2 Orruks (maybe 3, not sure if the savage orruks count as different or not), 2 Khorne and 2 Nighthaunt, so they can release different warbands from the same factions.
And then we have warbands like the Rippa’s Snarlfangs that dont have a faction i believe (I might be wrong about this).
For me WU seems like a good place for GW to test new factions for future releases in AOS, although maybe that cannot work with the time they need to develop a new faction.
Danny76 wrote: Indeed Ossiarch are May, and Idoneth June.
Possibly the last two battletomes to get one.
(Ignoring free cities as that’s a tricky one depending whether it’s a warband or several warbands.)
I knew about the Idoneth but forgot the bone bros.
They could also start introducing other issues WRT Shadespire and the Katophrane Curse to the broader Worlds by bringing back some of the Lost. Imagine what happens when one of the breaches happens somewhere in Shyish and starts drawing the already-dead into the resurrection loop? Be a good excuse to bring back the Tomb Kings aesthetic. But mostly because I want a Brettonnian warband; mounted Knight, mounted Lady, two or three Men At Arms on foot, all very confused.
Lore wise and model wise it can go on forever. Rules design space is limited in such a tightly designed game, but so far they've managed to expand it (Cylces, Quarry...) without it feeling weird to me. One thing that's starting to overlap a lot is Inspire conditions.
Yeah, they need someone that inspires on achieving a certain number of objectives, or glory points (because you can get those in other ways), which is a space they don’t seem to have explored much.
Geeze GW are terrible at painting muscles. I'll guess those muscles aren't actually made from narrow chasms and sharp edges and it's just an artefact of a terrible paint job.
I understand keeping paint schemes simple rather than having them like they're painted by the gods, but wowser GW need to improve how they paint muscles on their display models.
Oh god, GW please release an updated Savage Orruk kit. The current kit isn't bad, but they have so much potential. Make the archers a separate kit, make some new shamans (looks like the team has one, hopefully with a Wurzarg mask), etc!
Edit: Weird that he doesn't have toe nails/claws. Some orruks do, but I guess not these ones (or maybe they fell out, like what happens with marathon runners)
Oh god, GW please release an updated Savage Orruk kit. The current kit isn't bad, but they have so much potential. Make the archers a separate kit, make some new shamans, etc!
Yeah doubt that's gonna happen. This is just an Underworlds warband, I don't see them updating the Savage Orc kits any time soon.they're decent quality kits that let you build archers, spear/shield, dual hand weapons or hand weapon / shield. Overall it's a pretty good kit.
Oh god, GW please release an updated Savage Orruk kit. The current kit isn't bad, but they have so much potential. Make the archers a separate kit, make some new shamans, etc!
Yeah doubt that's gonna happen. This is just an Underworlds warband, I don't see them updating the Savage Orc kits any time soon.they're decent quality kits that let you build archers, spear/shield, dual hand weapons or hand weapon / shield. Overall it's a pretty good kit.
Yeah, the kit itself isn't terrible, but I'm a sucker for "new" models. If anything, the crypt ghouls need the update more (but even their underworld team doesn't fill me with much hope)
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Geeze GW are terrible at painting muscles. I'll guess those muscles aren't actually made from narrow chasms and sharp edges
No they are. Savage orcs are from that era when GW decided that sharp edges on organic tissue is going to be their new art style.
I have some of those Savage Orcs, they are not nearly as bad as the paint job makes them look. Maybe the muscles are a bit over-defined, but the paint job turns it up to 11. If you do a google image search you'll find the same models painted by people other than GW and they look a lot better.
GW just decided to almost "blackline" the crevices as if it were power armour and edge highlight the muscles when no such edge exists (or is much too soft to warrant an edge highlight).
If they got someone to paint the muscles with proper blending using glazes, it'd probably represent the underlying model a lot better.
On the muscle thing, its the result of how the GW painting method works
Base, wash, layer highlight. These models are meant to look like something resonably acheivable, not a masterclass.
Theophony wrote: Wolverine claws and an "X" on the forehead , I hope they name him L-Orc-gan
I noticed the Wolverine pose but didn't connect it with the "x" on his forehead
I guess the Marvel Comic deal opened more doors than we thought. Sadly, this means we won't get some Soulblights with youthful wards in green spandex any time soon :(
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Geeze GW are terrible at painting muscles. I'll guess those muscles aren't actually made from narrow chasms and sharp edges
No they are. Savage orcs are from that era when GW decided that sharp edges on organic tissue is going to be their new art style.
I have some of those Savage Orcs, they are not nearly as bad as the paint job makes them look. Maybe the muscles are a bit over-defined, but the paint job turns it up to 11. If you do a google image search you'll find the same models painted by people other than GW and they look a lot better.
GW just decided to almost "blackline" the crevices as if it were power armour and edge highlight the muscles when no such edge exists (or is much too soft to warrant an edge highlight).
If they got someone to paint the muscles with proper blending using glazes, it'd probably represent the underlying model a lot better.
I'm not so sure. Ever since their first muscle-bound CAD model, I've had a hard time with the look of GW's 'muscled' models. The bloodthirster, the khorne blood-blooders, minotaurs, etc. I even own some of the latter, and its really both. The muscles themselves look really very odd, and they're also painted in a fashion that just doesn't work for flesh.
Part of it is simply that their only 'trick' these days is 'edge highlighting' and they use it on everything regardless of circumstances (and grossly over do it), but also the structure of the models is just... odd. In both cases what works for armor doesn't work for flesh.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Geeze GW are terrible at painting muscles. I'll guess those muscles aren't actually made from narrow chasms and sharp edges
No they are. Savage orcs are from that era when GW decided that sharp edges on organic tissue is going to be their new art style.
