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 Bottle wrote:

coldgaming wrote:
I notice the silly rules continue to go. The long beards still have their grumbles, but the player doesn't have to do them.

What's OCD-ish bugging me though is it looks like all the dwarfs and elves are on 25mm rounds.

Why is it bugging you? 25mm rounds has been the go to for models that were on 20mm squares.

Probably because Fyreslayers are on 32mm.

So, White Dwarf Weekly #113 gave us our first look at a Dark Elf Warscroll Battalion and the name of a second one--along with how the "Scourge Privateers" faction works background wise!

Quoting Matthew Hutson:

I've always liked the Black Ark Corsair models so when I found out about the Scourge Privateers faction in the Grand Alliance: Order book, I was immediately interested. Corsairs are master mariners, plying the seas of Azyr and sailing across the void to the Mortal Realms where they raid the holdings of Chaos warbands. And possibly other unfortunates too--they're not the nicest people allied to the forces of Order. The Corsairs also make use of deep-sea monsters such as the Kharibdyss, one of which I'd already also painted. In fact, the only unit I need to complete the Realm Reavers warscroll battalion in the book was a Scourgerunner Chariot to hunt down new monsters. I got one the same day and painted it over the course of a weekend--job done! I find warscroll battalions like this are a great way to structure your force and plan your army, giving you a good starting point for your ongoing collection. I plan to complete a Thrall Warhost from the Darkling Coven faction next to join them in larger battles.

Scourge Privateers consists of:
Black Ark Corsairs
Kharibdyss
Scourgerunner Chariots
Black Ark Fleetmaster

From all appearances, the "Realm Reavers" warscroll battalion consists of:
A couple of units of Black Ark Corsairs. I count 18 in the picture, but they come minimum sized 10 models and they're not in coherency there so I'm going to assume 2-3 units of Black Ark Corsairs.
A Scourgerunner Chariot
A Kharibdyss
A Black Ark Fleetmaster

That would make a nice get started set.

Sounds awesome! I would love to collect a little swashbuckling force of pirate dark elves. Maybe some Dark Eldar transports could be converted into ships? (Probably a bit small).

Skullhammer wrote:
That would make a nice get started set.

It would, but I kinda feel like it would be a little TOO good of a deal for a "Getting Started" set.

Add in that the point of the "Getting Started" sets is to provide you a unique formation rather than let you fill out a complete Warscroll Battalion and it makes me think that what you might see is this:

Start Collecting Scourge Privateers
Black Ark Fleetmaster
Kharibdyss
Black Ark Corsairs(20)

I'm speculating though that Black Ark Corsairs are going to get reboxed from 10 for $24.75 to 20 for $41. That would put the retail price of the contents at $126 and the "Start Collecting" at $85 still being a decent chunk of savings(specifically $41--giving you the savings to spend on a Scourgerunner Chariot or another box of Corsairs).

Also thinking that the "Realm Reavers" might have minimum unit sizes of like 15 or something to encourage more Corsairs.

Plying the seas of Azyr and sailing across the void to the Mortal Realms where they raid the holdings of Chaos warbands.

Wait, what? Ok, now I am as confused as ever on the geography of how the hell things work in the AoS setting. Are we going all Spelljammer on things now?

Sounds like they're using shadow magic to enchant their vessels so they can go between worlds. Since everything is of a magical essence it makes a certain sense.

I hope they expand on this in the fluff. It'd be interesting to know what the void is like. Would it be like sailing a ship through a endless black ocean where there is no up or down or are they sailing through something worse?

Baron Klatz wrote:
Sounds like they're using shadow magic to enchant their vessels so they can go between worlds. Since everything is of a magical essence it makes a certain sense.

I hope they expand on this in the fluff. It'd be interesting to know what the void is like. Would it be like sailing a ship through a endless black ocean where there is no up or down or are they sailing through something worse?

I've given up on trying to get a firm grip on the geographical fluff, and just accept it's there. I mean, we still don't have it in black and white whether the realms are actually infinite, discworlds or spheres.
Or precisely how the mortal realms came into existence.
The whole section in the Realmgate Wars novels Were they on the edge of the world? But then how did.. huh?
So yeah, I just accept that AoS is a very high-magic/high-fantasy setting, and that anything is possible, especially when my attention's focussed on a specific 6x4 at a time...

Baron Klatz wrote:
Sounds like they're using shadow magic to enchant their vessels so they can go between worlds. Since everything is of a magical essence it makes a certain sense.

I hope they expand on this in the fluff. It'd be interesting to know what the void is like. Would it be like sailing a ship through a endless black ocean where there is no up or down or are they sailing through something worse?

If I am remembering correctly I believe the skaven are also able to gnaw their way through the realms. I think the realms are heavily warped by magic and many interpretations of them could be correct at any one time, or in any one instance or place. I suspect the background will slowly fill in, as it has been already, but there's not going to be a fully mapped and laid out version any time soon.

For me it's like the Bermuda Triangle - or in movies when Ghost-Pirate ships only appear in the gloom of fog cast on a full moon or something.

The realms bleed together at certain points magically and it is possible to travel between the realms through these points much like a realmgate.

It's a cool bit of fluff in my opinion and easy to get my head around than the space station orbiting Mallus (which still confuses me to no end).

If it was actually as developed as Planescape, I'd be all over it. But Planescape was a fully living and breathing setting - it spent a lot of time detailing what the normal people on the planes were up to, and then how cutters moved between planes. It had a planar geography set up with interesting links between them - the lore of Portals and their various keys, Or stuff like sailing the Styx to get from one Lower Plane to another, and so on.

Man, Planescape was awesome.

If GW did something like that with AoS instead of all this vague, pseudo mythic crap, I'd be all over the background material.

coldgaming wrote:

Baron Klatz wrote:
Sounds like they're using shadow magic to enchant their vessels so they can go between worlds. Since everything is of a magical essence it makes a certain sense.

I hope they expand on this in the fluff. It'd be interesting to know what the void is like. Would it be like sailing a ship through a endless black ocean where there is no up or down or are they sailing through something worse?

If I am remembering correctly I believe the skaven are also able to gnaw their way through the realms. I think the realms are heavily warped by magic and many interpretations of them could be correct at any one time, or in any one instance or place. I suspect the background will slowly fill in, as it has been already, but there's not going to be a fully mapped and laid out version any time soon.

Indeed.

I'm kind of thinking it like how Simon Green explains the difference between "The World" and "The Fay Realm"(I can't remember if it's "From Hell With Love" or "The Spy Who Haunted Me"--it's the one where Eddie has to compete in a scavenger hunt). There are places where the worlds bleed together, and if you know how...you can walk between worlds.