Warcry (AoS) News & Rumours - Briar and Bone reveal (Sylvaneth v OBR)

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**bortass**

NM. The missing Chaos PDF has been posted...

**Ghaz**

bortass wrote:
Ghaz wrote:
The Chaos Compendiums are up...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/aieIvNka3AA1f0la.pdf

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PN5smrdnpdAfNhH8.pdf

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/GGFXgwO43k5M2soa.pdf

It looks like a PDF is missing. They have Chaos 1, 3, and 8 Points. Chaos 1 is 13 pages and Chaos 3 starts on page 31. * Points starts with page 45.

Check my previous post for the link. The link is in the article but not on the Downloads page.

**bortass**

A quick question in case one of you happens to know. In first edition one of the twists had chaos beasts.

Does anyone know what 2.0 has for twists that require non warband models?

I've never played Warcry nor AOS, so am starting my collection with this edition and am curious what else would be good to pick up.

**Chikout**

bortass wrote:
A quick question in case one of you happens to know. In first edition one of the twists had chaos beasts.

Does anyone know what 2.0 has for twists that require non warband models?

I've never played Warcry nor AOS, so am starting my collection with this edition and am curious what else would be good to pick up.

I'm not sure if they are included in any of the twists but Savage Seraphon are the equivalent of chaos beasts in this edition. There are rules for them in the core book.

**Siygess**

Boo. I just noticed the Underworlds models are not included here so I guess I will be using Khagra and co as generic Chaos Warriors. Perhaps the new edition does away with the concept of Bladeborn fighters?

**NH Gunsmith**

Siygess wrote:
Boo. I just noticed the Underworlds models are not included here so I guess I will be using Khagra and co as generic Chaos Warriors. Perhaps the new edition does away with the concept of Bladeborn fighters?

I mean, the profiles and abilities are close enough that I plan to keep using them as they were in the Tome of Champions. Really don't think anybody will make a big fuss over that for now.

**lord_blackfang**

Guessing they dropped the Underworlds models because some of them are out of print entirely.

While Chikout makes an excellent retort, I worry that "AoS" factions are departing even more radically from "Warcry" factions in terms of capabilities with the inclusion of even more AoS models that seem ill suited for the scope of the game, like Mournfang Riders. The playing field is somewhat leveled with the ability to take allies, but I'd really rather not see the same crutch models showing up in every faction in every game.

**bortass**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Guessing they dropped the Underworlds models because some of them are out of print entirely.

That's too bad since we have a number of the original Underworlds sets and I was hoping to use them. But a chaos dude with no shirt can proxy as another chaos dude with no shirt if needed, lol.

**partisan_nick**

Overall good balancing making the bad stuff better and some of the best stuff a bit worse.

But - beyond pets I am stunned at the nerfs to the bespoke warbands (no they where not bad before overall). None of them where overpowered outside pets. Why do that to the likes of Corvus, Cypher, Unmade and even splintered? Really hard to grasp. Good boosts to the worst of the warbands though, Spire Tyrants could have needed more help.

**NH Gunsmith**

Gotta say my biggest let down is that they didn't move the Darkoath Chieftain and Queen to the... Darkoath Warband as in-faction options.

The seeming loss of the Bladeborn Fighters is pretty lame as well, but thankfully most of them are relatively easy to use as generic or upgraded fighter types.

**usernamesareannoying**

no update for today?
i thought they mentioned releasing rules?

**Billicus**

All the fighter cards released so far across the PDFs adds up to 823 so we've reached that "Over 800" mark, there's no bladeborn PDF coming. They may come back in white dwarf or something, who knows?

Means the Tome of Champions 2021 was only current for less than 6 months, which is a pretty poor shelf life even for a GW supplement book.

**Equinox**

A couple of pages back there was mention that the basic rules were going to be made available for download. I was not able to find where that was stated, so I am wondering if that is not the case. I have some of the older sets, so I would like to try out the updated basic rules without having to buy a new boxset. Can anyone confirm one way or the other if the rules will be made available as a pdf?

lord_blackfang wrote:
Guessing they dropped the Underworlds models because some of them are out of print entirely.
While Chikout makes an excellent retort, I worry that "AoS" factions are departing even more radically from "Warcry" factions in terms of capabilities with the inclusion of even more AoS models that seem ill suited for the scope of the game, like Mournfang Riders. The playing field is somewhat leveled with the ability to take allies, but I'd really rather not see the same crutch models showing up in every faction in every game.