I have some of those Savage Orcs, they are not nearly as bad as the paint job makes them look. Maybe the muscles are a bit over-defined, but the paint job turns it up to 11. If you do a google image search you'll find the same models painted by people other than GW and they look a lot better.
GW just decided to almost "blackline" the crevices as if it were power armour and edge highlight the muscles when no such edge exists (or is much too soft to warrant an edge highlight).
If they got someone to paint the muscles with proper blending using glazes, it'd probably represent the underlying model a lot better.
I'm not so sure. Ever since their first muscle-bound CAD model, I've had a hard time with the look of GW's 'muscled' models. The bloodthirster, the khorne blood-blooders, minotaurs, etc. I even own some of the latter, and its really both. The muscles themselves look really very odd, and they're also painted in a fashion that just doesn't work for flesh.
Part of it is simply that their only 'trick' these days is 'edge highlighting' and they use it on everything regardless of circumstances (and grossly over do it), but also the structure of the models is just... odd. In both cases what works for armor doesn't work for flesh.
I'm not going to say GW area great at doing muscled models, but they're no where near as bad as the paint jobs make them look. The Minotaurs are definitely a low point though, the Savage Orcs are nowhere near as bad as that. If you find some Savage Orcs painted by a skilled painter, they look good, the Minotaurs are always terrible no matter who paints them, lol.
The muscle-edges really don't exist on the Savage Orc models, they're purely painted on. The crevices are a bit overdone, but again they look so much worse than they are in reality because GW chooses to effectively black line them.
Not a bad mini by any means. I like the updated aesthetic for the savage orcs. I was personally hoping for Spiderfang grots, but that was a bit far fetched.
Not sure why I didn't notice the price creep until now, but $40 for a Underworld team is a bit much. May even stop me from getting the Vampires for a bit, unless they cost the original $35 (no way they'll be a $33 team.) Wish we had another warband to compare prices to, but Khagra's ravagers are the only separate warband of this season out atm
GaroRobe wrote: Not sure why I didn't notice the price creep until now, but $40 for a Underworld team is a bit much. May even stop me from getting the Vampires for a bit, unless they cost the original $35 (no way they'll be a $33 team.) Wish we had another warband to compare prices to, but Khagra's ravagers are the only separate warband of this season out atm
They’re all going to be the same as the chaos one. Warbands in a series have never cost a different amount, and I don’t see why they’d start doing so now.
GaroRobe wrote: Not sure why I didn't notice the price creep until now, but $40 for a Underworld team is a bit much. May even stop me from getting the Vampires for a bit, unless they cost the original $35 (no way they'll be a $33 team.) Wish we had another warband to compare prices to, but Khagra's ravagers are the only separate warband of this season out atm
They’re all going to be the same as the chaos one. Warbands in a series have never cost a different amount, and I don’t see why they’d start doing so now.
Wurmspat, Rippa, Grymwatch, and Hrothgorn were all $33 while Morgok and Morgwaeth were $35.
GaroRobe wrote: Not sure why I didn't notice the price creep until now, but $40 for a Underworld team is a bit much. May even stop me from getting the Vampires for a bit, unless they cost the original $35 (no way they'll be a $33 team.) Wish we had another warband to compare prices to, but Khagra's ravagers are the only separate warband of this season out atm
They’re all going to be the same as the chaos one. Warbands in a series have never cost a different amount, and I don’t see why they’d start doing so now.
Wurmspat, Rippa, Grymwatch, and Hrothgorn were all $33 while Morgok and Morgwaeth were $35.
Beastgrave did see varying prices.
Wasn’t there a general price rise in that time though, and the previous ones went up in price too?
Let’s put it this way then, they aren’t going to charge less for a later released warband.
GaroRobe wrote: Not sure why I didn't notice the price creep until now, but $40 for a Underworld team is a bit much. May even stop me from getting the Vampires for a bit, unless they cost the original $35 (no way they'll be a $33 team.) Wish we had another warband to compare prices to, but Khagra's ravagers are the only separate warband of this season out atm
They’re all going to be the same as the chaos one. Warbands in a series have never cost a different amount, and I don’t see why they’d start doing so now.
Wurmspat, Rippa, Grymwatch, and Hrothgorn were all $33 while Morgok and Morgwaeth were $35.
Beastgrave did see varying prices.
Wasn’t there a general price rise in that time though, and the previous ones went up in price too?
Let’s put it this way then, they aren’t going to charge less for a later released warband.
I had to check, but the original warbands all debuted at $30. And then were released without the cards for $25. I guess you could try to justify some of the releases, like the vampire one, since each model (save maybe the wing guy) could serve as HQs, and would probably cost $25 (HA) to $30-35 separately. It's harder to swallow when you get a bunch of skinks and a saurus, though. Even if ones a chamelon and ones a priest. Either way, if the Starstrider's cost $40, no way any of the other warbands this season will cost less
I'm actually hoping some more of them get released without cards and in standard grey plastic. I really hate the brightly colored plastic of Underworld's stuff, and frankly I am buying them for other skirmish games, anyway. So the cards are just an added cost I will not use.
AegisGrimm wrote: I'm actually hoping some more of them get released without cards and in standard grey plastic. I really hate the brightly colored plastic of Underworld's stuff, and frankly I am buying them for other skirmish games, anyway. So the cards are just an added cost I will not use.
Usually it happens at the end of a season, but who knows what COVID has done to that.
Plus they've been "direct only" items as apparently they weren't great sellers solo.
