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Specifically what has it done to the game? I hear Vampires and Tomb Kings are connected armies somehow? The Lords and Heroes are now 50%?

Basically what changes have been made and is this all vanilla now or is it just an optional way to play the game such as apocalypse for 40k?

Well, the change to lords and heroes is part of the core rules now, it was FAQed in.

You may now take up to 50% Lords and 50% Heroes for points.

As for other additions:

It has added some new armies which are combinations of various armies with some new characters, and other ones cut:

Undead Legion - Combination of Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts, with new characters added and a handful removed.

Chaos Legion - Beastmen, Warriors of Chaos and Demons was allowed to combine in the Glottkin book, with new units and characters added. In the coming Archaeon book, more units will be available which may be usable in normal WoC lists as well.

Elven Legions - There are three separate armies that have different combinations of characters and units allowed.

Skaven - While no new armies exist, there are new units which can be used in normal Skaven lists. In addition, there are formations in the Thanquol book for several armies as well, which work similary to 40k formations in that they have special rules for taking them.

Also, End Times has a modified magic system. You roll 4d6 for dice now (defender gets highest 2) and you can attempt to recast after failing to cast a spell. However, you must roll a d6 to see how many dice you can put into any particular spell. Finally, there are new End Times spells which, if you're familiar with Storm of Magic, are spells from that book for the most part.

As far as how it is played. End Times lists and armies are legal, and usable in normal games. However, the End Times magic system is something that in my experience, tends to be optional and flexible. So I'd advise checking with potential opponents before making lists out of politeness.

I believe the End Time rules themselves are completely optional. Various armies can now be fielded together using those special rules, but you don't have to.

At least, that's how I think it stands right now. People here more knowledgeable than me can say more, I'm sure.

Edit: Or just read what curran12 posted above me! That's probably better.

 curran12 wrote:
Well, the change to lords and heroes is part of the core rules now, it was FAQed in.

You may now take up to 50% Lords and 50% Heroes for points.

As for other additions:

It has added some new armies which are combinations of various armies with some new characters, and other ones cut:

Undead Legion - Combination of Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts, with new characters added and a handful removed.

Chaos Legion - Beastmen, Warriors of Chaos and Demons was allowed to combine in the Glottkin book, with new units and characters added. In the coming Archaeon book, more units will be available which may be usable in normal WoC lists as well.

Elven Legions - There are three separate armies that have different combinations of characters and units allowed.

Skaven - While no new armies exist, there are new units which can be used in normal Skaven lists. In addition, there are formations in the Thanquol book for several armies as well, which work similary to 40k formations in that they have special rules for taking them.

Also, End Times has a modified magic system. You roll 4d6 for dice now (defender gets highest 2) and you can attempt to recast after failing to cast a spell. However, you must roll a d6 to see how many dice you can put into any particular spell. Finally, there are new End Times spells which, if you're familiar with Storm of Magic, are spells from that book for the most part.

As far as how it is played. End Times lists and armies are legal, and usable in normal games. However, the End Times magic system is something that in my experience, tends to be optional and flexible. So I'd advise checking with potential opponents before making lists out of politeness.

Have an exalt my friend, for giving a well reasoned and rational response to an honest question. I poked into this thread because i was absolutely sure the first 18 reponses were going to be some version of "GW killing WHFB" or other.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 toasteroven wrote:
I believe the End Time rules themselves are completely optional. Various armies can now be fielded together using those special rules, but you don't have to.

At least, that's how I think it stands right now. People here more knowledgeable than me can say more, I'm sure.

Edit: Or just read what curran12 posted above me! That's probably better.

They are and they're not... Nagash specifically states that "If either person wants to use End TImes Rules, End Times Rules are used".

Now... realistically, if one doesn't want to use them, this is how that goes "I want to use End Times." " I do not". "Well the book says If i want to you, you have to." "The book doesn't say I have to play you."

So there's no enforcement mechanism if one player REALLY doesn't want to. However, Rules as Written, Nagash states that if one player wants to, End Times are used. Rules as Enforced.... not so much.

It's also worth mentioning that the Elven lists alter the special rules associated with units.