Agreed. I would rather see Warcry models ported into AoS than AoS models being allowed into Warcry. With the change in setting, I am hopefully we get some non-Chaos Warcry specific kits. Would be really cool to explore the outliers of the other alliances.

**lord_blackfang**

Yea no joke, of the 14 Warcry bespoke warbands so far 13 were Chaos, 3 more big boxes this season means another 6 warbands minimum, for the love of god do it like Kill Team with specialized commando teams for different factions.

**NinthMusketeer**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Sarouan wrote:
Quasistellar wrote:

You could a) provide your example politely, or b) be a gakwhole. You chose b). Time to add yet another to the ignore list.

Examples aren't hard to find, it just depends who you are listening to. The crowd of Warcry players complaining about "severe imbalance" in the game are the competitive part...mostly youtubers with a reputation to show (thus using antagonising titles and emotionnal statements because those are the ones that get more views).

However, these people play the game (or theorize it) in a very specific view, where balance is more an ideology than a real necessity. It's the same people saying point cost is the only way to balance a game and were spitting on AoS when it first came out or 40k V8 when power levels were introduced (a game without point cost ? HERESY !).

Here in the case of these poor Fyreslayer profiles, yes one is indeed more interesting than the other on the paper. Doesn't mean the axe wielding one can't be used in a game in an effective way (if you want to inflict damage, it's quite obvious these types of fighters aren't exactly here for that, they're more here to grab objectives and stand their ground). So the difference of 1 point in critical damage isn't really an important detail in itself : it only matters to people who focus on things they believe are crucial in a game while they're not.

As for why anyone would use a lesser profile instead of the other, the answer is very simple : because he wants to use the miniature. This, of course, is something the people only looking at rules will never truly understand ("why not using the better profile but the miniature you like as a proxy ?") because it simply goes against their ideology.

Yet that's still a valid answer in a game. Because the point is not to optimize at all costs...it's simply to have fun.

So how much fun is it to auto lose because the random scenario is unwinnable for your faction? Do narrative players enjoy that? Or are you gonna keep claiming that the only issue in Warcry is a 5 pts variance between identical profiles? Who are you to even claim Warcry is a narrative game? Its design ethos is clearly much closer to Underworlds than it is to Necromunda. I suggest all of you who deny criticisms without even playing the game it go join an actual Warcry community on reddit or discord and see what's what rather then just defend GW for the sake of defending GW.

My local narrative community would take one look or at most one attempt at such an impossible scenario then change it. Same thing when the randomized cards created a scenario that handed victory to one side; change it. Because that is what narrative play is about; creating fun experiences. Treating it like its matched play will inevitably result in bad experiences from time to time, because creating a system where those did not exist would also render stale many of the exciting options that are so fun when they aren't working badly. For players who want a set of reasonably balanced scenarios with straightforward setups that don't throw things through a loop, Warcry has always provided matched play scenarios for that use.

In other news, can anyone give examples of models that are extremely OP/UP? I genuinely want to know for the purposes of accounting for them in my games.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also quoting myself from the last page to stave off this particular straw man:

NinthMusketeer wrote:
However, extreme imbalance can still be disruptive on a narrative level and the edges of the bell curve need to be reigned in even within a narrative context.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Knight wrote:
I hope Splintered Fangs got better end of the deal.

Finally brought sneks up to a better points level (may have overdone it considering the wounds nerf), and made whip options viable. We kept our absolutely insane faction double and got a great reaction to boot. Serpent charmers are back to being extremely points efficient, I'd call them OP simply on the stats they provide relative to the cost.

**Overread**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Yea no joke, of the 14 Warcry bespoke warbands so far 13 were Chaos, 3 more big boxes this season means another 6 warbands minimum, for the love of god do it like Kill Team with specialized commando teams for different factions.

Yeah I'm all for Slaves to Darkness having lots of themed warbands - they've got them now. Branch Warcry out and make it so every faction gets their own unit like Daughters of Khaine did. I don't know why GW isn't going down that pathway. It's a no brainer. Esp when they've armies like Flesheaters and Fyreslayers that would shine with a slightly more varied unit block being added to them

**lord_blackfang**

NinthMusketeer wrote:

In other news, can anyone give examples of models that are extremely OP/UP? I genuinely want to know for the purposes of accounting for them in my games.