Is there any difference between the grey plastic and colored plastic sprues? I got the Wurmspat (green plastic) and the mold lines were awful. If the molds are any better in grey plastic, I'll hold off on the Crimson Court, since they'll almost definitely red plastic (or maybe dark purple)
I'm not a big fan of priming and painting over it. Any scratches to the paint job, and suddenly you have neon orange/purple/yellow/green showing through. I also hate trying to clean mold lines from eye-searing colors.
GaroRobe wrote: Not sure why I didn't notice the price creep until now, but $40 for a Underworld team is a bit much. May even stop me from getting the Vampires for a bit, unless they cost the original $35 (no way they'll be a $33 team.) Wish we had another warband to compare prices to, but Khagra's ravagers are the only separate warband of this season out atm
They’re all going to be the same as the chaos one. Warbands in a series have never cost a different amount, and I don’t see why they’d start doing so now.
Wurmspat, Rippa, Grymwatch, and Hrothgorn were all $33 while Morgok and Morgwaeth were $35.
Beastgrave did see varying prices.
Wasn’t there a general price rise in that time though, and the previous ones went up in price too?
Let’s put it this way then, they aren’t going to charge less for a later released warband.
I had to check, but the original warbands all debuted at $30. And then were released without the cards for $25. I guess you could try to justify some of the releases, like the vampire one, since each model (save maybe the wing guy) could serve as HQs, and would probably cost $25 (HA) to $30-35 separately. It's harder to swallow when you get a bunch of skinks and a saurus, though. Even if ones a chamelon and ones a priest. Either way, if the Starstrider's cost $40, no way any of the other warbands this season will cost less
I believe here they were £17.50 for season 1, £20 for 2, £22.50 for 3. And now £25 for season 4.
Wasn’t that $33 to $35 a price rise you guys got. As all the warbands also went to 35 from that seasons sets?
But as mentioned. They have a price. Lizards will 100% be that price as well.
(Also, they can’t argue vampires to cost more as they are characters. Characters for what? As underworlds is the game and that’s it.
You can’t say oh these cost more because of that other game some people might play. There’s a lot of people on the Underworlds discord for instance that the only game they play from GW is WHU. It’d be madness).
GaroRobe wrote: Is there any difference between the grey plastic and colored plastic sprues? I got the Wurmspat (green plastic) and the mold lines were awful. If the molds are any better in grey plastic, I'll hold off on the Crimson Court, since they'll almost definitely red plastic (or maybe dark purple)
I doubt it. They aren't going to cut new molds for that and the plastic's the same (the normal plastic is also dyed, despite what some inevitably claim), so there shouldn't be any real difference.
GaroRobe wrote: Is there any difference between the grey plastic and colored plastic sprues? I got the Wurmspat (green plastic) and the mold lines were awful. If the molds are any better in grey plastic, I'll hold off on the Crimson Court, since they'll almost definitely red plastic (or maybe dark purple)
The plastic is exactly the same, the colour is purely an additive added to the mix to give colour. Even grey is a colour additive to give that shade.
The moulds are also the very same, so any mould lines will be pretty much similar model to model no matter the pigment colour of the plastic.
That said moulds degrade over time and thus you might see grey plastic with worse mould lines than coloured simply because the grey is cast and sold after the coloured. However in general most modern GW plastics have been very very good at having very little in the way of mould line problems.
Of course if you want the best chance of reduced mould lines, get the models early. Earlier castings will have been done with less wear and tear on the mould and thus less mould lines.
I know the colour is supposed to be an additive, but the plastic feels different under the knife when cleaning mould lines. Almost like it’s a bit softer.
I wonder if to make the very bright colours the amount of colour they add messes with the mix a bit.
Way back many moons ago I got a box of lizardmen which seemed to be a darker grey than normal and they went the other way, the plastic seemed harder but more brittle. Many a spear and javelin got snapped out of that set.
GaroRobe wrote: Is there any difference between the grey plastic and colored plastic sprues? I got the Wurmspat (green plastic) and the mold lines were awful. If the molds are any better in grey plastic, I'll hold off on the Crimson Court, since they'll almost definitely red plastic (or maybe dark purple)
The plastic is exactly the same, the colour is purely an additive added to the mix to give colour. Even grey is a colour additive to give that shade.
The moulds are also the very same, so any mould lines will be pretty much similar model to model no matter the pigment colour of the plastic.
That said moulds degrade over time and thus you might see grey plastic with worse mould lines than coloured simply because the grey is cast and sold after the coloured. However in general most modern GW plastics have been very very good at having very little in the way of mould line problems.
Of course if you want the best chance of reduced mould lines, get the models early. Earlier castings will have been done with less wear and tear on the mould and thus less mould lines.
Some moulds are also just naff.
I got a bunch of the Pestilens kits when they first came out, and those had really prominent mould lines which took an age to clean off.
Guess the kits are moulded en-masse, so any slight misalignment during a run is gonna be visible on hundreds of sprues.
I've also bought brand new release GW plastic kits that have had terrible mould lines on what should be the first run of kits. Not recently though, this was a few years back.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I've also bought brand new release GW plastic kits that have had terrible mould lines on what should be the first run of kits. Not recently though, this was a few years back.
A few years ago, I was starting to believe that GW really were the master of plastic. Mold lines seemed to be designed to be along seams and joints or were just not there.
Nowadays, they're all over every tiny little piece. Building necromunda figures meant I was scraping lines off every side of 17 tiny pieces.
In contrast, the last SW Legion kit I built (Clan Wren), the only scraping I did was at the tiny joins from cutting them off the sprue.
