Warhammer: The Undead?

[Sanai]

The zombie plague rule looks pretty damn simple to me. You inflict wound, zombie appears.
Also, the rules cannot represent every possible option directly. If they did the VC book would be the size of the core rulebook.
I didn't say that no necros reached lord levels, I said that it was restricted to really exceptional individuals, those rare mortals who have found a way other than vampirism to survive the terrible effects of wielding necromancy for an extended period of time.
Also, necromancy is a form of dark magic from most of what I have read.
If the old fluff on magic still stands, dark magic is wielding the magic as is, in its unadultered form, while death magic is simply drawing on the wind of Shyish.

 

[Sception]

All lord level characters, named or not, wizards or not, are rare and exceptional individuals. I see no reason to restrict lord level non-vampyric necromancy to named characters only. this idea that necromancers can't become lords is a figment of the current army book only.

Sorcery is magic in its undiluted form. Dark magic and high magic can be viewed as sorcerery, but are something far beyond it. Necromancy was derived by Nagash from dark magic, and has a close kinship with it, but they're not the same thing, and part of the difference is that necromancy isn't quite as damaging, at least not as swiftly so, to the user as dark magic is.

Necromancy can preserve a soul, or separate it from the warp, and it can preserve bodies in undeath. as a necromancer gets older and more powerful, their bodies do start to break down and they do face premature aging and death, and most at that point attempt to sever their spirit from the warp and bind it to their unliving forms - becoming liches. Those who succeed at the severing, but somehow fail the binding, or fail to preserve their corpse (ie, a lich who is slain and burned by a witch hunter) fade, but their souls never depart the world (remember, they're severed from the warp, as vampires are) - generally their minds fade and they continue on as wraiths.

Vampirism is an easier, more fool-proof method of achieving about the same result (the soul is severed from the warp and bound to the unliving corpse, sustained by the blood of the living), but also results in thralldom and in any event requires a willing 'sponsor'.


I'd just like to see the lord level necromancers/liches as an option in the list. Is that so much to ask? Used to be your lord options were vampire, necromancer, or lich, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, their own place in the undead fluff. I liked the variety. I felt I had more thematic control over my army then. The choice between a vampire and a lich always felt more significant to me then the choice between, say, a blood dragon and a strigoi.

 

[Abbysal]

One bite, and it's all over, and then that thing is a Zombie.

How does that work Grish? A WH Zombie is a re-animated corpse. So if one bites you, you automaticaly die? Your guts would have to be ripped out or you'd have to be smothered or they'd have to bite you like 64 times or something! Your typical Empire state trooper can parry swings from an Orc chopper, swing back at ferocious Lizardmen, holds a charge from rampaging Beastmen but can't stop a Zombie from biting him to death??

It seems like you're looking to change the fluff for our precious Zombies too. So Zombies are created from one biting another. A plague that doesn't need any kind off sorceror and one that would wipe Humans off the face of the WH world in about 27 days or so (unless you got riot gear and a Black Cab!).:zombie:

 

[Grish]

Honestly, I don't really care what they put into fluff, or how it works in fluff. Most stuff in WH doesn't make any real sense, so why should this? Are you saying the raising power for Ghouls makes sense? That there's tons and tons of cannibals just 'hanging around' and it takes the winds of magic to say "Hey! You 5 cannibals milling around! Get into line!'.... come on.

All I'm saying is that GW models it's creatures on our culture. Orcs are beastly, dim witted humanoids, exactly as Tolkien had them. What if we gave Orcs S2, T2? Explain it how you want, but at the end it doesn't 'feel' like an orc anymore, just like these punching bags don't 'feel' like zombies. There's a huge population out there that love zombies, and we are getting no love from Games Workshop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csMm3xmchF8

 

[Tim]

They are not even really good punch bags, since punch bags stay in place to get the beating, the zombies just crumble before you without even touching them...

 

[Sanai]

Actually warhammer orcs are very, very different to tolkiens orcs. Tolkiens orcs are often cowardly, they hate the sun and are pretty skinny, short, malformed wretches, often not even being green. Warhammer orcs will fight anything, would rather fight the sun than hide from it and are big, muscly green guys with very distinctively shaped bodies and faces.
Tolkiens orcs are descended from tortured elves and are drawn to evil beings. Warhammer orcs are fungus creatures that have nothing to do with elves and are neither good or evil, they just like a good fight.

 

[Abbysal]

I think that the rules that have been suggested would work well. Just make Zombies T3/4 same streangth and automatically add a Zombie if they ever make a kill, comon sence really!:zombie:

 

[Irisado]

Grish: I'm with Sanai on this. Your argument about Zombies doesn't really stack up when you compare them to other units in Warhammer, and this is why they are so inferior, particularly in relation to other Undead units. Skeletons, for example, are more nimble, which explains why they are slightly better fighters.

