Looks good to me. A lot of usr to remember, but with Stillmanism as my guiding star I only need to recall a single army. Also think a lot a of this stuff will be tidied up with the release of bret army book.
Didnt like the armor bane on 6 to wound. It slows down the game for a very minor boost.
Cant wait for army selection, but since there was no Rare tag on the grail knights, I assume the imo brilliant 3 specials and 2 rares system is out in favor of a more or less 'take whatever you want' style army. A pity if so, as it makes armies more rock paper sciccors.
nathan2004 wrote: They moved things like formation types a unit can make and things like stomp away from all unit types have this rule to the actual datasheet that way they can restrict say Empire Knights from doing lance formation and so on. Realize that's probably not the best example but y'all hopefully get my point.
Warhammer fantasy has always been a lot of special rules to remember, which you did by playing a lot. It beats the current state of 40k where there are no USRs really and just a different name for the same thing over multiple factions or one faction has a better USR then the rest lol.
Army selection is next week's preview!
Double post
40k went to usr's in 10th. And hh2 and li. Gw went to usr side of pendulum swing now.
nathan2004 wrote: They moved things like formation types a unit can make and things like stomp away from all unit types have this rule to the actual datasheet that way they can restrict say Empire Knights from doing lance formation and so on. Realize that's probably not the best example but y'all hopefully get my point.
Warhammer fantasy has always been a lot of special rules to remember, which you did by playing a lot. It beats the current state of 40k where there are no USRs really and just a different name for the same thing over multiple factions or one faction has a better USR then the rest lol.
Army selection is next week's preview!
Double post
40k went to usr's in 10th. And hh2 and li. Gw went to usr side of pendulum swing now.
Meh, 10th 40k doesn't really have USR's. It has like 3 rules that they hand out but it has vastly more of the exact same rule named something different on multiple datasheets or rules that are insanely similar with one being slightly better (move 6" instead of d6") from datasheet to datasheet. This feels more like a return to true USR's. Which seems to be a specialist game thing thank goodness.
Not sure how I feel about the number of USR, yes I know Grail Knights are Uber Knights, and I am aware that a few of those USR are core rules (formations and such).
All that said I can not shake the feeling that GW's reluctantance to use dice other than the D6, handicaps them a lot, and thus they rely upon a geological layer of special rules to help make things stand out.
Just use a wider range of Dice GW! D10's won't hurt you!
How is this special rules bloat? It's 75 USRs in the main book rather than a half-hearted attempt at a 20-25 USRs scattered around a rulebook and then literally over 1000 bespoke rules on unit cards. That's bloat, especially when so many of them are slight variations on the same rule or type of rule.
It does occur to me that the unit entry is missing any indication which book to look in for any given USR, the army book or the rulebook
(and if HH is any indication, each book also has USRs arbitrarily divided into several sections with no logic to speak of and some wildly creative alphabetization.)
Presentation-wise, I think it would have been slightly better to list formation separately, or with base size if desperate to avoid an additional line, rather than have to scan the SR part of each entry.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the days of "go and double check the war beasts section and note their specific rules and THEN the USRs that are bolted onto them" are over.
Great to see a unit that is supposed to be legendarily powerful has a torrent of rules and specialness!
How is this special rules bloat? It's 75 USRs in the main book rather than a half-hearted attempt at a 20-25 USRs scattered around a rulebook and then literally over 1000 bespoke rules on unit cards. That's bloat, especially when so many of them are slight variations on the same rule or type of rule.
I'm used to 6th. Every unit entry or profile shown thus far is bloated by comparison.
yeah, "rebasing" is the main thing for a lot of people for about half a year now, simply to have their collection up to date when the game drops although a lot of them are not going to plan on playing it (at least the reddit community is mostly collectors)
will be funny when new models come with the usual GW style of consistency to use whatever base size the designer thought fits best
but I have to say I am a little surprised that GW uses generic and old base sizes for the units.
30x60 and 40x60 are widely available because of their use in historical games
Well only known thing is that 20mm are moving to 25mm ones. Beyond that, there is strong chance that there is some difference by unit rather then by type.
For example, Tomb King chariots could be on smaller bases then other ones by simply 1) Being "Light Chariots" (old moniker). 2) For easier manouvers for being a unit of chariots. 3) Wouldn't look good on bigger base.
Giving up first turn is presented as something heavy. An actual cost. But…it’s not. With an army of Cavalry, I’m not about to move up the board and make your life even easier when it comes to charging. So really, you get a nice Ward save, and I lose my first turn of movement.
Unless I get super jammy with my ranged attacks and spells? It’s an entirely one sided exchange. And having Last Turn is often a boon too, as you can do last minute charges, maybe pick off a now loan character etc.
Giving up first turn is presented as something heavy. An actual cost. But…it’s not. With an army of Cavalry, I’m not about to move up the board and make your life even easier when it comes to charging. So really, you get a nice Ward save, and I lose my first turn of movement.
Unless I get super jammy with my ranged attacks and spells? It’s an entirely one sided exchange. And having Last Turn is often a boon too, as you can do last minute charges, maybe pick off a now loan character etc.
Boo to this. Boo I say. Booooooooo!
In 8th I generally agree with you, but maybe not so much in the old world. With give ground and FBIGO you need to have space behind your units to give ground into - so your opponent stepping forward even a little can double the distance between the back of their units and the edge of the board. That has value I would think.
as someone who has played Brets for quite some time, I love the blessing, the enemy is generally deployed such that they cannot shoot at me without moving up a bit due to the range being over 24", and if they stay still longbows can hurt them
so they will advance, if I go first I end up mid board, to maybe take a charge, or get peppered by arrows
if they go first they have to move up, perhaps allowing me to charge and dilute their firepower
plus as noted you get the last turn, there is essentially no real downside to it
Well I started to wonder how some of the Empire units get treated. Outright removed, retconned or renamed?
Some of the fancier firearms and artillery was invented long after Siege of Praag, Colleges of Magic didn't exist, magic/sorcery/witchcraft was outright banned and States/Counts relied more on militia and mercenaries.
Sotahullu wrote: Well I started to wonder how some of the Empire units get treated. Outright removed, retconned or renamed?
Some of the fancier firearms and artillery was invented long after Siege of Praag, Colleges of Magic didn't exist, magic/sorcery/witchcraft was outright banned and States/Counts relied more on militia and mercenaries.
Weird enough, I think Steam Tanks were around.
Might depend on the province, initial posts said there’d potentially be 4 Empire variants.
E.g. with Wizards Middenheim had a Wizard and Alchemist guild for over a millennium at this point and according to older sources Talabheim had a wizard college since the start of Ao3E and Marienburg potentially their sea wizards.
It’s only the Reikland supporting section (the most Sigmarite province) that is really anti wizards.
Repeater handguns, volley guns and hell storm rockets might be gone though, as presumably the hurricanium/luminark
Sotahullu wrote: Well I started to wonder how some of the Empire units get treated. Outright removed, retconned or renamed?
Some of the fancier firearms and artillery was invented long after Siege of Praag, Colleges of Magic didn't exist, magic/sorcery/witchcraft was outright banned and States/Counts relied more on militia and mercenaries.
Weird enough, I think Steam Tanks were around.
Might depend on the province, initial posts said there’d potentially be 4 Empire variants.
E.g. with Wizards Middenheim had a Wizard and Alchemist guild for over a millennium at this point and according to older sources Talabheim had a wizard college since the start of Ao3E and Marienburg potentially their sea wizards.
It’s only the Reikland supporting section (the most Sigmarite province) that is really anti wizards.
Repeater handguns, volley guns and hell storm rockets might be gone though, as presumably the hurricanium/luminark
Agreed - Reikland is the outlyer with not offically having Wizards guilds etc - Middenhiem was a centre of magical learning for most of its history and Talabheim, Marienburg and Nuln all had their own Guilds or schools. However it would also be good if they have have the priests and warrior priests of other Cults - esp Mymidia, Verena etc rather than just Sigmar, Sigmar, Sigmar - and of course new models for old players
Sotahullu wrote: Well I started to wonder how some of the Empire units get treated. Outright removed, retconned or renamed?
Some of the fancier firearms and artillery was invented long after Siege of Praag, Colleges of Magic didn't exist, magic/sorcery/witchcraft was outright banned and States/Counts relied more on militia and mercenaries.
Weird enough, I think Steam Tanks were around.
Might depend on the province, initial posts said there’d potentially be 4 Empire variants.
E.g. with Wizards Middenheim had a Wizard and Alchemist guild for over a millennium at this point and according to older sources Talabheim had a wizard college since the start of Ao3E and Marienburg potentially their sea wizards.
It’s only the Reikland supporting section (the most Sigmarite province) that is really anti wizards.
Repeater handguns, volley guns and hell storm rockets might be gone though, as presumably the hurricanium/luminark
Agreed - Reikland is the outlyer with not offically having Wizards guilds etc - Middenhiem was a centre of magical learning for most of its history and Talabheim, Marienburg and Nuln all had their own Guilds or schools. However it would also be good if they have have the priests and warrior priests of other Cults - esp Mymidia, Verena etc rather than just Sigmar, Sigmar, Sigmar - and of course new models for old players
Yeah, I’d be really surprised tbh if we don’t get Ulrican, Taalite and Manaanite priests for Middenheim, Talabheim and Marienburg factions respectively. Gives easy flavour for the factions and something new for GW to sell.
chaos0xomega wrote: The luminark and hurricanum were explicitly inventions of the Imperial Colleges of Magic, so absent a retcon they wouldn't be present.
I think the fans care a lot more about that kind of stuff than GW does. I would not be surprised if they just ignore that kind of thing and put it all in.
chaos0xomega wrote: The luminark and hurricanum were explicitly inventions of the Imperial Colleges of Magic, so absent a retcon they wouldn't be present.
I think the fans care a lot more about that kind of stuff than GW does. I would not be surprised if they just ignore that kind of thing and put it all in.
It also depends on which fans. Don't forget a lot of people only see an army in a visual sense rather than a lore accurate one and even if they do follow the lore; its Battletome level lore rather than digging into all the surrounding books.
It's also possible that GW can take the concept of latter generation inventions and back-engineer an earlier version that perhaps fits the same game role and some style elements, but is more primitive/different in style. Something that perhaps was the forerunner that became things like the Hurricanum
chaos0xomega wrote: The luminark and hurricanum were explicitly inventions of the Imperial Colleges of Magic, so absent a retcon they wouldn't be present.
I think the fans care a lot more about that kind of stuff than GW does. I would not be surprised if they just ignore that kind of thing and put it all in.
It also depends on which fans. Don't forget a lot of people only see an army in a visual sense rather than a lore accurate one and even if they do follow the lore; its Battletome level lore rather than digging into all the surrounding books.
It's also possible that GW can take the concept of latter generation inventions and back-engineer an earlier version that perhaps fits the same game role and some style elements, but is more primitive/different in style. Something that perhaps was the forerunner that became things like the Hurricanum
Worth noting they’re still being sold for AoS, so potentially that’s an indication they may not transfer across.
On a similar note though, I wonder how the indices will handle special characters? GW said there’d be rules for all the old armies but many special characters really don’t fit into the timeframe.
I wonder if the initial get you bys will have rules for stuff that doesn’t fit the era? (Possibly sectioned off?)
IIRC the Age of Sigmar release pdfs made many of the special characters into alternate sculpts for generic heroes, that might be the approach they take with TOW as well.
That or they might reclassify some as new hero's of old or make them generic heroes.
Eg We might not get Franz and his Twin headed Griffin but we might get Bob and his twin headed Griffin.
Old Stuff still in AoS might still port over. At least I'd say anything in Cities of Sigmar that is old-World could be ripe for plucking and moving into the old game. It still has lots of parts that don't quite "fit" AoS or haven't been fleshed out properly/fully or are just hangons. So I'd still put a question mark over everything that wasn't part of the new refresh.
Everything else should be fine; though we might see Demon models do triple duty and move over same as how they work in AoS and 40K (and historically in 40K and Old world)
Many months ago I made a point that most of the current Empire range is inappropriate because of all the Sigmar imagery. My understanding of the setting is that worship was heavily diversified between Empire factions and worship of Sigmar was considered second-rate to outright heresy among the Ulricans/Taalites. Thus, anything with a reference to Sigmar or the twin-tailed comer might as well be a Chaos star for at least half of the Empire factions.
Overread wrote: That or they might reclassify some as new hero's of old or make them generic heroes.
Eg We might not get Franz and his Twin headed Griffin but we might get Bob and his twin headed Griffin.
Old Stuff still in AoS might still port over. At least I'd say anything in Cities of Sigmar that is old-World could be ripe for plucking and moving into the old game. It still has lots of parts that don't quite "fit" AoS or haven't been fleshed out properly/fully or are just hangons. So I'd still put a question mark over everything that wasn't part of the new refresh.
Everything else should be fine; though we might see Demon models do triple duty and move over same as how they work in AoS and 40K (and historically in 40K and Old world)
AoS did a big purge of a lot of old WFB stuff a couple of months ago (mostly from CoS). That stuff I *would* expect to reappear rebadged as TOW, especially as it contained all the HE (who are a core TOW race) and all the old WFB artillery.
But IMO that puts the stuff which survived the purge in a dicier position.
Mozzamanx wrote: Many months ago I made a point that most of the current Empire range is inappropriate because of all the Sigmar imagery. My understanding of the setting is that worship was heavily diversified between Empire factions and worship of Sigmar was considered second-rate to outright heresy among the Ulricans/Taalites. Thus, anything with a reference to Sigmar or the twin-tailed comer might as well be a Chaos star for at least half of the Empire factions.
Yes and no. Religion is of course used for political reasons - both by rulers and the cults themselves.
Sigmar is the patron god of the Empire but often other gods outside the Reikland are as important or even more so. Talabheim is probably the most prominent as under its first (self proclaimed) Empress it denounced the Cult of Sigmar as a heresy with Ar-Ulric moving to her city to support her and her claim. However alot of people are not going to be anti-Sigmar as such.
Alot depends I feel on how many new models they want to do - as priests and warriors priests of the various sects seem an easy win - help distinguish factions and provide different forms of magic for thre Empire whilst providing sexy new models for us to buy.
Overread wrote:That or they might reclassify some as new hero's of old or make them generic heroes.
Eg We might not get Franz and his Twin headed Griffin but we might get Bob and his twin headed Griffin.
Old Stuff still in AoS might still port over. At least I'd say anything in Cities of Sigmar that is old-World could be ripe for plucking and moving into the old game. It still has lots of parts that don't quite "fit" AoS or haven't been fleshed out properly/fully or are just hangons. So I'd still put a question mark over everything that wasn't part of the new refresh.
Everything else should be fine; though we might see Demon models do triple duty and move over same as how they work in AoS and 40K (and historically in 40K and Old world)
Pretty sure a handy rename will be the answer. Look at the new Unicorn Prophetess they showed. It's literally Morgana Le Fay. Not named that, but it's the exact same loadout.
Hulksmash wrote: I'd expect the Dark Elf and Dwarf stuff to still shift over. Can't imagine longbeards/ironbreakers/hammerers not making the jump back.
And doesn't AoS still have almost the entire DE range for Cities?
Dark Elves are not a core race so they’re not jumping back at all (get-you-by list aside), imo probably part of why all the HE got purged but none of the DE did.
The Dwarfs stuff is more weird unless they’re bringing back the old metals like with the WE Treeman (though the last set of basic plastics did technically make longbeards).
Pointedly, post purge, other than BoC and WoC all the Core armies no longer have a substantial AoS presence. Most of the remaining Empire stuff is not in the right timeframe.
All the AoS armies that kept a substantial amount of the WFB range are not Core so won’t be supported beyond the initial lists.
If you see what they’re doing with 40k and Heresy atm, trying to keep the lines separate seems to be their plan.
