Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I don't know any historical company that is doing a "Arabia" faction, the same way as no one is doing an Africia or Asia faction (you get historical countries or rebel groups which is something very different thatn throwing all racial stereotyps the english had in the 80ies for the middle east into a single faction)

but yes, if GW instead of their Arabia brings in a fantasy Persia it wouldn't be much of a problem, but it would not be Arabia either

.

The problem is sometimes it only takes 1 nutter to cause problems.

It might also be that Araby Warmaster was a pet project of a staffer who no longer works at GW and they don't have any design work made for full-size models. So in effect its an entire new army to work from scratch almost and if no one in the design team champions them it might well be that they are just stuck like Squats were for decades - no real champion to push them forward so it doesn't get made.

Even for the video game world they still have to work with GW and what GW has designed and if there is nothing on the table GW might well not allow/encourage them to take that path over other forces that GW has material on or has plans for in the future.

I'm sure somebody good will do an Araby force for 3D printing before too long (they already have actually, but there will be more). There are 17 factions in The Old World now, plenty of space to proxy an army.

The trouble with Araby, and various other historical non-European forces, whether fantasy or real world?

So many prejudices and stereotypes exist that it’s really hard not to make the models insulting.

28mm faces are tiny. And so the features are, by necessity, somewhat exaggerated. The difficulty is exaggerating in the right way.

Consider the Catachan Carl Weathers. We can tell at a glance who it’s inspired by. The sculpt and paintjob are both very well done, and sympathetic without being stereotyped or over exaggerated.

Araby? Well, we’ve Al Muktar’s Desert Dogs from the old Dog Of War book. They’ve a clear real world inspiration, and look the part. Are they an insulting stereotype? I personally can’t say, as being a pasty Scots git, it’s not exactly for me to say.

For an army? How do you translate real world, historical inspiration into a Fantasy setting in a sympathetic way?

Camel mounted Cavalry is (was?) a real world thing. But now may be seen as a negative stereotype.

Flying Carpet riders could be inspiration from Sinbad and Ali Baba, but again? Could be seen as a lazy, insulting stereotype.

That is not to say Therefore It Cannot Be Done And Anyone Thinking Of Possibly Maybe Giving It A Go Must Be Sealed In Concrete And Dumped In The Atlantic.

Just that it’s a tricky one, and something that’s going to take an awful lot of thought and care.

Where you may want to go, background allowing, is a 300 Inspired Araby force. Lean into the comic book style there.

It’s not exactly a positive stereotype. But I for one wouldn’t call it an inherently racist stereotype.

 kodos wrote:
I don't know any historical company that is doing a "Arabia" faction, the same way as no one is doing an Africia or Asia faction (you get historical countries or rebel groups which is something very different thatn throwing all racial stereotyps the english had in the 80ies for the middle east into a single faction)

but yes, if GW instead of their Arabia brings in a fantasy Persia it wouldn't be much of a problem, but it would not be Arabia either

By preference, the newest Victrix minis doing crusade era islamic armies are nice, but if you want variety why not go all the way back to Foundry Miniatures, and all thier metal lines? As dated as they are, they are neat, even if only for the variety.

But if you mean a historical company doing a fantasy mish-mash of all sorts of middle eastern andnorth african sterotypes together into a grabbag none exist...


... unless you count the haradrim from lord of the rings...

In which case GW itself already has you covered.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Spoiler:

The trouble with Araby, and various other historical non-European forces, whether fantasy or real world?

So many prejudices and stereotypes exist that it’s really hard not to make the models insulting.

28mm faces are tiny. And so the features are, by necessity, somewhat exaggerated. The difficulty is exaggerating in the right way.

Consider the Catachan Carl Weathers. We can tell at a glance who it’s inspired by. The sculpt and paintjob are both very well done, and sympathetic without being stereotyped or over exaggerated.

Araby? Well, we’ve Al Muktar’s Desert Dogs from the old Dog Of War book. They’ve a clear real world inspiration, and look the part. Are they an insulting stereotype? I personally can’t say, as being a pasty Scots git, it’s not exactly for me to say.

For an army? How do you translate real world, historical inspiration into a Fantasy setting in a sympathetic way?

Camel mounted Cavalry is (was?) a real world thing. But now may be seen as a negative stereotype.

Flying Carpet riders could be inspiration from Sinbad and Ali Baba, but again? Could be seen as a lazy, insulting stereotype.

That is not to say Therefore It Cannot Be Done And Anyone Thinking Of Possibly Maybe Giving It A Go Must Be Sealed In Concrete And Dumped In The Atlantic.

