Bringing some Warhammer and other miniatures into SBG

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**Da Boss**

I have to confess that ever since I was a kid, I was a bit disappointed that Warhammer Fantasy Battle was set in the gunpowder era for the human factions. It never really made sense to me that everyone wouldn't be grabbing those guns and using them.

My preferred style of fantasy (and period of history!) had always been more Dark Ages and very early Medieval - chainmail, bows, you know, like LOTR.

Modern Fantasy leans into the GW approach, with lots of full plate armour all over the place, and I find it quite unsatisfying.

One of the reasons I like SBG is because it's a bit more Dark Ages right in it's bones. The Peter Jackson films do go wrong on this in many places - too much plate armour for my liking, but I've always been comfortable leaving that stuff out when I play the game.

And as a book-first LOTR fan, I also was always a bit leery about the more "Warhammer-y" stuff GW put in the SBG. I didn't like the Hobbit movies or game expansions because I felt they leaned into this too much. So I often leave out units that I feel are too over the top when playing SBG as a LOTR game, too.

But I do still like aspects of the Warhammer world and pulpy fantasy, and I realised I could use SBG for a more pulpy style game just by using my other miniatures and using the more whacky profiles GW has made to represent them. With my historical mod I can then have fun making Celts or Romans fight Snakemen using SBG's excellent core system. I was into Erehwon for that purpose, but I think it's a bit too fiddly for my gaming buddy, and I've got him into SBG, so why not keep going?

So I've gone through my collection and used profiles from SBG for all the bits and pieces I want to include. I mostly want Beastmen including Gnolls, Lizardmen including Snakemen, Chaos Warriors (even though they have plate, I'm fine with it if they're the ONLY ones and a sort of supernatural faction) and Undead. I prefer the LOTR style Orcs and Goblins and I think the LOTR human factions are all great so I don't feel a need to bring in any of those, and an entire faction of Ogres I feel would be a bit crazy - though you could do it for sure.

I'll put my proxy list in spoilers here and try to attach my PDF of the faction lists. Sometimes I give the units options they don't have in the core book, like giving bows as an option to a unit that normally doesn't have them, just for the usual cost which is 1 point per model. I don't think that's gonna break anything since I also use the 33% bow limit.

Spoiler:

**Sgt. Cortez**

It's a lot of stuff so just some random thoughts from me:

- Skeletons as Warriors of the dead doesn't really fit for me - why do they kill on Courage? They're just skellies with old normal weapons, no?
- ogres as trolls... hmm, in my view they're more fitting with the half Troll profile as they appear in whole armies, unlike the trolls in Warhammer
- Cygor - Gundabad Troll?
- Centaurs- How about any kind of cavalry? Khand Horsemen because of their low defense and two handed axe? You could give them a rule that they obviously can't be separate from their horse - so maybe just give them 2 wounds.
- Skink - in my view they're rather like Goblins. Or Orc trackers if you take ranged ones'.

Note that my knowledge about WhFB is mostly based on the Total War game so I might be off at some impressions of unit strengths.

**Da Boss**

No worries thanks for the feedback!
Skeletons - yeah, totally fair. I think you could definitely make Skeletons that were not the Warriors of the Dead. I just quite like the mechanics of the Warriors and wanted to use them. I suppose they're pretty tough and spooky skeletons! If you wanted weaker skeletons, I'd say you could use Orc or Goblin stats perhaps.
Ogres - Yeah fair. I would not have armies of Ogres but if you were going to, then using Half Trolls might well work better. Cave Troll is probably a bit bulky for your standard fantasy Ogre. Might try both out and see how I feel - the main thing is the base size is going to be a problem for a lot of Ogre models that are 40mm based as opposed to Half Trolls that are 25mm based.
Cygor - Yeah I was going back and forth on that. I also thought of the Catapult Trolls because my Cygor is modelled holding a huge rock over his head. I'll play with it and see how it goes but I wasn't really happy with 3 wounds for such a big mini.
Centaurs - making cav that cannot have their horse killed out from under them would be a valid way to do this, but I think 2 wounds would be too much because with cav, if either mount or rider looses a wound it's a pretty significant change. I was happy when I saw the Berserkers because they're like really fast "Super Infantry" so they fit fairly well.
Skink - absolutely fair, skinks have always been quite quick on their feet though, unlike goblins, and I wanted the poisoned attacks. But yeah they're a bit beefy.

So I basically think you have a solid point on all of those, and I went back and forth on several of them. I think you could totally make different choices.

**Sgt. Cortez**

It's certainly a rather limiting decision in lotr that movement is derived from your species and not from your armor.
After my post I thought about it and realized that Hobbits might also be fitting for skinks if they weren't even slower.

thinking about it even more, the best fit might be the wood men from Druadan.
Catapult trolls would also be super fitting for Cygors, aren't they exactly that in Warhammer?

**Da Boss**

Druadan Woses definitely would work, I think I had in my head that I might use the Mumakil for one of the big dinosaurs and so it made sense to me to have Haradrim as the skinks for that, and also so that I could have a basic captain type for them.

Another area I'm thinking about a lot is figuring out how they cost wizards to make a sort of "DIY shaman" entry. I think the very low magic, possibly explained away by mundane means for the Orc shaman take is perfect for LOTR but if I wanted a bit more pulp fantasy I might want to make a bit more available to my various shamans than Fury and Transfix, and I'd also like to be able to make human spellcasters.

**Sgt. Cortez**

Easterling war Priest, Druzhag and Khardush might be good starting points for more direct casters.
Overall magic in the lotr game is not the deciding factor, at least not with damage spells. We have no Purple Sun here but I don't think that's a bad thing

**Da Boss**

Oh yeah I am a fan of the magic but thought a bit more modularity would be good.

**SamusDrake**

Someone made an amazing conversion of Gulavhar, which was a Cursed City Vargskyr with the wings from a dragon from another game - Descent, I think?

**Da Boss**

Yeah if I was gonna do a Silmarillion inspired Vampire I would probably use his rules but get a Vargheist or something to represent him. From Tolkien's sparse descriptions I always imagined a more batlike rather than demon like appearance.