I know mold lines get worse over the lifetime of a mold (metal and resin far worse than plastic) but I think GW have stopped bothering caring. It's just about the fancy poses and details now.
hotsauceman1 wrote: On the muscle thing, its the result of how the GW painting method works
Base, wash, layer highlight. These models are meant to look like something resonably acheivable, not a masterclass.
While I understand the point, they came a little too far:
Warhammer TV painting video for the hedonite release this week was
a pain to watch. These figures deserve better than this "battle ready".
Its just a result of how GW does its paint jobs to look like they are achievably, which is why you see the distinct layering method they use.
ITs why they boxes dont have NMM or other big fancy techniques to not push away people
hotsauceman1 wrote: Its just a result of how GW does its paint jobs to look like they are achievably, which is why you see the distinct layering method they use.
ITs why they boxes dont have NMM or other big fancy techniques to not push away people
That's fine to an extent, but they also shouldn't make a model look like poo just because they want to religiously follow a painting technique that is inappropriate for the model. An Orc, especially a character type model, can't be blacklined and edge highlighted without it making the muscles look silly, so instead of putting people off with an unachievable paint job, they put them off with a model that looks awful (but is probably fine under their hideous paint job).
hotsauceman1 wrote: On the muscle thing, its the result of how the GW painting method works
Base, wash, layer highlight. These models are meant to look like something resonably acheivable, not a masterclass.
While I understand the point, they came a little too far:
Warhammer TV painting video for the hedonite release this week was
a pain to watch. These figures deserve better than this "battle ready".
hotsauceman1 wrote: Its just a result of how GW does its paint jobs to look like they are achievably, which is why you see the distinct layering method they use.
ITs why they boxes dont have NMM or other big fancy techniques to not push away people
Sorry to bring this thread up again, but I just saw the Sigvald model and was reminded of this comment, as they painted it with NMM. GW definitely use smoother and more advanced techniques on some of their show models, just for some reason with Orcs they stick to blacklining and edge highlighting even though it's an inappropriate technique for muscles.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I know the colour is supposed to be an additive, but the plastic feels different under the knife when cleaning mould lines. Almost like it’s a bit softer.
I wonder if to make the very bright colours the amount of colour they add messes with the mix a bit.
Way back many moons ago I got a box of lizardmen which seemed to be a darker grey than normal and they went the other way, the plastic seemed harder but more brittle. Many a spear and javelin got snapped out of that set.
I think this is just in your head.
The only case where you may legitimately see (or feel) a big difference in the consistency of their plastic is if you get a hold of sprues from, like, 10-15+ years ago, when their plastic was actually softer and more buttery. I believe they switched up their formula at some point to spend less on the petroleum-based additives. The old stuff is usually a paler shade of grey than what we see now. I actually prefer working with the new formula; more prone to snapping, but less prone to bending.
I have been converting some of the Godsworn Hunt models into marauders with flails for a Warcry warband. The brown plastic they're made of is noticeably softer than the grey plastic the flails I'm adding from my bits box (some of which are the light grey plastic from the early 2000s, some a darker grey from a couple of years ago). It's so soft that I nearly ruined Jaggathra's arm because the knife went through it much quicker than I expected it to.
And this shouldn't be surprising, because HIPS is pretty pernickety about additives. A chemical added to change the colour can easily also alter its hardness. Maybe the normal grey dye GW uses makes it harder, or maybe some of the other coloured dyes make it softer. Anyway, the suggestion that all HIPS is identical and any differences are "all in our heads" is silly.
Yeah plastics of different tones do seem to have different properties, some softer and some harder, for example I find the gold on the Stormcast easy build quite strong.
At least this one has indents to indicate where his nails would be
Since one of the orruks has the name big spear, and that looks like an axe, I guess we have at least two more models to reveal. Weird choice to not have warpaint on half the warband (so far), but I guess it's better than if GW had made raised areas on the body for tattoos, a la fyreslayer runes.
The Bonereaper has a cool silhouette. But I'll be happily surprised if the models are cool enough to warrant buying, since OB models are mostly hit and miss imo
Orcs have claw like nails, so it's a weird omission.
Not any more. Check the Ironjawz minis.
Almost all of them have boots.
The Brute that doesn't is in the background, but seems to have darker toes to indicate toenails.
The Warchanter is definitely painted as if he had toenails, but oddly doesn't have fingernails. Though his feet are weirdly misshapen.
Orcs have claw like nails, so it's a weird omission.
Not any more. Check the Ironjawz minis.
Almost all of them have boots.
The Brute that doesn't is in the background, but seems to have darker toes to indicate toenails.
The Warchanter is definitely painted as if he had toenails, but oddly doesn't have fingernails. Though his feet are weirdly misshapen.
I don't know whats he's talking about, they still have "claws"
Orcs have claw like nails, so it's a weird omission.
Not any more. Check the Ironjawz minis.
Almost all of them have boots.
The Brute that doesn't is in the background, but seems to have darker toes to indicate toenails.
The Warchanter is definitely painted as if he had toenails, but oddly doesn't have fingernails. Though his feet are weirdly misshapen.
I don't know whats he's talking about, they still have "claws"
Looks like they're somewhat inconsistent. The new warbands have claws on their fingers but neither nails nor claws on their feet.
The Ironjawz models are mostly wearing boots, but they mostly still have claws on their hands and the two models that do have exposed feet also have weird hands that don't match the rest of the range.
Yeah.....that Savage orc is a pretty big let down. Especially considering how great I feel The Dread Pageant, Khagra’s Ravagers, and the Crimson Court look. I also think the Seraphon and Elves (well not Myari) look pretty good. The first orc looked okay, but this guy is terrible. Definitely not up to season standards.
