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I've got an idea.

Tomb Kings have Necrotects, see? And they build and maintain the Living Statuary the Tomb Kings use in wars, right?

One of the Special Characters of the Tomb Kings is one of, if not the best Necrotect ever.

What about a rule, for either Necrotects, a new Uber Necrotect Lord, or Ramhotep the Visionary, that allows a unit of Animated Constructs (Ushabti, perhaps) to be/count as Core? This would allow a Tomb Kings player to field an army composed of almost nothing but Constructs, which in my opinion, would be awesome. Great or Two Weapon Ushabti as the main Core Block, Great Bow Ushabti as archers. War and Necrosphinxes instead of Chariots and Cavalry, and Colossi and Heirotitans doing their thing, watched over by a Liche Priest and a Necrotect or two.

It even fits the fluff! There's a story in the book about a Khemrian Construct army- or rather several. The Alabaster Army of Quatar, Ramhotep's Marble Army, etc. etc. I just think it'd be awesome.

Nothing Rare would ever be Core. You're not going to have 4 Necrosphinx or Colossus. They don't do that counts as Core stuff so much anymore. 1 because it sells less models. 2 because there's a reason everyone has a % limit on Core/Special/Rare, because it helps distribute points into types that other armies can reasonably fight. 3 because it gives armies a standard feel. And generally core are pretty lousy--not for cost, but you know. It's a big defining point of what each army book is. 25% as a matter of fact.

Ogres allows you to take 2 Gorgers in a unit size and multiples, but they're still Special. And they aren't that great. And you need a really expensive lord to get it.

WoC let you do it, but it's with fairly overpriced units and, while cool, is more gimicky. 40K I think showed it doesn't work to have it done a lot.

TK are all about skeletons. It's what that army is. Constructs are simply protectors of said skeletons. It'd be like having an army of swarms.

Anyway, that's game theme. If you want to make a Lord Necrotect, that's cool. Buff the Necrotect rules, which kind of blow. I mean if it was stoneshaper with regen 5+ instead of 6+, that alone would be damn powerful (too bad everything fighting TK has flaming). Or that buff ability where they get to reroll armor saves but their armor goes from 5+ to 4+ for the select Animated Construct. That would make you want to take a giant ushabti group. Just a few digit changes like that are pretty big.

I just don't think TK should be skeleton-less. They're a horde army. And a heirophant becomes less important because crumble isn't as big a deal for constructs. And that's one of the TK's biggest traits. Like animosity for O&G.

Anyway. Buff a necrotect

Fair points, all.

I know that Fantasy has been going away from the 'counts as' thing- I've got the old Tomb Kings rulebook, too.

I suppose I was just thinking more of the fluff than anything else- that bit about the army made completely of Statuary was pretty neat.

I suppose you could always make an army that uses very very small 'animated constructs' instead of Skeltons...

Skeletons are animated constructs. They are mindless. It's only the heirophant's magic that brings them up. There's no reason they couldn't be really scary stuffed animals--if the proper stuffed animal rituals were done. Skeletons just weren't chiseled out of rock. But they are fundamentally the same. Only heroes and lords have any free will or intelligence. Even all the animated constructs are considered undead. It's not reversed because then they'd all have armor saves and those other special rules. But they're still constructs.

Actually, though that may be true for the Vampire Counts, it's not true for the Tomb Kings. Each and every Skeleton has the soul of its own warrior inside of it, and every Animated Construct has the soul of an extra-impressive warrior. The only thing is that most of the stuff from their past lives are a bit fuzzy, except their unending devotion to their King.

Hey, you're right. It even says it under Skeleton Warriors.

But it also says they are the backbone of a TK army. And all that stuff above still holds, more or less.

I remember looking at the 40K books and they had stuff like Dreadnauts as Core (or whatever they were called) and you're just like, this could make some games incredibly lame. It's a bit easier in WHFB because everything can hurt everything and it's more strategic. But seeing as it's more strategic, it has those hard/fast rules in to keep it so. Which is why a Rare is rare, etc.

What about something like terracotta warriors in place of skeletons? If you want some new rules, maybe they're T4 and cost more. But I see no reason why you couldn't just do some conversions and clever colour schemes to make the Alabaster/Marble hosts of legend.

Oh, I certainly plan to. I'm going to have a bunch of Animated Constructs in my army, along with a big ol' block of Archers (I'm running Khalida), and I'm going to be painting them up as thought they're carved from Jade.

I think the Duke has the right of it, having Core, Special and Rare as distinctions helps ensure some kind of balance within armies.

Otherwise you end up with a really limited paper, rock & scissors exercise. If I were deploying my Empire troops and saw the other player putting down nothing but massive constructs, I’d think ‘well either I’ve got enough cannons or I don’t’. There’d be little decided in deployment, and even less in maneuver, it’d all come down to how my army matched up against yours.