Just that it’s a tricky one, and something that’s going to take an awful lot of thought and care.

Where you may want to go, background allowing, is a 300 Inspired Araby force. Lean into the comic book style there.

It’s not exactly a positive stereotype. But I for one wouldn’t call it an inherently racist stereotype.

I appreciate the arguments, and in a certain sense I agree - IF it were ever done (and I get it, it's not likely to be) it would be picked through with a fine toothed comb and a smart company (which GW is not always) would see what works in terms of Arabic countries children's programming and cartoons to see what's safe.

But I'd be willing to bet most stuff from the 1001 nights is pretty open.

I don't think it's cowardice on GW's part that prevents them from exploring that path - but profitability.

Even I, a person who would be keen to see such a project happen don't have a huge pressing desire for them. I'd honestly much rather see Tileans*, Sartossans (if there is a difference), and Estalians as new human factions, and see the return of Chorfs to the table top - and if I wanted GW to be brave, I'd want them to rehabilitate the Fimir and release them, too.

*I'd be especially keen on the Tileans, as I'd hope they would give them a look that combines both late medieval/renaissance Italy, and Roman Italy to help differentiate them from those hot-pants wearing Germans in the Empire)

But yeah, I think it's apathy that would keep GW from doing them.

I do not expect Araby as a playable faction for TOW any time soon, if at all - mostly because I think GW has no interest in putting them on the table.

What is there in an Araby army that is not covered in other human factions already? While others might want to lump the undead varieties into the mix, only talking about actual humans in TOW:

Bretonnia does shining knights and peasant hordes of the Arthurian variety. Cavalry of all sorts, blocks of light infantry, some magic, minimal war machines.

The Empire does a version of the HRE with lots of other "Middle European" tropes thrown in the mix. Infantry and cavalry of all sorts, some monsters, a variety of magic, a variety of war machines, some minor shenanigans.

Warriors of Chaos cover "northern barbarian hordes" if you so wish. Infantry and cavalry of all sorts, all kinds of monsters, a variety of magic, no shooting to speak of.

Now Cathay is about to do another kind of mix - and what we have seen so far is actually not that far off of what the Empire does already. The potential for monsters and exotic shenanigans is probably higher overall, and we have seen "exotic" variants of giants, dragons and mobile watch towers already. Building on this first wave of upcoming releases we have to wait and see what GW will bring in actual miniatures going forward.

Then there is the prospect of Kislev doing yet another human faction, and we have only a vague idea of what GW will bring in terms of miniatures and rules.

So what niche would an Araby faction fill that is not already covered by one of the above? With where TOW is headed with its background and what that means in terms of miniatures and publications, I just do not see room for Araby outside of background material.

Depends if they lean into the Djinn aspect, and stuff like Medieval Islam, which was at the forefront of science and alchemy and that.

I’d need to watch my Sinbad movies again (it’s a tough life!) to see other stuff. But there’s plenty there in real world historical mythology to work with.

 Darnok wrote:
I do not expect Araby as a playable faction for TOW any time soon, if at all - mostly because I think GW has no interest in putting them on the table.

Depends on how well Conquest is doing, I think. If Conquest does well enough then GW might release Araby as an attempt to undercut their Sorcerer Kings faction, similar to what Mantic does to GW.
They'll probably be a crappy cash grab though. Because GW.

Arent the Sorceror Kings more medieval India than they are Arab?

chaos0xomega wrote:
Arent the Sorceror Kings more medieval India than they are Arab?

It's both. They're a mix of Indian and Arabic.
They have Rakshasas (Indian), Djinn (Arabic), Ghols (Arabic), Efreet (Arabic), Raj (Indian), Sardars (Persian in origin, though it is used throughout South Asia) and Mahabharati (Indian)

Ah, never paid much attention to them but youre right. At a glance they seemed indian coded

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Depends if they lean into the Djinn aspect, and stuff like Medieval Islam, which was at the forefront of science and alchemy and that.

I’d need to watch my Sinbad movies again (it’s a tough life!) to see other stuff. But there’s plenty there in real world historical mythology to work with.