The Ossiarch silhouette looks great, though I really haven’t liked many of the non characters from the faction because their faces look too silly to me.
I don’t understand why everyone seems to be on a downer about the Savage Orc? It looks pretty cool to me, the only negative that I can see is the visible join on its left elbow.
I mean, it’s clearly a step up from the regular Savage Orc boys.
Undead_Love-Machine wrote: I don’t understand why everyone seems to be on a downer about the Savage Orc? It looks pretty cool to me, the only negative that I can see is the visible join on its left elbow.
I mean, it’s clearly a step up from the regular Savage Orc boys.
How so?
The paint job isn't quite so bad (no solid black depths and solid white 'edge highlighting'), but there are so many things missing (toenails), weird (mutant feet), or added (orcs have nipples now?), that it doesn't feel like a step up so much as a step sideways into all new mistakes.
Undead_Love-Machine wrote: I don’t understand why everyone seems to be on a downer about the Savage Orc? It looks pretty cool to me, the only negative that I can see is the visible join on its left elbow.
I mean, it’s clearly a step up from the regular Savage Orc boys.
For me the bone piercings on the leg are what really pushed it over the edge, they look terrible to me. They look as if they are actually part of the miniature's physique rather than a foreign object.
Orcs have claw like nails, so it's a weird omission.
Not any more. Check the Ironjawz minis.
Almost all of them have boots.
The Brute that doesn't is in the background, but seems to have darker toes to indicate toenails.
The Warchanter is definitely painted as if he had toenails, but oddly doesn't have fingernails. Though his feet are weirdly misshapen.
I don't know whats he's talking about, they still have "claws"
Looks like they're somewhat inconsistent. The new warbands have claws on their fingers but neither nails nor claws on their feet.
The Ironjawz models are mostly wearing boots, but they mostly still have claws on their hands and the two models that do have exposed feet also have weird hands that don't match the rest of the range.
Different designers maybe?
I imagine they meant look at the Warchanter, who does have toes, but no nail claws. (Also the shoeless orruk from the second Ironjawz underworld team)
Spoiler:
Does it look good? Eh. I didn't like it when the warchanter came out (feet wise), and I don't like it any better on savage orruks.
Also, I'm glad everyone is as interested in ork toes as I am
Undead_Love-Machine wrote: I don’t understand why everyone seems to be on a downer about the Savage Orc? It looks pretty cool to me, the only negative that I can see is the visible join on its left elbow.
I mean, it’s clearly a step up from the regular Savage Orc boys.
How so?
The pose: it's light years ahead of the standard Boy, way more dynamic. It's actually doing something, as opposed to just standing with its arms in the air. I love the weapon too! Bone Tomahawks make me think of the film of the same name, which is an underrated gem.
Voss wrote:The paint job isn't quite so bad (no solid black depths and solid white 'edge highlighting'), but there are so many things missing (toenails), weird (mutant feet), or added (orcs have nipples now?), that it doesn't feel like a step up so much as a step sideways into all new mistakes.
It looks like the painter just forgot to paint the toenails on? The nipple could be removed easily if it's not wanted. Can't say i see a problem with the feet TBH.
Sabotage! wrote:
Undead_Love-Machine wrote: I don’t understand why everyone seems to be on a downer about the Savage Orc? It looks pretty cool to me, the only negative that I can see is the visible join on its left elbow.
I mean, it’s clearly a step up from the regular Savage Orc boys.
For me the bone piercings on the leg are what really pushed it over the edge, they look terrible to me. They look as if they are actually part of the miniature's physique rather than a foreign object.
Yeah, I see what you mean about the leg piercings, they are pretty flat. I guess that this is bound to happen from time to time with the limitations of plastic tooling combined with little sprue space.
This has become a '2/10 Would Not Orc' thread very quickly. I think they look just fine, maybe the weakest of the expansion run for Direchasm, but still one of the stronger expansions for Underworlds overall, at least by the first two reveals.
frankelee wrote: Are we talking sharp claw-like toenails, or just toenails? 'Cause I can clearly see them modeled on. Painter just didn't bother himself.
These kind of toes are fine on Ironjawz, and many of the models have similar toes. They've got nothing but new models, and the older black orcs all have shoes, ergo no feet.
However, every single savage orc model has sharp claw-like toenails, so some continuity would be nice
Not all that keen on Direchasm's theme so its good to see another starter with the casts'n'haunts. If its a bit kinder in price I might take the plunge and join you all for Underworlds.
You mean the set with the recycled models? Of course, but it'd still be too expensive for set with recycled models.
Look at direchasm, each team + card cost 40US$, so buying the whole set, i got 5 US$ off and "free" gameboard, token and dice.
Now look at this new starter, each team is 15US$ (without the cards) on GW store, so how much would they price this? Look at the "champion of dreadfan" set, same 15US$ team and they sell it for 60US$ (and 58US$ after they retired it and repack it, but without the board and the new mechanic cards) So I got NO discount, and have to pay a truckload for all of the extra.
Might as well buy the Direchasm(or Beastgrave) starter if you want to play. Plus those team have wizards, which can help score some easy points, what needed to win the game.
I just don't fancy the teams in those two sets, and I already have the Sepulchral Guard with the decks still sealed. The models in this set will at least see reuse in AoS as I collect those factions, and I was going to buy them down the road anyway.
No idea at this time as to the price, but to even have a starter set opposed to the current starter set, which is selling at £50? I'd venture about £40.
Selpuchral guards were the top-performing team, back in season 1, iirc.