That's something that I've noticed coming from 40K to Fantasy. In 40K, that whole Army vs. Army thing is pretty standard- just look at the Meta of Metal Bawkses vs. Melta/Lance/Railguns. If you don't have enough weapons of the right strength, certain enemy units can basically ignore you, or if they have enough of the right weapon, they can slaughter you with impunity.

But then again, if 40K has become Rock, Paper, Scissors, Fantasy seems (to me) to be Paper, Newsprint, Brown Bag, where almost every army can be expected to have at least one big block of weak units- from what I've seen, there's no way to have a Fantasy army with just a couple fast moving hard hitters and still win (this is just from what I've seen, though- may be wrong.)

^ I really really lost interest in 40K when I saw how much the actual game was decided on 2 pieces of paper: the lists of each others' armies. Land Raiders (and such) were what was really over the top in that, if you didn't have really stong Anti-Armor it could literally run over a million billion zillion troops and never take a scratch. List building you don't need to actually do at a store in person. Just write it up, email it to each other, and see who wins. Save some gas.

Anvildude wrote:That's something that I've noticed coming from 40K to Fantasy. In 40K, that whole Army vs. Army thing is pretty standard- just look at the Meta of Metal Bawkses vs. Melta/Lance/Railguns. If you don't have enough weapons of the right strength, certain enemy units can basically ignore you, or if they have enough of the right weapon, they can slaughter you with impunity.

But then again, if 40K has become Rock, Paper, Scissors, Fantasy seems (to me) to be Paper, Newsprint, Brown Bag, where almost every army can be expected to have at least one big block of weak units- from what I've seen, there's no way to have a Fantasy army with just a couple fast moving hard hitters and still win (this is just from what I've seen, though- may be wrong.)

It’s something that’s come into Fantasy in this edition. Previously you could just rely on big monsters or elite troops and they could handle most anything that came their way. This edition has made units a lot more unique, because they’ve given big blocks of cheap troops the ability to reliably stay in a fight despite losing each round (steadfast). It means you need a more combined arms approach to win games.

40K tried to do something similar, by giving troops their own special advantage, the ability to take objectives, but they dropped the ball badly in letting troops inside vehicles claim objectives, as that meant you could still take an all vehicle force, and just keep the troops in their carriers. Even then it probably wasn’t enough to make the different unit type meaningfully different.

I kinda like that idea. I think they should keep the Visonary the same price (or maybe bump him up to like 130) and have the following special rule:

Ramhotep's Army: An army including Ramhotep The Visonary may include a single unit of Ushabti as a Core choice.

Anvildude wrote:there's no way to have a Fantasy army with just a couple fast moving hard hitters and still win (this is just from what I've seen, though- may be wrong.)

Very wrong sir, very wrong indeed. You see while giant blocks in 8th is the norm there is a group... Some say they do not exist but I know otherwise! They call themselves MSU gamers and are truly a force to be feared

Ushabti units have no upper limit. Which means you could have a non-skeleton TK army. And stick a necro tech in and give them all regen and use the buff ability and give them all a reroll to armor saves. And stick a Tomb King inside and give them all WS6.

Nein.

It's cheesy and it's not a horde-like crumbling TK army. It's nearly exactly the opposite.

Maybe take a single Necrosphinx, Warsphinx or Necrolith Colossus as a Core choice? Those units are 0-1, but would still eat up a hefty amount of your Core points, letting you take fewer Skellies- and at low point games, would even let you run a Monster Mash, with, say, a Warsphinx with Fiery Roar and Envenomed Sting, the Visionary and a lvl1 Heirophant, along with some Ushabti or another Sphinxs or something.

@Anvildude: I think the idea is that, historically, you really couldn't win a battle with just one kind of troop, unless your enemy also had one kind of troop, and it was a favorable match-up for you. You need variety. That's why there's air forces, navys, armies, and all the little divisions therein.

@Johnny: MSU-style armies and one-trick-pony armies are very different. The opposite, in fact. MSU's are based on the idea that nothing looks like a better target than the next thing, so you're going to get hurt. One-trick-ponies do their one thing. 7th edition armies like that were...Chaos Knights. That's really The Example of that sort of silliness, and I'm glad it's done.

I know what MSU is as I use MSU quite often. I am just saying 8th is not all about big blocks all the time and most TK MSU involves sphinxs as they can hold things up nicely

TK is about skeletons. They really are. Having a giant monster as core really breaks a lot of their special rules.

They don't WANT you to use mandatory Core points to buy Rares. That's why they are mandatory Core points. I don't think you're remotely going to get past that, not even with Specials. Certainly not Rares.

Buff Necrotect (for nth time). But don't break the BRB or TK special rules.

