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DukeRustfield wrote:
Greeks didn't use chariots. Their whole country is hills and rocks. Rome didn't use them in warfare.

It's cool you found wikipedia, but look a little deeper. They're not using them for mass combat outside of areas that are, you know, flat. If it's not dry and flat a chariot is infinitely suck compared to a horse. Because you're basically being dragged on a rigid frame behind pissed off horses over rough terrain. I mean, it's great for comic relief.

The idea that forest-dwelling beastmen have them and chaos/permafrost/viking-dwelling WoC have them is doofy. The world has been fighting using horses for predominantly and successfully for thousands and thousands of years. Not so much for chariots.

Yes because I didn't care to look deeper because you're trying to find logic in Warhammer.

When one goes a bit deeper to try to find justifications for logic in a world where random born children can be born beasts, where the north literally has a giant wedgie in space and time that contains alternate universes and chaotic gods, where gods exist in all forms and shapes, where there's Daemonic Huns fighting Chinese equivalents on the other side of the world....

Yeah, not so much caring for pure history here.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I wondered who did. I couldn't figure out why they stuck chariots in nearly every book. Almost no one in history used chariots except for show/sport. Almost no one anywhere on earth could. Unless you live in the country of Pavedsurfacevania.

They're cool models that can be put into the game with unique rules, and therefore perfect for a wargame. Ever notice how FoW games are chock full of King Tigers and JSIII, despite there being so few built during the war?

It seems very strange to question why there's chariots and not wonder why there's so many siege weapons in use in a pitched battle.

Well I made 2 points. First, was who likes these things? 2nd was no one really used them. The first answer was Grey Templer. And the 2nd was a lot of incorrect stuff. If the answer wants to be, "they're cool" that's fine.

The one action figure I never really liked much was luke skywalker. Because I couldn't figure out why a lightsaber meant a pile of space beans when people were blowing up planets with layz0rz.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Greeks didn't use chariots. Their whole country is hills and rocks. Rome didn't use them in warfare.
.

http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/chariots.htm

4 things make me sad about this book.
Lost lore of Heavens (personal fluff reason makes me sad about that)
Standard of Rage is only for Khorne Units (compleatly understandable)
Dragon Ogres didnt go up to T5. (was really hoping for this)
Lost Infernal Puppet. (coolest item in the game)

Other then those four things I love the new book.
Lore of Metal on my chicken on a disk? YES PLEASE!
Cheaper Dragon Ogres
Better mark of nurgle
Shagoth fieldable again
Daemon Prince wizards
Chimaera
LORE OF METAL (repeat I know)
Lore of Nurgle is awesome

I always ran a weird list with the old book and everything that I used to have stayed about the same or gotten cheaper (here is looking at you shaggoth) Lore of tzeentch would see table play if not for the warpflame special rule but I can take metal instead so thats ok. Overall I really like the book although that might be because I never really used marauders or chosen.

 grimgrimly wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:
Greeks didn't use chariots. Their whole country is hills and rocks. Rome didn't use them in warfare.
.

http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/chariots.htm

You have a nice web page you didn't read but maybe looked at the pictures? Read at the Conclusions and the few paragraphs preceding.

OK, a couple of points I didnt notice in the discussion so far -

Why is it that the Slaanesh magic buff lasts for 1 turn (extra attack etc) whereas the Nurgle one (extra T etc) is for the remainder of the battle.

Also, I like the steeds of slaanesh as a cheap enough fast cavalry option.. I presume it doesn;t keep all the min/maxers out there happy which is why it hasn't been mentioned much.

As for the nugle extra beef for wizards, surely that makes a nurgle wizard a good fit in a front line unit - as long as they keep on dishing out damage they just keep getting extra wounds.
Sure, I may have misremembered that slightly, but you see what I mean.

Why is it that the Slaanesh magic buff lasts for 1 turn (extra attack etc) whereas the Nurgle one (extra T etc) is for the remainder of the battle.

Because it can be buffed multiple times in one turn, buffs three stats at once as well (WS, I, and A)

Say you somehow get..8 unsaved wounds, that's 8 rolls of 6's, nurgle gets one roll per spell cast from nurgle.

While the average is against you, if lucky and you roll alotta six'es you'll do A bit of of damage in combat.

