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Sception

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 23, 2009
2,714
I agree that the downgrade of fear was a heavy loss, but the reason why skeletons are so terrible now, where ghouls and grave guard aren't, isn't the fear, it's the changes to the close combat rules. In 7th ed (or any ed before it), attacks from units were relatively limited in number, and higher initiative fighters could clear an enemy's front rank, leaving them unable to fight back. Back in the day, a strong vampire could clear the enemies in base with him, leaving the vamp immune to return attacks, and letting the skeletons win on combat res despite their poor stats, since they were going to take at most two or three return attacks, not enough to overwhelm the vampire's wounds, let alone the skeletons combat res.

Nowadays? No longer can a hero in the unit clear the enemy's front rank, protecting themselves and the skellies. Now, instead of facing three or four return attacks, you'll typically be facing fifteen or more. It's a sea change, a completely different paradigm. The 'thing' that skeleton units used to contribute to an army simply doesn't exist anymore. Now units either need to be tough enough to take dozens of strong attacks, or needs to be able to deal out dozens of such attacks themseles, or they're merely a tarpit. Now, with steadfast and horde rules even tarpits can wear an enemy down, but do we really want to see that from skeletons? 200+ strong units, the way people run skaven slaves? Even so, skeletons are lousier then skaven slaves in a fight, and instability means they won't last nearly as long as the slaves do with their steadfast/bsb/general's leadership.

I'm not opposed to having such a unit available, in theory, but if we had to have one, wouldn't zombies be the better choice? And, if zombies could do that already, wouldn't it be better if skeletons were something else?

Even if we still had autobreak from fear, skeletons would still be pretty terrible, because simply adding them to a fight is almost a guaranteed way to lose combat, and to lose it big enough that the instability wounds will cause significant further damage not only to the skellies but also to any other allied units involved in the combat.


I'm not sure what the answer is, if there even is one. TK skellies had their points cut in half, but on TK forums they're still frequently dismissed as useless. There are whoops you can jump through to make them somewhat functional (tomb king, necrotect, magical buffs), but they're all things generally better spent on other, better units. At least, so goes the common wisdom.

I'm just not sure what the role of skeletons is supposed to be in 8th edition. I hope it's more then tarpits, but maybe not.
 

Vlad Dracul

Zombie
Nov 2, 2009
6
I'm not sure Skeletons are as bad as you say. Toughness 3 and a 5+/6+ save, for example, is the par these days. Weapon Skill and Initiative 2 is poor, but the units that will be dealing the most hurt in close combat would strike first, hitting on a 3+, against average stats anyway. I think a points decrease would make them very much a competetive option. Perhaps the Unstable rule ought to be revised in light of Steadfast, fighting in 2 ranks and the changes made to fear, but this can be accomplished in the new book.

Each core would then have a clearly defined role - Zombies to fix the enemy in place, Skeletons as a cheap and cheerful mainstay for an army and Ghouls a unit with a close combat edge over most basic infantry.
 

Uziel

Vargheist
Aug 29, 2011
687
Since there is to some extent an actual difference as to how the TK Skeletons work as opposed to the VC ones fluff-wise, I think there is at least a possibility for opening up for a slightly different Skeleton in a VC army.
The TK Skeletons were raised as Nagash cast his great spell of awakening, but when alcadizzar killed him (the summoning spell was broken) the rest of the skeletons fell, while those that had sworn oaths of loyalty to the various Tomb Kings of their times, returned to serve them in their "afterlife".
This difference, as well as the idea that it is a lot harder to summon skeletons as opposed to zombies, made me think that this would make a skeleton more "infused" with dark magic, and as a result, would resist the Unstable rule to a certain extent, as well as have more of a connection with other creatures with strong connections to shyish, i.e Vampire.

I have posted one suggestion for as to how skeletons could be fixed; "Skeletons (New)". Note that I don't imagine one will ever be able to summon more skeletons that what the army originally brought along though, but the Skeletons will definatly be much more of a reliable and proper battle-line option. Sadly, I don't reallt imagine GW is going that way to fix it (since skellies have changed extremly little over the years), and then the're left with only the summoning option to "fix" the issue, which to me doesn't really fix anything at all.
 