I think the best option would make Rhammy a lord and make him more like Skrag, in that they still remain in their slots but the cap is removed

But with the new system, there's still a 'cap' of a sort, in that you're basically stuck with 25% of your points being Core, and a certain amount being Hero/Lord. And with TK, that includes, both any special characters you want, as well as the needed Heirophant- to run my Khalida army, I can't play games anywhere less than 1500 points, and need 2000 for any decent magic.

That's a lot of skeletons, for someone that maybe doesn't have that much money, time, or inclination to paint them (and yes, I know there are options, and I'm also speaking purely hypothetically here).

What would be rather handy, I think, would be something where you could possibly have a 'tect that both lets you take extra Animated Constructs and can count as your army's Heirophant, like Settra and Arkhan.

It'd be somewhat fluffy, since there are Khemrian armies composed mainly if not only of Animated Constructs, and would allow newer players the option to run a much cheaper list at lower points levels with TK. Currently, if you don't want to pay much, you pretty much have to go Ogres right now, and some people don't like their fluff or look all that much.

I don't think it would break the game by any means. Go against the army's tone? Sure. But they'd still be Tomb Kings. And it's not like you're opponent isn't willing to let you try it. You want to switch things up a bit? Go for it. Just don't forget how the army was originally meant to be fielded.

Anvildude wrote:basically stuck with 25% of your points being Core

That isn't Tomb Kings. That is all armies in every book. And as we've said, there's a reason for that.

I literally will ignore some books because if I don't like their Core, I'm not going to like that army. I mean, I can't get any more synonymous and descriptive than Core. 40K example, I LOVED Imperial Guardsmen vehicles. Tanks and basilisks and such. I hated the fact they were horde throw-away green grunts with flashlight guns. Apparently a lot of other people did too, because they changed it so you could have nothing but vehicles. And it was a horrible mistake. This is an IG-type change. It's what 40K does and it really does break the strategy of WHFB. It's not JUST about units and painting and whatever. You need those Core to have a WHFB balanced army.

I think Skaven have some really cool stuff, I just hate the hell out of rats. And they are horde. I love Beastmen Minotaurs and other specials/rares but you MUST field a crapload of nekkid Gors and such. You can't just make a war machine Dwarf army, it would be godlike, even if you had the Super Lord Engineer of Awesomeface. It simply disrupts the fundamental of WHFB.

Some guys got some really good suggestions here. But in general, if you don't like an army's core, you don't like the army. If you love everything else, do your damndest to kit out that Core with as much expensive stuff as you can. Get every upgrade, get multiple small units (MSU) and buy a champion for each one. Musucian/Standard in each one. If you did that with Skeleton Charriots, you could get away with probably having 3 sets of 3 guys in a decent size game. And they aren't bad or remotely horde-y.

I was talking about all the armies.

See, this is where I have a bit of difference in oppinion- partially from a Gamer's standpoint, and partially from the standpoint of someone trying to break into the business of Game Design and miniatures.

If you love the army's look, but either dislike a portion of it, or prefer a different portion, you should have the option of not needing that portion. Not only does it allow gamers more options in their modeling and list building, but it also will sell more miniatures if a person could say "Oh, I dislike the Horde concept, but their vehicles are awesome! I'll just buy the vehicles to use, then!" instead of "Dang, I have to get 500 grunts to field 5 tanks- I don't think I'll use this army"

In 40K, it may have been a mistake allowing for IG parkinglots, but that, I think, comes more from the 40K core ruleset than anything else- the fact that you could potentially have one army that cannot, under any circumstances be harmed by another is not a good one, yet it's completely possible between vehicles, walkers and weak infantry grunts. I could put together a Gretchin Horde Ork army, with a bare Big Mek HQ, and be unable to do anything to a Parking Lot.

However, in Fantasy, everything has a chance to hurt anything. My army of 5 Warsphinxes can still fall to your hordes of Zombies if you tarpit with a little unit and flank charge with a big one- and sheer weight of numbers almost guarantees that you'll be doing some wounds to it, and that you'll have plenty of guys left. In fact, those Sphinxes might even have a hard time against things if I don't take the Flaming Roars (which are each very expensive, and would probably reduce the number of Sphinxes taken by 1) or I roll badly- or just if you roll well!.

If the basic rule system were to be perfectly balanced, there would be no need to restrict anything beyond the points cost level- if it's mostly balanced (which I consider it to be, currently) then army composition shouldn't need to be restricted as much, with proper requirements. If it's an unbalanced ruleset (like I think 40K is) then the Armies are more important than the generalship, and you might as well just write up 5 or 10 Army Lists for each point level instead of giving points costs to individual models and units.

Balance. That's a perfect word. Stuff is Special or Rare and has a % limitation because of it.

I like chess. But I hate bishops. Why can't I swap all my rooks for bishops? It literally becomes exponentially more difficult to create balanced army books if everything is swappable.