Wonder how well they hold up, now that there's warbands with ranged weapons (which did appear in season 1), magic, that hunter mechanic, etc.
The real question is, can any of the mini starter set warbands, like the glaivewraith stalkers, become a top tier warband? Would be funny to see them sweep the championship
Yeah, sepulchral guard was the worst team in the game. They were slow as sloth and their inspire condition was literally feeding points to your opponent and waste your activation to bring them back, yikes.
In ss2 some cards was banned and some mechanic was changed, which help them somewhat.
Also not recommend playing them for starting player, that'd be the equivalent of playing halfling and goblin team in Blood bowls.
SamusDrake wrote: IThe models in this set will at least see reuse in AoS as I collect those factions, and I was going to buy them down the road anyway.
You will not though. The castigators and glaivewraiths are two units that have no reason to exist and you'd be better off buying command points for the same points in AoS proper.
Might be an okay buy at £30, but ti's probably will be £37.5-£40 because dreadfan.
In that case don't. meme-players shouldn't have to put up with GW's insane pricing. Other players did because "new models", or they're serious competitive players.
It looks like net-decks. Requires no skill to build, only money to assemble the components. From the top tier decks it looks like a draw from 8-9 expansions.
Common thing with CCGs...some excellent deck builders design a great deck, and EVERYONE copies it. Helps mitigate a lack of skill when card draw takes care of itself.
Meme-player is a pretty common term in card games for someone who actively goes against the meta focusing on making a deck around an unlikely wombo combo or something similar for fun. They're different from casual players in that they'll invest in making it, even if it's got a low winrate.
Tyranid Horde wrote: Meme-player is a pretty common term in card games for someone who actively goes against the meta focusing on making a deck around an unlikely wombo combo or something similar for fun. They're different from casual players in that they'll invest in making it, even if it's got a low winrate.
Never heard of it. It sounds great though!
I thought that was called "a narrative list". (or just plain, having actual fun list )
I might be a meme-player then, but to be honest, I was probably forced to become one because Im really bad at making competetiv lists.
Also, I get sick to my stomach each time I get the suggestion to spam the new "flavour of the month" unit or combo to win.
Tyranid Horde wrote: Meme-player is a pretty common term in card games for someone who actively goes against the meta focusing on making a deck around an unlikely wombo combo or something similar for fun. They're different from casual players in that they'll invest in making it, even if it's got a low winrate.
Never heard of it. It sounds great though!
I thought that was called "a narrative list". (or just plain, having actual fun list )
I might be a meme-player then, but to be honest, I was probably forced to become one because Im really bad at making competetiv lists.
Also, I get sick to my stomach each time I get the suggestion to spam the new "flavour of the month" unit or combo to win.
It's honestly a great way to play sometimes. Your objective isn't really to win, it's to do something ridiculous or janky in the scope of the game and maybe win. I am not sure if it's possible with what's available in Underworlds as I've not played a game yet, but very easy in other games. It also helps your deck building due to there being no decks on the internet of them.
Tyranid Horde wrote: Meme-player is a pretty common term in card games for someone who actively goes against the meta focusing on making a deck around an unlikely wombo combo or something similar for fun. They're different from casual players in that they'll invest in making it, even if it's got a low winrate.
Never heard of it. It sounds great though!
I thought that was called "a narrative list". (or just plain, having actual fun list )
I might be a meme-player then, but to be honest, I was probably forced to become one because Im really bad at making competetiv lists.
Also, I get sick to my stomach each time I get the suggestion to spam the new "flavour of the month" unit or combo to win.
It's honestly a great way to play sometimes. Your objective isn't really to win, it's to do something ridiculous or janky in the scope of the game and maybe win. I am not sure if it's possible with what's available in Underworlds as I've not played a game yet, but very easy in other games. It also helps your deck building due to there being no decks on the internet of them.
You can win with any deck if you roll enough crit.
some other factor might contribute like only drawing the cards you need, or opp have garbage starting hand.
Also a "meme players" are player who play for fun and not caring about the win (or so they should), which applied for every player who just play using what come in the box, or maybe they have all the cards but just like to put what ever cards that is considered bad that season in their deck.
"Hey can I play the game with just 1 box?" Sure, absolutely, just play for fun, not for the win. The fact is that if they manage to win against comp players is a meme itself. But for this game, rolling the dice is still a big part of it, so that sort of thing shouln't be impossible.
Chopstick wrote: You can win with any deck if you roll enough crit.
some other factor might contribute like only drawing the cards you need, or opp have garbage starting hand.
Also a "meme players" are player who play for fun and not caring about the win (or so they should), which applied for every player who just play using what come in the box, or maybe they have all the cards but just like to put what ever cards that is considered bad that season in their deck.
"Hey can I play the game with just 1 box?" Sure, absolutely, just play for fun, not for the win. The fact is that if they manage to win against comp players is a meme itself. But for this game, rolling the dice is still a big part of it, so that sort of thing shouln't be impossible.
Saying someone is a meme player just for playing stuff out of the box isn't a meme player and I can see why that'd be insulting to someone who doesn't play competitively. I have the starting warbands because I've just started, does that make me a bad player? Someone who shoves bad cards into their deck isn't a meme player either. Meme decks are very specific things, not just a case of "oh I brought my starter deck and beat a comp deck, lol what a meme".
It feels like there needs to be a joke or a story to the deck / team. Some 'thing' to it that makes it worth telling a story about it at the pub after the game.
Saying someone is a meme player just for playing stuff out of the box isn't a meme player and I can see why that'd be insulting to someone who doesn't play competitively. I have the starting warbands because I've just started, does that make me a bad player?