Zombies might well be deadly in films, but since when did films bear any relation to Warhammer? Also, a horde of Zombies would tear villagers apart, but fully trained soldiers? I don't think so. Grind them down through sheer weight of numbers more likely.

As for all the cultural points you made, they're entirely subjective. I wouldn't want to see any references to Frankenstein or similar options in the VC book, since they are simply not of interest. I don't think that the case for adding these from a gaming perspective is particularly strong, rather it's just a case of you would like to see them. There's nothing wrong with having that view, it's just not really a convincing argument to change the book in my opinion.

Disciple of Nagash: I appreciate what you're saying, and remember that I was playing when the first Undead book was released . That said, the background has moved on, for better or for worse, so the only way I could see Necromancers playing a more prominant role would be for another shift in the background to take place.

This may happen, and there could be a change of emphasis, but this would happen within the confines of a VC book.

 

[Sception]

I don't mind zombies being lesser undead, I just want them to not be so far below other units as to be useless. I like the idea of zombies as tar pits, but under the 8th ed close combat rules they melt to fast to actually hold anything up.

Make them a bit tougher, let characters join them, and then make skeletons a bit cheaper/better so an improved zombie don't just supplant them as an option.

As for faster/deadlier zombies, I like that archetype as well, but the rules for ghouls are already very close to that concept.

 

[N.I.B]

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq6-9UrsbJc&feature=player_detailpage[/video]

 

[Fenrir]

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq6-9UrsbJc&feature=player_detailpage[/video]

Zombies are so passe now, Cannibals are the next big thing.

 

[Grish]

Hey Irisado, sometimes it's hard to tell if my points are coming across effectively. I understand what you're saying, that according to the current Warhammer world and fluff, Zombies are where they are for given reasons. I agree with this.

Grish: I'm with Sanai on this. Your argument about Zombies doesn't really stack up when you compare them to other units in Warhammer, and this is why they are so inferior, particularly in relation to other Undead units. Skeletons, for example, are more nimble, which explains why they are slightly better fighters.

This is the current fluff for Warhammer. They could make any unit as good or as bad as they want; they decided skeletons should be stronger than zombies, so bam, they are. They dress it up in a 'logical' explanation about Magic animating the dead. I say, change the fluff. Decide zombies are better, give different fluff.

Zombies might well be deadly in films, but since when did films bear any relation to Warhammer? Also, a horde of Zombies would tear villagers apart, but fully trained soldiers? I don't think so. Grind them down through sheer weight of numbers more likely.

'Films' per se do not affect Warhammer, but Warhammer draws heavily (entirely?) from our collective conscious, of which films are a part of. They didn't invent Vampires, Orcs or Elves, they didn't invent core traits of these races. Their orcs are bestial and fight just like any other Orc out there. Their elves live long and are magically inclined just like all the rest. Vampires are powerful undead just like most other sources that drink blood. They can dress it up different, saying Orcs are fungus, Elves are vegetables, and Vampires come from the sea, but in the end, no one is going to confuse them. Most people here have never heard of Warhammer. If I showed it to them, I would bet most people could look through the models and figure out what are Orcs, elves, dwarfs, goblins. So to me, they are not very different.

In the movies, Zombies die by the truckload; fine. But they eventually overwhelm their opponents, and not just unarmed weaklings.

As for all the cultural points you made, they're entirely subjective. I wouldn't want to see any references to Frankenstein or similar options in the VC book, since they are simply not of interest. I don't think that the case for adding these from a gaming perspective is particularly strong, rather it's just a case of you would like to see them. There's nothing wrong with having that view, it's just not really a convincing argument to change the book in my opinion.

As the videos various people have posted (and there's tons more) I'm not the only one that is a Zombie lover. Show me a more powerful cultural force surrounding undead that has to do with Skeletons and Vampires (Twilght is stronger, but I'm sure GW does not want to model it's vampires after that). I am just talking about Zombies; I agree that Frankenstein would be my personal taste and there are elements about him that exist in the Strigoi already. Culturally I'm just talking about Zombies as I don't want to dilute or distract from my point.

This may happen, and there could be a change of emphasis, but this would happen within the confines of a VC book.

Always agreed that there should be no new book, just some more options.

I really hope you know that I'm trying to establish that:
1) Zombies are one of the largest cultural undead forces, if not the largest; more movies, games, social events surround them than anything else I know of, barring Twilight.
2) Zombies are horrifying in culture; they are not weak/jokish undead threat. They normally are more dangerous than Vampires/Ghosts or any other undead I'm aware of.
3) In Warhammer, which pulls heavily from our culture, there is a big disconnect. Because they are so horribly bad (which they shouldn't be, because our culture says they aren't) no one takes them (which is a shame, because they are so large in our cultural conscious).