The Host of the Aestyrion is primarily High Elf units(excluding Dragon Princes of Caledor and Phoenix Guard) and lose their "Martial Prowess" special rule, instead gaining "Murderous Prowess". It also includes basically all the Dark Elf list, barring some characters.

Host of the Phoenix King is basically all three Elf books in one. They then replace Murderous Prowess with Martial Prowess, and Forest Stalker flatout ceases to exist instead becoming Forest Strider and Martial Prowess.

Host of the Eternity King is all three books together with Murderous Prowess AND Martial Prowess.

The only real difference between HotPK and HotEK is the characters within.

Oh, and Wood Elves lose their free Citadel Wood.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's also worth mentioning that the Elven lists alter the special rules associated with units.

The Host of the Aestyrion is primarily High Elf units(excluding Dragon Princes of Caledor and Phoenix Guard) and lose their "Martial Prowess" special rule, instead gaining "Murderous Prowess". It also includes basically all the Dark Elf list, barring some characters.

Host of the Phoenix King is basically all three Elf books in one. They then replace Murderous Prowess with Martial Prowess, and Forest Stalker flatout ceases to exist instead becoming Forest Strider and Martial Prowess.

Host of the Eternity King is all three books together with Murderous Prowess AND Martial Prowess.

The only real difference between HotPK and HotEK is the characters within.

Oh, and Wood Elves lose their free Citadel Wood.

Not for long, apparently.

Will these new armies and rules make it to most tournaments, or is the only real effect on the competitive scene the change to Lords and Heroes that was FAQed into the core rules?

Many tournaments have allowed the new armies to go ahead. In my area a lot of the new special characters are banned however. Also if someone is using the new Elf armies, you're supposed to use Khaine Magic System, but in my meta we have decided that it is too much hassle and takes up to much time, so we stick to regular magic.

zeekill wrote:
Will these new armies and rules make it to most tournaments, or is the only real effect on the competitive scene the change to Lords and Heroes that was FAQed into the core rules?

Only 50% lords and heroes is brb official. For anything rlse ask the TO. I have noticed a lot of tournaments allowing combined armies (with a comp penalty) but no khaine magic and no special characters over 499 pts.

One other thing that End Times has done is created new versions of key characters as ultra-characters at high points costs that can put out a metric TON of damage. Nagash at 1,000 points is half of your army, but with Lore of Undeath he can summon a bunch of models from the Undead Legions army around him. Other massive characters are Mannfred, Neferata, Arkhan, The Glottkin, Karl Franz Ascended, Tyrion - Avatar of Khaine, Malekith in two versions, Imrik, Thanquol and Boneripper. Smaller characters have also received updated rules but are still reasonably pointed, like Valten, Festus, Ungrim Ironfist, Krell and Vlad. In tourneys that have allowed the supercharacters, they have dominated, especially Nagash, Karl Franz Ascended, Malekith and Imrik.

Also, there are now five variants of Verminlords for Skaven and three new variants of Bloodthirsters coming out in the next week. Nurgle also received a new unit of infantry (Blightkings), while Skaven received Rat Ogres with weapons on them (Stormfiends). Haven't seen them used much in tourneys as of yet (granted I'm not uber connected to that either), but I could see the Stormfiends especially helping out Skaven a bit by having another option for mobile weaponry that can still be tough in close combat.

I guess nobody has spoken to the Lore of Undeath yet. It is a new lore to go with the other 8 lores in the BRB. This lore can be taken by ANY wizard in ANY army to reflect the spread of the wind of death magic throughout the world. The whole basis of Undeath is summoning models. Unlike Vampires or Nehekhara, there are different spells for different types of models: so one spell for infantry, one spell for cavalry, one for monsters or characters, and one for monstrous cavalry or warmachines in the Undead Legions army. This has been allowed in most tournaments and was also FAQ'd to be a part of the main rules of WHFB in the BRB.

Lore of Undeath was used by the player that won the U.S. WHFB Masters this year, who won it with a TK army by using the Lore of Undeath to place small speedbumps of Necromancers or ethereal units in front of advancing units he didn't want to deal with. Game 5 he was playing Empire and brought up a unit of spirit hosts directly in front of a unit of 5 Demigrphs, charged and killed them in 3 turns because they could not strike back. Then, later in the game, he would spawn massive units (Terrorgheist or a unit of two Morghasts).

