RIP WHFB 2015
- Thread starter Adam_Barrow
- Start date
-
The masquerade of murder returns! A new game of Vampires Amongst Us has begun. Unmask the killers, trust no one, and try to survive the night. Find out more and sign up now!
Pirate Robot Ninja of Death
Vampire Thrall
So it's going to be 90% the same game, but bases are changing on warmachines and big stuff I.e. cauldron of blood/ screaming bell. And characters can't join units........riiiiiiiiight.
It's either nonsense or characters can't join units and will just get sniped by magic and shooting, because the rules aren't really changing?
Makes perfect sense now they've explained it
On the assumption that the above is correct (which I rather doubt), I suspect that this would work out to where characters essentially don't exist as standalone units, and are more like the crew for warmachines. So you put their models next to the unit (like crew next to a warmachine), but they aren't *actually* there and simply get pushed out of the way if necessary.
Then, when it comes to combat, you add their profile to the number of attacks coming out of the unit as per normal. Attack allocation on a base-to-base basis is gone, and replaced with a more abstracted "up to X number of models can attack a character."
Why do it this way? Because I get the feeling that the character wall and challenge shenanigans are NOT what GW had in mind when they designed this game. I don't think they ever conceived of WoC characters with 3++ saves filling out the front rank of a unit of marauder horse or hounds, or brolock buses with 1+ save cav characters or skeleton unit full of cairn wraiths doing the same. I don't think they expected to see ogre gutstars with the characters sitting in the second rank, making way (or not) as they please, or running your black knights 3-wide so that the vampires / WK BSB can apply base-contact effects as is most advantageous.
Remove characters from the equation a la warmachine crew and you can simplify attack allocation through abstraction. No more counting how many guys are in base-contact. No more janky charges where you have 1 skeleton warrior fighting in a combat because that's how many guys you could close the door with. Easy Peasy.
Better for the game? I don't think so. If it lets you play a 2,500 point game in less than 3 bloody hours on average then that's sort of cool. But I really appreciate the complexity and nuance that exists in the game at present. I can see why abstracting out certain elements would appeal to a company trying to expand its player base, though. WHFB as it presently exists is stupid complex, and full of all sorts of unnecessarily complicated rules and fringe cases.
Pirate Robot Ninja of Death
Vampire Thrall
At that point you might as well just abstract it away anyways. If you can always attack the unit then what's the point of the character being there at all? Why bother counting how many attacks can go against a character when it would be easier to just set it at a certain amount?
Again, I'll go on record as saying that I really enjoy the complexity the current system adds to the game. But if you're going to let people just attack units then you might as well just ditch the model-level attack allocation altogether.
Then it doesn't matter whether characters are IN a unit or BESIDE a unit. You can stick them in the unit and have them on really tall scenic bases if you'd like. Or have them floating beside/behind it. Then it doesn't even matter what sort of base they're on, and you can have them on giant scenic bases if you'd like rather than the uninspiring 20mm ones.
I imagine having my Vampire Lord perched on a big ruined pillar, standing behind his legions of bone...looking for a spot to leap into the air and fly his way into the thick of battle wherever he is needed most. I'd use a 40K monster base because round bases just plain look better for those sort of models. Tonnes of room for making an interesting base with lots of character and narrative.
edit: funnily enough, I was still in the process of building my characters when I first caught wind of this rumour so all my characters got magnetized rather than glued to their bases. Now I'm very happy that I did.
I'd still like for there to be verisimilitude with character positions. Especially with scattering templates and using units for cover as they move around. Having them float alongside the unit doesn't feel that way. Letting units ignore characters and just attack each other works really well to solving the character wall and is realistic as the regiments would be crashing together and interspersed.
I hope they do. It's one of the clunkier aspects of the game that really makes the game feel more gamey, and less like a battle.
