Arcane Journal: War of Settra's Fury & related releases

[Sception]

Arcane Journal: War of Settra's Fury goes up for pre-order this weekend, expected release two weeks later, and I've put an order in with my local store. If you haven't paid much attention to it, here's the WarCom designers commentary: Old World Almanack – Designer’s commentary for The War of Settra’s Fury - Warhammer Community

The new book will be accompanied by new plastic multi-part hero kits for Tomb Kings heroes:

I love these models, though sadly I cannot afford to purchase them right now, not at the pretty steep asking prices, not when I already have old models & conversions for these units.

..............

Despite what the title and cover art might suggest, this is NOT primarily a Tomb Kings book. While I won't have a copy until release day, preview articles describe the following content:

Tomb Kings Content

• New 'barded skeletal steed' mount option for princes, heralds, and priests, in order to match the above kits
• New purchasable bound spell scrolls for Liche Priests, meant to call back to their old incantation magic system
• "winged warsphinx" that trades the howda & crew for flight. not sure what the point is when necrosphinxes exist, but hey it's an option.

Non-Tomb-Kings Content

• Renegade Crowns - an Army of Infamy mixing Empire and Brettonian (and more?) units, representing the diverse mercenary forces of the Border Princes. This is particularly interesting to me not because I want to collect such an army, but because it could provide a useful model for a mixed vampire counts/tomb kings 'Undead Legion' army of infamy that I'd like to put together as part of a personal homebrew project.
• Slayer Host - an all dwarf slayers army of renown, something I misremembered as already being a thing from the dwarf arcane journal, but apparently not.

Faction-Independent Content

• Battle March - a game play variant focusing on smaller games (500-750 points) played on smaller tables (30" x 44"). I am skeptical of this, small points WHFB variants have been tried many many times in the past and they almost never work well, but also very hopeful. Spearhead, the new small game format for Age of Sigmar, is the very best aspect of AoS 4th edition and has made onboarding experience of that game worlds better than ever before. I doubt Battle March can do the same for tOW - part of what makes Spearhead work is the lack of list building, with fixed army choices and even variant rules for the units included tailored to the small game format. Again, though, I'm very hopeful for this. Fingers crossed that it's good.

Lore

• Lore describing the progress of Settra's Campaign into the old world as his armies push into the Border Princes region is included as a framing device to add context to and tie together the otherwise relatively disconnected mechanical content in the book. I'm interested in this for its own sake, but also because I also want to use military campaign lore as a similar framing device for homebrew projects. As with the Renegade Crowns army of infamy, seeing how GW does it could give me a model to emulate.

In addition to the announced releases, this image has also been floating around:

It could be a fake, but if not this would be a leak of a new Tomb Kings Battalion likely to be announced soon, including:

• One Warsphinx/Necrosphinx kit (the hero model is part of this kit)
• 20 Tomb Guard
• 36 Skeleton Warriors/Archers

Price depending that ~could~ be a relatively decent box set for Tomb Kings. It does include a bunch of the old skeleton models, which I don't like but I know they have their fans. It's an option to consider for those who want to start collecting Tomb Kings but don't want to pick up the giant army box.

...........................................

So... What does everyone think of this? Who's planning to pick up the book, and/or the new models?

 

[Sception]

Square Based podcast looks at the new book.

A bit disappoontrd by thr tomb kings rules tbh. the scrolls are one use per game, can be dispelled, & most of them are pretty pricey. the only new mount option is the barded steed, no option to put heroes on necroserpents or war sphinxes. an option to trade a warsphinxes howda and crew for wings... creating a worse necrosphinx for basically the same price, so... yeah.

I'm glad the tomb kings rules weren't the main things I was looking forward to here.

 

[Seneschal]

Ah a Slayer list! The game really should have one. It'd be cool to bring back more of the Storm of Chaos lists...I miss Army of Sylvania and CoS...

TK content is underwhelming tbh.

 

[Hanblack Nagash]

The 10pt incantation makes the screaming skull catapults alot more efficient.

Dont forget the incantations do not come out of magic items allowance

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

So an interesting approach with this - I'm not sure they should have really themed this as a TK supplement as it's more like some of the mini campaigns they used to do - Remember the Battle for Skull Pass? Feels more like that.

Overall I'm seeing the new rules aren't really brilliant, Dwarves especially are moaning about how the slayer army just isn't really viable. I was surprised to hear the incantation was one use only, not sure they decided to do that.