I haven't played with magic yet, but heard that the 4d6 magic phase with the d6 power/dispel dice is interesting. It ultimately makes magic a bit more random and makes it more difficult to just six dice the big spells each round, which helps to balance out some of the OP nature of some of them. However, it is quite a bit more random and definitely changes the reliability of the magic phase. Probably won't be seen in many tournaments.

I don't have my books in front of me, but I believe there was another change to magic where some mages at higher levels automatically have access to the new End Times magic spell of their given lore, which is a super powered spell for the given lore. I will have to look back through the rulebook for Khaine to give more details.

One last thing (sorry it's been so long at this point) is that the Thanquol rulebook re-introduced formation battle-scrolls. Basically saying if you take these units together, you get these special rules. One thing that each of the battlescrolls stipulated (and there were 4-5 in that book) were that if you used the units listed, you didn't have to take a minimum of 25% core in your army. Also, if you use the units listed in the battlescroll, you are granted one or two special rules for that formation. Haven't seen anything in tournaments saying whether those could be used or not, so not sure entirely how that will affect the game.

That seems to be the rest of the gameplay things that have changed. As is probably obvious, the story/fluff has moved forward significantly and lots of characters have died. But your question seemed to focus more on gameplay so I tried to focus on that.

HobbyBox wrote:



Lore of Undeath was used by the player that won the U.S. WHFB Masters this year, who won it with a TK army by using the Lore of Undeath to place small speedbumps of Necromancers or ethereal units in front of advancing units he didn't want to deal with. Game 5 he was playing Empire and brought up a unit of spirit hosts directly in front of a unit of 5 Demigrphs, charged and killed them in 3 turns because they could not strike back. Then, later in the game, he would spawn massive units (Terrorgheist or a unit of two Morghasts).

Yep. Lore of Undeath with multiple casters, especialy cheap ones, is massively OP. As a Goblins player, being able to easily summon Ethereals at a whim with lvl 1 casters getting a casting bonus of 3-4 is just ridiculous and makes an army that excels at killing anything armored even more fearsome. Sadly, this has led to an immense increase of G&O players and we're currently debating on how to limit the new lore.

Honestly, one of the best ideas I've seen for limiting Undeath in End Times?

If you are casting from the Lore of Undeath but do not have the "Undead" special rule, you roll a D3 rather than D6 to see how many dice you get to use for the casting attempt.
As well if you use a "Raise the Dead" counter, you get +5 points rather than +10.

The best comp Ive seen is the one that makes summoned units worth VP when killed. Even if its only 1/2 or something.

I have been to one tournament which allowed End Times in all it's glory, albeit at a small point level. It was doubles 1300pts each, I look Wood Elves with lots of Archers and my Friend took Skaven and that new Warp Seer.

We won 5 games via tabling, at most giving away 25pts for a Rat Dart. End Times Magic was ridiculous, his Warp Seer had re-rolls to cast Warp Lightning and always auto rolled a 6 on how many hits. However many more dice we had compared to them was about how many spells we got off, if not more. And god help you if a few Withers got through, BOTWD or not that unit is removed. It seems to me End Times magic makes little spells a lot more spammable and likely to go off, so much so that the big spells might as well be off the table in terms of effectiveness.

End Times magic is balanced against End Times magic; if one side's built around using it and the other isn't the side fighting it is boned. It's not bad if both sides have invested in a number of wizards but it's pretty terrifying to fight if you aren't fielding it.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
I have been to one tournament which allowed End Times in all it's glory, albeit at a small point level. It was doubles 1300pts each, I look Wood Elves with lots of Archers and my Friend took Skaven and that new Warp Seer.

We won 5 games via tabling, at most giving away 25pts for a Rat Dart. End Times Magic was ridiculous, his Warp Seer had re-rolls to cast Warp Lightning and always auto rolled a 6 on how many hits. However many more dice we had compared to them was about how many spells we got off, if not more. And god help you if a few Withers got through, BOTWD or not that unit is removed. It seems to me End Times magic makes little spells a lot more spammable and likely to go off, so much so that the big spells might as well be off the table in terms of effectiveness.