Mozzamanx wrote: Many months ago I made a point that most of the current Empire range is inappropriate because of all the Sigmar imagery. My understanding of the setting is that worship was heavily diversified between Empire factions and worship of Sigmar was considered second-rate to outright heresy among the Ulricans/Taalites. Thus, anything with a reference to Sigmar or the twin-tailed comer might as well be a Chaos star for at least half of the Empire factions.
I would think all the old Empire kits with the name "Karl Franz" decoratively sculpted into armor and heraldry (like the Demigryph Knights) might be a bigger issue.
Hulksmash wrote: I'd expect the Dark Elf and Dwarf stuff to still shift over. Can't imagine longbeards/ironbreakers/hammerers not making the jump back.
And doesn't AoS still have almost the entire DE range for Cities?
Dark Elves are a non-supported pdf faction for TOW. The dark elf kits are going to remain in AoS, they are split between Cities and Daughters of Khaine.
Hulksmash wrote: I'd expect the Dark Elf and Dwarf stuff to still shift over. Can't imagine longbeards/ironbreakers/hammerers not making the jump back.
And doesn't AoS still have almost the entire DE range for Cities?
Dark Elves are not a core race so they’re not jumping back at all (get-you-by list aside), imo probably part of why all the HE got purged but none of the DE did.
The Dwarfs stuff is more weird unless they’re bringing back the old metals like with the WE Treeman (though the last set of basic plastics did technically make longbeards).
Pointedly, post purge, other than BoC and WoC all the Core armies no longer have a substantial AoS presence. Most of the remaining Empire stuff is not in the right timeframe.
All the AoS armies that kept a substantial amount of the WFB range are not Core so won’t be supported beyond the initial lists.
If you see what they’re doing with 40k and Heresy atm, trying to keep the lines separate seems to be their plan.
We already have seen reference to iron drakes in tow so will be in both games.
The entire army is still in AoS Cities of Sigmar, barring their two big named heroes, Morathi and Malarion. Both of which are now gods leading their own armies, of which only Morathi's Daughter's of Khaine have models.
GW could make DE into an entire army in AoS in a single throw of a battletome and 2 or 3 hero leader models - boom done whole army and honestly not really any super-old plastics in there either. All very serviceable and functional.
It's very strange - more so because GW did kind of soft-reboot DE as an army in an expansion book for AoS with the Daughters of Khaine. That said I feel that many DE fans are just kind of on the fence as to if GW is going to kill them or not - because barring that 1 bit of lore they've done nothing with them.
Hulksmash wrote: I'd expect the Dark Elf and Dwarf stuff to still shift over. Can't imagine longbeards/ironbreakers/hammerers not making the jump back.
And doesn't AoS still have almost the entire DE range for Cities?
Dark Elves are not a core race so they’re not jumping back at all (get-you-by list aside), imo probably part of why all the HE got purged but none of the DE did.
The Dwarfs stuff is more weird unless they’re bringing back the old metals like with the WE Treeman (though the last set of basic plastics did technically make longbeards).
Pointedly, post purge, other than BoC and WoC all the Core armies no longer have a substantial AoS presence. Most of the remaining Empire stuff is not in the right timeframe.
All the AoS armies that kept a substantial amount of the WFB range are not Core so won’t be supported beyond the initial lists.
If you see what they’re doing with 40k and Heresy atm, trying to keep the lines separate seems to be their plan.
This.
It does leave BoC, WoC, and to a lesser extent Dwarves in a weird position. Also Gloomspite Gitz as their main battleline unit was once the nightgoblin kit for Orcs & Goblins. I'm curious to see how all that ends up shaking out, whether those kits end up splitting time between both games or if they have a plan to divide/separate out the model ranges.
As far as WOC are concerned I've been theorizing that the TOWWoC won't have proper chaos warriors as we knew them (what with this being the pre-Kul era) and will be more like norscan marauders, so they'll pull the Chaos Marauders and Marauder Horsemen back from AoS (which lets be real, nobody uses) and maybe a couple other of the other older kits (warshrine? chariots?), put the forsaken and warhound kits back into production, season with chaos ogres/trolls/giant, dragon ogres, and hellcannon to taste. Add a chaos war mammoth in as the new big plastic centerpiece kit, a few new chaos shaman/priest/sorceror types and marauder lords and you're golden.
I'm not sure why they didn't remove the Dwarf units from Cities of Sigmar, unless they intend for that style of Dwarf to find a home in AoS and intend to go a different direction in ToW? I think (if I recall) that the units that remain in the CoS book were just a small minority of the range, so its possible for them to fully reconstitute WHFB style Dwarves in a workable army without them, yes?
In terms of O&G, most of AoS is non-WHFB at this point except maybe savage orcs? Do they go back to WHFB and form the core of a new O&G army? Do they take spider grots with them from the Gloomspite list (Im thinking no)? Does GW cut the moonclan grots from the AoS range (theyve mostly been pushing squigs instead of infantry as the way to play the list anyway)?
I have no idea what they are going to do with Beasts of Chaos short of basically excising them fully from Age of Sigmar. Would be a double-slap in the face to BoC fans that stuck with their faction through the End Times into the AoS era, but 90% of the range is legacy WHFB anyway. With Ogroids and the like being StD units despite their obvious similarities to BoC units, I kinda feel the writing is on the wall that they will go this direction, and then maybe they rebuild the AoSBoC faction with Tzaan/Slaan/Pest/Khorngors and Ogroids, etc. to differentiate it.
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Overread wrote: That said I feel that many DE fans are just kind of on the fence as to if GW is going to kill them or not
Thats how I feel. I've wanted to go out and buy an Order Serpentis/Scourge Privateers or whatever they call em themed AoS army for a while... but I won't because of the uncertainty behind what will become of the faction.
Well, I have some, tiny, very tiny, hope that Tomb Kings get new regular Skeleton Spearmen/Archers/Riders/Chariots. Those are so old that I would find it weird that those would be reproduced.
Yet TOW is (as far I understood) is more akin to Specialist game so it probaply does not get that much love.
Hulksmash wrote: I'd expect the Dark Elf and Dwarf stuff to still shift over. Can't imagine longbeards/ironbreakers/hammerers not making the jump back.
And doesn't AoS still have almost the entire DE range for Cities?
Dark Elves are a non-supported pdf faction for TOW. The dark elf kits are going to remain in AoS, they are split between Cities and Daughters of Khaine.
Meh, all the armies are pdf's when they drop. The direction of ToW has changed more than once since the idea was presented a few years ago. Then the focus was going to be the empire in civil war. Now the focus has turned into Brets vs. TK. I can't imagine we won't see DE as a real faction once they get around to releasing books since the entire range is still available outside of their bolt throwers currently in one form or another. It's similar to the Dwarf models. But maybe a fantasy staple will be non-supported as well.
chaos0xomega wrote: "Dark Elves in TOW" is going to become the "Xenos in Horus Heresy" of fantasy gaming.
Aren't we already ahead of that given that they are getting actual rules off the bat and I've never seen Eldar or Ork rules in HH? But you keep on keeping on.
chaos0xomega wrote: "Dark Elves in TOW" is going to become the "Xenos in Horus Heresy" of fantasy gaming.
Aren't we already ahead of that given that they are getting actual rules off the bat and I've never seen Eldar or Ork rules in HH? But you keep on keeping on.
I don't consider "here's some half-assed free rules we are putting online and will never look at, touch, rebalance, update, or mention again" to be "actual rules".
The entire army is still in AoS Cities of Sigmar, barring their two big named heroes, Morathi and Malarion.
"Entire army" seems extremely generous, given how much stuff was outright deleted.
You can't even have a regular Dark Elf Lord unless he's got an entire dragon glued to his backside.
As I said the only models missing are the 2 named leaders - oh and the reaper bolt thrower now I remember it.
But in general everything else is there, its just spread out into a few of those "subfaction groups" and such.
Basically if you wanted to rebuild DE all GW needs to do is give them a Battletome and a few token hero models and the army would be ready to go. Ergo if they got the same model support that Fyreslayers or Flesheaters have had to date (excluding the very recent update to the FE range); then the Dark Elf army could have been a thing in AoS as a fully functional army. But because its in Cities no one knows what's going to happen to it; esp after we saw HI and WE elements get whittled down steadily to almost nothing.
Heck if GW did an Elf Cities of Sigmar focused force i'd just expect them to roll those last few bits of HE and WE into the DE and call it a united Elf force. Indeed considering how many elf models they had I'm surprised they've never done it. I'm guessing that GW themselves don't know really what to do with them.
Part of me also wonders if the Dark Elves are just hanging on as the "dark elf" type of army until Malarion gets his army release.
February like rumored. Give time for it to sell. Hope the game does well, I’m tired of remembering all these different rules for the different rule sets (oldhammer, WAP, 9th age, etc).
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: 75 Universal Specials rules over 15 armies is not a lot frankly. Especially if they are all in one place it makes everything easier overall.
Is it too much to hope the army books won't have new special rules?
I mean... I assume there'll still be army books, but maybe that's not the case? Do we know?
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: 75 Universal Specials rules over 15 armies is not a lot frankly. Especially if they are all in one place it makes everything easier overall.
Is it too much to hope the army books won't have new special rules?
I mean... I assume there'll still be army books, but maybe that's not the case? Do we know?
We know the Brets have army specific special rules from this article…
boyd wrote: With one more "how to play" or "hype" article left, when do you think this game will be released? Before or after AOS4.0?
GW doesn't start these hype things at this detail over half a year so before.
We saw picture GW pulled back that indicated february. GW also said TOW is among first releases 2024. AOS4 comes in summer. You think GW will have half a year without releases? If they don't then obviously before
leopard wrote: as someone who has played Brets for quite some time, I love the blessing, the enemy is generally deployed such that they cannot shoot at me without moving up a bit due to the range being over 24", and if they stay still longbows can hurt them
so they will advance, if I go first I end up mid board, to maybe take a charge, or get peppered by arrows
if they go first they have to move up, perhaps allowing me to charge and dilute their firepower
plus as noted you get the last turn, there is essentially no real downside to it
It also allows you to plan your overall strategy. If you know you’re going to go second, and so get the final say in the battle, you can build your army around that.
Me? Well, I never know when I might play Brettonians.
Also, it’s meant to represent her blessing them against dishonourable conduct, like being shot/blown up. But, also offers solid protectyness against the very weapons best suited to wrinkling your body out that armour you’re wearing. Despite you having in-built boons like better horses, solid armour, special formations to maximise your attacks and your ranks.
I bloody hated that rule. And I’m probably going to go on hating it. If it was just against ranged stuff? Probably fine. Stops my Bolt Throwers kebabing your Lance. If you had to first win the roll off? Even better. But to get to make a unilateral decision with one-sided benefits sucks.
chaos0xomega wrote: I don't consider "here's some half-assed free rules we are putting online and will never look at, touch, rebalance, update, or mention again" to be "actual rules".
"If you have a longer pony tail than your opponent, your Dark Elf Lord can re-roll 1's on the turn it declares a charge!"
chaos0xomega wrote: I don't consider "here's some half-assed free rules we are putting online and will never look at, touch, rebalance, update, or mention again" to be "actual rules".
"If you have a longer pony tail than your opponent, your Dark Elf Lord can re-roll 1's on the turn it declares a charge!"
Mercifully I don't think GW is so out of touch that they would try going down that road a second time with TOW.
Lord Zarkov wrote: We know the Brets have army specific special rules from this article…
Yeah... I guess I was hoping that they'd be found in the USR list of rules, even if they were only for one army - so you wouldn't have to track all the different books.
... but "army specific" is pretty much the opposite of "universal", and it would go against GW's typical business model. So probably a pretty silly hope on my part.
Looking forward to seeing the Chaos Dwarf PDF rules - already starting to hunt for good counts as/alternatives to these now almost impossible to find miniatures too!
Same actually. I have a full on army, just need some odds and ends to round it out. Started buying them for WHFB and then started re-building them for AoS, but then they got legendsed out of AoS (effectively) and don't have a home anymore. I'm not sure that they'll really be playable long term in TOW, but I can dream I guess. I had hoped that they would end up a regular faction in TOW but it looks like they were put on the "narratively unavailable" faction list for some reason.
Pariah Press wrote: While I don't own any Chaos Dwarfs, I admit that I'm really curious about what will or won't be in the army list.
GW has stated that everything playable in 8th edition will be playable in TOW. We will have to see how much of that plays out in the end, but taken as it is: I would be (positively) shocked if we see anything but a 1:1 conversion of previous units for the non-core factions. For Chaos Dwarfs this would mean the Legion of Azgorh list, so...
Sorcerer-Prophet
The only lord option in the army which should be considered a very tough wizard lord rather than a magic using combat lord. He comes with Blackshard armour and a Darkforged weapon making him fairly decent in combat, especially mounted on a Taurus with Blood of Hashut. For a defensive lord use the Talisman of Preservation and the Enchanted Shield along with a Potion of Healing. In paying for a magic weapon you lose his Darkforged weapon so it probably not worth it. An alternate use can be sitting back with the war machines using a long range lore, but Hobgoblins and Bull Centaurs may struggle without his leadership.
Advantages: Very tough for a wizard lord
Disadvantages: Slightly weak for a combat lord, expensive
Great/Bale Taurus: A good choice for an offensive lord especially combined with the Lore of Fire where two of the spells can be used to heal the Taurus. The Bale Taurus upgrade give an extra +1 toughness and +1 wound in addition to a strength 4 flaming breath attack, although it is quite expensive.
Advantages: Good combat ability, can regenerate wounds, breath attack
Disadvantages: Probably not as good as other armies lord mounts
Lammasu: The only access to the Lore of Shadow in the army. Negates Magic weapons in base contact. Good choice for a defensive lord as any enemy character won’t have his magic weapon giving the Sorcerer-Prophet a good edge.
Advantages: Extra levels of shadow magic, can reduce enemy character ability
Disadvantages: Fairly expensive
Heroes
Daemonsmith Sorcerer
Quite a tough hero level wizard with engineer abilities as well. A level 1 using the lore of fire with a charmed shield and dispel scroll is an effective magic boost and war machine baby sitter. His reroll ability is excellent and he can look after two war machines adequately in addition to defending them from skirmishers and the like(equip with naptha bombs for a sneaky stand and shoot). He comes with a 4+ save and a +1 strength magic weapon so even ethereal units don’t scare the war machines. However being so far from the battle means that the lore of fire is the better option as metal and death are relatively shorter ranged lores. He is an excelent carrier for the Chalice of Blood and Darkness which saves your Prophet's item allowance for defence.
Advantages: War machine reroll, war machine defence
Disadvantages: Restricted in magic lores
Dark Castellan
One of the best heroes in the game with a stat line which rivals many lords and a higher magic item allowance than any other hero. As a battle standard bearer with the Mask of the Furnace, shield and a great weapon he will turn a unit of Infernal Guard or Ironsworn from very tough to almost immovable. Making the unit Stubborn means you can deploy in two ranks to make the most from your ranged weapons and not worry about losing a round of combat. A good defensive combo with his 75 points of magic items is the dawnstone and trickster's helm, making the enemy reroll successful wounds along with a rerollable 3+ save. He could also use an Arabian carpet and fly in to weak units to hold them up.
Advantages: Stubborn, high magic item allowance
Disadvantages: Will often have to take challenges from lords.
Hobgoblin Khan
The cheapest hero available who can fill a few roles. He can be used as a cheap addition to a unit of cutthroats or mounted on a great wolf to assist a unit of Wolf Raiders. As a lone mounted Khan he can be used to bait and redirect enemy units and is more reliable than a unit of Wolf Raiders as he does not suffer animosity. He can also be used to hunt war machines and hero wizards quite effectively. For a nasty surprise equip him with the Terrifying Mask of Eee! And charge him into a low leadership unit or the Ruby Ring of Ruin and move him to where it can be really effective.
