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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the Total War stuff?

Do they have Elite Infantry units and that?

Fandom - Grand Cathay unit roster

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the Total War stuff?

Do they have Elite Infantry units and that?

Celestial Dragon Guard and Celestial Dragon Crossbows.

There's a surprising lack of ranged elements in this initial batch of kits. No Peasant Archers, no Jade Crossbows, no Crane Gunners, no Iron Hail Gunners.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

Also someone find and restrain Imrik, cuz that Yao Ming is looking fiiine.

GW has the NBA licence now?

Some additional info from the Preview Show for anyone that would rather not watch it:

Jade Warriors have the Defensive Stance special rule: If they remain stationary, they can re-roll armours saves of a 1 in the combat phase.

Jade Lancers can fight in two ranks on the charge. Furthermore they count as charging next turn when they follow up.

The Ogre Loader is an upgrade that lets the warmachines fire twice in a phase once per game. They're also armed with bombs for some additional close range fire support and increases the movement of the warmachines.

The Grand Cannon slows units nearby to where the shot lands due to how thunderous the blast is.

The Rocket Battery has different ammunition types for anti-horde and anti-monster.

Sky Lanterns can spot for the warmachines, letting you draw line of sight from it instead.

The Magistrate can be on foot or in the Sky Lantern.

The Sentinels have different rules based on the variant: Teracotta has Regenerate, Granite has a better armour save, and Warpstone reduces the toughness of nearby enemies. They also mention Obsidian ones existing (might be lore only though). Combined with the Jade ones mentioned in the Warcomm article, that might mean 5 different variants in total?

The Shugengan has Hero and Lord versions, with the Hero starting as a level 1 Wizard and the Lord version being able to be level 4.

Gate Masters also have Hero and Lord versions.

Including Miao Ying in your army lets you upgrade units into (Celestial) Dragon Guard.

Im happy to say I told you so - some of yall were convinced it would be 2-3 years to get through all the core armies, that they would revisit legacy armies before adding anything, and kislev/cathay would be 5+ years away. But I said otherwise and that it would take roughly a year, perhaps a bit more to get the core armies out and that wed have the first new army by summer 25.

Technically i was wrong on a couple points, I said Kislev would come first and that there would be a bigger refresh of Beastmen featuring an updated model range, but close enough.

 Londinium wrote:

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

Also someone find and restrain Imrik, cuz that Yao Ming is looking fiiine.

GW has the NBA licence now?

I dont know why my Phone Auto corrected Miao Ying to that....Lol

chaos0xomega wrote:
Im happy to say I told you so - some of yall were convinced it would be 2-3 years to get through all the core armies, that they would revisit legacy armies before adding anything, and kislev/cathay would be 5+ years away. But I said otherwise and that it would take roughly a year, perhaps a bit more to get the core armies out and that wed have the first new army by summer 25.

Technically i was wrong on a couple points, I said Kislev would come first and that there would be a bigger refresh of Beastmen featuring an updated model range, but close enough.

Recently I was expecting Cathay to be the latter quarter of this year so I was thinking about now we might have seen a single model or something - the full release was a big blow-away and that beastmen and WE are side by side suggests GW are speeding up Old World releases. Which honestly is a good thing cause Cathay marks the big turning point. Hopefully after them we see either Kislev or the first re-work of old kits for classic armies starting to come out.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Why does this new stuff feel so much like a mantic release.

Two things...

# 1 What's mantic?

#2 Is it me, or does the Cathay army look like a nightmare to transport?

Dude, since you got here you're flooding literally every topic in the forum with your posts and you're telling me you missed the mantic thread that's always on Page 1 of the news?

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Why does this new stuff feel so much like a mantic release.

Two things...

# 1 What's mantic?

#2 Is it me, or does the Cathay army look like a nightmare to transport?

Dude, since you got here you're flooding literally every topic in the forum with your posts and you're telling me you missed the mantic thread that's always on Page 1 of the news?

Sorry, I don't read games I don't play. If you want to hide from me just make a post about about a non GW game and I'll never find you.

Okay, having now seen Cathay, I admit that AOS was a terrible mistake and should never have happened. The Dragons and Sentinel are ****ing awesome.

Then setting eyes upon the Beastmen and Woodelves...I take it back. Ye Olde sculpts from when I was still firmly in school. And that is now a long time ago...oh dear, GW is still using metal of all materials.

Yeah, this beautiful infantry will beautifully do nothing while eaten by dragons and monsters and magic.

My friend's prediction for an average Cathay list: 2 dragons, 2 statues, some cannons. A bit like Kill Team but with huge models.

those Cathay models are absolutely gorgeous, god damn. the teal trim!

SamusDrake wrote:
Okay, having now seen Cathay, I admit that AOS was a terrible mistake and should never have happened. The Dragons and Sentinel are ****ing awesome.

Then setting eyes upon the Beastmen and Woodelves...I take it back. Ye Olde sculpts from when I was still firmly in school. And that is now a long time ago...oh dear, GW is still using metal of all materials.

See, I'm looking at these Beastmen and Woodelves and think: Yeah, they're still looking worse than the first lotr minis from the same period... but still better than most new AoS stuff.
And metal... well I like metal. GW made me like metal with their terrible failcast. (And other producers with just awesome metal sculpts).

So, will the balloon just be immune to melee attacks? No way anyone shy of a giant will be able to reach it.

I laughed at the Square Based guys for thinking Cathay was coming early this year, much like they thought Kislev was coming soon last year. It seems GW has hit the gas on these releases compared to what we say in 2024, though no release dates yet so no guarantees of when these boxes will actually hit shelves. I wonder how much of the Cathay army are they willing to not have out when the book drops.