Your word, not mine, never said or mention anything about "bad player". You called yourself bad, i told you to play for fun. playing even knowing that your deck isn't optimized, a win is a win, a loss is.. well just another game. I guess people prefer being called casual than "meme player"
The "bad player" are the toxic one, which is not fun to play with.
That said I do wish to see a player with 1 or only a few expansion to win a tourney, that'd be glorious,
I don't play Underworlds, I mostly follow the thread because I think the models are pretty, but to kind of use an example from a game I play, Star Wars Imperial Assault.
Casual: I have these models from the main box and I've made my list based on this plus another couple of purchases.
Meme: MRRRRWWWRRRMMM ALL WOOKIEES, with cards based on pulling peoples arms off.
Compel wrote: I don't play Underworlds, I mostly follow the thread because I think the models are pretty, but to kind of use an example from a game I play, Star Wars Imperial Assault.
Casual: I have these models from the main box and I've made my list based on this plus another couple of purchases.
Meme: MRRRRWWWRRRMMM ALL WOOKIEES, with cards based on pulling peoples arms off.
It doesn't really work like that in Underworlds, because your deck is limited to only having one of any given card. You can't gain an advantage by buying several boxes of the "best" warband this month.
There's no doubt that having all the currently usable warbands (and hence cards) gives a competitive player an advantage, but it's not like anyone's going to be spamming multiples of any card because that's not allowed.
The newer warbands definitely work better out of the box (using faction-only cards) than many of the earlier warbands, but I don't think any of them are really great like that. Hrothgorn's faction deck isn't even tournament-legal.
Saying someone is a meme player just for playing stuff out of the box isn't a meme player and I can see why that'd be insulting to someone who doesn't play competitively. I have the starting warbands because I've just started, does that make me a bad player?
Your word, not mine, never said or mention anything about "bad player". You called yourself bad, i told you to play for fun. playing even knowing that your deck isn't optimized, a win is a win, a loss is.. well just another game. I guess people prefer being called casual than "meme player"
The "bad player" are the toxic one, which is not fun to play with.
That said I do wish to see a player with 1 or only a few expansion to win a tourney, that'd be glorious,
I mean, the implication was there as you addressed "bad cards", but I'll hold my hands up, I did say bad player myself. I didn't say I was bad though
However, I will say that that is the common attitude from competitive players, and addressing everyone who isn't a competitive player a "meme-player" is very inaccurate.
The wife and I are just getting into Underworlds. How do sets/cards/warbands rotating out of organized play work? Are the season 3 warbands about to be invalidated? Is it even worth hunting down season 2 warbands?
NewTruthNeomaxim wrote: The wife and I are just getting into Underworlds. How do sets/cards/warbands rotating out of organized play work? Are the season 3 warbands about to be invalidated? Is it even worth hunting down season 2 warbands?
The warbands and their faction specific cards are fine, it’s the universal cards that rotate out.
Sure is a lot of lore around Beastgrave. What are the chances GW is going to move this story forward via an Underworld competition? Whichever warband of the 8 this season wins the tournament accomplishes their goal, that sort of thing.
Skinks win, they trick the mountain to destroy themselves. Lumineth calm it, orruks kill it, Hedonites turn it into the chaos diety, etc.
NewTruthNeomaxim wrote: The wife and I are just getting into Underworlds. How do sets/cards/warbands rotating out of organized play work? Are the season 3 warbands about to be invalidated? Is it even worth hunting down season 2 warbands?
The warbands and their faction specific cards are fine, it’s the universal cards that rotate out.
How often/quickly does that happen? It sounds as if worrying about buying "everything" for access to all the cards, is disincentivized if they do it each season?
NewTruthNeomaxim wrote: The wife and I are just getting into Underworlds. How do sets/cards/warbands rotating out of organized play work? Are the season 3 warbands about to be invalidated? Is it even worth hunting down season 2 warbands?
The warbands and their faction specific cards are fine, it’s the universal cards that rotate out.
How often/quickly does that happen? It sounds as if worrying about buying "everything" for access to all the cards, is disincentivized if they do it each season?
It seems to be every 3 sets, the universals get rotated out of the oldest set.
An important notation is that most Universals that get rotated out get replaced by a new card that does something similar but is less of a "must have" or just gets reprinted with new art.
I would love to get my hand on Khagra's Ravagers before Seraphon. They were supposed to be released 5 weeks ago but I don't know any shop in Finland that received any. But hey, at least we got our first wave of Codex: Death Guard this week.
GW's distribution has been off the rails since the double blows of Covid and Brexit. I have $1500 worth of orders in limbo because their shipping, communication with stores, etc... has just completely broken down.
GaroRobe wrote: Sure is a lot of lore around Beastgrave. What are the chances GW is going to move this story forward via an Underworld competition? Whichever warband of the 8 this season wins the tournament accomplishes their goal, that sort of thing.
Skinks win, they trick the mountain to destroy themselves. Lumineth calm it, orruks kill it, Hedonites turn it into the chaos diety, etc.
Doubt it, but it would be so dam cool if they did.
They tried that with Eye of Terror and Storm of Chaos.
Sadly, people on the internet got salty when it turned out both campaigns were won by the side with the greater number of players, because that’s how averages tend to work.
If memory serves;
The Chaos won the Eye of Terror campaign and GW had to say basically they won the ground war but not the space war to explain why this didn't result in a race for Terra.