Advantages: Very cheap, versatile
Disadvantages: Don’t expect much
Bull Centaur Taur’uk Possibly the toughest hero in the game who can hold up units single handily. As standard will have 4 wounds, toughness 5 and a 3+ armour save which can be upgraded to a 1+ easily with Blackshard armour and a shield leaving 50 points for a ward save or similar, a good choice is the dawn stone for a rerollable 1+. With a great weapon he has 4 strength 7 attacks making him very good at challenging enemy characters, especially if equipped with the other trickster's shard to negate enemy ward saves. As you have to take him with a unit of Bull Centaur Renders he can start off within the unit but move/charge out of it on his own if the situation dictates. This increases his protection against warmachines if you have a unit of 5+ as he'll get a look out sir roll.
Advantages: Extremely tough, very hard hitting, monster assassin
Disadvantages: Must include a unit of bull centaurs, expensive
Core
Chaos dwarf Infernal Guard
Best taken in units of between 20 and 30 although smaller units of 10 or 15 may also be useful in the right situations. Full command is worth paying for but the Musician and Champion can be dropped with much worry. Banner of Eternal Flame is cheap and very effective when combined with Ash storm. Razor Standard is effective against heavier armoured units.
Hand Weapon & Shield: Standard equipment which confers 3+ 6++ armour save in combat making them amongst the most resilient infantry in the game. Combine with a Castellan battle standard and you have an excellent anvil unit which will not flee easily.
Advantages: Very cost effective for your 25% core.
Disadvantages: Low damage output.
Great Weapons: The cheapest weapon upgrade bringing the unit’s strength up to 6 at the cost of bringing the armour save in combat down to only 4+. However with toughness 4 they’re still a match for most. The always strike last with great weapons doesn’t matter that much as a Chaos Dwarf’s initiative is low anyway and the extra strength really gives the unit some punch. A good use is as a small unit of 10 as a flanking unit after your anvil has pinned the enemy. Can be effective against small, high toughness units such as monstrous infantry.
Advantages: High strength good for adding damage to stalemate combats.
Disadvantages: Loss of armour save and relatively high cost of weapon.
Fireglaives: Similar in combat to great weapons but with an 18” ranged weapon. Good against medium armoured targets with the Armour Piercing special rule and strength 4. Can be devastating against medium armoured toughness 3 cavalry. Use an Overseer with a pistol or Naptha Bomb to ensure the unit fires at short range in a stand and shoot reaction.
Advantages: Unique to Chaos Dwarfs and can catch enemy unaware if they think they’re charging just a ranged unit.
Disadvantages: Short range means not many rounds of shooting. Expensive and can be an easy target for templates.
Hailshot Blunderbusses: Most expensive weapon option but the unit still has hand weapon and shield for close combat. Random multiple shots does make it slightly unreliable but has a lot of potential and is very effective against lightly armoured, low toughness troops. Needs to be used in units of 20+ to get the to-wound reroll for maximum efficiency and casualties needs to be considered. The unit also needs to be deployed with a long frontage (Two ranks of 10-15) which will make them vulnerable in combat without a Castellan. A unit of 30 in two ranks including a Battle Standard Bearer will be a powerful unit which is hard to defeat making it useful if playing a points denial game.
Advantages: High potential for devastating damage. Still very effective anvil combat unit.
Disadvantages: Very short range. Extremely expensive unit vulnerable to templates and magic.
Hobgoblin Cutthroats
Only low point unit in the army. Can be surprisingly effective in hordes while close to the General and Battle Standard but susceptible to animosity when not near a Chaos Dwarf unit. Full command is cheap and effective for a combat unit which is best taken at 30+ in hordes. 20+ units with bows can be effective. Throwing knives can be an unexpected surprise to a charging enemy.
Hand Weapon: Basic and cheapest option. Can occasionally be effective as a support or flanking unit alongside a unit of Infernal Guard. Useful to send ahead as a throwaway unit causing distractions as it will not cause panic amongst anything but other Hobgoblins.
Advantages: Cheap throwaway unit.
Disadvantages: Fairly ineffective.
Hand Weapon & Shield: For half a point extra per model it brings the save to 5+ 6++ making them a noticeably more resistant in combat. Can be used as a risky anvil if the General and Battle Standard are nearby.
Advantages: Still a cheap throwaway unit but more resilient.
Disadvantages: Still fairly ineffective.
Additional hand weapons: For half a point extra per model it effectively doubles their combat ability. Used in a horde it has good potential to actually win against average enemy infantry with massed attacks.
Advantages: Cheap unit with a huge number of attacks.
Disadvantages: Will still die in droves so don’t overestimate them.
Bows: Cheapest and longest ranged unit other than war machines. Good to thin out enemy units and then as a throwaway unit to distract the enemy. Can also take shield to make them a more resilient support unit.
Advantages: Cheap massed ranged weapon.
Disadvantages: Fairly ineffective in combat.
Special
Chaos Dwarf Infernal Ironsworn
Essentially a buffed up unit of Infernal Guard with Ensorcelled hand weapons and shields. Magic weapons with +1 strength and +1 weapon skill combined with their resilience makes them a tough unit which can also dish out some effective attacks. They should be able to stand up to any enemy charge and hold them in place, slowly witling down the enemy numbers. In a battle of attrition the Chaos Dwarfs will win. Razor Standard is an effective magic banner giving a total -3 armour modifier.
Advantages: Extremely good at not dying.
Disadvantages: Relatively expensive.
Bull Centaur Renders
Extremely tough Monstrous Infantry with good weapon options which make them quite versatile. With toughness 5, 3 wounds and a 3+ armour save as standard they do not die easily. An excellent choice as an anvil unit to hold a low strength enemy in place, anything strength 4 or under should struggle to cause noticeable damage. They can also be used as a mobile, hard hitting unit to hunt war machines and small, fast units. Full command is generally always worth it with the Gleaming Pennant or Banner of Discipline if the unit is going to be away from the General and Battle Standard. Bull Centaur Renders are monstrous beasts and therefore treat all weapon options the same as infantry on foot.
Hand Weapon: The cheapest option with low damage output but can potentially be good with an augment spell like Flaming Sword of Rhuin combined with Ashstorm on the enemy you will be dishing out some decent damage. Use a small unit against war machines, skirmishers, small support units.
Advantages: Quite cheap, relatively speedy and very tough.
Disadvantages: Not very hard hitting.
Hand weapon and shield: Gives them a 2+ 6++ save in combat. Combined with their wounds and toughness this makes them unbelievably resilient. A good choice for an anvil unit of 6 to hold the enemy in place although they still need augmenting for any real damage output.
Advantages: Still pretty cheap, relatively speedy and extremely tough.
Disadvantages: Still not very hard hitting.
Additional hand weapon: A cheap upgrade which makes a noticeable increase in damage output. Quite similar in use to the hand weapon option although they will be better against low toughness infantry, especially useful for a flanking manoeuvre.
Advantages: More attacks, relatively speedy and very tough.
Disadvantages: Still low strength attacks.
Great Weapons: Most expensive weapon option and you are striking last but as you are only initiative 3 your targets will probably have higher anyway. Bringing the strength up to 6 makes them more useful against heavy infantry, you'll likely be wounding on a 2+ and giving -3 armour save. They can also give other monstrous units and monsters a hard time.
Advantages: High strength attacks, relatively speedy and very tough.
Disadvantages: Low number of attacks.
Spear and shield: Needs to be taken in large units with three ranks to make use of the spears. But with a 2+ armour save and extra attacks it makes them an amazing anvil unit that can grind the enemy down, move them in front of any enemy and take the charge without a flinch.
Advantages: More attacks, relatively speedy and extremely tough.
Disadvantages: Low strength attacks. Needs to be a large, expensive unit.
K’daai Fireborn
An unstable unit that needs to be used quickly and carefully but with awesome potential. Where the Bull Centaurs focus on defence the Fireborn are more about offence. With a toughness of 4 and only two wounds the unstable and burning bright rules can make the unit very unreliable. However they are unbreakable, have a 4+ ward save and the enemy must reroll successful wounds, this makes them tough for the opposition to wound. With the blazing body auto hits and strength 5 they can cause damage, but are best taken in large units to cover losses(on average you will lose one or two per game from burning bright). Units of 6 or 9 are best used against low toughness troops; combine with Ash Storm to really make the most of them.
Advantages: Decent amount of attacks, unbreakable
Disadvantages: Expensive and can burn themselves out.
Magma Cannon
Unique to the Chaos Dwarfs this flaming template cannon has excellent range and damage. Strength 5 and D3 wounds makes it excellent against any large multi-wound unit such as monstrous infantry. When made Hellbound it is exceptionally good against ethereal units. With a Daemonsmith reroll on the scatter distance it becomes very accurate.
Advantages: Cheap, high potential damage output
Disadvantages: Vulnerable (without Hellbound)
Deathshrieker Rocket Launcher
The cheapest war machine available which is similar in effect to a mortar, this has two different rockets to fire. The standard rocket is flaming strength 3 which causes panic. It uses the large 5” template but if the shot is not on target you gain a second roll on the artillery dice towards the nearest unit, although this only uses the small 3” template. Combined with the Daemonsmith reroll this makes it extremely accurate. The Demolition rocket is strength 8 with D6 wounds but only hits one target and doesn’t get the extra roll if it misses. However along with the Daemonsmith reroll this can be used to snipe monsters and war machines. Two of these sharing a Daemonsmith are very effective.
Advantages: Cheap, extremely accurate and versatile
Disadvantages: Vulnerable (without Hellbound)
Iron Daemon War Engine
A very tough but unwieldy unique unit. With 7 wounds and toughness 8 with a 3+ armour save it’s one of the most resilient units in the game. If you can manoeuvre it to charge an enemy unit it will hold them up for the entire game slowly grinding them down. The cannonade is particularly effective against cavalry and monstrous infantry although it’s short range and front firing can make it hard to get the target you want. For a small cost this can be replaced with a skullcracker which will double its thunderstomp and impact hits however it’s not as versatile and will need to be used well. Best option is to send it across the board at a diagonal and hope to hit something good. Both options however can be easily held up by flyers and anything immune to its grinding attacks, if they charge it will only have it's three crew attacks.
Advantages: Extremely tough, hits hard on the charge (really hard with skullcracker)
Disadvantages: Expensive, hard to manoeuvre, can be easily held up by some cheap units
Rare
Hobgoblin Wolf Raiders
The only fast cavalry unit available in the army which is quite cheap and very manoeuvrable. Units of 5 an be used as effective redirectors, fleeing from enemy charges which won’t cause panic in anything except other Hobgoblins. They can also be used to harass war machines although their animosity can make them unreliable. Full command is worth it but a musician is essential for manoeuvring. The cowardly despoilers rule makes them effective flank charges giving an extra +1 combat resolution. Use in tandem with Bull Centaurs to keep their animosity in check.
Hand weapon: Basic cheap option, best if being used as a redirector or sacrificial unit.
Advantages: Very cheap, very fast
Disadvantages: Animosity, low leadership
Shields: Lose the fast cavalry rule making them less reliable, however when used with a spear in a larger unit of 10 or 15 they can be used as medium cavalry with a 4+ save. With the larger unit size the effects of animosity is lessened and then the +1 to hit can be effective. Wait to fail your animosity with a 6 then charge.
Advantages: Slightly more resilient.
Disadvantages: Less manoeuvrability, Animosity, low leadership
Spears: Cheapest weapon upgrade providing a bit of extra punch for flanking or war machine hunting. With their awesome charge range they can be a real threat to war machines.
Advantages: Cheap flanking ability, low cost
Disadvantages: Animosity, low leadership
Bows: Probably not very useful in most situations, 5 bowshots won’t do much damage. Best to be used against small weak units or single characters hiding where they think it’s safe.
Advantages: Getting a few bow shot in the right place
Disadvantages: Animosity, low leadership
Dreadquake Mortar
Extremely powerful war machine with very long range. The Quake! Special rule can halt units in their tracks which can be very effective firing on a unit that would charge you in their turn, if they charge they have to take the dangerous terrain test if they don’t then they can be charged next turn. Without a slave Ogre there is a chance it won’t fire every other turn, but with the Ogre it will fire every turn and also gain an extra 3 wounds in addition to extra combat ability making it quite resilient. With Hellbound it will have 7 wounds and toughness 8! However without a Daemonsmith nearby it can suffer from bad misfires. Excellent against large blocks of high toughness troops and monstrous troops. I can also be used against large monsters and war machines with its strength 10 centre hit and D6 wounds.
Advantages: Devastating power and range, can slow enemy advance, very tough
Disadvantages: Bad misfires, needs Slave Ogre for best results
K’daai Destroyer
The most expensive unit in the army with an unbelievable potential damage output. With a possible 9 attacks, blazing body auto hits and thunderstomp it can take out entire units in single turns. Movement 9 allows you to get it exactly where you want. With 6 wounds and toughness 6 and a 4+ ward save it is hard to wound in combat, combine this with the blazing body rule where the enemy must reroll successful wounds this means low strength (5 or below) attacks will really struggle to hurt it. As powerful as it is, poison will wound it effectively and anything that lowers its toughness will really hurt it so be wary of the Lore of Shadow. It can also be vulnerable to units with 2+ fire ward save which will hold it up all game and be aware of being baited out the way due to it's frenzy rule.
Advantages: Massive damage output, extremely tough, unbreakable
Disadvantages: Expensive, burning bright and unstable make it unreliable occasionally, can be held up by lone characters with fire wards or ethereal units
Hellcannon
Currently quite cheap but will likely see a reduction in power with the new Warriors of Chaos army book due to be released soon. Its template weapon is very effective and it has monster characteristics making it very able to defend itself. Excellent at defending a flank on its own however it can go very wrong with a misfire.
Advantages: Powerful template, very tough for a war machine, Unbreakable
Disadvantages: Occasionally Rampages
Chaos Siege Giant
Only a bit cheaper than the K’daai Destroyer and generally not as powerful, however it can be great as a monster hunter although its random attacks can make it unreliable. It can also be used to take out tough characters as many of its attacks allow it to select a target and ignore toughness and armour saves. It is also quite well armoured against shooting attacks allowing it to get to where you want it. It can be very effective in siege battles using scaling spikes to easily take down buildings and walls and becoming a ladder if it dies.
Advantages: Monster hunting, character eating, building crushing
Disadvantages: Unreliable, sometimes falls over
... this.
If and when GW finally comes around to do Chaos Dwarfs for AoS they might be unrankable even on bigger bases. So for now the best option for CD infantry in hard plastic is from Mantic, with some excellent alternatives for 3D printing around as well. I wonder if FW will even bother to bring their range back into production, I can not see it selling at all.
The best part The Olde World so far is it's encouraged 3d model makers to start making WFB armies. And the more releases GW puts out, the more fodder they have to ape. Bretonnia got some great stuff in the last few months.
I was going to complain about the lack of newer plastics in the box (guard, sphinx, stalkers, etc) but on second thought this is actually a pretty great core for a TK army. There's little else in the way of 'normal' TK stuff you'd have to buy, except maybe some more chariots
That's damn near all I'd need to start a TK army with, given I have an old-school Battalion being held for me as we speak. Looks like it's time to commission some 3d printed bases.
Oof. No beautiful tomb guard, sepulchral stalkers, etc. in the box. I still don’t get the pint of the dragon. The warsphinx was a great centerpiece AND came with the option for a tomb king on foot
GaroRobe wrote: Oof. No beautiful tomb guard, sepulchral stalkers, etc. in the box. I still don’t get the pint of the dragon. The warsphinx was a great centerpiece AND came with the option for a tomb king on foot
They had to throw together something new to encourage people to buy it that already own all the old models. I think the warsphixn would have been a better (and cheaper) choice here, the dragodile/crocodon is ok but really feels like something they threw together to met the 'all forces need a really big model' quota and now they can over charge for the older big kits when they are sold separately.