So let's get this straight.

You and your friend did a doubles tournament and took Skaven built around their stupidly broken Wither spell, coupled with some of the best shooting in the game...
And are bragging about winning via tabling?

Cool story, brah.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
I have been to one tournament which allowed End Times in all it's glory, albeit at a small point level. It was doubles 1300pts each, I look Wood Elves with lots of Archers and my Friend took Skaven and that new Warp Seer.

We won 5 games via tabling, at most giving away 25pts for a Rat Dart. End Times Magic was ridiculous, his Warp Seer had re-rolls to cast Warp Lightning and always auto rolled a 6 on how many hits. However many more dice we had compared to them was about how many spells we got off, if not more. And god help you if a few Withers got through, BOTWD or not that unit is removed. It seems to me End Times magic makes little spells a lot more spammable and likely to go off, so much so that the big spells might as well be off the table in terms of effectiveness.

So let's get this straight.

You and your friend did a doubles tournament and took Skaven built around their stupidly broken Wither spell, coupled with some of the best shooting in the game...
And are bragging about winning via tabling?

Cool story, brah.

I don't see how he's bragging. he's mentioning how bent ET can get. Though as we all know any semblance of balance goes out the window the second you mention "doubles" and allow them to use different armies.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
I have been to one tournament which allowed End Times in all it's glory, albeit at a small point level. It was doubles 1300pts each, I look Wood Elves with lots of Archers and my Friend took Skaven and that new Warp Seer.

We won 5 games via tabling, at most giving away 25pts for a Rat Dart. End Times Magic was ridiculous, his Warp Seer had re-rolls to cast Warp Lightning and always auto rolled a 6 on how many hits. However many more dice we had compared to them was about how many spells we got off, if not more. And god help you if a few Withers got through, BOTWD or not that unit is removed. It seems to me End Times magic makes little spells a lot more spammable and likely to go off, so much so that the big spells might as well be off the table in terms of effectiveness.

So let's get this straight.

You and your friend did a doubles tournament and took Skaven built around their stupidly broken Wither spell, coupled with some of the best shooting in the game...
And are bragging about winning via tabling?

Cool story, brah.

I don't see how he's bragging. he's mentioning how bent ET can get. Though as we all know any semblance of balance goes out the window the second you mention "doubles" and allow them to use different armies.

My friend and I once each took a perfectly balanced double Morathi cauldron gunline to a 1200 each doubles game recently. End times magic is dumb.

That's another good point Kanluwen made, in End Times due to having Loremaster you can build your army with the knowledge you will have the spell you want. This lead to some broken synergies, for example when we played against a Dwarf/Empire Gunline all we had to do was pop Storm Banner and Holwing Warp Gale to make all his Bs based shooting and Half his war machines useless, all the while my Glade Guard took no negatives due to trueflight and if i cast hand of glory on them i was hitting on 2's no matter what.

It's not just that the system is dumb, especially rolling for how many dispel dice you get, but it allows for to much to be built around magic. We were assured Howling Warpgale and Hand of Glory which hard counters shooty armies, we were assured Wither to counter any <T5 Deathstar and we were assured a ridiculous amount of Warp lightning to fry any MSU. At least when it was random you couldn't sure up ALL your weaknesses with magic.>

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
That's another good point Kanluwen made, in End Times due to having Loremaster you can build your army with the knowledge you will have the spell you want. This lead to some broken synergies, for example when we played against a Dwarf/Empire Gunline all we had to do was pop Storm Banner and Holwing Warp Gale to make all his Bs based shooting and Half his war machines useless, all the while my Glade Guard took no negatives due to trueflight and if i cast hand of glory on them i was hitting on 2's no matter what.

It's not just that the system is dumb, especially rolling for how many dispel dice you get, but it allows for to much to be built around magic. We were assured Howling Warpgale and Hand of Glory which hard counters shooty armies, we were assured Wither to counter any <T5 Deathstar and we were assured a ridiculous amount of Warp lightning to fry any MSU. At least when it was random you couldn't sure up ALL your weaknesses with magic.>

I could get pretty close with my White Lion deathstar but now that I don't need as many Archmages it's something like two hundred points less expensive than it was.