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 Arnizipal wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
And then you issue a challenge, and fight a 1 on 1 combat between Karl Franz and his retinue of 50 griffin riding nobles against Nagash and his retinue of 50 other Nagashs.

That would be silly.





















It would be a 10 on 10 battle

Now I'm just imagining Nagash to just be a big matroshka.
Like, he just opens his chest and a smaller Nagash comes out, and then an even smaller one, and it continues until he gets the desired number of Nagashes.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Arnizipal wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
And then you issue a challenge, and fight a 1 on 1 combat between Karl Franz and his retinue of 50 griffin riding nobles against Nagash and his retinue of 50 other Nagashs.

That would be silly.
It would be a 10 on 10 battle

Now I'm just imagining Nagash to just be a big matroshka.
Like, he just opens his chest and a smaller Nagash comes out, and then an even smaller one, and it continues until he gets the desired number of Nagashes.

Don't be silly.


Nagash is just 10 skeleton warriors standing on each others shoulders in a big cloak.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Arnizipal wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
And then you issue a challenge, and fight a 1 on 1 combat between Karl Franz and his retinue of 50 griffin riding nobles against Nagash and his retinue of 50 other Nagashs.

That would be silly.
It would be a 10 on 10 battle

Now I'm just imagining Nagash to just be a big matroshka.
Like, he just opens his chest and a smaller Nagash comes out, and then an even smaller one, and it continues until he gets the desired number of Nagashes.

Don't be silly.


Nagash is just 10 skeleton warriors standing on each others shoulders in a big cloak.

Those pesky undead halfling skelingtons....

 Argive wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Arnizipal wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
And then you issue a challenge, and fight a 1 on 1 combat between Karl Franz and his retinue of 50 griffin riding nobles against Nagash and his retinue of 50 other Nagashs.

That would be silly.
It would be a 10 on 10 battle

Now I'm just imagining Nagash to just be a big matroshka.
Like, he just opens his chest and a smaller Nagash comes out, and then an even smaller one, and it continues until he gets the desired number of Nagashes.

Don't be silly.


Nagash is just 10 skeleton warriors standing on each others shoulders in a big cloak.

Those pesky undead halfling skelingtons....

Dude's bigger than a Daemon Primarch, it's clearly 10 Ogre Skeletons pretending to be a combiner.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Arnizipal wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
And then you issue a challenge, and fight a 1 on 1 combat between Karl Franz and his retinue of 50 griffin riding nobles against Nagash and his retinue of 50 other Nagashs.

That would be silly.
It would be a 10 on 10 battle

Now I'm just imagining Nagash to just be a big matroshka.
Like, he just opens his chest and a smaller Nagash comes out, and then an even smaller one, and it continues until he gets the desired number of Nagashes.

Don't be silly.


Nagash is just 10 skeleton warriors standing on each others shoulders in a big cloak.

That explains the giant hat... it is actually a skeleton in there.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Arnizipal wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I thought of the retainer explaination, but it still doesn't really work when you consider flying mounts. What, does Karl Franz have a bodyguard of griffin riders?

Why not, he's the freaking Emperor.
If he takes to the field he should have the best, most expensive protection available

Fair enough. Griffins are consider to be prized mounts for Imperial Nobles.
I guess it would make sense for Karl Franz to have a personal retinue of Griffin Knights, handpicked from the best of the Reiksguard or Demigryph riders.
There would probably be just like, 10 or them or so. Or even fewer. Apparently a single Griffin rider can break an entire enemy regiment by itself.
I guess monsters in WHFB are super dangerous or something.

And then you issue a challenge, and fight a 1 on 1 combat between Karl Franz and his retinue of 50 griffin riding nobles against Nagash and his retinue of 50 other Nagashs.

I thought that, canonically, Nagash's robes were writhing with the enslaved souls of vanquished foes. They seem like a good retinue to fight against griffin riders.

 stonehorse wrote:


That explains the giant hat... it is actually a skeleton in there.

Yes, it's actually little skeleton Z.