I'm not surprised the sepulchral stalkers are not in here, they know what they go for on ebay and can now push the price to match
That's a..bold choice to put in the skeletons and chariots over something that actually looks good, like the guard and stalkers. Especially considering this is going to break into triple figures cost.
Lord Zarkov wrote: We know the Brets have army specific special rules from this article…
Yeah... I guess I was hoping that they'd be found in the USR list of rules, even if they were only for one army - so you wouldn't have to track all the different books.
Hell no. This is excellent way to turn USR list into useless, unreadable, unusable trash. See virtually any GW game with 100+ entries of this gak to flip through.
If GW still wants to go the stupid USR route, limit them to 10-20 max. That's about the limit most players can memorize. If said rule is only found in 1-3 books? No USR for you, into Codex special rules it goes. If it's found on only 3-6 units in the game, like 2/3 of """universal""" shyte in past editions? Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect USR $$$, Do Not End Up Codex Special Rule, Print It On The Damned Datasheet. There, fixed
Now, I wouldn't be opposed to PDF glossary (pure text thought!) collecting all special rules in the game (with errata if any!). In physical book, though, the one you need to find stuff quickly and efficiently, especially now that you have 10-15 bullets of this gak to find for each individual unit we saw so far? Get out, I'd like my games to take less than a month
Ah, yes, a proper old school army box. With ancient, gak models despite a lot of these having much better stand ins in other ranges now (one tiny upgrade sprue away to blow these out of the water and even that isn't really needed, a skeleton is a skeleton). And the new fancy models you might want to use for actual popular games (AoS or 40K, or hell, Warcry even) gated here for months.
it will sell out and people will praise those as the best quality models on the table and that details doesn't matter as you want see them anyway on the gaming table
Man, I want to be excited, but the army box is hugely disappointing. Is it a solid core from a gameplay perspective? Sure. Is it chock full of miniatures that should have been resculpted 20 years ago? Why yes it is. Not sure who is going to want to pay 300-350 dollars for that.
Honestly it would have been better had they just used the old VC skeletons and made a single upgrade sprue of shields and heads. Or even resculpted one of the old units in the box.
Not even any of the nice Tomb Guard or more recent sculpts in there.
Not really interested in the Tomb Kings, but excited to see what the equivalent Bretonnian box looks like. You predict the Pegasus, few unit of knights as well as bowmen and men at arms but probably a smaller model count?
Now that I took second look, it might not be so bad if you buy GW plastic skull set (with 4756673 skulls in it), chop away ugly pumpkins these have as heads, and pin the new, nice skulls in their place. It will take tons of effort and time but at least 80% of the fugly will be gone
It's pure nostalgia pandering at this point. It's GW so it's never for the rules, they almost always sell on the quality of the models. And right now, the quality sure ain't there.
Actually not a bad number of figures (I am dreaded by cost, however!) but I was very afraid that we get the old models which were very likely.
But now to wait for Brettonian side (which can be shockingly big) and wonder were are those actually cool looking Tomb King guys (Tomb Guard, looking at you!)
Ah, yes, a proper old school army box. With ancient, gak models despite a lot of these having much better stand ins in other ranges now (one tiny upgrade sprue away to blow these out of the water and even that isn't really needed, a skeleton is a skeleton). And the new fancy models you might want to use for actual popular games (AoS or 40K, or hell, Warcry even) gated here for months.
Delightful
I mean, you dont have to buy it. I'm not as I already have 6 armies already.
If I do end up creating an army specifically for Old World I'll buy 3rd party because I don't want to pay GW tax on their over priced models when there are artists out there making lovely 3d prints.
I just need the rules and I can work the rest out form there. As for the old skeletons...I mean we already new GW wasn't updating them from the earlier preview, if you dont like them then dont buy them. I dont know why their mere existence is so offensive.
Not exactly stoked at the prospect of ye olde Tomb King skeletons making a return. They always appeared to be stop gap kit, being regular vampire counts skeletons with some extra bits chucked in. I know that they were in the preview videos for that (silly) dragon but I can't believe they're not remaking them. Why wasn't somebody more careless... They could have done us all a favour and dropped the mould.
I'm excited for a return of WHFB and that we get Tomb Kings back. That should make me an ideal target for these miniatures. I won't be buying this though.
I think this will be my first foray into STLs and a printer...
40 Men at arms (2 units of 20)
16 Archer's
2 lances of Knights (12 models)
3 Pegasus Knights
1 Lord
=72 minis
GW's article from October said that regiments will be sold in boxes containing a "full complement", and specifically called archers out as 32. This might actually have something different to the rumor.
Having (probably) the least popular WHFB army be one of the headliners, and then stuffing the box with ancient sculpts that were dated when they were new, is one hell of a bold choice.
I also agree it'll sell like hot cakes but woah momma are those some ugly skellies.
likely will be getting the book for this individually, not interested really in bony boys and have enough pony boys already.
good they are going with individual starter armies though, avoids trying to have a set with both sides where its either so expensive no one buys it or neither faction is large enough to properly play the game
it is a bit sad its mostly older models though, not exactly going to sell the game on model quality as others have noted
I wonder if Old World had a bigger budget and then suddenly found it lost a bunch of investment. Or their budget got eaten up faster than they thought?
I recall early on they were going for several new armies and all new content and now they are recycling quite a bit of content.
It might also be that managers have changed their impression of the success and have toned back the budget with a "If you do really well at sales you'll get more, but we need actual sales data first".
The one boon is that GW can in theory not waste any money on this project. If it fails they can just change the bases in the box to round and throw out battletomes for AoS and reveal a glut of new armies appearing in the setting.
It's a good core to the army, you have to buy a few more units and you likely have a complete army for TK to play with. Say what you will about sculpts and what not but if this is priced reasonably, it will address one of the biggest issues Fantasy had which was high entry cost.
Hopefully all armies get a core box like this, it will bode well for the future of the game I think.
Irbis wrote: If GW still wants to go the stupid USR route, limit them to 10-20 max. That's about the limit most players can memorize. If said rule is only found in 1-3 books? No USR for you, into Codex special rules it goes. If it's found on only 3-6 units in the game, like 2/3 of """universal""" shyte in past editions? Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect USR $$$, Do Not End Up Codex Special Rule, Print It On The Damned Datasheet. There, fixed
Yeah. Then we can be like 10th Ed 40k, where we have 20 or so USRs and 1000 bespoke special rules. That's much easier to manage.
nathan2004 wrote: It's a good core to the army, you have to buy a few more units and you likely have a complete army for TK to play with. Say what you will about sculpts and what not but if this is priced reasonably, it will address one of the biggest issues Fantasy had which was high entry cost.
Hopefully all armies get a core box like this, it will bode well for the future of the game I think.
Reasonably priced? Remind yourself which company you're talking about here.
bong264 wrote: That stack of boxes is all that's getting made for the global release of the old world
thought the same, because seen various different pictures now but all of the same single stack and nothing else around
bong264 wrote: I am curious what the brett one is gonna look like now...
it will look the same, 2 units cavalry, 2 units infantry, 2 units archers, the special unit and the new hero and we have already seen on WC pics of newly painted and based models that match this
Any info on if the new plastic Pegasus hero will be available separately at launch? Or will he only be in the Bretonnian box set?
Might seem dumb asking just didn't know if The Old World would be sold like other GW games with characters only available initially in box sets and then a few months later as a single release.
I've put together those skellie minis before and have no appetite for doing it again, it'll be some Mantic Empire of Dust and 3D prints for me.
I do like the look of the croc dragon though.
I think GW probably did have the resources to make a new skeleton sprue, it's really odd to see a new game being launched by them in 2023 without the usual quality standards, if they can release 50 sprues of meat trees for warcry, they can throw Warhammer 9th edition a bone or two.
I thought they were long past the GorkaMorka days of wanting to make a new game but only having capacity to make 1-2 hard plastic kits.
scarletsquig wrote: I've put together those skellie minis before and have no appetite for doing it again, it'll be some Mantic Empire of Dust and 3D prints for me.
I do like the look of the croc dragon though.
I think GW probably did have the resources to make a new skeleton sprue, it's really odd to see a new game being launched by them in 2023 without the usual quality standards, if they can release 50 sprues of meat trees for warcry, they can throw Warhammer 9th edition a bone or two.
I thought they were long past the GorkaMorka days of wanting to make a new game but only having capacity to make 1-2 hard plastic kits.
It's likely a fight for resources at GW. GW has multiple other games drawing on their resources and ultimately their capacity and finances are limited. There might also be managers questioning if GW can support 3 fantasy model maingames at one time; especially when 2 of them share the same visual and style design elements and the core difference is lore (which is background fluff) and base shape; and heck where 1 is basically half built on the other games "old models".
So some of it might be that GW feels Old World will work, but they want to actually see the sales figures and see the engagement before they can commit more resources.
Another aspect that I just thought of is the "too many at once" aspect. Similar to how AoS has a lot of armies needing updates and they can't all get a full refresh at once; it might just be that Old World is the same and the staff decided that instead of investing everything into two or three full new/updated armies; they would instead allow the game to grow faster with more armies by re-releasing a lot more older models. So perhaps this is part of GW actually thinking it will do REALLY well and they want to jump start the popularity much faster. So instead of a few armies a year they are pushing out way more and pat of that is simply using a mix of new and old models.
insaniak wrote: Given how many of the models already in my collection are 20 years old or more, I have absolutely no issue with the return of the old skeletons.
The issue isn't that they're old. There are plenty of great models that are ancient. The issue is that they're awful models to put together.
insaniak wrote: Given how many of the models already in my collection are 20 years old or more, I have absolutely no issue with the return of the old skeletons.
That's a sexy box, right there.
Yup, I'm with you. I vastly prefer the GW aesthetic of the 90s and 00s to what they're putting out now.
insaniak wrote: Given how many of the models already in my collection are 20 years old or more, I have absolutely no issue with the return of the old skeletons.
The issue isn't that they're old. There are plenty of great models that are ancient. The issue is that they're awful models to put together.
Plastic skeletons generally are. Try the Wargames Factory skellies (currently sold by Warlord for Erewhon) with their separate feet...
I haven't built the TK skeleton kit specifically, but haven't had any real dramas with GW skeletons in the past.
What excite me the most about this leak is ... the box The Skeletons are ugly (wasn't a fan when they were released, still not a fan now). You get a healthy amount of them at least, but will be fun seeing people online having to build so many after getting 76 of them! The Skeleton Horsemen are fine to me (especially with the TK bits), static poses but fine enough sculpt. I acquired a ton of them near the end of 8th though so I have more than most TK players will ever need. Chariots I have a healthy amount already so I don't think I'll need more of them. The new more is OK-ish, not something that will push me to get the box to get it. I already have over a dozen characters of all type (fighters and wizards), so the interest is low for it.
But as a general collector and fan of the army, yeah I'd like that box the most
It's a good box to jump into the army no doubt (in terms of number of minis and them being the core of the army), but the sculpt will be hit-or-miss a lot and many will be put off by getting that box or starting the army because of that. The Skeletons at a bare minimum should have been remade (even at the same size to match the horsemen and charioteers).
Before getting too excited at how fast these'll sell, it's still Games Workshop. I can easily imagine them dropping a massive price tag on these things and watching as the world goes, "Ehhh..."
I'm pretty sure The Ash Wastes is still sitting on Amazon at half off. And the Dominion starter... my God!
I'm interested to see how they handle the character model situation too. Not enough of them made it into hard plastic. And their $30 for one guy pricing of plastic hero models, well that too is an issue for this game.
Though maybe they'll drop these starter boxes at $200 and bundle up terrible resin character models together for a discount too, who knows.
It feels like GW should pay me money to take the old skeletons off their hands. I don't know what the price for this box is going to be (other than hilarious), but about the only way they could get me to buy it is if it wasn't more than the retail prices of the crocodragon and rulebook combined.
Irbis wrote: Now that I took second look, it might not be so bad if you buy GW plastic skull set (with 4756673 skulls in it), chop away ugly pumpkins these have as heads, and pin the new, nice skulls in their place. It will take tons of effort and time but at least 80% of the fugly will be gone
It wouldn't even be any work. The spine has a flat top and the skulls from the skull box are level enough on the bottom that a decent drop of plastic cement will get the job done just fine.
The biggest loss is the headgear, especially if you go on to replace your Tomb Guard heads to match.
insaniak wrote: Given how many of the models already in my collection are 20 years old or more, I have absolutely no issue with the return of the old skeletons.
The issue isn't that they're old. There are plenty of great models that are ancient. The issue is that they're awful models to put together.
I've had an Old World sycophant on Discord tell me these skeletons are better than the Vyper!
insaniak wrote: Given how many of the models already in my collection are 20 years old or more, I have absolutely no issue with the return of the old skeletons.
The issue isn't that they're old. There are plenty of great models that are ancient. The issue is that they're awful models to put together.
I've had an Old World sycophant on Discord tell me these skeletons are better than the Vyper!
Having done both... no. I've have far more visceral memories of rage and frustration as the skellies collapse under their own weight, and little tiny nubs for joins are broken or just missing from the cast.
I definitely can't imagine that the latter situation will be better years later, unless they replaced the old moulds (which to be frank, seems unlikely)
It in part comes down to pricing, but unless GW make the units cheap and I mean 40 skellies for the cost of a box of intercessors type cheap, I can't see anyone seriously wanting to go out and be excited to buy 1998 skeletons for what will likely be maintained as a niche game.
Worse than the god awful old minis, if they haven't learned the lesson regards the price point restricting access to the game, it'll be as dead in a couple of years as it was at the end of 8th anyway.
I mean the AoS redux launch (i.e. the first real ruleset) should show gw is capable doing the pricing right to ignite a game. I'm cautiously optimistic.
I'll be sticking with my chaos dwarves and pdf army list I think, at least until they release enough resculpted/new minis that I can build an army around them without needing to bother with the older kits. While the tomb kings box (and presumably the bretonnian box) might come at an appealing price, I just... I can't justify spending money on most of those old kits. The only ones I'm kinda ok with are the Bretonnian peasant bowmen and men at arms, but Im absolutely not getting the old mounted knights.
Rihgu wrote: It's riding the dragon. You can also have it on foot and the king riding the dragon, per the preview.
But the dragon kit builds a priest and a tomb king, 1 riding and 1 on foot, in either combination.
I think it's only the Tomb King that can be on foot:
This kit builds either a Tomb King or a High Priest on Necrolith Bone Dragon, each with their own palanquin.* The High Priest has a tasteful canopy, shielding his delicate mummified skin from further bleaching in the sun – and if you choose him, you can also make a Monarch of Nehekhara on foot, to lead the charge from terra firma.
Sotahullu wrote: I actually wonder why you can build Tomb King on foot if Priest is on Crocodile (it is!) but not the otherway around.
I think it's simply because the king is standing in the howdah on the dragon, so the pose is the same on the ground (with different arms), while the liche is sitting on a chair, thus cannot really be used on foot (but nothing stopping him to bring his chair with him to rest on the battlefield!).
Comparing the prices, if the boxes are in line with HH, we are looking at 250€ total and 180€ for the Box
Is it more in line with AoS, it is 350€ total and 250€ for the box
bigger question is, how many will be needed for an army
as the same box is 1400 points without dragon in 6th Edition, or 900 without dragon in 8th which is a big difference
also the question if you can actually bring a dragon in 2k points game
Sotahullu wrote: I actually wonder why you can build Tomb King on foot if Priest is on Crocodile (it is!) but not the otherway around.
I think it's simply because the king is standing in the howdah on the dragon, so the pose is the same on the ground (with different arms), while the liche is sitting on a chair, thus cannot really be used on foot but nothing stopping him to bring his chair with him to rest on the battlefield!).