As a rule of thumb, anything that's grossly outside the norm (as set by Warcry bespoke warbands) in one or more areas (mobility, hitting power, staying power).

The classic culprit has always been the Crypt Flayer, a 30 wound (40 in its Leader variant), 10" speed flyer. This bad boy is unkillable if he doesn't want to fight and will auto win any sort of scenario where the point is to survive or to hold a singular loot token unless the opponent can match speed or maaaybe with obscene shooting power (also not available to Warcry warbands). Now the rumoured core change is -2" speed and no Fly when carrying a loot token, so that should help a lot with the second type of scenario, but still not the pure survival ones. The Crypt Flayer itself went down from 30 to 28 wounds at the same cost... meh. OTOH the same model will very likely lose scenarios where you need to hold ground and his mobility is moot as he's not very punchy for his cost.

Other outliers are obscene shooters like SCE and rat ogres and automatic "impact hits" type abilities mostly found on cavalry. I haven't had a good look yet if any of that got better.

**Sarouan**

usernamesareannoying wrote:
no update for today?
i thought they mentioned releasing rules?

They already did last week, actually.

The part on reaction rules had a video showing the rules, and since they are the same...

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Siygess wrote:
Boo. I just noticed the Underworlds models are not included here so I guess I will be using Khagra and co as generic Chaos Warriors. Perhaps the new edition does away with the concept of Bladeborn fighters?

It was an optional rule in the last Warcry Compendium. Since the rules are exactly the same, nothing prevents you to still use them, actually.

They can use reactions from the faction they belong, so they don't really need another for their specific underworld band.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if GW adds more Warcry rules like they did for Kill Team in the future White Dwarf releases.

**usernamesareannoying**

Oh really sarouan?
I thought there was more to it.
Thanks.

**NinthMusketeer**

lord_blackfang wrote:
NinthMusketeer wrote:

In other news, can anyone give examples of models that are extremely OP/UP? I genuinely want to know for the purposes of accounting for them in my games.

As a rule of thumb, anything that's grossly outside the norm (as set by Warcry bespoke warbands) in one or more areas (mobility, hitting power, staying power).

The classic culprit has always been the Crypt Flayer, a 30 wound (40 in its Leader variant), 10" speed flyer. This bad boy is unkillable if he doesn't want to fight and will auto win any sort of scenario where the point is to survive or to hold a singular loot token unless the opponent can match speed or maaaybe with obscene shooting power (also not available to Warcry warbands). Now the rumoured core change is -2" speed and no Fly when carrying a loot token, so that should help a lot with the second type of scenario, but still not the pure survival ones. The Crypt Flayer itself went down from 30 to 28 wounds at the same cost... meh. OTOH the same model will very likely lose scenarios where you need to hold ground and his mobility is moot as he's not very punchy for his cost.

Other outliers are obscene shooters like SCE and rat ogres and automatic "impact hits" type abilities mostly found on cavalry. I haven't had a good look yet if any of that got better.

Hm. I have actually played against flayers a lot and while I agree they were definitely OP I didn't find them to be game breaking. Certainly no worse than serpent swarms. The problem was fly and treasure with very real though, and in that context they definitely were, fortunately can confirm that rumor is true.

**lord_blackfang**

My meta was lucky in that nobody was willing to buy 200€ of the same box just for the snake swarms

**NinthMusketeer**

lord_blackfang wrote:
My meta was lucky in that nobody was willing to buy 200€ of the same box just for the snake swarms

Two warbands of splintered fang, friends who played Seraphon and had extra snake bits from the Bastiladon kit, a bit of creativity = 5 snek swarms

They are probably the single most infamous unit in my local Warcry community.

**Danny76**

Doing something like what Kill Team has for warbands would be pretty cool.
Touching in various factions

**Knight**

Oh, I would had loved to spam snakes but couldn't justify spending time or money looking models for them at that time. The snakes in v2 cost too much, even with bonus activations. However, I think almost all pets got increase in points.

I find v2 to be a missed shot, mostly because GW integrated AoS line too fast and greedily. It would had been totally fine dedicating more time and releasing more thematic and thought out expansions.