On the 'how many men does one man represent' question, I seem to recall Rick Priestley saying in an interview that WFB abstracted the basic troops, but went 1:1 for the heroes/leaders. So one soldier might be 10 or 100 men, but one Karl Franz was always one Karl Franz.

In the 5th ed rulebook it mentions the troop abstraction, but not the heroes.

On a related subject, it's amusing to note that even in Warmaster (10mm scale), also by Priestley, the rulebook says right at the start that the 30-40 little metal men in each little metal regiment actually represents hundreds of men plus baggage, camp followers and so on.

(I like to think a similar principle applies to all troop and organisational numbers in 40K fluff. Whenever GW writes '1000 Space Marines' they actually mean 100 000 because historical wargaming is so deep in their DNA that even the actual galactic background for their tabletop wargame is abstracted to a tabletop wargame. )

Incidentally, I've never played a game of WFB in my life... but collected all the original 4th/5th ed army books a few years ago, along with quite a few from 6th, because the fluff from that era is great. Especially 4th/5th. Finding the Undead book was the hardest for some reason. I felt like the classic would-be Necromancer seeking a forbidden tome and constantly chasing false leads.

I cannot be having with the 'twenty men walk around in a rectangular block' thing, though. It only makes sense to my brain at smaller scales like Warmaster. At 28mm scale, I keep thinking of that Discworld book where Colon is recalling his army days; they 'all formed up into them squares, and then all formed up into them arrows', because his commander thought a proper battle should look like the maps in books. Still, I'll admit that the block regiments look impressive on the table.

Zenithfleet wrote:
On the 'how many men does one man represent' question, I seem to recall Rick Priestley saying in an interview that WFB abstracted the basic troops, but went 1:1 for the heroes/leaders. So one soldier might be 10 or 100 men, but one Karl Franz was always one Karl Franz.

This is how I've always interpreted it. The heroes fight with the skill/strength/ferocity/cunning/etc. of many times their number.

Well that doesn't make much sense either. Are we really supposed to imagine that Karl Franz is personally killing dozens or even hundreds of men on his own, and in the same amount of time a regular soldier can kill at most one?

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Well that doesn't make much sense either. Are we really supposed to imagine that Karl Franz is personally killing dozens or even hundreds of men on his own, and in the same amount of time a regular soldier can kill at most one?

Yes kinda yes. I mean have you seen the Grifin he rides into battle? Go play Warhammer TW for a good flavour of how leaders can be smashing enemies left and right whilst regular troops are parrying and holding the line. Heck many of the GW BL books are the same - You'll see Gotrek slice dozens of beastmen for every one that a regular soldier manages to down (and that's often working in a team against one).

 Overread wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Well that doesn't make much sense either. Are we really supposed to imagine that Karl Franz is personally killing dozens or even hundreds of men on his own, and in the same amount of time a regular soldier can kill at most one?

Yes kinda yes. I mean have you seen the Grifin he rides into battle? Go play Warhammer TW for a good flavour of how leaders can be smashing enemies left and right whilst regular troops are parrying and holding the line. Heck many of the GW BL books are the same - You'll see Gotrek slice dozens of beastmen for every one that a regular soldier manages to down (and that's often working in a team against one).

This. Heroes in GW games are Dynasty Warriors characters, carving their way through hundreds of peasants.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Well that doesn't make much sense either. Are we really supposed to imagine that Karl Franz is personally killing dozens or even hundreds of men on his own, and in the same amount of time a regular soldier can kill at most one?

Yes kinda yes. I mean have you seen the Grifin he rides into battle? Go play Warhammer TW for a good flavour of how leaders can be smashing enemies left and right whilst regular troops are parrying and holding the line. Heck many of the GW BL books are the same - You'll see Gotrek slice dozens of beastmen for every one that a regular soldier manages to down (and that's often working in a team against one).

This. Heroes in GW games are Dynasty Warriors characters, carving their way through hundreds of peasants.