A chapter master, a fat Genestealer and even another liche did it before, so why not?
It looks to be about 830pts of unupgraded models, without the Dragon and assuming that the points are as per 8E.
The LHP used to be 175pts and a Dragon is typically ~300 so 500pts for a bare LHP on Dragon seems like a good start.
Of course there are command groups, magic items and wizard levels on top. 1500pts seems a reasonable floor even if 40% of your list are on characters
Well, we may see Skellingtons coming with a lower base cost because Combat Res is no longer “all or nothing”.
When it was, completely unbreakable units were a menace, and a canny, cunning opponent would quickly learn how to tar pit you, with a flank charge ready to go in their turn.
Now Skellies can presumably be pushed back, and everyone else has a built in a pretty solid protection against Brown Trousers, being Unbreakable is still good, just not as good as it used to be.
Of course, Skellingtons came with crap stats. Low WS, low I. And we can’t take for granted that might not have been changed.
My local group has it at about 1700pts in WAP. It's a solid start to an army. And outside of the cavalry you'll probably use most of it. Even the cavalry could be 3x5 redirect horse archers which is not terrible.
I don't love that they didn't resculpt the skellies but at the same time I don't actually hate the skellies with TK heads and shields. Are the new VC ones better. Sure. But I don't mind the look. Now BUILDING the old ones dear god.....
Yeah Horse Archers were a must in my games, always had one unit, very very often had 2, and even had a third just in case (units of 6). Main opponent was orcs so it was my prime Fanatic magnet unit too
Regular Horsemen were more meh, but still could be fun to use, but in no mean reliable or a good unit! They were also fast enough to throw forward to distract and redirect and help protect Chariots (I don't remember if they were cheaper than the archer ones tho).
Sotahullu wrote: I actually wonder why you can build Tomb King on foot if Priest is on Crocodile (it is!) but not the otherway around.
I think it's simply because the king is standing in the howdah on the dragon, so the pose is the same on the ground (with different arms), while the liche is sitting on a chair, thus cannot really be used on foot but nothing stopping him to bring his chair with him to rest on the battlefield!).
A chapter master, a fat Genestealer and even another liche did it before, so why not?
Spoiler:
Thank you for these, I’ve never seen any of these sculpts and I very much enjoyed seeing these (no sarcasm).
GW is using drug dealer tactics here, get people to pick up the core of their army via army boxes and fill out with special/rare as they see fit (knights, stalkers, guard for TK).
That strategy appeals to me and hey if the game is successful, maybe in time they redo the old skellies.
tneva82 wrote: 2k has generally allowed dragons before evee when big monsters restricted. Don't see changing.
yeah, were heroes were restricted by numbers, while with the points restriction is is different
you cannot have a 600 point hero model at 2k when there is 25% restriction, even if there is no limit on monsters
and there was a reason why 3k was the standard during that time, people bought a dragon and they wanted to use them
tneva82 wrote: 2k has generally allowed dragons before evee when big monsters restricted. Don't see changing.
yeah, were heroes were restricted by numbers, while with the points restriction is is different
you cannot have a 600 point hero model at 2k when there is 25% restriction, even if there is no limit on monsters
and there was a reason why 3k was the standard during that time, people bought a dragon and they wanted to use them
I can't remember a 25% restriction on characters, it was usually 50%. Monsters had a 25% cap, but as mounts of a character they were purchased from the character part.
It was 50% Lords and Heroes towards the end of 8th edition. First part of 8th was 25% Lords, 25% Heroes. Can't remember when that cap changed but it was in the FAQs for the rulebook I believe. Might have been End Times especially considering how many characters came out of those books.
tneva82 wrote: 2k has generally allowed dragons before evee when big monsters restricted. Don't see changing.
yeah, were heroes were restricted by numbers, while with the points restriction is is different
you cannot have a 600 point hero model at 2k when there is 25% restriction, even if there is no limit on monsters
and there was a reason why 3k was the standard during that time, people bought a dragon and they wanted to use them
tneva82 wrote: 2k has generally allowed dragons before evee when big monsters restricted. Don't see changing.
yeah, were heroes were restricted by numbers, while with the points restriction is is different
you cannot have a 600 point hero model at 2k when there is 25% restriction, even if there is no limit on monsters
and there was a reason why 3k was the standard during that time, people bought a dragon and they wanted to use them
When it's been points it was generally 50%.
I took dragons in 2k at editions 5-8 at least.
6-7th it was slots based - 4 characters of which 1 could be a Lord, with a dragon taking up an extra hero slot (as did the most powerful characters).
So you could take a Lord on dragon regardless of points and still have 2 hero slots left.
Sotahullu wrote: I actually wonder why you can build Tomb King on foot if Priest is on Crocodile (it is!) but not the otherway around.
I think it's simply because the king is standing in the howdah on the dragon, so the pose is the same on the ground (with different arms), while the liche is sitting on a chair, thus cannot really be used on foot but nothing stopping him to bring his chair with him to rest on the battlefield!).
A chapter master, a fat Genestealer and even another liche did it before, so why not?
Spoiler:
While it can be as simple as that, you could add some style and use the spare scarabs from the sphinx kit (or 3rd party if there are any, or 3D prints if that's more your thing) to add a carpet of scarabs around the chair so it's entirely plausible that he can move without the inconvenience of getting out of his chair.
nathan2004 wrote: Hmmm wonder what that means if influencers are starting to get materials...like rules or models or both?
Most likely they are sent the whole box like we got linked a few pages ago. So Models +rules for review a few weeks early so they can paint them up too.
Well, at least people got the old Tomb King and Bretonnua models they always wanted to bought back when. If game sells well will probably be new models eventually.
Huh, I didn't think about it but Brets actually has some models that could hold to age.
Now to paint that well.
Bretonnians still look very good in a vacuum, they just suffer alongside more modern sculpts
^^^^ this
they are ok, I have a load, and some earlier ones, what they lack is some of the sharper details of modern sculpts and the more detailed trim elements and finer structures some newer models have.
not after silly fine, breakable, bits but a bit more dynamic for some would be nice to bring them to more modern standards
same with the infantry, they have redone characters and brought in the much needed foot knights finally and I have my doubts how well its all going to look side by side as I suspect the newer ones will look decades ahead of them
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triplegrim wrote: Well, at least people got the old Tomb King and Bretonnua models they always wanted to bought back when. If game sells well will probably be new models eventually.
hopefully, shift enough of the older ones to justify some new ones, in the hope people will then buy them..
but more likely some more models that are newer stuff with slightly more fantastical elements that make older models or historical proxies etc a bit harder. Ethereal archers for Bretonnia anyone, hinted at in the 8th edition rulebook
they are ok, I have a load, and some earlier ones, what they lack is some of the sharper details of modern sculpts and the more detailed trim elements and finer structures some newer models have.
not after silly fine, breakable, bits but a bit more dynamic for some would be nice to bring them to more modern standards
same with the infantry, they have redone characters and brought in the much needed foot knights finally and I have my doubts how well its all going to look side by side as I suspect the newer ones will look decades ahead of them
Semi-related rant, but it always bothered me quite a bit that the 6th ed knights kit didn't have a few couched lance arm position, especially after I found out that 5th ed ones had them.
Other than that, they were always one of my favorite Warhammer plastic kits of all time, and I never even played Bretonnia (until right now).
Would've bought a great deal of them if Highlands miniatures hadn't released their Gallia range which closely follows GW aesthetic but has better details, proportions and poses. Still gonna buy a crapload of GW peasants though, as they're by far my favorite option.
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: So when will GW finaly rename 'The Old World' to 'Bretonnia simulator'?
It feels like half the players will be Bretonnia players.
The best ending.
Jokes aside, I'm the only Bret player from the people who've expressed interest in playing (and who already have armies) in my circle. There's also an Empire player, Delf, Vampire, O&G, and two dwarfs. I'm also planning on getting TK once the newer stuff becomes available, and will be printing spearmen/archers/cav/chariots.
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: So when will GW finaly rename 'The Old World' to 'Bretonnia simulator'?
It feels like half the players will be Bretonnia players.
Nothing will Chang. Bret’s will surge at first due to being human but once summer hits and the empire box comes out, they will be the most played faction. Then probably high elves.
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: So when will GW finaly rename 'The Old World' to 'Bretonnia simulator'?
It feels like half the players will be Bretonnia players.
Well while bretonnia is half the supported armies beyond legend like units no surprise
TBH if the skellies were newer, nicer models I'd be tempted to get that starter box, I've got all the Brets I'll ever need really but I'd have been up for a TK army
to be fair we dont know what the pricing will be. I think most of us were surprised byhow generous the pricing on HH ended up being. How would we feel about the Tomb Kings box set if the price comes in at the same point as the Age of Darkness box?
Personally I probably still wouldnt buy it, price per mini might be highly competitive but I dont think I want those ancient as skeleton sculpts. The crocodragon isnt cool enough on its own to sway me otherwise.
chaos0xomega wrote: to be fair we dont know what the pricing will be. I think most of us were surprised byhow generous the pricing on HH ended up being. How would we feel about the Tomb Kings box set if the price comes in at the same point as the Age of Darkness box?
Personally I probably still wouldnt buy it, price per mini might be highly competitive but I dont think I want those ancient as skeleton sculpts. The crocodragon isnt cool enough on its own to sway me otherwise.
I think you managed to talk yourself out of your own point by the end there lol but unless it's 40 skellies for £40 or otherwise £1 per mini at most then imo it'll be a bad deal when you factor in how bad some of these minis are by todays standards.
You also hit the problem that we do have current day points of reference. Night goblins are £27.50 for 20, which are presumably also going to be contemporary old world minis. So if tomb kings skeletons are also £27.50 for 20, that sucks. If they are cheaper, does that mean GW will be forced to make gloomspite gitz cheaper?
yes and no - I think the tomb kings mini range is gak and you probably could not pay me to take them... the Bretonnian box I could be convinced on, so long as they don't put a unit of pegasus knights in the box. If they do (and they very likely will), thats a deal breaker.
The peasant archers and men at arms are fine kits and I have no issues with them, and the knight kit is serviceable, especially if the eventual foot knight kit comes with enough extra bits to spruce them up a bit - I could make do with them until an eventual replacement comes out (would probably downgrade them to errants at that point and move on with the new kit as knights of the realm).
Pegasus knights though? Why on earth would I want to use those ugly old things alongside a brand new gorgeous hero on pegasus sculpt that not only dwarfs them in size but also blows them away in aesthetic quality?
chaos0xomega wrote: to be fair we dont know what the pricing will be. I think most of us were surprised byhow generous the pricing on HH ended up being. How would we feel about the Tomb Kings box set if the price comes in at the same point as the Age of Darkness box?
Personally I probably still wouldnt buy it, price per mini might be highly competitive but I dont think I want those ancient as skeleton sculpts. The crocodragon isnt cool enough on its own to sway me otherwise.
I think you managed to talk yourself out of your own point by the end there lol but unless it's 40 skellies for £40 or otherwise £1 per mini at most then imo it'll be a bad deal when you factor in how bad some of these minis are by todays standards.
You also hit the problem that we do have current day points of reference. Night goblins are £27.50 for 20, which are presumably also going to be contemporary old world minis. So if tomb kings skeletons are also £27.50 for 20, that sucks. If they are cheaper, does that mean GW will be forced to make gloomspite gitz cheaper?
Price per model will be cheaper than gitz due to more models in box. We already know bret archers come in 32.
Like how stormcast became cheaper. Model count doubled, price upped but less than double.
A lot of unknowns price wise as you say. It’s a specialist games release so AOS pricing doesn’t really apply. GW have never rereleased a discontinued model kit back into retail before so there is no precedent. This box may be priced aggressively like Age of Darkness, or not so much like Legions Imperialis.
MaxT wrote: A lot of unknowns price wise as you say. It’s a specialist games release so AOS pricing doesn’t really apply. GW have never rereleased a discontinued model kit back into retail before so there is no precedent. This box may be priced aggressively like Age of Darkness, or not so much like Legions Imperialis.
What worries me about pricing is that these old sprues are very inefficient to cast. 4 skellies per tool and you need a separate sprue of bows and shields. The cav is a sprue per 4 riders, a sprue per 2 horses, and again extra bows and shields. Compare to a modern AoS sprue that's one tool for 10 dudes with all gear. ToW will be taking several times as long to manufacture by machine time alone, and packing is more complex too.
chaos0xomega wrote: to be fair we dont know what the pricing will be. I think most of us were surprised byhow generous the pricing on HH ended up being. How would we feel about the Tomb Kings box set if the price comes in at the same point as the Age of Darkness box?
Personally I probably still wouldnt buy it, price per mini might be highly competitive but I dont think I want those ancient as skeleton sculpts. The crocodragon isnt cool enough on its own to sway me otherwise.
I think you managed to talk yourself out of your own point by the end there lol but unless it's 40 skellies for £40 or otherwise £1 per mini at most then imo it'll be a bad deal when you factor in how bad some of these minis are by todays standards.
You also hit the problem that we do have current day points of reference. Night goblins are £27.50 for 20, which are presumably also going to be contemporary old world minis. So if tomb kings skeletons are also £27.50 for 20, that sucks. If they are cheaper, does that mean GW will be forced to make gloomspite gitz cheaper?
Price per model will be cheaper than gitz due to more models in box. We already know bret archers come in 32.
Like how stormcast became cheaper. Model count doubled, price upped but less than double.
So again, gitz/night goblins will very likely be in the old world at some point with the greenskins, either they have to sell gitz in bigger boxes, cheaper per head, or we have to accept that old world pricing will be... prohibitive.
These regiments and other future regiments are returning in boxes that contain enough plastic miniatures to make a full regiment, not just a rank or two. With the Peasant Bowmen box, you’ll be able to build a unit of 32 archers, complete with a command group and Defensive Stakes.
Apart from that I can't recall GW ever re-releasing minis of this age on this scale.
What's the most expensive army/starter box GW has ever released? I wouldn't be surprised to see this box rival that.
I think that might be a tie between the Grand Master Adeptus Titanicus and Age of Darkness Horus Heresy boxes.
The latter, whilst carrying a £180.00 price tag remains really good value, as it’s positively stuffed with goodies. Certainly enough that buying one sets you well on the way to a proper army.
MaxT wrote: A lot of unknowns price wise as you say. It’s a specialist games release so AOS pricing doesn’t really apply. GW have never rereleased a discontinued model kit back into retail before so there is no precedent. This box may be priced aggressively like Age of Darkness, or not so much like Legions Imperialis.
What worries me about pricing is that these old sprues are very inefficient to cast. 4 skellies per tool and you need a separate sprue of bows and shields. The cav is a sprue per 4 riders, a sprue per 2 horses, and again extra bows and shields. Compare to a modern AoS sprue that's one tool for 10 dudes with all gear. ToW will be taking several times as long to manufacture by machine time alone, and packing is more complex too.
Didn't you just comment on how they were inefficient to cast...?
Although I think you might be overstating it somewhat, particularly if the weapon sprues are shared between all of the TK models.
And how would that even work, they're not digital sculpts.
GW were making tools long before there were digital sculpts. They've retooled various pre-digital kits over the years. Just requires the master models. Or, these days, digital scans of those master models.
To be clear, I doubt they have bothered to retool them, as they would have wanted to put as much of the budget as possible into the shiny new models instead... but if they felt that a new tool would result in a big enough productivity increase to justify the expense, it's not out of the question.
It's unlikely "sprue efficiency" is a relatively important factor in pricing. And these products are not priced at a competitive formula that takes into account the cost of their material and cost of production, the way a family restaurant costs it's dishes. Those costs are negligible and the old style sprues probably aren't causing some great delay in their plastic injection molding schedule. It's more just a matter of how far corporate's willing to push it and risk strangling the whole project in the crib.