Pirate Robot Ninja of Death
Vampire Thrall
Well that's just the thing: the character doesn't HAVE to float alongside the unit. Their position is irrelevant for game purposes, so they could just as easily be on a scenic 60x60mm base in the centre of a big brick as floating around behind. Basically a unit filler with a character on instead of a finnicky little 20mm base that has to be in a specific position in the front. The modelling possibilities are endless.
I mean...imagine a necromancer poisoned on a tomb in the middle of a big graveyard-scene-brick of zombies? A Vampire Lord standing a rock jutting up from the middle of a brick of skeletons? It'd be awesome.
Why even have the character models then, if their physical presence has no gameplay significance? Bleh.
Infernal Skull
Wight King
It sounds a lot like characters in Warmaster: Characters have a command bubble, and if they join a unit they buff it with a couple extra attacks. They can cast spells, but otherwise don't "fight." If an enemy unit moves over a character, the character must join a nearby friendly unit. The only way to kill them is to destroy the unit they've joined.
Spitballing here for how this might work in WFB:
Characters move on their own, as usual, on round bases with 360 LOS. If they join a unit they are placed behind it and can direct their attacks at the enemy. Maybe the character can only be attacked directly in a challenge (which would make models like Nagash and Karl Franz invincible unit deleters). If a character on its own is engaged, maybe the entire front rank can fight the character to represent the regiment wrapping around the character?
As to why they would do this? Who knows. Maybe it allows more freedom of character movement and acts of heroism. More freedom to make cool scenic bases without worrying about the character's footprint and fitting in the front rank of a unit.
Spitballing here for how this might work in WFB:
Characters move on their own, as usual, on round bases with 360 LOS. If they join a unit they are placed behind it and can direct their attacks at the enemy. Maybe the character can only be attacked directly in a challenge (which would make models like Nagash and Karl Franz invincible unit deleters). If a character on its own is engaged, maybe the entire front rank can fight the character to represent the regiment wrapping around the character?
As to why they would do this? Who knows. Maybe it allows more freedom of character movement and acts of heroism. More freedom to make cool scenic bases without worrying about the character's footprint and fitting in the front rank of a unit.
That's why they redoing the fluff
I would wager that over half those 40K players don't give a rats ass about the fluff.
Meh, Marine players tend to stick with their power armour. Players who don't care about the fluff will play whatever xenos is the new hotness.
Most 40k players I know are fanatical about the fluff. Ask them if they think the Emperor of Mankind is a Chaos Power and watch what happens.
And in fairness to the 40k fans and space marine players, space marines are really misunderstood. Born from DNA harvested by their god-emporer and the primarchs. Space marines are cybernetic and genetically enhanced religious zealots who are mankind's last bastion against threat of chaos and the xenos. The lore behind them is pretty awesome and the reason there is so many different armies of them has to do with the legions of the first founding and the mutation of their gene-seeds. Each mutation is a corruption of the emporer's DNA that could lead to whole legions falling to chaos (and did for some of them, hence the whole Horus Heresy and the traitor legions). The remaining legions were split up into chapters to protect against this happening again. Each Space Marine army book is either the remaining uncorrupted marines (ultramarines and their off shoots) or the mutated ones that are still loyal (space wolves, blood angels, dark angels and their off shoots). Each army is as distinctly different as the different elven kin. The only other marine army are the Greg Knights, and they are a secret order tied to the inquisition, they all are trained in psychic defenses and they hunt daemons. They are not normal marines.
Last edited:
Lol, that could end up being true for us WFB players soon. I can see them having Draigo arrive in the apocalyptic old world from the warp, his equipment damaged, weakened or expended, but his knowledge of chaos strong. Then he helps form the order of anti-chaos knights as a sort of Greg knight chapter in the fantasy setting.
Honestly if done right, it would be really awesome. Knights trained in magic to fight daemons, armed with weapons and armor covered in runes that channel arcane power and lead by this old, near immortal daemon hunter who fought in the heavens amongst the gods. Hell yeah!
I guarantee that the new faction is related to those elements in some way.