*nods head in approval*

I love 6th ed tyrion fluff about turning the battle on whichever flank he joined, as he went slaying enemy champions like wheat with each swing of his sword! Mofo is Anearion reborn. Of course hes worth like a 1000 men!

Dynasty Warriors The Old World

Oh man, I'd play that game.

 malfred wrote:
Dynasty Warriors The Old World

Oh man, I'd play that game.

Duuuuuuude… you just blew my mind.
Id throw all my money at that!

 malfred wrote:
Dynasty Warriors The Old World

Oh man, I'd play that game.

I literally can't give them enough money that would be proportional to how much I want this.

Back in the day, I bought a PS2 specifically to play DW.

TW is awesome enough. The animations have gotten absolutely sick. (Looking at you abomination fighting a dragon/hydra ripping huminoids into tiny bits)

Now to have that in DW scale? Its too much! My Gf wouldn't see me for weeks and we'd end up breaking up and Id wake up 20 years later thinking what the eff I've done with my life.

Yep it can be jarring if you come from a historical background to see fantasy heroes carving up armies by themselves, but thats a distinct angle that a lot of people love and want.

I don't know, I think that's even worse than imagining that Karl Franz has a bodyguard of nobles on griffins that he fights with. Even at a modest ratio of 1:10, meaning you'd still be representing a pretty small battle, as your 20 man unit would only be representing 200 men, that makes the characters ridiculous.

Let's forget about the top tier characters. What about a low level like Empire hero character? If he's got 3 attacks, you're saying he's actually 30 times as killy as a regular soldier? That seems like a big jump. Let alone if you're talking about a 100:1 scale so you're closer to representing a real battle, with units of 2-3 thousand men. Then your regular empire hero is 300 times as deadly as a regular soldier, and he's killing a hundred men at a time.

I guess this is why they were never very specific about a model scale.

 auticus wrote:
Yep it can be jarring if you come from a historical background to see fantasy heroes carving up armies by themselves, but thats a distinct angle that a lot of people love and want.

Naw Warhammer Heroes don't tend to carve up whole armies; just regiments. Now if you want whole armies jump over to Malazn Book of the Fallen book series for army shattering spells.

Also don't try and ever take wargames and scale them up perfectly. The numbers just won't work at all. They are representational and its likely that a trooper might equally represent 200 warriors one moment and 2 the next depending on context of what they are fighting. Same for leaders. In the end its a game not an accurate simulation experience.

Characters in Rn'F fantasy pose an issue that isn't seen in historical games. Named characters in historical wouldn't really fight as great heros. They might fight as part of a larger unit or have their own base but perform a command and control function rather than a combat function.

I'm my mind the hero figure represents the hero and his or her retinue. So the Emperor is not a single fighter but the Emperor and his chosen band of elite fighters.

What bothers me most in all Rn'F games isn't the fighters to figures ratio but buildings. 28mm scale buildings on boards give me mild OCD. Is that a single house or does it represent a village?

to be fair in 28mm if you start to put down accurately scaled buildings you can pretty much only run Infinity/malifaux scale skirmish games. Wargames go out the window because you can't easily fit them on the table.

I think things like villages and such become more practical with 15mm to 6mm games.

Zenithfleet wrote:
On the 'how many men does one man represent' question, I seem to recall Rick Priestley saying in an interview that WFB abstracted the basic troops, but went 1:1 for the heroes/leaders. So one soldier might be 10 or 100 men, but one Karl Franz was always one Karl Franz.

In the 5th ed rulebook it mentions the troop abstraction, but not the heroes.

On a related subject, it's amusing to note that even in Warmaster (10mm scale), also by Priestley, the rulebook says right at the start that the 30-40 little metal men in each little metal regiment actually represents hundreds of men plus baggage, camp followers and so on.