I have to say it would be hilarious in an "OMG" & "WTF" kind of way if they have re-tooled and redone the sprues, but still use the ancient models on those sprues
Though GW will have made the tooling themselves, I do wonder just how old the files are and what lengths they had to go to in order to get a more modern machine to work with them?
I don't know if there are ways they could repair an existing mould to reduce mould lines; otherwise I wouldn't expect them to retool or remake a really old mould. With digital sculpting GW could easily knock out a bunch of new skeletons.
The bottleneck would be the cost and time of preparing new moulds themsleves. So if they were going to remake the old ones they'd have just invested into new ones.
frankelee wrote: It's unlikely "sprue efficiency" is a relatively important factor in pricing. And these products are not priced at a competitive formula that takes into account the cost of their material and cost of production, the way a family restaurant costs it's dishes. Those costs are negligible and the old style sprues probably aren't causing some great delay in their plastic injection molding schedule. It's more just a matter of how far corporate's willing to push it and risk strangling the whole project in the crib.
Production efficiency on these kits actually matters a lot, it's not about material usage, it's about time. In the time it takes to produce 1 box of 32 skeletons, they can potentially have produced around 4-8 boxes of a more modern kit (depending on the kit). The machine can only be producing one set of molds at a time, so if you think about the machine staying on the Tomb king skeletons for a day, fo example, it might produce ~2,700 kits for sale (estimated based off my experience with industrial plastics manufacturing)... or you could produce something like 10,800 deathrattle skeleton kits or 21,600 black knights kits instead. When you put that into the context of the sales price of the latter two kits, it's frighteningly obvious that GW is basically leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table per day producing these older kits instead of more modern ones - and if the demand for them is as high as some assume, then that means those machines are going to be tied up producing these kits for a long time (and that alone might be why it's taken GW so long to get this game into production, because I doubt they'd want to to have anything more than the bare minimum of machines allocated to production of such an inefficient product). The only way to offset that inefficiency really is to hike the cost of the kits to offset the time losses, but you can't really price the kits 4-8x higher because then nobody will buy them.
And I add what I said in the very beginning, this is either much smaller or much bigger than most of us thinks
Maybe GW had the old moulds around, allocated the maximum possible machine time to be cost efficient (simple calculation on how many kits you can produce with old stuff until making new moulds that are better would have been cheaper) and this is everything we get and sold out in seconds
Or they made new moulds with a modern layout to produce like modern AoS kits but have chosen to use the old design for nostalgia reasons and because "original old" sells high on ebay and collectors are willing to pay (without ever playing the game), swarming the market with more than people can buy and attracting new players for the hobby
We already know the prices of a few troops for the core factions.
-10 Ungors/Gors: 35$
-10 Bestigors 55$
-20 Chaos Marauders 45$
-20 Night goblins 45$
-20 Savage orcs 60$
.16 Dryads 55$
-10 Flagellants 35$
-10 Longbeards/Ironbreakers/Hammerers 55$
Some of these prices are insane. I used to buy a box of 16 dwarf warriors/longbeards for 22$. Now 10 of them cost 55$...
Oke those skellys are maybe not the best models but they will go nicely whit my old skellys didnt buy enough when playing tk did have a lot of chariots, the only bret i need are some characters and those footknights. so will buy only the rules or the tk box if there is a nice price.
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: We already know the prices of a few troops for the core factions.
-10 Ungors/Gors: 35$
-10 Bestigors 55$
-20 Chaos Marauders 45$
-20 Night goblins 45$
-20 Savage orcs 60$
.16 Dryads 55$
-10 Flagellants 35$
-10 Longbeards/Ironbreakers/Hammerers 55$
Some of these prices are insane. I used to buy a box of 16 dwarf warriors/longbeards for 22$. Now 10 of them cost 55$...
The Marauder price is a very good indication, as those are the oldest on that list. Some that were nearly as old, got their sprue changed in AoS.
So I think we can safely say that GW will be charging current prices for models that are over 20 years old.
, think the Skeletons are fro the back end of 5th edition WFB. They got a Khemri sprue added when Tomb Kings came out. It had Shields, Command group, skulls with head dresses, and bows & arrow quivers.
I was seriously tempted to start a GW Dwarf army for ToW, but of the prices are going to be what they seem to be, I'll just get the rulebook and use my current collection.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
skeleton wrote: Oke those skellys are maybe not the best models but they will go nicely whit my old skellys didnt buy enough when playing tk did have a lot of chariots, the only bret i need are some characters and those footknights. so will buy only the rules or the tk box if there is a nice price.
If you want good skeletons, buy the Warlord Skeletons. Absolutely fantastic looking Skeletons. Kit comes with shields, hand weapons, Spears, bows, and arrow quivers. Only thing missing is command groups, bit thise can be made from spare parts.
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: We already know the prices of a few troops for the core factions.
-10 Ungors/Gors: 35$
-10 Bestigors 55$
-20 Chaos Marauders 45$
-20 Night goblins 45$
-20 Savage orcs 60$
.16 Dryads 55$
-10 Flagellants 35$
-10 Longbeards/Ironbreakers/Hammerers 55$
Some of these prices are insane. I used to buy a box of 16 dwarf warriors/longbeards for 22$. Now 10 of them cost 55$...
The Marauder price is a very good indication, as those are the oldest on that list. Some that were nearly as old, got their sprue changed in AoS.
So I think we can safely say that GW will be charging current prices for models that are over 20 years old.
, think the Skeletons are fro the back end of 5th edition WFB. They got a Khemri sprue added when Tomb Kings came out. It had Shields, Command group, skulls with head dresses, and bows & arrow quivers.
I was seriously tempted to start a GW Dwarf army for ToW, but of the prices are going to be what they seem to be, I'll just get the rulebook and use my current collection.
This is exactly why I can't see this new game taking off in a way that lasts. The launch sets are probably going to be good value, GW will want the rulebook out in the wild as it gives people with existing collections an excuse to pick something up at least and moves people away from playing the readily available (and free) old editions.
But once the launch kits are done, and we see such discrepancies between AoS and old world kits, which are essentially the same models for some forces, I don't think people are going to want to keep buying 2 €42.50 'aos' kits to make a single unit of old world models. Beastmen are the prime example- boxes of 10 models against the bretts 32. I do not see them shifting a double box of brett models at €85 to match the cost of the aos sets.
Now sure, maybe they will rebox the 10 man kits but then we will either need to see beastmen units completely rechanged in AoS to match, because we know full well GW won't lower the price.
skeleton wrote: Oke those skellys are maybe not the best models but they will go nicely whit my old skellys didnt buy enough when playing tk did have a lot of chariots, the only bret i need are some characters and those footknights. so will buy only the rules or the tk box if there is a nice price.
If you want good skeletons, buy the Warlord Skeletons. Absolutely fantastic looking Skeletons. Kit comes with shields, hand weapons, Spears, bows, and arrow quivers. Only thing missing is command groups, bit thise can be made from spare parts.
I love that skeleton kit. It got a bad rap due to some people crying about it on youtube, sure you do need a little more patience when putting them together but its a damn fine serviceable kit and looks properly in scale against WFB kits of the time. The tomb king skeletons are massive in comparison.
If the tomb kings were not getting a re-release then I'd have brought a couple of hundred more of the warlord ones and just used the old TK shields. But I'm happy with the TK ones being a bit bigger, as it separates my vampire counts ones (for which I am sticking with warlord games ones)
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: We already know the prices of a few troops for the core factions.
-10 Ungors/Gors: 35$
-10 Bestigors 55$
-20 Chaos Marauders 45$
-20 Night goblins 45$
-20 Savage orcs 60$
.16 Dryads 55$
-10 Flagellants 35$
-10 Longbeards/Ironbreakers/Hammerers 55$
Some of these prices are insane. I used to buy a box of 16 dwarf warriors/longbeards for 22$. Now 10 of them cost 55$...
Yes. Now what does that tell when they double model count for tow boxes? Hint: it won't be double.
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: We already know the prices of a few troops for the core factions.
-10 Ungors/Gors: 35$
-10 Bestigors 55$
-20 Chaos Marauders 45$
-20 Night goblins 45$
-20 Savage orcs 60$
.16 Dryads 55$
-10 Flagellants 35$
-10 Longbeards/Ironbreakers/Hammerers 55$
Some of these prices are insane. I used to buy a box of 16 dwarf warriors/longbeards for 22$. Now 10 of them cost 55$...
The Marauder price is a very good indication, as those are the oldest on that list. Some that were nearly as old, got their sprue changed in AoS.
So I think we can safely say that GW will be charging current prices for models that are over 20 years old.
, think the Skeletons are fro the back end of 5th edition WFB. They got a Khemri sprue added when Tomb Kings came out. It had Shields, Command group, skulls with head dresses, and bows & arrow quivers.
I was seriously tempted to start a GW Dwarf army for ToW, but of the prices are going to be what they seem to be, I'll just get the rulebook and use my current collection.
This is exactly why I can't see this new game taking off in a way that lasts. The launch sets are probably going to be good value, GW will want the rulebook out in the wild as it gives people with existing collections an excuse to pick something up at least and moves people away from playing the readily available (and free) old editions.
But once the launch kits are done, and we see such discrepancies between AoS and old world kits, which are essentially the same models for some forces, I don't think people are going to want to keep buying 2 €42.50 'aos' kits to make a single unit of old world models. Beastmen are the prime example- boxes of 10 models against the bretts 32. I do not see them shifting a double box of brett models at €85 to match the cost of the aos sets.
Now sure, maybe they will rebox the 10 man kits but then we will either need to see beastmen units completely rechanged in AoS to match, because we know full well GW won't lower the price.
It will be such a mess.
This is entirely my stance and concern, I can't see them removing all these units into triple the unit size they're in now, or likely some bizzaro number like 24 bestigors or whatever (unsure if the sprues mean they can be made in 4s to be clear), but it totally undermines and devalues the sigmar boxes and likely they will need to cease to exist. But then Sigmar is based off a box = a unit, so if you suddenly only ever buy infantry at double/triple the unit size, they're making a convolution of that system.
In short, either sigmar is about to get cheaper or old world is going to be more expensive than people hope.
Don't forget chaos warriors are £37.50 for 10, I'm not really sure GW will do a 20 man box at a comparable price point to what is expected (I'd assume 20 for £50)
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: We already know the prices of a few troops for the core factions.
-10 Ungors/Gors: 35$
-10 Bestigors 55$
-20 Chaos Marauders 45$
-20 Night goblins 45$
-20 Savage orcs 60$
.16 Dryads 55$
-10 Flagellants 35$
-10 Longbeards/Ironbreakers/Hammerers 55$
Some of these prices are insane. I used to buy a box of 16 dwarf warriors/longbeards for 22$. Now 10 of them cost 55$...
Yes. Now what does that tell when they double model count for tow boxes? Hint: it won't be double.
If they are cheaper for TOW, than AOS players will just buy them from the TOW site and nobody will buy them from AOS site. You cannot sell 20 Hammerers for 80$ and 10 Hammerers for 55$ on the same GW site. I do realize that one kit will have round bases and the other one square bases. But still, you are on hopium if you think they will be cheaper for TOW vs AOS.
frankelee wrote: It's unlikely "sprue efficiency" is a relatively important factor in pricing. And these products are not priced at a competitive formula that takes into account the cost of their material and cost of production, the way a family restaurant costs it's dishes. Those costs are negligible and the old style sprues probably aren't causing some great delay in their plastic injection molding schedule. It's more just a matter of how far corporate's willing to push it and risk strangling the whole project in the crib.
Production efficiency on these kits actually matters a lot, it's not about material usage, it's about time. In the time it takes to produce 1 box of 32 skeletons, they can potentially have produced around 4-8 boxes of a more modern kit (depending on the kit). The machine can only be producing one set of molds at a time, so if you think about the machine staying on the Tomb king skeletons for a day, fo example, it might produce ~2,700 kits for sale (estimated based off my experience with industrial plastics manufacturing)... or you could produce something like 10,800 deathrattle skeleton kits or 21,600 black knights kits instead. When you put that into the context of the sales price of the latter two kits, it's frighteningly obvious that GW is basically leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table per day producing these older kits instead of more modern ones - and if the demand for them is as high as some assume, then that means those machines are going to be tied up producing these kits for a long time (and that alone might be why it's taken GW so long to get this game into production, because I doubt they'd want to to have anything more than the bare minimum of machines allocated to production of such an inefficient product). The only way to offset that inefficiency really is to hike the cost of the kits to offset the time losses, but you can't really price the kits 4-8x higher because then nobody will buy them.
Added to that will be the fact that some of the older tools may not fit in some of the newer machines (and conversely some of the newer larger tools won't fit in the older machines) there will be a constant juggling act to try and make things as efficient as possible,
frankelee wrote: It's unlikely "sprue efficiency" is a relatively important factor in pricing. And these products are not priced at a competitive formula that takes into account the cost of their material and cost of production, the way a family restaurant costs it's dishes. Those costs are negligible and the old style sprues probably aren't causing some great delay in their plastic injection molding schedule. It's more just a matter of how far corporate's willing to push it and risk strangling the whole project in the crib.
Production efficiency on these kits actually matters a lot, it's not about material usage, it's about time. In the time it takes to produce 1 box of 32 skeletons, they can potentially have produced around 4-8 boxes of a more modern kit (depending on the kit). The machine can only be producing one set of molds at a time, so if you think about the machine staying on the Tomb king skeletons for a day, fo example, it might produce ~2,700 kits for sale (estimated based off my experience with industrial plastics manufacturing)... or you could produce something like 10,800 deathrattle skeleton kits or 21,600 black knights kits instead. When you put that into the context of the sales price of the latter two kits, it's frighteningly obvious that GW is basically leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table per day producing these older kits instead of more modern ones - and if the demand for them is as high as some assume, then that means those machines are going to be tied up producing these kits for a long time (and that alone might be why it's taken GW so long to get this game into production, because I doubt they'd want to to have anything more than the bare minimum of machines allocated to production of such an inefficient product). The only way to offset that inefficiency really is to hike the cost of the kits to offset the time losses, but you can't really price the kits 4-8x higher because then nobody will buy them.
Added to that will be the fact that some of the older tools may not fit in some of the newer machines (and conversely some of the newer larger tools won't fit in the older machines) there will be a constant juggling act to try and make things as efficient as possible,
If all this is true, wouldn't just making new kits be the more profitable option even from a cold, calculating, capitalist point of view?
Especially since GW designers aren't exactly paid a kingly wage.
And I add what I said in the very beginning, this is either much smaller or much bigger than most of us thinks
Maybe GW had the old moulds around, allocated the maximum possible machine time to be cost efficient (simple calculation on how many kits you can produce with old stuff until making new moulds that are better would have been cheaper) and this is everything we get and sold out in seconds
Or they made new moulds with a modern layout to produce like modern AoS kits but have chosen to use the old design for nostalgia reasons and because "original old" sells high on ebay and collectors are willing to pay (without ever playing the game), swarming the market with more than people can buy and attracting new players for the hobby
There's no way of easily making new moulds of designs this old. They don't exist as digital designs and would have originally been produced as physical 3-ups, which were then pantographed to cut the steel mould. There are methods of making copies of existing moulds but not too easily digitise them and adjust layouts. These are almost certainly the existing moulds, with all the inefficiencies that likely brings.
tneva82 wrote: You assume they will do 2 different boxes. What stops them from replacing one with other?
Oh wait gw never replaced box with new that has double models...oh wait they have. It's even been mentioned in this thread.
Some boxes going double size is no big deal for gw.