Aug 15, 2011
7
The problem with fixing skellys isn't so much one of making them better its more to do with the tk skellys. When the tomb kings came out they set the rule that all skelletons were the same its why they have a bs yet can't shoot. What that means is the only real way they could justify to themselves any diff is unique upgrades which I doubt they'll do. They'll probably just drop the cost and try to fix them with a synergy thing.

Edit: Tbh what I expect to see is something along the lines of just a simple drop in the cost of skellys and a significant change to zombies. Something like a sure drop in their cost and maybe getting their classic stat line back 3s and 3t with maybe a ward save or a wound delt wound regained mechanic. Both are fluffy and seeing as how zombies are, in books and lore anyway, THE anvil / tarpit unit...
 

Sception

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 23, 2009
2,714
S3, T3, 5+ save melee guys is par these days? I don't know where you play, Vlad, but I want to play there, too. Where I play, the only S3, T3, 5+ save infantry I see also has multiple attacks and strike first or poison or hatred with high leadership and shadow magic backup. Usually, what I see is 4+ or better save infantry with Ws4 and parry, or S/T 4 infantry with halberds or multiple hand weapons or flails, or infantry with great weapons, or some combination of the above.

High elf spears and swordmasters, Dark elf spears and witch elves, hordes of saurus spears or chaos warriors, or marauders with flails. Empire swordsmen and greatswords. I just don't see any trash infantry any more where I am. If you can neither dish the hurt out nor take it like a champ, then you better be holding a handgun. Or perhaps be fielded in 100+ man death stars. Skeletons aren't even much good at the latter due to instability making them a whole lot easier to grind down than, say, an equal number of skaven slaves or goblins.

When I run skeletons, I usually find them facing an opposing force where the weakest melee unit in their battle line will reliably beat them by five or more points of combat res, where adding skeletons to any ongoing fight is tantamount to handing over whatever units were already engaged on a silver platter. My black knights have a better chance of winning combat if they charge an enemy block infantry unit in the front then they do when charging into the flank or rear of a unit already engaged with a block of skeletons.

It's kind of depressing. Aesthetically, I want skeletons to be a mainstay battle line unit, but in 8th edition they just aren't. It's not that they're useless, they're perfectly fine as a bunker never meant to see combat, and if they get a heavy points cut they can be a functional tar pit to hold an enemy unit up for a turn or two. It's just doesn't feel like what they should be doing, to me. At least, it's not what they used to do. My friends used to fear my skeleton regiments. I don't want the cheesy days of auto-breaking back, but it would be nice if my silent legions weren't laughed off the field. It just feels like they don't have any real purpose anymore. What they used to do is gone, and, based on the Tomb Kings book, I don't think the designers have found a new role for them, yet.
 

Uziel

Vargheist
Aug 29, 2011
687
I couldn't agree with you more Malisteen. i really hope they come up with a way of fixing this in the next book.
 

Abbysal

Crypt Horror
Feb 16, 2010
565
Beijing
Probably get shot down here but couldn,t our skellies have a higher initiative and strength through being controlled by a high initiative Vamp, and for strngth the fact that they are animated through magical energies and the fact they have no muscle wouldn't matter. At least then with an initiative of 3 and a strength to match they'd be somewhat of a more viable troop choice.:zombie:
double post sorry.

I hope the Cavalry box is mounted skellies with standard but newly skulpted skelly horse with two sides of barding for every horse and options for Black Knights and maybe a Whight King character upgrade.:zombie:
 

Sception

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 23, 2009
2,714
I just hope the new black knights, if indeed that's what we're getting, don't look too far removed from my conversions, otherwise I might have to skip them.

Definitely looking forward to flesh golems. I hope they're good in game.
 

eggsPR

Vampire Count
True Blood
Aug 28, 2011
1,136
Dublin
Nice posts Malisteen. I agree completely and enjoy reading your logic.

As to making the skellies more viable without altering too much, perhaps we'll see an overhaul with the Vamp lore spells including our own buff spells, perhaps pertaining only to skleleton units which could really enhance their value. With that, the word on the street could then be "Skellies suck, sure, but don't EVER let that XYZ spell get off... then you'll wished he deployed all ghouls instead of bones".

This is purely speculation, but it would be nice to have a buff spell other than Van Hels (to me it doesn't even really help skellies that much anyway, with GG or ghouls that's a different story) or choosing another Lore.
 

eggsPR

Vampire Count
True Blood
Aug 28, 2011
1,136
Dublin
Sanai said:
To be fair, some users on here base their entire armies around using Van Hels.