The new Heralds/Heroes kit is brill, really good model but a bit puzzling when TK had some really good new models there when TOW was released which appear to have disappeared now? The Battalion is a let down - I don't think there's anything new in it, which feels unusual, I'm sure normally these repacking takes place when there's at least one new option? Some people might like the skellies but I personally think they are due an update in terms of quality at least

 

[Sception]

Battalion of exclusively old plastic models is a pretty standard practice for Old World's officially supported WHFB holdover factions. Tomb Kings and Brettonians only didn't have one already because they got the larger starter army launch boxes with the hardcover core book included instead. Compared to other similar battalions I think the TK one actually looks a bit better than most of them? If only because the inclusion of the warsphinx model means their battalion has a hero option, where typically these boxes don't have one. Still held back by the old skeleton models, though, and the lack of chariots in the box is a bit of a fail for faction flavor.

As for the book, yeah, content wise it's very much NOT a tomb kings thing, but rather a lore progression campaign thing with content for a handful of factions involved, with a small scale variant format tacked on. Marketing wise, it probably could have called out better that it's /not/ specifically tomb kings themed, maybe with a title like "War in the Border Princes," and a cover art depicting a battle between multiple forces instead of just a tomb kings line up.

That's a relatively minor complaint, though. I'd maybe complain a bit more about the kind of weak tomb kings content... except that tomb kings are one of the strongest official oldhammer factions in the game due to the strength of Old Worlds implementation of undeath in general, much like Vampire Counts are unquestionably the strongest legends pdf faction. Neither are as strong as Cathay, which came out of the gate a bit nuts, possibly deliberately so as an attmept to make sure they're successful given that Cathay is the Old Worlds first brand new faction release and by far the biggest expenditure of studio resources on the game to date, and doesn't have the same nostalgia factor to lean on as the oldhammer factions. While I can understand the desire if that was the case, at this point I don't think they have to be worried about Cathay flopping, and really need to put some work into reigning them back a bit.

But I'm drifting off topic.

Anyway, yeah, I'd complain more about the TK content being a bit weak, but the faction's so strong that I don't feel the need.

What I do criticize a bit more is the choice to package the small format game in here. A small format introductory variant, something that can be played faster on smaller tables with fewer minis, is something Old World desperately needs, but it's something that every old world player needs regardless of which faction they play and whether or not they have any interest in Settra or the Border Princes. That should have been given a dedicated expansion all of its own, one heavily hyped to the player base. Dwarf players missing this book because they don't realize there's a slayer army is unfortunate but not that big a deal, but Old World players in general missing out on a format that could, if it's well designed (crossing my fingers but not raising my hopes), help onboard sorely needed new players or even launch entire Old World gaming groups is tragic.

So yeah, the small format should have been its own dedicated expansion. IMO he space dedicated to it in this book should have instead gone into a narrative style campaign, maybe ladder or tree format tyle, with scenarios detailing specific battles to let players play out the advancing game narrative, as an illustration of how to put such campaigns together, maybe even with a write up of advice for how players could craft similar campaigns of their own design. That's a style of play that is also currently lacking explicit support in the Old World, one that more perfectly fits what the rest of the book is doing.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

Anyway, yeah, I'd complain more about the TK content being a bit weak, but the faction's so strong that I don't feel the need.

I think it depends on the lens, as from a marketing point of view as a TK player I'd have been getting hyped up about a TK supplement only to realise it's actually quite naff for TK. As you said above, advertising it as a mini-expansion would have made much more sense and stopped quite a few of the complaints we're seeing.

On the Cathay sidenote - oh yes absolutely GW have made the OP to get those sales in, which is a bit of a pity as that seems to be a trend nowadays in general with a lot of new releases. Get everyone hooked...but then people end up feeling hard done by when the brand new army they have just invested in gets battered with a nerf-hammer months later to bring it back in line, sometimes overnerfing them. It would certainly make me dubious about getting into a brand new army that's just been released, I'd be waiting to see what changes are made first.

What I do criticize a bit more is the choice to package the small format game in here

Interesting point, yeah I do remember in a lot of previous editions of WHFB they had appropriate adjustments or rules for starter 500/750pt games which really help to get into the game without feeling you need to fork out a lot initially. Make it into a fun campaign book as you say, maybe with some new items etc for a bit of flavour and could help get some new people onboard. But the days when GW used to regularly fun these type of campaigns in Fantasy don't seem to be around any more

 

[Sception]

On the Cathay sidenote - oh yes absolutely GW have made the OP to get those sales in, which is a bit of a pity as that seems to be a trend nowadays in general with a lot of new releases.

I don't know about the larger trend. This is something that warhammer players have always said was a thing, but that hasn't really been borne out in practice. There have been and continue to be so many new releases that are wildly underpowered on release, like just plain bad. And there have been several cases of a fancy new plastic kit being released for a faction alongside a new codex or army book that made that unit terrible, but some other kit that everyone already has way better.

In general, GW just doesn't have the balance control on its rule releases to do this sort of thing deliberately, however much they might want to. That would require putting more resources into rules writing than GW as a company seems willing to expend.