While T regardless of power you can still be damaged on a six, after a point you pretty much get capped.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Greeks didn't use chariots. Their whole country is hills and rocks. Rome didn't use them in warfare.

It's cool you found wikipedia, but look a little deeper. They're not using them for mass combat outside of areas that are, you know, flat. If it's not dry and flat a chariot is infinitely suck compared to a horse. Because you're basically being dragged on a rigid frame behind pissed off horses over rough terrain. I mean, it's great for comic relief.

The idea that forest-dwelling beastmen have them and chaos/permafrost/viking-dwelling WoC have them is doofy. The world has been fighting using horses for predominantly and successfully for thousands and thousands of years. Not so much for chariots.

I understood that some Greek colonies used them although by the time of Marathon they were old fashioned? Mainly for Hero transport and archery?

Cavalry does make more sense than Chariots for Beastmen/Vikings- although they were pretty popular in Britain and France during the Roman conquest period I think.

However they can make nice models

 Mr Morden wrote:
I understood that some Greek colonies used them although by the time of Marathon they were old fashioned? Mainly for Hero transport and archery?

Cavalry does make more sense than Chariots for Beastmen/Vikings- although they were pretty popular in Britain and France during the Roman conquest period I think.

However they can make nice models

I'm not saying no one used them. But in many cases they were more a status symbol. They just aren't practical for 99% of the landmass. Rain, snow, rocks, hills, bumps, forests, etc make them impractical. None of those things bother horses much.

Of course much of the time battles would be fought on level ground simply because it was almost mutual agreement. Neither side wanted the confusion of having to navigate over rough terrain.

The Phalanx wasn't exactly friendly to rough ground either.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I'm not saying no one used them. But in many cases they were more a status symbol. They just aren't practical for 99% of the landmass. Rain, snow, rocks, hills, bumps, forests, etc make them impractical. None of those things bother horses much.

They weren't just a status symbol, they were a real weapon of war, and at times a very effective one. At times they were fielded in numbers greater than 1,000. You do that with a weapon of war, not a status symbol.

They did have problems with many types of terrain (forests, mountainous terrain) but I think you're overstating that point a little. They needed open terrain, sure, but not absolutely flat ground (and that is only for the field of battle itself, in marching when poor terrain was encountered the chariots were generally light enough to be carried).

And yeah, they were surpassed by cavalry. But the point is that at the time when chariots were dominant, horses were much smaller. As horses were bred big and strong enough to carry a warrior in heavy armour, the value of a chariot disappeared.

You'd be surprised how often people would fight over where they got to fight - having a favorable battlefield where you don't have obstructions / cover / and you have the higher ground tended to make or break many battles. If you had a field of rocks then you could't field chariots... or charge, or use cavalry, or maneuver effectively.

People like to fight on reasonably flat ground. This remained true up until the modern day, and even now we like to keep it as flat as possible. The modern mobile rifle armed infantryman makes cover and broken terrain more appealing, but this was a relatively recent development.

Even the amount of terrain we generally see in most wargames would probably be horrifying to fight over back then.

 sebster wrote:
They weren't just a status symbol, they were a real weapon of war, and at times a very effective one. At times they were fielded in numbers greater than 1,000. You do that with a weapon of war, not a status symbol.

They were a statistically insignificant weapon of war. Put it that way. And they didn't work at all like they are portrayed these books with people crashing into enemies and running them over.

Horses were smaller.

People were smaller.

Horses were always okay with their load of dudes. There wasn't a time when giants were scraping their knees riding little horses, waiting for breeding techniques to advance. We knew how to breed animals tens of thousands of years ago. It's really simple. That one's big. So is that one. Breed them. That one is small and bites me. We eat that one.

People are too enamored of the Spartacus-type movies. If you're riding in circles in the Circus Maximus, it's really easy to be on a chariot. In every other situation possibly imaginable, it's not.

DukeRustfield wrote:
They were a statistically insignificant weapon of war. Put it that way. And they didn't work at all like they are portrayed these books with people crashing into enemies and running them over.

No. Chariots were more commonly used as platforms for archers, but their use as shock weapons was recorded. See the hittites at Qadesh in 1274 bc, who used chariots with three crew, a driver, spearman and shieldman, and no bow.