I'm not saying do away with Van Hels, but with VH being our only CC type buff spell, it makes perfect sense that ppl rely on it. Heck, I rely on it to win combat with every core unit. Ghouls rip through other infantry with VH, esp when you're rerolling those poison hit :thumbsup:! Although with skellies, VH really only allows you to lose combat by lesser of a margin, or at least that's what I usually observe. I've never casted VH on zombies as I don't see the point.

All I'm saying is that another spell augmenting skellies would be really useful, aside from lowering points costs which would, as another poster mentioned, position them right next to zombies (thus making zombies utterly useless).
 

Uziel

Vargheist
Aug 29, 2011
687
Abbysal said:
Probably get shot down here but couldn,t our skellies have a higher initiative and strength through being controlled by a high initiative Vamp, and for strngth the fact that they are animated through magical energies and the fact they have no muscle wouldn't matter. At least then with an initiative of 3 and a strength to match they'd be somewhat of a more viable troop choice.:zombie:

People tend to forget that to apply strength effectivly, you need a lot of mass (or a LOT more kinetic energy) behind it in the first place. Can't imagine skellies having some sort of magical "magnetic boots" to ground this strenght, so even though you COULD argue that the skeletons could be made stronger by the magic raising them, you would still have the problem explaining how they could actually use this strenght effectivly. The same goes for those that wish to see S6 (or even 7) Vampires returned to the game as well. There is simply no way a Vampire could exceed the strength of a two ton ogre tyrant. We should be quite pleased that we have S5 in fact. People tend to have all kinds of fancy ideas about Vampires, but most stems from the fact that almost ALL vampire fluff is written from a human perspective, in which case even S4 is described as awesome.

We'll just have to see though. I hope the rumpurs are right that we'll sonn get to see a new VC book, not to mention some new models...
 

Abbysal

Crypt Horror
Feb 16, 2010
565
Beijing
Abbysal Wrote: Probably get shot down here but couldn,t our skellies have a higher initiative and strength through being controlled by a high initiative Vamp, and for strngth the fact that they are animated through magical energies and the fact they have no muscle wouldn't matter. At least then with an initiative of 3 and a strength to match they'd be somewhat of a more viable troop choice.Zombie1


People tend to forget that to apply strength effectivly, you need a lot of mass (or a LOT more kinetic energy) behind it in the first place. Can't imagine skellies having some sort of magical "magnetic boots" to ground this strenght, so even though you COULD argue that the skeletons could be made stronger by the magic raising them, you would still have the problem explaining how they could actually use this strenght effectivly. The same goes for those that wish to see S6 (or even 7) Vampires returned to the game as well. There is simply no way a Vampire could exceed the strength of a two ton ogre tyrant. We should be quite pleased that we have S5 in fact. People tend to have all kinds of fancy ideas about Vampires, but most stems from the fact that almost ALL vampire fluff is written from a human perspective, in which case even S4 is described as awesome.

We'll just have to see though. I hope the rumpurs are right that we'll sonn get to see a new VC book, not to mention some new models...

I agree with what you said, but I am a bit confused as to why you are applying logic and physics to a fantasy universe where horses can fly or have horns and Daemons are real?o_o:zombie:
 

N.I.B

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 26, 2007
2,369
This thread has long since entered the land of wishlisting, as rumour threads are prone to do.

Any rules/stats changes to our core units will depend on what they do to Helm of Commandment, the VC lore and vampiric/bloodline powers. Nothing has been rumoured yet. Ghouls and Skellies are fairly new additions model-wise, so I suspect they stay as options.
As for Zombies, wasn't there a rumour back when the current codex came out, that GW had new Zombie models made (in the image of John Blanche's decomposing style, see the Corpse Cart pullers) but they ended up looking too much like constructs/Pinocchios so they were pulled back?

To recap a bit,

Harry thinks the book will have five new units + Lords/Heroes. It starts to look something like this:

Units:
Terrorgheist
"Flesh Golems" possibly pulled or mounted by a Spirit Host
Coach/alternative. Dread Coach? And can be built into something not a coach.
New cavalry models. Possibly it's a new unit.

Lord/Hero
Some kind of female/Lahmia model.
Krell
Wraith
Banshee

Current Black Coach will stay as finecast, Blood Knights also finecast.
 