And in Storm of Chaos, the grand sweeping narrative of Order vs Chaos was won by... the Orks! So they had Grimgor rock up, kicking the snot out of Valten and Archaon then just wondering off after making both of them look like weaklings XD
So for me they were both fiascos for the opposite reason, an unexpected faction won but GW didn't follow thorugh and booked a Dusty finish to expain why Chaos and Orks didn't technically win or change anything XD
The Nemesis Crown or Medusa V campaigns are examples of how you handle a campaign like this well, including not promising earth shattering consequences.
The Eye of Terror thing was legit; Imperial battefleets absolutely pasted chaos in the BFG half of the campaign. Not really surprising since the imperial fleet composition was specifically designed to counter chaos-aligned raiders and the speed advantages chaos had weren’t super useful when trying to besiege or defend a planet.
More recently, didn't AOS do that with the cities in the realm of life? Forces of order overwhelming won the three or so campaigns/battle compilations, so the cities weren't destroyed by chaos or orruks and were allowed to expand in the lore.
With AOS/Underworlds, the lore is constantly expanding. So it shouldn't matter who wins Beastgrave, since otherwise, it's unlikely to ever be resolved, despite the plot expanding in other places.
Yeah they have done it before with AoS and despite numerous people absolutely insisting it would be ret-conned or never referred to again the results were incorporated into the lore. For the Seeds of Hope in a pretty big way too. Greywater Fastness which was held by the slimmest margin (the margin of victory seems to have been reflected in the fluff) has featured in numerous stories since, with the desperate measures they went to in order to survive having significant ramifications.
The Malign Portents campaign the players did not ultimately have an affect on the end result (Necroquake) which imo worked fine because GW sort of implied from the start that it was inevitable. What did matter was the things that happened along the way, many of which have not been particularly relevant since but some have been explicitly referred to and are implied that they will matter in the future (we have yet to see if/how much this will play out, but IMO we could have Daemon Prince Khul if a different option had been taken *shakes fist*).
jullevi wrote: I would love to get my hand on Khagra's Ravagers before Seraphon. They were supposed to be released 5 weeks ago but I don't know any shop in Finland that received any. But hey, at least we got our first wave of Codex: Death Guard this week.
I got my preordered one at the beginning of the March. Batch was small and barely covered orders so nothing hit the shelves or so I've heard.
Let's hope things get better soon.
On the note, very excited about Seraphons and definitely make an pre-order. I've been waiting like... 2 seasons.
Man, that is one sweet OBR. I wish I the whole range had faces like that. He looks genuinely disturbing rather than like he was an extra from Masters of the Universe.
Just combine them into the ultimate skellie. Though maybe the Chickenwalker guy's hands would work better. His soul-totem thingy is a bit cooler, since it has a nicer looking ghost
Kiwis' online shop has this weeks preorders up, and we have finally our full 3D preview of the full warband. They surely bring foward The Great Plan.
They cost $75 NZ, and only uses two sprues, which makes the plan of Crendor (WoW and no WarhammerCrendor) of buying like 5 boxes something reasonable.
And, for 225 points, we can send the Starblood Stalker to the battlefield of the Mortal Realms. They have the Keywords COALESCED, THUNDER LIZARD, which surprised me a lot because I expected them to be neutral.
CMLR wrote: Kiwis' online shop has this weeks preorders up, and we have finally our full 3D preview of the full warband. They surely bring foward The Great Plan.
They cost $75 NZ, and only uses two sprues, which makes the plan of Crendor (WoW and no WarhammerCrendor) of buying like 5 boxes something reasonable.
And, for 225 points, we can send the Starblood Stalker to the battlefield of the Mortal Realms. They have the Keywords COALESCED, THUNDER LIZARD, which surprised me a lot because I expected them to be neutral.
225 points may seem hefty but they're actually not that bad. Not as ridiculous as the obviously mispriced Morgwaeth's Bladecoven (which gives you a Hag Queen with a better weapon for LESS points than a Hag Queen plus some bodyguard chaff. Whoops.) but not that bad. The only major downer here is the Thunder Lizard keyword. You get a Priest who can use his command ability of +1 to hit on the Stalkers for free, an entire unit that can deploy and ambush and a Saurus oldblood with a decent number of attacks who functions as a Ld boost for them.
Initial impressions
Skinks are skinks. Eh. The core unit of 4 models isn't that special or amazing. They can deploy in ambush. Have meh damage and attacks. Suspect their sole purpose is to be chaff for the Chameleon Skink.
Kixi-Taka - Standard Skink Priest with one bonus wound - actually,that's important as the Coalesced keyword means they deduct 1 damage from all attacks that hit them. Have the 2 standard Priest abilities. The roll of a 3+ save boost (that becomes 2+ on Starblood Stalkers - AND turns them into a 4+ save for the buckler skinks - that might be useful). Command ability is free if used on Starblood Stalkers - so not too shabby. Makes them very self sufficient as a blob.
Klaq-Trok - Saurus Oldblood with a worse save but 1 inch more movement. No command ability. BUT he gets to deploy in ambush with the others so you can throw the mini murder machine of attacks into something fairly quickly.
Thunder Lizard is probably the worst bit. Pointswise they seem efficient? Depends on how much you value that ambush.
Kainen is awesome. The rest are okay I guess (for OBR), the yelling one looks pretty derpy. Not my favorite Warband of the season, but I’m not a huge fan of the OBR heads, so I think I’m not the target audience for this one.
. They might be a dual kit with walkers/thralls. Maybe thralls will get weapons and walkers will just be cheaper. It could help flesh out units, having thralls move quicker and have weapons while having walker/zombies be harder to damage/remove as they are too stupid to die fully.
. I wonder if they're any better once they get a separate release, sans cards...
, Not a very threatening name 