You might be right. Than some AoS players will rejoice for better deals they will get. GW/AOS team is probably not happy with the mess this will cause in the AoS range. They would have to update some of the boxes but leave the others? BUT we do know from the box leak that TOW boxes will have art on the front cover and AOS boxes have picture of models on the front cover. And you have to put either square or round bases in the box, so can you really have the same box for both systems? Demons have the same box for 40k and AoS tough..
frankelee wrote: It's unlikely "sprue efficiency" is a relatively important factor in pricing. And these products are not priced at a competitive formula that takes into account the cost of their material and cost of production, the way a family restaurant costs it's dishes. Those costs are negligible and the old style sprues probably aren't causing some great delay in their plastic injection molding schedule. It's more just a matter of how far corporate's willing to push it and risk strangling the whole project in the crib.
Production efficiency on these kits actually matters a lot, it's not about material usage, it's about time. In the time it takes to produce 1 box of 32 skeletons, they can potentially have produced around 4-8 boxes of a more modern kit (depending on the kit). The machine can only be producing one set of molds at a time, so if you think about the machine staying on the Tomb king skeletons for a day, fo example, it might produce ~2,700 kits for sale (estimated based off my experience with industrial plastics manufacturing)... or you could produce something like 10,800 deathrattle skeleton kits or 21,600 black knights kits instead. When you put that into the context of the sales price of the latter two kits, it's frighteningly obvious that GW is basically leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table per day producing these older kits instead of more modern ones - and if the demand for them is as high as some assume, then that means those machines are going to be tied up producing these kits for a long time (and that alone might be why it's taken GW so long to get this game into production, because I doubt they'd want to to have anything more than the bare minimum of machines allocated to production of such an inefficient product). The only way to offset that inefficiency really is to hike the cost of the kits to offset the time losses, but you can't really price the kits 4-8x higher because then nobody will buy them.
We don't know their machine park. They could still have older injection machines not really suitable for producing new sprues but used for more simple moulds (ancient kits like the Vyper, possible MtO like the 3rd edition 40k box or bases). Then the 'normal' production wouldn't be affected that much. I work in the industry (not gaming though), and until machines have too many failures and/or the replacement parts are too hard (and expensive) to get, we keep them for the same reasons.
tneva82 wrote: You assume they will do 2 different boxes. What stops them from replacing one with other?
Oh wait gw never replaced box with new that has double models...oh wait they have. It's even been mentioned in this thread.
Some boxes going double size is no big deal for gw.
It kind of is, the only time they've done it realistically was the stormcast boxes I think. The point still stands you're asserting they want to shift more plastic at lower profit in the name of supporting what is at this stage a niche game.
At least for Gobbos they could solve double TOW/AOS box problem by simply not having Night Goblins/Wood Goblins subfactions (insert whatever fluff reason - see other non playable factions) in the game but only regular Gobbos just like there are no regular Orcs in AOS.
I said that a few days ago, somewhere. May have been reddit or fb. Most of the range is legacy whfb models, they've barely been touched. My theory is that they send Beasts back to WHFB with the exception of the tzaangors and slaangors and the handful of new kits, and then move the ogroids and fomoroids and the like out of slaves to darkness to build a new basis for an AoS Beastmen army.
tneva82 wrote: You assume they will do 2 different boxes. What stops them from replacing one with other?
Oh wait gw never replaced box with new that has double models...oh wait they have. It's even been mentioned in this thread.
Some boxes going double size is no big deal for gw.
You might be right. Than some AoS players will rejoice for better deals they will get. GW/AOS team is probably not happy with the mess this will cause in the AoS range. They would have to update some of the boxes but leave the others? BUT we do know from the box leak that TOW boxes will have art on the front cover and AOS boxes have picture of models on the front cover. And you have to put either square or round bases in the box, so can you really have the same box for both systems? Demons have the same box for 40k and AoS tough..
Spoiler:
That won't happen with the chaos warriors. They've been sculpted specifically with AoS in mind as they've got stuff like SCE trophies hanging off of them.
Which makes one wonder if they're going to bring back the old chaos warriors kit for TOW, or just cut them from TOW entirely and recalibrate the army. My theory there is that marauders and marauder horsemen get cut from AoS along with the chariots and a few of the other older units and they rebrand and rebuild the chaos warriors as being more Norscan in flavor. My recollection of the lore was also that the heavy plate armor chaos warriors thing didn't come about until either Asavar Kul made certain pacts with the gods or the chaos dwarves opened up trade with the north, so it might not be in timeline for TOW?
chaos0xomega wrote: Which makes one wonder if they're going to bring back the old chaos warriors kit for TOW, or just cut them from TOW entirely and recalibrate the army. My theory there is that marauders and marauder horsemen get cut from AoS along with the chariots and a few of the other older units and they rebrand and rebuild the chaos warriors as being more Norscan in flavor. My recollection of the lore was also that the heavy plate armor chaos warriors thing didn't come about until either Asavar Kul made certain pacts with the gods or the chaos dwarves opened up trade with the north, so it might not be in timeline for TOW?
A lot of it depends on the other rumour that it's going to be two armies every six months. You could have three or four years before any of the listed armies comes close to hitting the table.
chaos0xomega wrote: Which makes one wonder if they're going to bring back the old chaos warriors kit for TOW, or just cut them from TOW entirely and recalibrate the army. My theory there is that marauders and marauder horsemen get cut from AoS along with the chariots and a few of the other older units and they rebrand and rebuild the chaos warriors as being more Norscan in flavor. My recollection of the lore was also that the heavy plate armor chaos warriors thing didn't come about until either Asavar Kul made certain pacts with the gods or the chaos dwarves opened up trade with the north, so it might not be in timeline for TOW?
A lot of it depends on the other rumour that it's going to be two armies every six months. You could have three or four years before any of the listed armies comes close to hitting the table.
and thats likely entirely dependent on sales for the first two, if they don't sell many boxes but sell a lot of rulebooks we may see other boxes but more of a risk
I'm increasingly doubting the rumors about army pairs every 6 months, they were linked to rumors of a new chariot instwad of bone dragon and a unit of mummies in the Tomb Kings box, which ate now verifiably false.
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: BUT we do know from the box leak that TOW boxes will have art on the front cover and AOS boxes have picture of models on the front cover.
The spoiled box is from an 'includes the rulebook' starter set, not a unit box. They always have painted art, regardless of system. We don't yet know the unit box style.
Now that breaking opposing units is trickier to pull off, I wonder if that’s going to bring a Points Premium to stuff which causes automatic Panic tests, like the Screaming Skull Catapult.
Because when you can no longer rely on a crushing combat victory to drive the enemy away, surely every such test which might result in a fleeing unit is going to become more valuable?
I am 100% sure you will be able to buy minis for all the core factions on release day. They cannot open a new system by selling just Bretonnia and Tomb Kings.
Than after 6 months they will release new models for Empire and O&G.
As far as army books go, who knows. Maybe just two army books for good and evil factions.
skeleton wrote: Oke those skellys are maybe not the best models but they will go nicely whit my old skellys didnt buy enough when playing tk did have a lot of chariots, the only bret i need are some characters and those footknights. so will buy only the rules or the tk box if there is a nice price.
If you want good skeletons, buy the Warlord Skeletons. Absolutely fantastic looking Skeletons. Kit comes with shields, hand weapons, Spears, bows, and arrow quivers. Only thing missing is command groups, bit thise can be made from spare parts.
I love that skeleton kit. It got a bad rap due to some people crying about it on youtube, sure you do need a little more patience when putting them together but its a damn fine serviceable kit and looks properly in scale against WFB kits of the time. The tomb king skeletons are massive in comparison.
If the tomb kings were not getting a re-release then I'd have brought a couple of hundred more of the warlord ones and just used the old TK shields. But I'm happy with the TK ones being a bit bigger, as it separates my vampire counts ones (for which I am sticking with warlord games ones)
Yeah those Skeletons (originally from another manufacturer) are great! I got them when they were released by that other company. They used to come 30 to a box, so with two I made 50 warriors and 10 archers! Don't know what bad reap they got online but myself I loved them! Smaller and more delicate models for sure, but definitely worth it for the price. Added some TK to them and they look fantastic.
Yeah those Skeletons (originally from another manufacturer) are great! I got them when they were released by that other company. They used to come 30 to a box, so with two I made 50 warriors and 10 archers! Don't know what bad reap they got online but myself I loved them! Smaller and more delicate models for sure, but definitely worth it for the price. Added some TK to them and they look fantastic.
The 'bad rep' was just that they were really fiddly to build, due to the waist joints and separate feet, and the parts being so delicate. They are fantastic looking models once you get them together, though.
Army Building article is up. Mixture of points and core/special etc. so pretty familiar stuff, albeit each faction looks like it'll have bespoke lists to choose from.
Interesting distinction between mercenaries and allies.
OK. I don’t remember pre-6th Ed Warhammer list building terribly well, but this feels like a mix of post-6th WHFB and 2nd Ed 40K.
The “slots” are carried over (Characters, Core, Special, Rare) but rather than so many of each, it’s now a maximum percentage of your available points.
lord_blackfang wrote: Yea not sure why Mercs wouldn't just come under the Allies allowance.
It might just be so Ogres can operate as mercenaries and maybe future proofing in case they ever, somehow, do Dogs of War? Could even already be a list of fairly generic things like Tilean Crossbowmen, the mentioned Bombards etc. that get thrown in?
lord_blackfang wrote: Bit at the end implies that main factions get a physical army list of some format.
I thought that was already stated, or at least heavily implied by them? Probably as a separate product to the core book (whether that's bespoke books for each faction or more of a compilation) but I was under the impression that there was already the idea that the core factions would get a physical release whereas the 'legacy' style lists would be PDF only for now.
lord_blackfang wrote: Yea not sure why Mercs wouldn't just come under the Allies allowance.
without a better example an 40k one
you play Space Marines, chose your man Chapter (eg Dark Angels) and can use 20% as Mercs generic units and 25% as Allies from "Imperium" (eg Astra Militarum) or Eldar
so the Eldar will not benefit from any army rules but Mercs will
Bit at the end implies that main factions get a physical army list of some format.
Hardly surprising. Who didn't expect army books to return?
Personally I'm not expecting full army books of old but something more akin to the Liber Astartes/Hereticus etc. style books that Horus Heresy got. You could probably do all the core factions in a single book (or at least 2 with an arbitrary order/destruction split and everyone complain that Tomb Kings are in the latter).
Off white kind of implies bones, so looks like more skellies.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I would guess that Sergeant at Arms will be a "commoner" low level hero so that you don't have the slightly odd look of a bunch of peasants and one Knight.
bong264 wrote: I got excited at the "up to 0-50% can be spent on characters" but then saw magic items were limited. Was hoping for a return to herohammer
Hmm... let's see how poweful a Duke with T 5 and 7 wounds + 100 points in magic items + vows + virtues is...
The new article seems to confirm something that GW hasn't touched upon so far.
In a recent video, the Honest Wargamer Rob "speculated" that the free PDF rules won't be just low-effort rules akin to "legends" (or whatever it's called) rules for AoS & 40k, but full fledged army lists that would be on the same strength land granularity level with the "main factions".
He also added that the rulebooks/campaign books would just add rules to build thematic/alternate army list, which won't be just straight-out superior or more detailed to the PDF rules.
The new article seems to confirm the "thematic army lists in books" bit, which is encouraging for those who want to wargame with armies that aren't main factions.
If he's right, Dark Elf, Vampire, Skaven and Ogre players can breathe a sigh of relief and look forward to playing with new rules.
The Men-At-Arms are described as poor fighters but cheap in points.
They do however have the ability to become stubborn and the shieldwall rule allows them to give ground instead of falling back. Even poor fighters look very hard to actually break?
Dreamchild wrote: The new article seems to confirm something that GW hasn't touched upon so far.
In a recent video, the Honest Wargamer Rob "speculated" that the free PDF rules won't be just low-effort rules akin to "legends" (or whatever it's called) rules for AoS & 40k, but full fledged army lists that would be on the same strength land granularity level with the "main factions".
He also added that the rulebooks/campaign books would just add rules to build thematic/alternate army list, which won't be just straight-out superior or more detailed to the PDF rules.
The new article seems to confirm the "thematic army lists in books" bit, which is encouraging for those who want to wargame with armies that aren't main factions.
If he's right, Dark Elf, Vampire, Skaven and Ogre players can breathe a sigh of relief and look forward to playing with new rules.
Don't follow the channel but I'd imagine Rob would have more than an inkling than most Youtube folks on what the product is going to look like. Not to mention that some channels are apparently starting to get their preview rules etc.
Ohman wrote: The Men-At-Arms are described as poor fighters but cheap in points.
They do however have the ability to become stubborn and the shieldwall rule allows them to give ground instead of falling back. Even poor fighters look very hard to actually break?
They are poor fighters, they barely can kill Skeleton warriors if not already running away from them! Its more of an case that they "hold" enemy down so that the Knights can heroically intervene by slamming right into the flanks and save the day.
bong264 wrote: I got excited at the "up to 0-50% can be spent on characters" but then saw magic items were limited. Was hoping for a return to herohammer
Hmm... let's see how poweful a Duke with T 5 and 7 wounds + 100 points in magic items + vows + virtues is...
It’s the save of the Hippogryph which caught my attention.
Griffonic Pelt is a nice addition, giving Mr Tweetyflapdeath protection. And we can add Barding for presumably a 4+ save.
And as the beastie itself adds to its owner’s stats? I have to assume, in the absence of further information, the saves add together.
Heavy Armour + Shield = 4+ save on its own. So…does being mounted on that beast now grant a 1+ save?
Dreamchild wrote: The new article seems to confirm something that GW hasn't touched upon so far.
In a recent video, the Honest Wargamer Rob "speculated" that the free PDF rules won't be just low-effort rules akin to "legends" (or whatever it's called) rules for AoS & 40k, but full fledged army lists that would be on the same strength land granularity level with the "main factions".
He also added that the rulebooks/campaign books would just add rules to build thematic/alternate army list, which won't be just straight-out superior or more detailed to the PDF rules.
The new article seems to confirm the "thematic army lists in books" bit, which is encouraging for those who want to wargame with armies that aren't main factions.
If he's right, Dark Elf, Vampire, Skaven and Ogre players can breathe a sigh of relief and look forward to playing with new rules.
Denial is a hell of a thing to go through, don't worry you'll get through those stages of grief eventually.
Heres the thing, the PDF lists are apparently the "Grand Army" lists. The Grand Army lists are said to be the totality of units available to that faction. By that logic, any "thematic army list" for Dark Elves, Vampires, Skaven, Ogres, etc. would essentally be/necessitate an update to the PDF army list, because you are adding units to that faction. We know that they will not be updating the PDF army list though, which means those thematic lists for those factions won't be happening - aside from the fact that GW already said that the core factions are the ones that would be explored and updated in forthcoming expansions, and the other factions like VC and Skaven would not be.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: OK. I don’t remember pre-6th Ed Warhammer list building terribly well, but this feels like a mix of post-6th WHFB and 2nd Ed 40K.
The “slots” are carried over (Characters, Core, Special, Rare) but rather than so many of each, it’s now a maximum percentage of your available points.
I’m encouraged by this.
5th was as such: 25%+ spent on regiments. Not Core or anything like that. Regiments. Up to 25% on characters, up to 25% on war machines, and up to 25% on Allies. Guess what you can get as your Allies? If you guessed "no restrictions", then you are spot on.
Percentages have always been a garbage composition tool and have led to the worst imbalances in the game. Not shocked at all that they're in.
And in the past this was based on fluff not on power
Meaning some armies wanted to play core units only, which was fluff (and strong), while others played with 25% less
Bit at the end implies that main factions get a physical army list of some format.
Hardly surprising. Who didn't expect army books to return?
I did but there was some uncertainty expressed recently in this thread about it, that's why I'm pointing it out.