(I like to think a similar principle applies to all troop and organisational numbers in 40K fluff. Whenever GW writes '1000 Space Marines' they actually mean 100 000 because historical wargaming is so deep in their DNA that even the actual galactic background for their tabletop wargame is abstracted to a tabletop wargame. )

Incidentally, I've never played a game of WFB in my life... but collected all the original 4th/5th ed army books a few years ago, along with quite a few from 6th, because the fluff from that era is great. Especially 4th/5th. Finding the Undead book was the hardest for some reason. I felt like the classic would-be Necromancer seeking a forbidden tome and constantly chasing false leads.

I cannot be having with the 'twenty men walk around in a rectangular block' thing, though. It only makes sense to my brain at smaller scales like Warmaster. At 28mm scale, I keep thinking of that Discworld book where Colon is recalling his army days; they 'all formed up into them squares, and then all formed up into them arrows', because his commander thought a proper battle should look like the maps in books. Still, I'll admit that the block regiments look impressive on the table.

Rn'F games can be played down to quite low levels. So in not defining a proper scale WFB or KoW kind of scale to whatever sized battle you want to play.

1 to 10 ratio you are playing a very minor battle. 1 to 100 you are playing fairly major engagements. The scale is as you need it. I imagine the big battles in WFB to be like the biggest battles from our own ancient history. I can also imagine a near 1to 1 ratio if I'm playing a raid on a village.

niall78 wrote:
Characters in Rn'F fantasy pose an issue that isn't seen in historical games. Named characters in historical wouldn't really fight as great heros. They might fight as part of a larger unit or have their own base but perform a command and control function rather than a combat function.

I'm my mind the hero figure represents the hero and his or her retinue. So the Emperor is not a single fighter but the Emperor and his chosen band of elite fighters.

What bothers me most in all Rn'F games isn't the fighters to figures ratio but buildings. 28mm scale buildings on boards give me mild OCD. Is that a single house or does it represent a village?

Indeed in historical your hero as awesome as he may be, and as well trained is not going to have a legendary magical sword calling down bolts of lightining or riding a mythical fire breathing monster... His job is to give the order for feigned retreat at the right time or inspire his centre to hold until the ambush force arrives at the rear etc. Human are but mere mortals.

I like the way people assume GW will call a hypothetical next version of WHFB version 9.
We all know they'll do an apple and skip 9 and call this Warhammer X.

I can remember drunkenly arguing with my roommate in college decades ago about how great a Warhammer musou/ Dynasty Warrior game could be.

His counterpoint was that there wouldn't be enough of a Japanese fanbase to get a company like Omega Works involved. Oh, how we can dream though!

It baffles me we don't see more cross promotion between the models and the various video games they've made over the years.

All those sweet Lizardmen units from Total War, character models like Kholek Suneater... it just pains me they aren't capitalizing on those. Yet, at least.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
I like the way people assume GW will call a hypothetical next version of WHFB version 9.
We all know they'll do an apple and skip 9 and call this Warhammer X.

The name is literally the only thing that we allready know about this.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:

It baffles me we don't see more cross promotion between the models and the various video games they've made over the years.

All those sweet Lizardmen units from Total War, character models like Kholek Suneater... it just pains me they aren't capitalizing on those. Yet, at least.

I'd like to see it, too, but the main issue is video games take a long time to make, especially if you don't already have the assets to use. By the time a video game is released, the design any unit featured in that game is at least 2-3 years old, and GW is usually more about promoting their new models (it should be noted that the webstore did have a search filter for models that appeared in Total War when the game first came out, but several of them were out of production by then). The other option would be for GW to including the game developers in the design process, and we all know that's not likely.

If they were more in touch they could release models for TW heroes and units at the same time, because the lead time is nearly the same.

But for that GW should take seriously their partnership.

The speculation was a bit fun, but honestly the hyperbole from some posters is even more fun. NOBODY has laid out any "AOS has failed" crap, yet AOS players are already in the thread making sure you know that they think that this won't be Warhammer like you remember it, it won't possibly have square bases, and you better DAMN well know that AOS isn't going anywhere.


Nobody is taking your game, people. We're getting another game. Period. A new release of BFG isn't suddenly going to negate 40K, nor would an actual MOW release negate WFB or AOS.