More importantly, like many things in history, the use of chariots varied greatly over time, from nation to nation, era to era. Just as it would be silly to generalise firearm use as being entirely volley fire from soldiers in line formation, given how the use of firearms varied from nation to nation, and over time (through both changes in the technology available and the tactical circumstances), it's silly to generalise the chariot as having had a single use.

Horses were smaller.

People were smaller.

No. Comparing the increase in the size of horses through selective breeding to the increase in people through diets is inane. Just incredibly inane.

Horses were always okay with their load of dudes. There wasn't a time when giants were scraping their knees riding little horses, waiting for breeding techniques to advance. We knew how to breed animals tens of thousands of years ago. It's really simple. That one's big. So is that one. Breed them. That one is small and bites me. We eat that one.

No matter what silliness you might care to type on the internet, we know that horses were much smaller when chariots were used.

And we knew how to breed animals tens of thousands of years ago, but the animals we bred didn't originally include horses. Horses were kept from only 4,000 bc, and only bred for size and strength from around 2,000 bc. Which is, of course, the time at which heavy horse and horse archers began to develop, and chariots were slowly outmoded as viable weapons of war.

People are too enamored of the Spartacus-type movies. If you're riding in circles in the Circus Maximus, it's really easy to be on a chariot. In every other situation possibly imaginable, it's not.

No. But people are all too enamoured with the history they've gleaned from reading little bits of pieces of this and that, combined with the stuff they've made up in their heads. And all too opposed to actually learning when it turns out they were wrong about something.

Your understanding of chariots, and their decline, is simply lacking. No shame in that, people don't have to know everything about everything. But please don't turn this into a thing. Just accept you didn't know much about the subject, and take the opportunity to learn something.

In fairness the GW chariot isn't a thing that ever existed. Take Scythes for example. GW thinks they were all Ben Hur style wheel scythes when the more common Scythe would be a fixed blade about 3 feet long which would be used to cut down the sides of a formation not charge head long into it.

However in Fantasy that would involve some very odd rules probably involving moving a chariot within 1" of a units front/flank/rear, leadership checks (to see if the unit is ordered out of the way of the scythe) followed by an initiative check for every model on the side that was attacked before taking a wound.

Finally it would probably involve an initiative roll off between the unit and the chariot to see if it actually gets locked in combat or if it just drives off.

In comparison just chucking the thing into somebodies flank and getting some impact hits is much simpler.

Chariots as used in Fantasy - suicide rockets to throw into the enemy formations - is a bit odd, historically. Chariots as archery platforms and transport for leaders is more common, and indeed how Homer and Caesar represent their use in battle by the Mycenean-era Greeks and British respectively, but there are examples of the scythed chariot in used (Selucids used them against the Romans, I believe; didn't work).

However, WFB isn't a game that would suit having chariots as mobile archery and leader transportation. Among other things, the scale is too large, so it wouldn't really have space to work. Anyone remember using chariots in R:TW? Total pain, usually got destroyed by Roman infantry as I recall. But I think that we can all agree that chariots make an interesting element in Fantasy as they work - the more one-shot wonder version of heavy cavalry, with the same damage output but not the same survivability. The perfect flanking unit.

The problem is the very limited movement - a normal unit of cavalry has a movement of ~16-18'' whereas a chariot is limited to a maximum movement of 9.

That's my main problems with chariots, they should be more mobile than a unit of marching infantry. I can just get a unit of wolf riders instead of a Goblin Wolf Rider Chariot... :/

Whilst we appreciate and even desire a degree of conversational latitude, might be better if further discussion of historical chariots was in a new thread ?

No damage done though, carry on the sterling work chaps.

 reds8n wrote:
Whilst we appreciate and even desire a degree of conversational latitude, might be better if further discussion of historical chariots was in a new thread ?

No damage done though, carry on the sterling work chaps.

I was wondering when this would happen

On topic: Marauders with Flails and MoN seem pretty good on paper and only 10 ppm.

While I didn't get to play the new book last weekend, was able to watch four separate games. The new book stomped Dark Elves, VC, Chaos Dwarfs, and an internet Ogre list. Those who say the book is weak are trying to lose deliberately.

One thing everyone took away from the games: Nurgle Demon Prince is stupid a$$ broken! Took an entire Ogre Irongut deathstar swinging into it. No wounds. Almost all regular troops will need 6's to hit him and need to get through his T5, 1+ armor save and 5+ ward save. Any wounds that do get through are healed next round. The soul feeder gift is way undercosted for what it does. 10 pts and any unsaved wound roll of a 6 heals you, yea... That is a +1 in any WoC army. We have already nicknamed it Healing Blow.