This thread also heavily indulged in speculation that TOW would be in Epic scale, I wouldn't listen to half of it. Main issue is whether they'll all be amalgamated into a couple books HH style or whether each army will get one. I suspect the latter in some kind of format (perhaps as suggested above for variant lists) as there's a lot more background and fluff you can fill WHFB army books with than HH when you have 20 slightly varying degrees of Space Marine.
Dreamchild wrote: The new article seems to confirm something that GW hasn't touched upon so far.
In a recent video, the Honest Wargamer Rob "speculated" that the free PDF rules won't be just low-effort rules akin to "legends" (or whatever it's called) rules for AoS & 40k, but full fledged army lists that would be on the same strength land granularity level with the "main factions".
He also added that the rulebooks/campaign books would just add rules to build thematic/alternate army list, which won't be just straight-out superior or more detailed to the PDF rules.
The new article seems to confirm the "thematic army lists in books" bit, which is encouraging for those who want to wargame with armies that aren't main factions.
If he's right, Dark Elf, Vampire, Skaven and Ogre players can breathe a sigh of relief and look forward to playing with new rules.
Denial is a hell of a thing to go through, don't worry you'll get through those stages of grief eventually.
Heres the thing, the PDF lists are apparently the "Grand Army" lists. The Grand Army lists are said to be the totality of units available to that faction. By that logic, any "thematic army list" for Dark Elves, Vampires, Skaven, Ogres, etc. would essentally be/necessitate an update to the PDF army list, because you are adding units to that faction. We know that they will not be updating the PDF army list though, which means those thematic lists for those factions won't be happening - aside from the fact that GW already said that the core factions are the ones that would be explored and updated in forthcoming expansions, and the other factions like VC and Skaven would not be.
Which is literally what I said was a good thing. Nobody from my gaming circle has expressed zero interest in thematic lists.
If every faction (even not the main factions) get a Grand Army list with a similar number of special rules/magic items, that's literally the same as every previous edition of WHFB & the one thing that non-main faction players (from my experience) were asking for.
Yeah, If every army has a minimum grand army list it'll be fine for the non-main factions if the new "infamy" lists in books come out with same power level but different then the non-main factions will be able to participate for a long long time.
It's a bonus if the non-main factions get an infamy army or two but not critical for balance. Sorry if all Lizardmen will have to take saurus for example instead of a southlands skink infamy list but overall it seems a good place for everyone based on the article.
with a part of the army can be from those sub-factions, not having them means others are already missing out
if those parts are the powerful units, well than there will be a problem
based on the article it is impossible to say if GW screwed the faction balance up or not, it just shows what possibilities to unintentionally screw it up are there
Yes it will be great, they will achieve perfect balance right out of the gate as always, no need for updates, guaranteed no power creep and no mandatory keeping up with campaign supplements to stay viable. In fact I heard that this is the most playtested edition of all time.
triplegrim wrote: Can somepne explain what a grand army list is to me? Like I'm 10 or smt.
a balanced list of options from which you can pick a wide variety of units
As opposed to a skewed list of options from which you can pick a slimmer variety of units. A Grand Army is the generic "this is general X faction" list. An Army of Infamy is "this is a specific sub-type of an army of faction X".
lord_blackfang wrote: Yes it will be great, they will achieve perfect balance right out of the gate as always, no need for updates, guaranteed no power creep and no mandatory keeping up with campaign supplements to stay viable. In fact I heard that this is the most playtested edition of all time.
I don't think anyone is saying that. Just that it won't be a total fly by night toss aside for the non-main factions out the gate. As far as I know HH doesn't require constant keeping up with supplements to function.
Also I think honestly in general the WFB engine is easier to balance than 40k/AoS simply by dint of so many things being so similar and having a limited amount of unit types. GW managed to have it be mostly balanced for 1.5 editions when they weren't trying which is saying something when they haven't managed to get 40k or AoS balanced for more than a few months at a time here and there in the last 4 years
Cautiously optimistic. Looks like a combination of all three systems which is interesting.
Core/Special/Rare as per 8th. Tbh I think that works quite well for units, particularly for min Core.
Characters somewhat more like 4th/5th (1 big group, but restrictions on the more powerful ones). Will be interesting to see though if the 50% is just a Bret thing or across the board (iirc in 5th they had 50% vs 25% for everyone else). 50% for everyone could really encourage unbalanced characters (what would have been lords) in small games (or even Undead with 2x L4 in 1500 pts if they’re all 0-1 big Lord and 0-1/1k lesser Lord). I did prefer Lord/Hero slots for characters and L4s restricted below 2k tbh.
Also allies and mercs like in 4th/5th which is interesting.
Then layered on top, scaling minima and maxima like in 6th/7th, but on a per unit basis not per category. I’m intrigued to see how that plays out in practice, but may work quite well.
bong264 wrote: I got excited at the "up to 0-50% can be spent on characters" but then saw magic items were limited. Was hoping for a return to herohammer
Hmm... let's see how poweful a Duke with T 5 and 7 wounds + 100 points in magic items + vows + virtues is...
It’s the save of the Hippogryph which caught my attention.
Griffonic Pelt is a nice addition, giving Mr Tweetyflapdeath protection. And we can add Barding for presumably a 4+ save.
And as the beastie itself adds to its owner’s stats? I have to assume, in the absence of further information, the saves add together.
Heavy Armour + Shield = 4+ save on its own. So…does being mounted on that beast now grant a 1+ save?
Maybe you get the best of rider or mount, plus bonus for barding? E.g. if a Prophetess can ride one (or an Empire/HE wizard or gryphon) then they can still get a respectable 4+ armour if they make themselves such a big target?
Some observations:
1. You can take two lv4 wizards in a 2000pt list
2. You cannot make a pure peasant or pure cavarly list due to 1+ for knights and peasant units.
3. 1000pts in Pegasus knights anyone? Remember the cheesy "Flying circus" lists?
4.Wierd limit on battle pilgrims. Only 4 units can be taken in 2000pt list?
5. Squires new Special unit? Are these Foot knight dual kit?
6. Sergeant at Arms new Hero?
7. Has Grail monk model always been in the Men at arms box?
8. Combined stats for rider and mount fully confirmed now.
9. Hyppogryph has no AP. Seems weak.
10. Fly (9) rule has a different stat than Movement
11. "(counts as heavy armor)" must be an error. No way a bird has heavy armor that you can combine with a character heavy armor. They probably meant "(counts as hand weapon)" like on Bretonnian warhorse and Unicorn.
12. Stubborn is very weak. Works only on the first break test (anoying to remember if you already used stubborn) and forces you to Fall back instead of trying to only give ground. This looks so bad that I suspect there is another typo there.
I think one thing people forget is that a lot of people really liked Fantasy and a fair few of those people are now at GW and really want to do right by it.
I'm really looking forward to it, the army comp looks great. Interested to see how other armies look.
Massive thing for me is seeing Mercenaries appearing. If we get new DoW minis I'll pap me kegs.
Something else from there, potentially a hint at what they’re doing with Empire given there’s 4 variations with separate stuff:
Presumably they’ve got a big Grand Army with all the common stuff, then each of the 4 factions will have an Army of Infamy with some restrictions (like no wizards for Reikland), bonuses, and possibly some unique units?
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: Some observations:
1. You can take two lv4 wizards in a 2000pt list
2. You cannot make a pure peasant or pure cavarly list due to 1+ for knights and peasant units.
3. 1000pts in Pegasus knights anyone? Remember the cheesy "Flying circus" lists?
4.Wierd limit on battle pilgrims. Only 4 units can be taken in 2000pt list?
5. Squires new Special unit? Are these Foot knight dual kit?
6. Sergeant at Arms new Hero?
7. Has Grail monk model always been in the Men at arms box?
8. Combined stats for rider and mount fully confirmed now.
9. Hyppogryph has no AP. Seems weak.
10. Fly (9) rule has a different stat than Movement
11. "(counts as heavy armor)" must be an error. No way a bird has heavy armor that you can combine with a character heavy armor. They probably meant "(counts as hand weapon)" like on Bretonnian warhorse and Unicorn.
12. Stubborn is very weak. Works only on the first break test (anoying to remember if you already used stubborn) and forces you to Fall back instead of trying to only give ground. This looks so bad that I suspect there is another typo there.
1) yeah, potentially a bit OP. And 3 maybe for VC if they can take a Vampire Lord plus 2 Necro Lords.
2) Sort of makes sense for the Grand Army (and IIRCKotR have always been 1+), presumably this is different in a
Armies of Infamy?
3) heavy limits your characters though. Also, same as 8th.
4) yeah, that’s a bit odd.
5) TWW had squires as elite infantry, but super weird if they’re that and more elite than KotR on foot. Maybe they’re an equivalent of Empire Huntsmen?
6) looks like it.
7) yes - there’s a separate command sprue that goes with both M@A and Archers and that’s the 4th model on the sprue.
8) definitely for the win there!
9) unless wicked claws and serrated maw are a defined weapon? Could be something common to lots of similar creatures.
10) interesting. Fly was always separate from ground MV, but interesting they’re making it vary between units rather than a flat 20”. Probably a good idea. Also aligns with HHfwiw.
11)maybe it’s an instead of? So if the character has no armour you still get a 5+?
12) yeah that does seem both annoying to track and pretty weak.
I don't think Stubborn is useless and in my eyes it can be handy as it does guarantee you don't get wiped out by combat result but to me it is rather the rule interaction they meant and I think it works like this:
You lose combat big time and you would probaply flee if you roll normally (with LD6 this happens likely) so you opt to declare to be Stubborn which makes them just Break Off instead of risking fleeing. However, unit has Shieldwall which instead makes the Break Off into Give Ground.
I am not sure how Shieldwall exactly works (there is probaply a condition to it work) but my example seems quite likely.
lord_blackfang wrote: Yes it will be great, they will achieve perfect balance right out of the gate as always, no need for updates, guaranteed no power creep and no mandatory keeping up with campaign supplements to stay viable. In fact I heard that this is the most playtested edition of all time.
Lol!
My current tentative plan is to play all factions at the initial release which I expect will be relatively balanced, and ignore army books.
We'll see how well that plan survives actual contact with reality....
Automatically Appended Next Post:
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: Some observations:
10. Fly (9) rule has a different stat than Movement
This has been a thing in a number of different editions - with the classic Great Eagle moving far when flying, but only hopping along at something like 4" if grounded for some reason.
Opting to declare to be stubborn is stupid. Are you stubborn or not? Choosing to be stubborn makes as much sense as choosing to cause fear.
Also I just realized the average distance of 2d6 discard the lowest for Fall back is 4.5". Compared to 2" for Give ground, the difference is so small why even bother having two options. Give ground should have been Hold ground with no moving backwards.
If every faction (even not the main factions) get a Grand Army list with a similar number of special rules/magic items, that's literally the same as every previous edition of WHFB & the one thing that non-main faction players (from my experience) were asking for.
Well. It might start about equal, then gets left behind.
And heaven forbid if something is bad(as likely), too bad. No updates.
If every faction (even not the main factions) get a Grand Army list with a similar number of special rules/magic items, that's literally the same as every previous edition of WHFB & the one thing that non-main faction players (from my experience) were asking for.
Well. It might start about equal, then gets left behind.
And heaven forbid if something is bad(as likely), too bad. No updates.
To be fair the article doesn't say they won't be touched up. It just says they won't be getting new releases. People are leaning pretty hard into they won't fix an obvious issue with a non-main faction that doesn't quite feel justified to me after the strides they've made to consistently try for balance in all their games. They won't get new minis or be a focus of an expansion but they don't not exist.
WorldEdgePlayer wrote: Also I just realized the average distance of 2d6 discard the lowest for Fall back is 4.5". Compared to 2" for Give ground, the difference is so small why even bother having two options. Give ground should have been Hold ground with no moving backwards.
so far it looks like with one you are destroyed if the opponent rolls higher, with the other it is just another charge
Sergeant at Arms is probably just a peasant hero that can join peasant units. You know, instead of having a dismounted Paladin with that Vow that lets them join peasant units.
Overall army composition looks fine. Loooove that Mercenaries are back! I have a box of Knights of the Realm I was going to paint up as Mercenary Knights for my Dogs of War army that I finally have an excuse to crack open.
triplegrim wrote: Can somepne explain what a grand army list is to me? Like I'm 10 or smt.
a balanced list of options from which you can pick a wide variety of units
As opposed to a skewed list of options from which you can pick a slimmer variety of units. A Grand Army is the generic "this is general X faction" list. An Army of Infamy is "this is a specific sub-type of an army of faction X".
Nice.
Like Skaven Horde vs Clan Skryre, Clan Eshin, Middenheim Siege defenders etc.
My favorite part of 6th was the extra sunfaction army lists at the end of the army book. Take these specials as core, those core as rare and no access to some other units.
triplegrim wrote: Can somepne explain what a grand army list is to me? Like I'm 10 or smt.
a balanced list of options from which you can pick a wide variety of units
As opposed to a skewed list of options from which you can pick a slimmer variety of units. A Grand Army is the generic "this is general X faction" list. An Army of Infamy is "this is a specific sub-type of an army of faction X".
Nice.
Like Skaven Horde vs Clan Skryre, Clan Eshin, Middenheim Siege defenders etc.
My favorite part of 6th was the extra sunfaction army lists at the end of the army book. Take these specials as core, those core as rare and no access to some other units.
Yep - the bloodline lists etc - all the great stuff
I don't know if the new edition will change this, but worth remembering that you used to get -1AP for every point of strength above 3. So the Hyppogryph could potentially get AP-2 by virtue of its strength alone.
Having to spend 25% on Core prevents “I’ll just take minimal Gobbos lololololol tactical genius” type shenanigans.
But, I do prefer better defined Core, Special, Rare.
This for now seems like a pleasing blend of the two.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Though if memory serves, Bretonnians have long had a great percentage cap on characters?
I may be entirely misremembering that. In which case, I do wonder where that memory came from.
In 5th edition, I believe the general limit on characters was 25%, but Bretonnians could take up to 50%.
Also: why do the haughty Bretonnians get to take mercenaries? I remember them very specifically being forbidden from fielding Dogs of War.
Pretty sure it was a general limit of 50% and 75% for Bretonnians the first time they got an army book. You could ride an Emperor Dragon in a 1500 point list and the dragon was 700+ points.
Also: why do the haughty Bretonnians get to take mercenaries? I remember them very specifically being forbidden from fielding Dogs of War.
That was when they got their army book in 5th edition, when Nigel Stillman turned them from backward, brutal and uncaring feudalism to King Arthur, honour, valour and fairy tale stuff. That was awful.
I mean, play them as noble heroes if you want, but don't restrict the whole nation to this. Of course there're corrupt, decadent and greedy knights and dukes and even more decent personalities should come to the conclusion that sometimes engaging mercenaries from your own or all the other nations around (Empire, Marienburg, Tilea, Estalia) might be a good idea when the going gets tough.
Also: why do the haughty Bretonnians get to take mercenaries? I remember them very specifically being forbidden from fielding Dogs of War.
That was when they got their army book in 5th edition, when Nigel Stillman turned them from backward, brutal and uncaring feudalism to King Arthur, honour, valour and fairy tale stuff. That was awful.
I mean, play them as noble heroes if you want, but don't restrict the whole nation to this. Of course there're corrupt, decadent and greedy knights and dukes and even more decent personalities should come to the conclusion that sometimes engaging mercenaries from your own or all the other nations around (Empire, Marienburg, Tilea, Estalia) might be a good idea when the going gets tough.
It was also a rule in the 6th edition book and in their rpg book. Dukes got around the laws banning mercenaries by hiring sheep herders who were heavily armed and just so happened to send them to heard near an orc incursion.
Well it could be, but equally there's a several hundred year gap too from the prior era. No reason that the "we don't work with Mercs" law wasn't put in place until after the old world era.