But Cathay really might be the exception there, which I'm only begrudgingly willing to accept as a possibility due to being so strong out of the gate that it's harder than usual to believe it was an accident, and because of how badly specialist studio needed Cathay to succeed in order to convince the suits that Old World could be more than just nostalgia pandering to a fundamentally limited pool of oldhammer veterans.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

It may be perception, it feels sometimes that newer releases - especially where the need to make a hit have some weird OP combos, I recall when Votann were released and had to be immediately nerfed - but point taken there have also been some terrible releases as well!

It's a pity GW won't put more effort into balancing more regularly, and it doesn't have to be sweeping changes, little and often would be much better. I personally feel that they should have army books etc more as fluff etc and have online as a primary source of stats/points and so on.

 

[Sception]

Votann was a problem on release, but I genuinely believe that was an accident due to how extreme it was and how quickly they acted to nerf them even at the cost of bad will. Of course, both could be true in that case - they might have been aiming to make them op on purpose, and only on accident made them way more op than they intended.

But yeah, I've been playing and paying attention to the game long enough to realize that new releases are very much a dice roll on whether they'll be at all good or not, to the point that I just don't believe they make new stuff op on purpose as a business policy.

I mean, there was that stretch in 7e WHFB where vamp counts into daemons into High & Dark elf lists were all wildly stronger than the last, destroying the tail end of that edition, but I don't think that was about making the new releases sell with op rules and more of an 'old lady who swallowed the fly' situation. Vamp counts way too strong on accident, daemons built to kill vamp counts as an attempt to 'fix' the problem (army wide magic attacks, anti-casting tech, etc) and ending up an even bigger problem for the rest of the game, elven armies written to reign in the daemons and ending up the biggest terrors of all, to the point that all of the pre-VC 7e books were utterly irrelevent by that point.

That specific stretch is why I'm more of a fan of periodic balance updates even despite the annoyance of having to constantly re-fiddle armies & army books being left out of date shortly after release. If the dev team had been able to just nerf vamp counts directly then maybe daemons and later elven armies wouldn't have been so broken, people might have stayed happy with the actually imo pretty good core rules of 7e, 8e might not have needed to be a full reboot causing its own problems, and we may never have ended up with the End Times and a decade of no official WHFB and the current divided Warhammer Fantasy landscape.

 

[Sception]

I just picked up my copy. TBH, as the narrative advancing campaign supplement that this book was sorta supposed to be, it's disappointing. no battle scenarios at all. relatively little story progress - mostly just settra's forces winning some fights off screen before the events of the book start, then getting bogged down basically immediately. Small battle format is neat but disconnected from both the story and the rest of the mechanical content - of which the renegade princes rules are neat, but if you're an oldhammer vet its hard not to see them as a placeholder for proper dogs of war. the tomb kings & dwarf stuff is underwhelming at best.

It's not all bad. There's a nice big map with colored arrows on it, which everyone knows is the most important part of any warhammer campaign supplement. There's some good background lore about how the ancient nehekharan empire once spread over much of the Old World before its decline, leaving caches of hidden scrolls & relics. The bound scroll system for tomb kings is neat, even if the scrolls themselves mostly feel overpriced for single use items.

My overall feeling is a bit disappointed, yeah, bit not so much because the individual components of the book are bad, but rather because they're sort of a disorganized grab bag lacking a strong unifying vision, and because the designers seem unwilling to commit to an advancing narrative.

If Settra is to be a meaningful threat in the old world proper he shouldn't be getting bogged down like this before his foot's even in the door. The basic rule of wrestling arcs is that the heel has to win until the title match, otherwise the villain lacks credibility and the story lacks staked worth emotionally investing in. This is a concept GW has consistently struggled with, and it's unfortunate to see old world going down the same path.

still, there's good stuff here to draw inspiration from for homebrew, so I'm not unhappy.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

Thanks for the review Sception - I've not bought it yet myself (house sucking up all my funds right now )

What you describe does feel very underwhelming, especially if this is meant to be with Settra at the helm - he is the big bad, the most powerful of the TK leaders and if the Border Princes stall him, I agree really undermines his threat level. I can understand that WHFB history doesn't show TK encroaching on the Empire, but then show him doing some decent advances into maybe into southern Tilea, actually claiming land. Dwarfs, Border Prince kingdoms etc could all reach to stop him sweeping up and around and it would feel like something a bit more threatening. I am very surprised at the lack of battle scenarios considering the nature of this supplement.

There's some good background lore about how the ancient nehekharan empire once spread over much of the Old World before its decline, leaving caches of hidden scrolls & relics.

This is cool, theres a lot not covered on the height of Nehekharan power - and I'd quite like if they included the power of the old gods like out of the Nagash trilogy. This might tempt me to get if there's some good lore to expand on.