Warhammer The Old World OT chat.

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**Just Tony**

catbarf wrote:
Cronch wrote:
The problem with that is in historical wargaming, you can point to examples and say "this was how it went down. Two M4A1s and a platoon of GIs held out against a battalion of experienced Fallschirmjaegers" and that's it. Under "balanced" logic the FJs players is cheesing out, bringing no lowly grenadiers or Volksturm (depending on date) that "should" be the core of German forces. Because IRL armies are "balanced" on a far higher level than gamers are usually expecting to bring. In fantasy and sf gaming there is much greater pressure on "balanced" organization stemming from this unrealistic expectation of "realism" where "no army is made up of elites only".

I don't think that's a good argument.

Taking a Fallschirmjaeger army in something like Flames of War isn't cheesy. It's based on the TOE of a real combat unit. The game has rules for taking a Fallschirmjaeger army; they're not a single unit type in what is expected to be a more varied/balanced army. Beyond history, the game itself tells you what a Fallschirmjaeger deployment typically looks like.

Taking an army composed of more King Tigers than were ever able to assemble in one spot without breaking down, supported by every Stuka Zu Fuss ever constructed, and nothing else, is cheesy. It bears no relation to how these units were historically used.

Alternate army lists are fine in a fantasy context. Remember those variant lists that let you shift certain units from Special to Core, at the cost of making certain Core units Special and certain Special units Rare? Or in 40K, how playing Deathwing made your Terminators Troops choices? That's the equivalent to a Fallschirmjaeger army list. There's nothing stopping the designers from building these alternative army concepts into the rules.

In any case, I don't think many of the 'historically' minded players have an issue with themed armies that ask for gentle liberties on otherwise restrictive rules to accurately represent their subject matter. That's not what we're talking about here; we're talking about loose restrictions catering to skew lists that don't fit the fluff and are chosen for gameplay effectiveness.

I absolutely ADORED those appendix lists, while my brother, my regular opponent, detests them.

**kodos**

this is a simply game design choice

and it is a "Warhammer thing" that fluffy armies, eg armies that are build like the background suggest they should look like are weaker than other lists that just spam good units

for most historical games, taking the army as it is supposed to be results in a "competitive" list and something that can never win

and GW is able to make such rules, but they don't want to and think more of it as an accident were the core units can carry the game (and change it back to "core tax" as soon as possible)

and this also results into having a lot of different units that are no real option as for a core tax, the cheapest is always the best
same for chaff, health points for the hero etc. the one unit that can do it with less points is better than the other unit that may be more versatile but costs more

so for other games or settings it is not unusual that an army only consisting of core infantry or build according to the background (aka fluffy) will have an easy win against a list that just uses the minimum core to get in as many elite and support units as possible

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Bear with me....

Should be released for Kislev, unless there’s a claws in the development contract....

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/05/11/old-world-update-bearsgw-homepage-post-4/?utm_source=CUSTOMERS&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GW_11th_May_Armoured_Bears_ENG&utm_content=&utm_term=_&m_i=G3e1fMXe9GdxDiSc0NdwklOGYMmFv_aBLk0GZGN_UtGk1KvM3a5KleViY3uis6Av72t_CB6387eWJztcJ3Jun1uBV_JOG6

**Overread**

The sketch concepts look great and loads of fun!

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

And suitably chonk as well!

One assumes we’ll see the old Cavalry return, and likely the Kossack Infantry too.

But I wonder what other wonders we might see in time?

**howie**

That's what they should have lead with initially. I have come around to the concept art for the unit. But this is totally what I imagine when I think of elite kislev unit.

Nice unit of bear cavalry to bodyguard the general

**His Master's Voice**

Eh, Russians riding polar bears are no different than elite witch units with ice weapons as far as I'm concerned.

Where are my Cossacks, GW? Where are my Winged Lancers (preferably sculpted by whoever did the Stormcast cavalry)?

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Relax dude. They’re showing off additions to Kislev.

Kossacks I’d hope will be redone, but it seems a dead cert Winged Lancers and Ungol will be updated.

**Mr Morden**

Very cool - good to see some new Warhammer stuff

**Theophony**

Depending on size it might fit well in my frostgrave collection

**Mr Morden**

Have a small pack of bear riders from Shieldwolf minis

**Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl**

Now that's more proper GW.

**infinite_array**

While I like the art, this sort of feels like the continued flanderization of Kislev (or the whole thing they do with aliens in Star Wars). There was one ice witch, so now there's a whole unit of them with magic weapons. There was one guy on a bear, now we've a whole unit of bear cavalry.

Still looking forward to seeing what else is previewed.

**Cruentus**

While I like the look of it, that photo also makes it look huge in comparison to the rider. So are we talking about a unit of smaller thundertusk like bears, or a unit of Dracoline sized models?

Either way, I'm sure they'll be in no way similar in size to existing bear cavalry.

**Vermis**

Kislev's martial forces are reknowned for their bear cavalry, where the 'ursus bruin' knights wear bearskins while riding bears, roaring their battlecry 'bears!' in a bearlike fashion, rattling their bearclaw necklaces, frightening their foes with bears, and bears, then bears, bears bears, bears bears bears. Bears? Bears bears bears bears bears. Bears bears.

infinite_array wrote:
flanderization

Never a truer word.

**Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl**

Hopefully it's just heroic mount. Very cool heroic mount. I mean, "Many heroes of Kislev tame great bears and ride them to war. Forming a bond with their mighty beasts is not easy"
Emphasis mine.
Or at least a very limited elite unit. A Rare unit back when there was Core, Special and Rare.

**Vermis**

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Hopefully it's just heroic mount.

After demigryphs, lion chariots, pegasususes, and so on, and so on, I'd be surprised. 'Monstrous cavalry' is a thing and every faction has to tick off that checklist. Stick it right in there no matter whether it's appropriate or daft. Give it a page or two of special rules ("Bear of the bear thing: the sheer beariness of bears does something kinda magical and arbitrary and poorly-explained. +1 strength. Or maybe armour save. Whatever.") and it'll fly off the shelves.

Strange thing is, if you class lion chariots and skycutters as, well, chariots, HE are the only faction stuck with plain old horses as cav. Remember those? All the caledorian monstrous cav just won't wake up.

**pm713**

The amount of jokes I'm going to make will be unbearable.

**Graphite**

Oh god yes that's the stuff. Really should have been the opening preview rather than the icewitches.

**Vermis**

pm713 wrote:
The amount of jokes I'm going to make will be unbearable.

We'll just have to bear with it.

**Smokestack**

I guess I am their Target audience. I love both the Ice Witches and the Bear cavalry.

**Graphite**

I mean, just look at this stuff.

There's one (1) bear with ice-crystal-magic-doohickeys. Let's suppose that's for General Elsa.

The coloured concept art has ornate (but not too ornate) armour, finished in gold trim. It has slightly un-civilised looking antlers and stuff attached to the saddle, knives, axes, gold tipped antlers as bear tusks - an onion-domed tower on the shoulder armour! Nothing that glows. None of the blades look magical - they look like they're for hitting people on the rare occasions that a polar bear isn't enough.

This looks like Kislev to me. This looks Warhammer. Something which can't actually happen in the real world, but Warhammer manages it with "He went out and tamed a bear because he's metal as hell" rather than "It was magic".

**Londinium**

Reading between the lines of the latest post because I have nothing better to do during lockdown:

A few weeks ago, we saw an early look at one of the factions that’s in the works for the return of Warhammer’s Old World – the cold northern nation of Kislev.

So Kislev basically confirmed as being their own thing rather than just an Empire contingent. Interesting that one of the initial factions are one of the minor factions of WHFB. The previous article used more vague language about Kislev's role.

Many heroes of Kislev tame great bears and ride them to war. Forming a bond with their mighty beasts is not easy, but for those who do, it is lifelong – indeed, legend says that when Tsar Boris died, his loyal bear guarded his corpse for a day and a night before disappearing into the snow. Some of you might actually remember this classic model of Boris riding his bear from years past…

Interesting hint about the timeline there. Could be an out of continuity reference to Boris but the way it's written is like someone in the Warhammer world is saying it. Boris died in 2517 IC, a couple hundred years after the end of Era of Three Emperors and very shortly before the original WHFB era. Could just bit a slip up in the way they've written it while trying to add some flavour or a hint that we're going to get the same time period as WHFB. If it's the latter, then what of the names on the Empire map? Mild retconning of some positions in the Empire?

**Duskweaver**

His Master's Voice wrote:Eh, Russians riding polar bears

Call the bear 'Wojtek'. Then he's Polish rather than Russian. Dużo lepiej!

Vermis wrote:bears, and bears, then bears, bears bears, bears bears bears. Bears? Bears bears bears bears bears. Bears bears.

The Kislevite constitution gives them the inalienable right to armed bears.

**Just Tony**

So basically all that End Times era Monstrous Cavalry stuff is going to be retconned back into the history of WFB?

Damn it, I guess all I can hope for now is balanced play and rank and flank combat. I'll not be getting rid of my 6th Ed. books, though. Something about this has my confidence pretty low.

**Overread**

They show a photo of the old Mini which was part of Kisleve before they were removed from the game long before End Times.

**BobtheInquisitor**

Vermis wrote:
pm713 wrote:
The amount of jokes I'm going to make will be unbearable.

We'll just have to bear with it.

You and I are polar opposites on this. Such a whimsical climate will endanger this thread’s ability to live on topic. It’s already on thin ice. We’ll have to starve this line of discussion before things really heat up.

**GaroRobe**

So, we see multiple designs for the bear. How much you want to be that we'll get something like Generic lord on bear, named character on bear, and Ice Sorceress on bear (who could also be a named character)? The armored bear has ice spikes, and I don't think we'd see that aesthetic armywide, save for the ice witches

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Well, given their just concept sketches, who knows?

If you’ve seen Jes Godwin’s sketches for stuff like Marines and Eldar, it’s clear not everything is 100% set.

These could be concepts such as you suggest. They could also be very early ‘we could armour them like A, B or C’, the artist still getting their overall feel for the project.

Definitely too early to draw any conclusions.

**Just Tony**

Overread wrote:
They show a photo of the old Mini which was part of Kisleve before they were removed from the game long before End Times.

They specified cavalry as in a unit, not a lone legendary hero on essentially a monster mount. This is hinting at them being Demigryff Knights but for Kislev, so my statement wasn't incorrect.