I dunno, the Sinbad movies do feature cyclopes, a fire-breathing dragon, a Minotaur robot and an animated Kali statue, so don't take them as a good source of Arabian Nights material! Hell, even the roc is given two heads in its Sinbad appearance, so even the 'proper' stuff is warped a little.

the issue with the 1001 Nights as inspiration is that a lot of the classic stories people associate with it are either European inventions, or stories focused on characters who aren't actually Arab

Ali Baba? European invention. the flying carpet? bought in India. Aladdin? European invention, and also he's Chinese in the original story

certainly, a lot of the stories are a part of Arab culture, and could work as inspirations, but it's the sort of thing where you'd need to do research to do it properly. a tilean faction or something like that would be a lot less work for them

In fairness GW is a western fantasy creation based heavily on western fantasy tropes and concepts. They don't actually have to "get it right" they just have to interpret it in so far as is popular in western fantasy circles.

So going after things like Aladin, Sinbad, flying carpets and so on and so forth - is actually pretty much what most would expect.

Throw in some camels, elephants and a few other exotics.


How "broad" a take would also depend on if GW was going to explore other cultural mytholocal fantasy nations inspired by those in the same region.

How you depict fantastical versions of real cultures 'respectfully' or at least equally fairly, comes down to the aspects of those cultures you put front and centre.

You can be pretty gross about the french if you leaned into the english stereotypes of them, and made models with features exaggerated to reflect that and gave them the worst aspects of one time in the culture of the country.

Or you can romanticise the culture and be flattering about. Or you can mix the two to varying degrees.

But the point is what you choose to typify the faction by says a lot about the attitude towards them and how you want people to react to them.

Cathay could have gone down the feet binding, serfdom, corruption etc aspects of chinese history, they could have gone for more exaggerated physical attributes to orientalise the models.

They could have made the Empire all inbred and bucktoothed as well, but they didn't.


If they just go down the fat sleazy sultans with harems of sex slaves and thieves with their hands removed tropes, it just plays on this negative aspect. To elevate it beyond just being negative stereotypes, you need a balance of factors and you can't have the intrinsically negative physical or cultural aspects as your touchstone for the army.

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
the issue with the 1001 Nights as inspiration is that a lot of the classic stories people associate with it are either European inventions, or stories focused on characters who aren't actually Arab

Ali Baba? European invention. the flying carpet? bought in India. Aladdin? European invention, and also he's Chinese in the original story

certainly, a lot of the stories are a part of Arab culture, and could work as inspirations, but it's the sort of thing where you'd need to do research to do it properly. a tilean faction or something like that would be a lot less work for them

No they wouldn't need to do a lot of research. TOW is not an historical game.As long as they don't put in some ridiculously racist things (them worshiping a pig for example), anybody with half a brain wont expect this faction to be a perfect representation of arabic/Islamic culture (whatever that means, considering theres a lot of disparities geographically and historically). Must say that the name arabyan is very unfortunate though. They probably should change it to a completely made up name


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And no, ali baba and aladdin were not european invention. They were tales heard by a french orientalist from a syrian maronite story tellers

 streetsamurai wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
the issue with the 1001 Nights as inspiration is that a lot of the classic stories people associate with it are either European inventions, or stories focused on characters who aren't actually Arab

Ali Baba? European invention. the flying carpet? bought in India. Aladdin? European invention, and also he's Chinese in the original story

certainly, a lot of the stories are a part of Arab culture, and could work as inspirations, but it's the sort of thing where you'd need to do research to do it properly. a tilean faction or something like that would be a lot less work for them

No they wouldn't need to do a lot of research. TOW is not an historical game.As long as they don't put in some ridiculously racist things (them worshiping a pig for example), anybody with half a brain dont expect this faction to be a perfect representation of arabic/Islamic culture (whatever that means, considering theres a lot of disparities geographically and historically). Must say that the name arabyan is very unfortunate though. They probably should change it to a completely made up name

There's no point in changing the name - albion is literally an ancient name for britain, Cathay is an archaic name for China, Nippon is literally Japan. Araby is in exactly the same vein.

I find it interesting how historical touchstones become unimportant when we want to stereotype non european cultures, but somehow being true to the spirit of history when we have the holy roman empire, the city states of the Mediterranean, the historical aspects of the weaponry and forces of every western based army is somehow really important and necessary.


GW did a really good job of WFBifying china for Cathay, and if that's the standard they're aiming for then I think they could do a great job of Araby.

