Old World News

[Zambula]

Vampire coast are cool... but the army of the cairs is sexier! And I think it was kinda confirmed, right? as an army of infamy, since the River of Bones will tell how Settra invaded Athel Loren.

Maybe I'm mixing lore but I'm talking about the "Army of the Lichemaster" that mix Tomb Kings units with Vampire Counts necromancers.

 

[Oppenheimer]

Since article only said the word "barrow", it could be just about anything. But yes, I am curious and will be keeping an eye out when it is released. I do prefer VC to TK. But it has been nice to have an excuse to get into more TK than VC stuff since Old World started. All my VC are still on rounds.

 

[Zambula]

Since article only said the word "barrow", it could be just about anything. But yes, I am curious and will be keeping an eye out when it is released. I do prefer VC to TK. But it has been nice to have an excuse to get into more TK than VC stuff since Old World started. All my VC are still on rounds.

Hmm yes and no, I chose to have faith because of the literal quote:

River of Bones follows one of the forces of Settra the Imperishable as they head into the primordial forest of Athel Loren after they’ve ravaged the Border Princes.*** It features new rules for the Tomb Kings of Khemri, including the Barrow Kingdoms Army of Infamy

The original Army of the Cairns was undead vs wood elves.

But hope is a dangerous thing

 

[Sception]

New Skeleton Horsemen thunder into the Old World

Tomb Kings of Khemri reinforcements rise from the sands.

www.warhammer-community.com

new skeleton horsemen & horse archers. These are a dual kit box, unlike what seems to be the case for the infantry warriors & archers, though im still not sure there.

otherwise these look fantastic, just like the chariots & infantry. overall this release wave is doing a fantastic job updating the models that most needed it in the range.

 

[Oppenheimer]

They look good but they're terrible on the tabletop and it looked like they're increasing the base size along with the chariot. They are technically heavy cav but have no save to speak of. So I don't really know why anyone would run them even if they get a new model.

 

[Sception]

the bases look the same to me. Regardless, the same box makes horse archers, which are fantastic.

the horsemen being heavy is dumb, and only exists to prevent cavalry heroes from joining the horse archers, which I understand as a balance consideration but could have been implemented in other ways.

but it doesn't really matter since horsemen would still be bad even if they were correctly classed as light cavalry.

And, again, horse archers are great regardless. if you haven't tried them i guarantee you won't regret picking up one box of these new models to put together two units of 5 mounted archers as mobile harrasment units that also fill core points.

 

[Unas the slayer]

They look good but they're terrible on the tabletop and it looked like they're increasing the base size along with the chariot. They are technically heavy cav but have no save to speak of. So I don't really know why anyone would run them even if they get a new model.

horse archers are not bad.
Anyway, TK cavalry is often used as chaff / redirectors...

 

[Sception]

Designers’ notes: The River of Bones lore

The Warhammer: The Old World team tells us about the background for the latest supplement.

www.warhammer-community.com

lore article for the upcoming arcane journal

 

[Unas the slayer]

Designers’ notes: The River of Bones lore

The Warhammer: The Old World team tells us about the background for the latest supplement.

www.warhammer-community.com

lore article for the upcoming arcane journal

oh, interesting!

 

[Oppenheimer]

I'm going to order it on Saturday to find out. But I continue to be very sure there isn't any vampires or necromancers in it regardless of the word barrows. Guess we'll find out soon!

 

[Sception]

the lore article describes the 'barrows' in the book - legacies of a time when Nehekhara's civilization & culture extended to the efges of the modern day Empire, with derivatives of Nehekharan burial practices & mortuary rituals.

This isn't entirely new lore - there's oldhammer lore that describes the barrow entombment of ancient kings and clan chieftans which created Wights & grave guard as derivatives of Nehekharan mortuary cult practices, maintaining the necromantic rituals binding the soul to the remains, but having lost the secrets of mumification that preserved the physical body itself. Magically, spiritually, grave guard & wight kings are thus the same sort of undead creatures as tomb guard & tomb kings.

What's more new here is that the barrows represent not just the spread of mortuary cult arcane practices, but of nehekharan people and imperial control. Not just northerners adopting southern magic, but southern armies and rulers occupying the territory directly.

So these barrows, and the dead within, are Tomb Kings through and through. mummies, not wights. liche priests, not necromancers. No vampires in sight.

Cool lore & potentially a neat army for undead fans, but those looking for old world vampires specifically will still be hoping and praying for vampire coast down the line, & working with legacy & hombrew rules in the mean time.

 

[Oppenheimer]

Base size changes as predicted. Haaate that. Especially with the horsemen being really terrible heavy cav as noted earlier.

 

[Sception]

Base size increase for the chariots I don't mind so much, they were kind of cramped on the 50x100s, and iirc GW 50x100s weren't *actually* 50 x 100 (side effect of their 25 x 50s not actually being 25 x 50). Base increase for the skeleton horses is more painful, but also not terribly significant. If horse archers are in combat then either something went wrong or you were sacrificing them anyway. Same for regular horsemen - where they're used at all it's usually as a sacrifical blocker/redirector, and honestly bigger bases are better for that, letting you block more space. If we used them as a character bus like black knights then it would hurt more, but as far as I know nobody's really doing that.

I do like that the horsemen are changing to light cavalry, for verisimilitude if nothing else. Doesn't actually change anything too meaningful, particularly since the mounted heroes are still classified as heavy cavalry. Sadly we still can't put liche priests in horse archer units.

Rules article is up:

Designers’ notes: The River of Bones rules

The Warhammer: The Old World team tells us about the rules from the latest supplement.

www.warhammer-community.com

New tomb kings stuff doesn't sound too exciting. TK battle march armies no longer required to run a hierophant. That's an appreciated increase in flexibility in such a limited format, but the BM lists I wrote never really had issues with that restriction to begin with. The Barrow list does something for horsemen and chariots, to make them better bodyguards for heroes. I guess they want people to run horsemen as character busses after all? I don't really see that working out, but can't say without seeing the actual rules.

The new wood elf rules sound much more interesting - tree spirit focused army of infamy, and subfaction rules for the main wood elf list. That's pretty hype. A bit disappointing for another arcane journal themed around Settra's campaign to have better and more interteresting rules for the factions fighting against the tomb kings than for the tomb kings themselves, but the Wood Elves definitely needed the help a lot more, so there's only so much room to complain about it. Especially when the new TK models are more hype and significantly more needed than any new TK rules could have been.

 

[Unas the slayer]

Base size changes as predicted. Haaate that.

that sucks.