Could you imagine if this order of 'fantasy space marines' we've heard rumers of were founded by Draigo directly?
It's a cool idea, but I hate the inevitable consequence, which is that sooner or later a battle-barge or something rocks up in orbit around the Old World and thousands of years of history and strife are evaporated in an instant by a single virus bomb.
I mean, I know GW would never do that to our beloved Old World, but once you directly incorporate 40K into WHFB, then the most powerful things in the setting stop being Archaon and Nagash and Tyrion, and start becoming things many orders of magnitude more powerful. Any old Alpha+ Psyker becomes more powerful than any of the named characters in our setting. Not to say Alpha+ psykers are common, but they're common enough.
That's why I'd hate any formal acknowledgement that 40K and WHFB are in the same universe. The over-the-top feeling of the 40K universe would completely overwhelm the WHFB setting.
I mean, I know GW would never do that to our beloved Old World, but once you directly incorporate 40K into WHFB, then the most powerful things in the setting stop being Archaon and Nagash and Tyrion, and start becoming things many orders of magnitude more powerful. Any old Alpha+ Psyker becomes more powerful than any of the named characters in our setting. Not to say Alpha+ psykers are common, but they're common enough.
That's why I'd hate any formal acknowledgement that 40K and WHFB are in the same universe. The over-the-top feeling of the 40K universe would completely overwhelm the WHFB setting.
I shied from going down this route, but I do agree; I think the tipping point would be that formal acknowledgement, at the moment the story teases at the edges of this possibility, if a named character from 40K put his Size 12s through the door to the Warhammer World I think Fantasy would lose a lot of credibility, but until then I suppose it's all a bit of fun.
Apparently, they have been openly doing it since the Daemon armies have been synced up. The armies have the same locales within the warp, named characters and units. But there has been some chatter that specific daemons have been plotting both in the 40k and fantasy universes for years now. I don't know the details, but there was a blog entry about it on Bell of Lost Souls where they listed some of the events. Things like a daemon fighting a space marine, getting severely wounded returning to the warp and then being summoned into the fantasy world and still is scarred or wounded from the marine. Conspiracies that connect Belakor to both settings and him manipulating his long term goals of betraying the Everchosen. Stuff like that. If so, they have been pretty subtle about it, but its fairly cool. To put fans at ease, the warp separates the two worlds and is near impossible to navigate to destinations within it due to time space distortion. The navigators and webway portals circumvent the effects of the warp because its not safe to remain exposed within it. Its not likely some spaceship is going to show up and drop its payload of future warriors on the planet.
Undying Scourge
Blood Knight
Well I think the Warhammer story and world does need to move forward, but I don't like the sound of the world turning into a bunch of bubbles floating in the warp. In my opinion, even though no one asked for it, it would be best if Nagash won, cleansing the world of all life, defeating the Gods of Chaos and banishing them from the world, and leaving it a desolate, lifeless wasteland filled with undead.
That, or Nagash cleansing the world of all life only to be cut down at the moment of victory by a sole surviving hero (maybe Tyrion or Karl Franz) who then dies himself, leaving the world completely dead and uninhabited. Then it could just be like a historical setting where all the battles take place in the past.
That, or Nagash cleansing the world of all life only to be cut down at the moment of victory by a sole surviving hero (maybe Tyrion or Karl Franz) who then dies himself, leaving the world completely dead and uninhabited. Then it could just be like a historical setting where all the battles take place in the past.
For my part I think plot development to this extent is unnecessary; for enjoyment of the game there are plenty of story hooks to use for battles or canpaigns, limited only by the imagination. Resolving all the emnities and shuffling the major world powers like this felt like either a cashgrab or a farewell hurrah to me, and leaves plenty of existing players disenfranchised; for that reason I'd rather not actually see Nagash succeed in an official capacity, or for the Chaos Gods to wipe Order from the world; in my opinion it'd take something away from the game to make its story purely retrospective.