**NinthMusketeer**

It is what people wanted though; from the launch of Warcry there were complaints that not all AoS factions were represented and people were quite happy when they all were. Even if the balance was a bit off, though much of that is because dedicated warbands are harder to spam specific models with as compared to AoS ported ones. I ripped through the AoS armies no problem with my Splintered Fang, but my composition was VERY different from what came in the box.

Balance seems to have improved with this new release, remains to be seen though. At any rate as others have mentioned as a narrative-focused game balance is less of a priority; extreme elements definitely need to be reigned in but smaller imbalances are likely to be drowned out by the dynamics of scenarios, injuries, level-up mechanics, etc.

**Knight**

The narrative was flawed and didn't encourage long term playing, Ash from GMG covered it in the latest Warcry review. It's definitely bad, if the rewards are generally so weak that you consider it a waste to keep it in your head or forget to use it most of the time! Now, naturally we all have our favourites, and I am not surprised people were initially excited to play their favourites in the drama. (I swear I am not copying Ash on this, but rather have a similar take on it).

The good news is that the reviews are positive about this aspect, and it is what gives an argument some weight to give it a go.

Locally, the game set into the sun set with the introduction of AoS profiles, for reasons argued above. Personally had a mediocre run with Splintered Fangs, as stated, you need to prioritize certain profiles over what you can do with the base box and even then you'll need certain luck or error on the side of the opponent to catch the flyer or dodge his or hers most lethal vector of attack. Honestly, there are a lot of games that I could spend my time and money on... as much as I'd like to spend some weekends on the warcry drama, I feel that the game still has too many harsh penalties for people that don't focus on its mechanics but would rather play more RPG/narrative.

**NinthMusketeer**

Mileage may vary I suppose. The narrative element met with great success in my community right from the start and more so after the trial of champions was introduced. Balance was never a particularly huge issue, and when faced with one-sided scenarios we'd just generate new ones. The only people who stayed away from Warcry were those who simply didn't have an interest in skirmish level games (which is totally fine) and a good number of people have stated they enjoy Warcry more than any other skirmish wargame they've played.

Especially with narrative-focused games many elements are only good or bad from a subjective perspective and if it isn't for you that's fine. It doesn't make it an inherent flaw of the game though.

As for splintered fang, always felt the warband had the tools it needed to deal with anything it came across. Even when running low-snek lists I never felt underpowered (the opposite, if anything). I hate to make the argument but there may have been a skill mismatch because certainly many of the AoS warbands are WAY easier to use as blunt instruments and can more readily be built not to require high skill thresholds for effective use. Which is/was absolutely a problem because of course players dabbling in the game aren't going to put in the time to move up the learning curve if their initial experiences are bad.

**Knight**

Everything we experience is subjective, we all seek pleasant experiences, what that is, will vary. There are theories with what makes the game good, however personally wouldn't want to discuss that angle.

Speed was one thing I was missing with Splintered Fangs, however that's only against AoS, the match up with OG warbands was fine. I will finish that I am somewhat disappointed that GW also chose to release new warbands rather than dedicating some time to releasing alternative heroes or perhaps expansions with few new profiles for OG warbands (monster, thralls and allies are a rather generic bandaid with this). It always seemed like an obvious thing to do, if you want to keep people interested, rather than release and forget approach.

**McDougall Designs**

Sarouan wrote:
Hanskrampf wrote:

Yup. And that just shows how cheap it has become to make molds for HIPS injection. The often quoted "it's so expensive, so the models need to be expensive too" is just wrong.

Cheap is very arguable. Here, GW does it because given the sheer amount of production, the cost can be covered elsewhere - even if it's at a loss. Giving a free model doesn't mean it's free to produce, nor even it's cheap. It just means it's a marketing move.

They can do something like 6 of those on a standard mold. 20-25 grand on a years worth of walk in advertising at several hundred stores around the globe? feth yea that's chump change for a company of GWs size.

**NinthMusketeer**

Knight wrote:
Everything we experience is subjective, we all seek pleasant experiences, what that is, will vary. There are theories with what makes the game good, however personally wouldn't want to discuss that angle.

I find it interesting how quickly things went from 'the narrative gameplay is flawed' to 'it's all subjective so no point in discussing it'.