Sception

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 23, 2009
2,714
I can't imagine they'd release a new plastic coach kit and leave the current black coach in finecast. Nobody would buy it, it would be pointless to continue producing it.
 

Disciple of Nagash

Oldblood
Staff member
Feb 12, 2008
27,732
Update made in first post:

Current Info - Last Updated 11th October 2011

Suspected Release Date
January 2012

Rules
  • Possibility of return of Bloodlines in some fashion. Heavy emphasis in previous WD, plus production of new vampire riders (for Terrorgheist / ZD) fitting Blood Dragon / Strigoi rather than the previous Carstein theme suggests this. Not confirmed in any other way as of yet though.

Characters
  • Krell
  • Heinrich Kemmler – whilst there has been no substantial rumours on this, Krell has never been produced without Heinrich, so highly likely he will be making a comeback as well.
  • Female Vampire – Possibly Lahmian
  • Banshee – likely to be retained due to recent introduction in WD
  • Wraith - likely to be retained due to recent introduction in WD



Units
  • "Flesh Golems" – a monstrous infantry option, said to be unlike any other monstrous infantry in Warhammer. Looks to be a cross between a Ghoul and Zombies all stitched up, hunched over. Also possibility that they will be mounted / ridden / pulled by Zombies or Spirit Hosts.
  • New plastic coach model (Dread Coach?). Is said to be a dual kit model, making a coach and something else which has not yet been defined. Has been said it is not a siege engine though. Unconfirmed whether the coach variant is the Black Coach, or a whole new coach type unit. Either way, the Black Coach is rumoured to be retained, if the new kit is not this unit it may just keep its existing unit.
  • New plastic cavalry models. Said to be dual kit, however no information as to what type of units for yet. Highly likely one variant may be existing Black Knights, and it is rumoured there is a new cavalry unit that the other variant is for.
  • There are said to be 5 new units in total, there are possibly 3 or 4 above (coach kit may be two new unit types), so possibly another 1 or two units we have not yet heard about.
  • Terrorgheist - likely to be retained due to recent introduction in WD
 

gorethumb

Ghoul
Apr 18, 2011
137
In regards to the skeletons being more effective. I agree with the minor stat increase they need it but I also have always thought they should have some sort of innate Ward save since they are being held together by dark magic and not bearing souls like their TK counterparts
 

Sception

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 23, 2009
2,714
I still can't get over how much I'm looking forward to flesh golems. At this point, if they're terrible, or if they prove to be wishful thinking and not an accurate rumor, I'll be crushed. As it is, I've already got dreams of a Necrarch or Necromancer army running zombies, flesh golems, corpse carts, maybe a terrorgheist as a giant undead rare construct...

It might even be enough to tear me away from my beloved Von Carsteins.
 

N.I.B

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 26, 2007
2,369
Malisteen said:
I can't imagine they'd release a new plastic coach kit and leave the current black coach in finecast. Nobody would buy it
Unless they were, you know, different units...
 

Sception

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 23, 2009
2,714
Even so, who's going to pay finecast prices for an old and out of date model, even if they give it new plastic steeds, when you could get a newer, fancier, cheaper plastic model of basically the same thing, and do a simple conversion / counts as? A plastic coach model will be used by basically anybody in place of a finecast black coach regardless of whether the army includes two separate coach units, which in and of itself sounds a little silly to me.
 

Tim

Grave Guard
Aug 7, 2011
255
Rotterdam
You might be right, but generally speaking people buy what they like, and I'm sure there are people that like that so called old out of date model, pricey or not.
I'm going to wait and see what comes before in vampuari, and see what I will do. Too bad I will be on holiday for the whole month during that time >.<
 

Grish

Liche
True Blood
Oct 11, 2007
5,319
Winnipeg, MB
Tim said:
Too bad I will be on holiday for the whole month during that time >.<
Well Tim, the only sensible solution would be to cancel your holidays. I'm sure everyone will understand; it's a matter of priority.
 

N.I.B

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 26, 2007
2,369
The old Black Coach is a great model, imo. I don't think people will buy a new offical model for a completely different unit and be forced to convert it to call it a Black Coach, especially if they like the new unit and want it as it is too.

Plus most current VC players already owns a Black Coach or two.
 
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