Again, I’ll own up to being wrong. I did not believe GW were taking Cathay seriously, but they nailed it with the miniatures.


My one niggle of a complaint is the dragon, which looks consistent with the Elf-ridden dragons…So why does the cannon, sculpted by people who live alongside real dragons, look like a real life Chinese dragon nothing like those Cathay dragons?

 Shakalooloo wrote:
So, will the balloon just be immune to melee attacks? No way anyone shy of a giant will be able to reach it.

Yeah I'm not sure how they are going to balance it. It if it were just a spotter that probably would be fine, but a unit that can both attack and is immune to most other units sounds like a bit much.
Maybe it's GW's way to force you to buy dragons and artillery, I dunno.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Again, I’ll own up to being wrong. I did not believe GW were taking Cathay seriously, but they nailed it with the miniatures.


My one niggle of a complaint is the dragon, which looks consistent with the Elf-ridden dragons…So why does the cannon, sculpted by people who live alongside real dragons, look like a real life Chinese dragon nothing like those Cathay dragons?

The dragon has hair and a moustache, so at least in that way it's different from the regular Warhammer dragons.

With Cathay GWs assault on my bank account continues....

chaos0xomega wrote:

Technically i was wrong on a couple points

This is some real personal growth here. I look forwards to the post when the first of the Legacy armies makes it's way to TOW in coming years.

For what it's worth I don't believe 'Cathay/Kislev are 5 years away' was ever a majority opinion in this thread. Most people suggested they were at some intermediate period beyond the 9 returning factions being released, what people weren't prepared for was the uptick in release rate, which seems to have pulled Cathay in 2025 and that Cathay would appear immediately after the final returning race.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:


And metal... well I like metal. GW made me like metal with their terrible failcast. (And other producers with just awesome metal sculpts).

Sigh...yes, twice in one day I must take it back; metal is indeed better than s***cast.

SamusDrake wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:


And metal... well I like metal. GW made me like metal with their terrible failcast. (And other producers with just awesome metal sculpts).

Sigh...yes, twice in one day I must take it back; metal is indeed better than s***cast.

It really isn’t. It’s harder to work with, less fun to paint and repaint and repaint, heavier to carry, and much harder to convert. Finecast was prone to miscasts, but that’s not the customer’s problem when a quick phone call to customer service will get a replacement sent out right away. By the third or fourth replacement you will have enough perfectly cast parts to build a flawless mini—and have tons of bits left over for conversion work. Sure beats a model that needs to be drilled and pinned to keep his arms.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:


And metal... well I like metal. GW made me like metal with their terrible failcast. (And other producers with just awesome metal sculpts).

Sigh...yes, twice in one day I must take it back; metal is indeed better than s***cast.

It really isn’t. It’s harder to work with, less fun to paint and repaint and repaint, heavier to carry, and much harder to convert. Finecast was prone to miscasts, but that’s not the customer’s problem when a quick phone call to customer service will get a replacement sent out right away. By the third or fourth replacement you will have enough perfectly cast parts to build a flawless mini—and have tons of bits left over for conversion work. Sure beats a model that needs to be drilled and pinned to keep his arms.

Surely sounds like more hassle to me than just getting the proper superglue for a metal miniature The only metal models I ever drilled were lotr trolls and I never had anything fall apart (unlike with failcast).
I'm not one to condemn resin per se(I have perfectly fine resin models from at least 5 manufacturers, including FW), but failcast literally is on a level with mantics early pvc nonsense - and GW even dared to rise prices for turning their perfectly fine metal models into crap.

Honestly I'm mixed on the Grand Cathay stuff, they're technically well-designed and I do like the artillery and balloons a lot, but they do seem a bit too...I dunno, "heroic" for Warhammer. Like compared to the Bretonnians and Empire, they seem very sanitized and clean and a bit "MMO" for my tastes; no poorly-equipped peasant troops or anything like that (doubly weird for the Ming China inspired faction). It almost smacks of wanting to appease Chinese investors who won't have their proxy-faction be remotely negatively-represented, somehow.

Having not played Total War Warhammer (any of them), how were Cathay presented in that regard in those games?

 Dysartes wrote:
Having not played Total War Warhammer (any of them), how were Cathay presented in that regard in those games?

Like this

 Dysartes wrote:
Having not played Total War Warhammer (any of them), how were Cathay presented in that regard in those games?

There's actually a noticeable sense of slavish, if not outright cult-like deference of the human population towards the Dragon Siblings and the Emperor in what little written content there is in Total War.

You'd be excused if you thought some of the lines came straight from Central Committee approved pamphlets.

 GreycapTheUnwise wrote:
Honestly I'm mixed on the Grand Cathay stuff, they're technically well-designed and I do like the artillery and balloons a lot, but they do seem a bit too...I dunno, "heroic" for Warhammer. Like compared to the Bretonnians and Empire, they seem very sanitized and clean and a bit "MMO" for my tastes; no poorly-equipped peasant troops or anything like that (doubly weird for the Ming China inspired faction). It almost smacks of wanting to appease Chinese investors who won't have their proxy-faction be remotely negatively-represented, somehow.

These are an oversees expedition to be fair. You're less likely to ship the peasants half way round the world.

Cathay looks terrible.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Why does this new stuff feel so much like a mantic release.

Pretty much this, and not the one in a blue moon good mantic release either.

In what way? I just don’t see it.

To me design and sculpt work look in line with the Warhammer aesthetic from the Goldsword or Island of Blood era. Yeah, as digital sculpts they’re more clean and regular than the hand-sculpted era, but they also aren’t goon-faced melon-hands.