You KNOW there will be X Core, X Special, X Rare, X Lords at the most. Those are fixed variables. As a budding game designer, you have to realize the great benefit this is. They used to have the concept of mercenaries (Dogs of War) that you could take from other armies and mix and match and it was a horrible balance issue.

Anvildude wrote:However, in Fantasy, everything has a chance to hurt anything. My army of 5 Warsphinxes can still fall to your hordes of Zombies if you tarpit with a little unit and flank charge with a big one- and sheer weight of numbers almost guarantees that you'll be doing some wounds to it, and that you'll have plenty of guys left. In fact, those Sphinxes might even have a hard time against things if I don't take the Flaming Roars (which are each very expensive, and would probably reduce the number of Sphinxes taken by 1) or I roll badly- or just if you roll well!.

WHFB is better suited to these kinds of things now, because steadfast has given horde infantry a unique place on the battlefield. But it still remains problematic, especially if you think past a couple of high priced creatures and into the kind of elite units that can grind through horde units. Consider an army that's nothing but big blocks of Minotaurs, for instance.

You might think 'well that's a tactically limited army and I can think of lots of things that can beat it' and you'd be right, anything with enough shooting will slaughter them, but at the same time anything built around hordes of troops will get absolutely slaughtered. Suddenly you're looking at games decided by army selection, not on the field.

If the basic rule system were to be perfectly balanced, there would be no need to restrict anything beyond the points cost level- if it's mostly balanced (which I consider it to be, currently) then army composition shouldn't need to be restricted as much, with proper requirements. If it's an unbalanced ruleset (like I think 40K is) then the Armies are more important than the generalship, and you might as well just write up 5 or 10 Army Lists for each point level instead of giving points costs to individual models and units.

Except that isn't true, because a thing taken in small amounts is nowhere near as good as a thing taken en masse. For instance, the parkinglot army is based around all those AV12 chassis. In and of themselves, those vehicles are hardly imposing, and are a reasonable price for what you get. The strength of them comes in taking a whole list of them, and presenting nothing but AV12 for the enemy to shoot. Any anti-horde weapons he's taken are wasted, while any really powerful AT weapons are left wastefully plinking at light tanks.

That's the issue with really open army creation, one tank might be worth 65 points, but two are worth a lot more than 130, and three even more than that.

For the record, I don't have a problem with the rules you're suggesting for homebrew games, but anything opening up army selection like you're suggesting needs to have responsible players, who will avoid extreme armies, or groups who don't mind most games ending up a cakewalk due to army match ups, as they're happy to just put really wacky armies onto the field.

Yes, Homebrew's and Friendly Games. I do understand that anything I post in a Proposed Rules forum will never see the light of day in a Tourney, but I do wonder how they'd be for fun games, and post them to share the idea and get the Dakka community's input on whether it has any merit or not- and what to change, if needed.

Anvildude wrote:Yes, Homebrew's and Friendly Games. I do understand that anything I post in a Proposed Rules forum will never see the light of day in a Tourney, but I do wonder how they'd be for fun games, and post them to share the idea and get the Dakka community's input on whether it has any merit or not- and what to change, if needed.

That's kind of the issue with Proposed Rules in general. Some of the rules are for homebrew stuff, and special campaign stuff, and some of the rules are proposed changes to army books (I think in our minds we all kind of like the dream of someone from GW reading the forum and saying 'yes, that is how we will fix the Wood Elves! ).

The standard needed for each is very different, of course, with special campaign rules really just needing to be flavourful and fun, homebrew rules needing to be generally balanced, while proposed changes to army books need to be all the above, and immune to exploitation.

People generally don't explain exactly what they intend with their rules, and respondents make their own assumptions and the result is a lot of crossed wires.

I think that's a great point. Everything I see here I assume to be an Official Army Book Suggested Change™.

Maybe a sticky should finally go at the top of this thread saying that all suggestions need to include whether this is for Official, Campaign, Fun/House. Not sure what else to include.

And I like to dream of someone at GW reading my posts, spilling their tea over their paint-smeared hands and going, "By the Queen's Beard, that DukeRustfield fellow is so smart we should give him a million pounds (sterling) just for existing!!!"

DukeRustfield wrote:I think that's a great point. Everything I see here I assume to be an Official Army Book Suggested Change™.

Maybe a sticky should finally go at the top of this thread saying that all suggestions need to include whether this is for Official, Campaign, Fun/House. Not sure what else to include.

And I like to dream of someone at GW reading my posts, spilling their tea over their paint-smeared hands and going, "By the Queen's Beard, that DukeRustfield fellow is so smart we should give him a million pounds (sterling) just for existing!!!"

You mean that hasn't happened to you yet?

And yeah, a sticky woudl be good, if not maybe just us regulars should ask people how what they're thinking with their proposed rule?