I personally would rather frame the discussion as above; going into how Warhammer describes why Zombies are bad doesn't make sense until the above questions are agreed/disputed. Does this make sense?

 

[Sception]

Actually, there's a very wide range in the depictions of zombies. In some older movies, or in, say, the Dead Rising games, most zombies are slow and individually weak - one average dude with a mall bench can plow through dozens of them - and it doesn't necessarily bother me if GW goes for these weaker zombies for their game, especially given the overlap that would exist with ghouls if they went for the faster/killier zombies.

So yeah, I'm fine with zombies as an implacable tarpit dangerous only in how long it takes to kill them, but the vamp count zombies aren't even that right now. With the 8th ed combat rules, even very large units are barely more then speed bumps.

As for zombies making more zombies - yeah, that's an iconic aspect of zombies, but I'm not sure you need game rules to represent it, since you already get more of them via invocation. I mean, vampires making more vampires is also an iconic aspect of their identity in the public conciousness, but I don't think any of us feel that warhammer fails in its depiction of vampires because they can't turn enemy heroes mid-game.

 

[Sanai]

They aren't normally more dangerous than ghosts, as in most movies ghosts can use telekinesis, suck people souls out of their bodies, move very fast, fly, go through anything, ignore almost any attack, etc....

 

[Tim]

Just remember that logic, reality and reasoning don't apply to a fantasy game.:tongue:
I do agree that zombies need a boost of some kind, at least so that you can't overrun them and get an advantage killing them in one turn, which would beat the purpose of even deploying them.
What about a scout or ambush option for one unit of zombies, representing the fact that they are raised from nearby graves or battlefields and not directly part of the vampires army.
Makes it easy to use since it uses rules already in the game instead of making extra special rules for zombies.

Also I agree there shouldn't be a split for a necromancer and vampire book, what you could do is say that certain troop, special and rare choices can only be picked if you have a certain lord, maybe even linked to a bloodline too.

For example, A necromancer lord could not get a black coach or a varghulf but does get a terrorgeist and zombie dragon as rare choice.
While a vampire can only pick a zombie dragon as mount.
And a necromancer could get Wraight's and banshee's as special choice.

Mix it up a bit, I would like such restrictions because I like fluffy lists but I don't think it will happen.

 

[Grish]

Looks like we're getting a Frankenstein model (flesh golems) and possibly a powerful necromancer.

Could it be that we'll also get useful (in some way) zombies? One can hope!

 

[SotF]

Looks like we're getting a Frankenstein model (flesh golems) and possibly a powerful necromancer.

Could it be that we'll also get useful (in some way) zombies? One can hope!

The perfect excuse for me to start getting together some Abominations to fit my army theme.

 

[Kassill]

Haters gonna hate

I guess I'm one sided towards Vampires because that's what initially drew me to the army was powerful vampire lords, units of deadly blood knights, varghulfs who were once vampires who let the monster take over, and of course the sinister black coach.

For me, zombies and skellies are just extra.

 

[Grish]

Heh, exactly opposite for me. The Zombies and the Skeletons are what drew me; Vampires Lords seemed like it was something they chose to lead the army. Could have been just as easily some other classical undead/horror monster as far as I'm concerned.

I mean I think the way it happened when they split is they said "We want an army with Zombies, skeletons and other undead critters. What can we do to make this happen?".

Then again, maybe I'm off base. Don't hate the zombies though! In two weeks our city is having another Zombie walkathon.

 

[SotF]

Heh, exactly opposite for me. The Zombies and the Skeletons are what drew me; Vampires Lords seemed like it was something they chose to lead the army. Could have been just as easily some other classical undead/horror monster as far as I'm concerned.

I mean I think the way it happened when they split is they said "We want an army with Zombies, skeletons and other undead critters. What can we do to make this happen?".

Then again, maybe I'm off base. Don't hate the zombies though! In two weeks our city is having another Zombie walkathon.

Varghulf works well already as a werewolf and other undead monsters can easily be unit fillers if nothing else. I'm considering a skeletal tyrannosaurus for a unit filler.

 

[Metal_ash]

Been playing warhammer fantasy now for 19 years and started of playing the undeads, when they later splitted the undeads in to mummy tomb kings and the vampire counts the choise was rather easy as the reason to why i started to play the undead was for the Vampires, ghouls, zombies and wights. Since that time much have been added to the vampire counts and many rules on units and such have changed.
Now i hope to have a new codex in my hands soon so i can get back at playing 8th edition of warhammer and actually make use of all units again and not the few units i now feel forced to use, as in my opinion far to many units in our codex have not the correct points value at all. For now it feels like Ghouls are the only core choise worth of useing...at least over skeletons and zombies.