New chariot is also great. The DE player hit one in the flank with a hydra and the hydra lost and ran. T6 and 3+ save makes the thing as hard as nails. The regular chaos chariots were good in the last book and now that they are core, they are awesome.

Reviews are mixed on the Chimeras. Some of the players love them, others think they are a point sink.

As for the new big monsters, won't see them. Skullcrushers are still gold. They went from stupid a$$ broken to just broken.

You will see a big change in how armies are played. One of the big factors that will decide how an army will do if it can minimize the armor save of a WoC army. Expect the Metal Lore to become more common. Heck, wouldn't surprise me if bolt throwers start showing up again.

So, after a few games I am becoming convinced that the Gorebeast Chariot is in fact the dark horse unit of the book. While it doesn't look that impressive, this chariot is a nightmare for most armies once it gets stuck in. Its not core, but its an amazing special unit.

Did I mention it has 5 wounds? More than most of our lords and monsters? And T6 on top of that?

Give it Mark of Khorne for unstoppable murderness. Or give it Mark of Nurgle to make it an unstoppable brick that you can't get out of your flank once it lodges itself there. Most units hitting on a 5+ and wounding on a 6 means that its going to be there for a looong time. And even without frenzy it delivers a solid 7 S5 attacks each turn.

I gotta say, I do like the new book. I am sad at the loss of puppet cause it was just fun to use and mess with the enemy armies. I am excited about all the cool new stuff and it is a challenge to figure out how to make everything work together now.

Chimeras! <-- this

This army along with my Dark Angels have been shelved for the foreseeable future, GW can bite my shiny metal ass.

Just made my first list with the new book ready for a game with my wife later.

One thing I wish to know. where has all my magic items gone :( are they just trying to get people to use the rule book more?

Daston wrote:
Just made my first list with the new book ready for a game with my wife later.

One thing I wish to know. where has all my magic items gone :( are they just trying to get people to use the rule book more?

It's been the same with every 8th book, they completely gut your army's magic gear and replace it with a few really good ones (instead of 2 OP and 20 you don't look twice at), then you go to the BRB to get the rest. Overall I like this new system but the need to hurry up and do it to everyone to balance it.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Daston wrote:
Just made my first list with the new book ready for a game with my wife later.

One thing I wish to know. where has all my magic items gone :( are they just trying to get people to use the rule book more?

It's been the same with every 8th book, they completely gut your army's magic gear and replace it with a few really good ones (instead of 2 OP and 20 you don't look twice at), then you go to the BRB to get the rest. Overall I like this new system but the need to hurry up and do it to everyone to balance it.

Although as I mentioned I think GW is going the right direction with the Chaos book. Most of the previous books have had super expensive gear that sucked all your points away. In the chaos books even if you got the most expensive weapon then you still have 35 points to get a ward, etc. Not saying that the other magic items in the other 8th books are useless (hello ogres, nice heart you have there!), just that they have a big cost to take them. The TK for example have only 1 item under 50 points

 jonolikespie wrote:

Daston wrote:
Just made my first list with the new book ready for a game with my wife later.

One thing I wish to know. where has all my magic items gone :( are they just trying to get people to use the rule book more?

It's been the same with every 8th book, they completely gut your army's magic gear and replace it with a few really good ones (instead of 2 OP and 20 you don't look twice at), then you go to the BRB to get the rest. Overall I like this new system but the need to hurry up and do it to everyone to balance it.

This...even worse, Orks&Goblins have some of the trashiest wargear I can imagine ;D

I still think the prices on the magic standards are a big typo.

Well after just having our first game with the new book.

1500 points a side

I scored 460 points.....my wife scored 1200! She nearly tabled me lol.

Both our armies are very much work in progress and we both have a stack of unopened units to paint up. Plus she has about 10% core and 50% Special/rare and a very mean lord so not exactly balanced.

But hey at least she has fun and thats what it's all about

Have only managed to have a quick look at the new book, but I see that it's largely the same with a few tweaks to, I imagine, balance out the metagame a bit more, which I guess is a good thing. The only bad thing about that is that my Dark Elves will be getting a nerf at some point too. Sad times...