Lorica Clothing did a great breakdown of the Cathay preview from the perspective of how well GW translated China to fantasy by neither pandering nor stereotyping but by being true the WFB setting. It's quite a good video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGr5ZBawDeU

 Hellebore wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
the issue with the 1001 Nights as inspiration is that a lot of the classic stories people associate with it are either European inventions, or stories focused on characters who aren't actually Arab

Ali Baba? European invention. the flying carpet? bought in India. Aladdin? European invention, and also he's Chinese in the original story

certainly, a lot of the stories are a part of Arab culture, and could work as inspirations, but it's the sort of thing where you'd need to do research to do it properly. a tilean faction or something like that would be a lot less work for them

No they wouldn't need to do a lot of research. TOW is not an historical game.As long as they don't put in some ridiculously racist things (them worshiping a pig for example), anybody with half a brain dont expect this faction to be a perfect representation of arabic/Islamic culture (whatever that means, considering theres a lot of disparities geographically and historically). Must say that the name arabyan is very unfortunate though. They probably should change it to a completely made up name

There's no point in changing the name - albion is literally an ancient name for britain, Cathay is an archaic name for China, Nippon is literally Japan. Araby is in exactly the same vein.

I find it interesting how historical touchstones become unimportant when we want to stereotype non european cultures, but somehow being true to the spirit of history when we have the holy roman empire, the city states of the Mediterranean, the historical aspects of the weaponry and forces of every western based army is somehow really important and necessary.


GW did a really good job of WFBifying china for Cathay, and if that's the standard they're aiming for then I think they could do a great job of Araby.

Lorica Clothing did a great breakdown of the Cathay preview from the perspective of how well GW translated China to fantasy by neither pandering nor stereotyping but by being true the WFB setting. It's quite a good video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGr5ZBawDeU

I mostly agree with you (see my post above), but i still think that using a name that is still used nowadays for a fantasy faction is not a good idea. For the record, i think they should also change the nippon name, since its still sometimes used to refer to the japanese people. Cathay is a different case, since i never saw/heard anybody used that name, or a derivative, to refer to the chinese people.

But I do agree that its not much of an issue. Contrary to what some westerners seems to think, most non-westerners are not insulted when their culture is used as an inspiration for a fantasy setting. Anecdotal evidence i know, but from my experience, the islamic inspired faction in Helldorado was very popular with arabs in my circle. Same thing for the alchemists in confrontation

I agree on the names had they changed them 30 years ago, but they've kept them so changing it now would likely be more noticeable and problematic.

so long as there are positive aspects to a cultural inspiration and not just the stereotype negative aspects (Would they still enjoy an arabic inspired faction if the faction was built only around fat sultans who's army is just their sex slaves?) then you can side step the issues. If they went with indolent and well educated sultans that were pre-eminent scientists as the theme, with some of the negative issues sprinkled through, you get the cultural feel but without the negative stereotype issue.

Slavery has been prominent all around the world for most of human history but you notice that none of the western inspired factions in WFB have slaves?

We don't see the Romans with slaves, despite their empire being built on the backs of slaves.

One of the most distinctive historical aspects of western history, slavery, is completely absent in depictions of WFB factions. Because it's a bad stereotype that you don't want to lead the faction identity with. They still have their negative aspects, but they don't put them as the identifying feature of the factions.

AFAIK there are only 3 explicit slave economies in WFB, the Dark Elves, Chaos Dwarfs and Skaven, all evil coded and purely fantasy (drawing on some realworld concepts, but not in the same the empire or cathay does).

Okay, a lot of reports here that there's fluff all actual news and rumour discussion going on, so again, take it somewhere else and kindly LET THIS THREAD LIE UNTIL THERE IS ACTUAL proper news and whatnot to discuss. Cheers!

Mod edit - removed.

Mod edit - removed.

EDIT: Removed so the mods don't have to.

On FB (I think) they had some post about Griffons with some artwork of high elves. Are they hinting at a new HE Griffon or redo of the IoB one?

 Daba wrote:
On FB (I think) they had some post about Griffons with some artwork of high elves. Are they hinting at a new HE Griffon or redo of the IoB one?

The Arcane Journal does have the IoB griffon on the cover, so I'm hoping it'll be re-released

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/zc96jzat/sunday-preview-high-elves-bounty-hunters-heroes-and-knights/

Wave 3 preorder went up yesterday. Still no silver helms right? Or did I miss them?

If you missed the Silver Helms, so did I.

It's a pretty significant oversight. The kit is just as old and just as terrible as the archers and spearmen, but it's a key unit in ToW lists. Possibly some issue with the molds?

Doubly annoying since GW could have simply done them as a dual-kit with the Ellyrian Reavers, smae horses and legs but different torsos, arms and heads.

At any rate, it's so nice to have High Elves available again.

No MTO has been announced so I'm wondering if there's a wave 4? Do the 6th ed silver helms models appear in the rulebooks?