The Unholy Trinity of Evil in Warhammer

Agreed. But analyzing a Steeler's fan and tickling a Hell Dog's tummy are both so tempting, and so likely to end in regret. Have you counted Slanputin's fingers?

My Unholy Trinity is:
1. The business arm of GW running the gaming arm.
2. The business arm of GW running the modelling arm.
3.

 

What is with all this upside-down stuff?!

On topic - somehow I didn't even think about RAI vs RAW! I think because it's not something that I've come across personally very often. I know there's a lot of RAI vs RAW discussion about various rules in the Lizardmen book, but since I haven't actually played any games with the new book I guess it slipped my mind.

I think if the intention is obvious and the rule is just poorly worded, then in a friendly game I'm happy to bend things a little but in a competitive game I play it by the book purely because I don't want to cause confusion for my opponent and I don't want them to see me as trying to gain an unfair advantage by essentially ignoring rules as written.

 

Since you ask...

 

Spawning of Bob nailed it, but I'll elaborate a bit.

First off, I am a supporter of the arts, of creativity, and of individual expression. I'm something of an artist myself, as it happens.
Second, I will never diminish the talent required to paint NMM.
Lastly, I know this is just an opinion and that not everyone shares it (though, as you'll see, it's not all that far away from fact as an idea - it's just my idea of whether it should or should not be used that is an opinion).

That all said, NMM as it is used when applied to three-dimensional surfaces, is one of the very few things in art that I would say with conviction is actually wrong.

This is not pink orcs, or an army of Khorne warriors returning to fight for the Empire under Sigmar's banner and thus being painted in the colors of Altdorf. We're not talking fluff or color choice. We're talking about what Bob said - NMM looks great in static, flat images because that's where it is appropriately used. The moment you move the model OR your head when looking at a 3D model, the technique fails. It becomes the wrong approach for the task.

Just to make up, right on the spot (and thus not all that well thought-through), a comparison, I would liken it to a family that is looking for a home choosing to move into a Hollywood movie set version of a home. On the screen, when shot how the director wants it, a home in a movie can look amazing. As a home in which to live, it's not the right choice. Chances are the plumbing does not exist, the walls are not load-bearing, and the whole place would fall over in a storm. If a family bought a home based on how it looked in a movie, they would have made a very poor choice and would realize it almost as soon as they arrived with the moving van, if not sooner.

NMM is like that. It's all flash and no substance. It's an egregiously obvious example of form over function, of style over appropriateness.

Where it CAN be great on models is in a shield design or banner design. These things, were they "real" would be like a magazine photo or museum canvas painting. They would be 'moments in time' on a flat surface.

Using NMM on a sword, piece of armor, or whatever results in the error Bob illustrates.

NMM is actually wrong for the task at hand.

 

Sleboda's Unholy Trinity of Evil in Warhammer
1) Counts As. This includes both unit filler and proxies.
2) Non-metallic metallic paint jobs.
3) Comp/get permission/house rules/"I know how they meant the rule to be"


1. kind of, depends on the situation, if someone is just using things from a point of being lazy or cheap, then this is a big no no (includes the guy with a nurgle army who used an upside down margarine tub covered in candle wax as a proxy rhino). if We're talking weapons (models are armed with HW+shields, but he's playing them as great weapons, I don't mind).

2. No problem for me, how people paint their models is up to them.

3. Depends, small things like a club rule (so any non update forgeworld book must have the items listed in it to comply with the rulings in the codex, so a tyranid biotitan in the old imperial armour 4 would use the current lash whips rule for +3 initiative, not the one it mentions where the enemy in combat with it is at initiative 1).

Anything beyond that, no, if you have rules of your own, that's fine, but not here.


As for myself I think mine are:

Rikard's Unholy Trinity of Evil in Warhammer
1) RULEHAMMER OF AWESOME!
- not so much house rules as a blatant disregard for rules (like movement, tanks move faster, so the person I'm talking about REFUSES to move his tanks at a max of 6, doesn't matter how many times he's told).

2) lazy proxies, I don't have enough zombies for the zombies I've summoned, so all these empty bases count as zombies (which again, ignores rules like "if you don't have the models, you don't get the extras)

3) The noisy observer, "Oh! You shouldn't have done that!" - Really don't like these people.

 

Agreed!

 

I'm confused, is the battleshock phase just for your units, or the players themselves after realising that the game they're playing is the result of the end times and the warhammer world being squatted?

I know, cheap joke, but I couldn't resist.

 

My Unholy trinity of evil -

1. Extremely badly made custom models. I know this probably won't affect most people, but in my gaming circle it got so bad that we had to introduce the rule If you want it to be able to attack with a particular weapon, it needs to have that weapon. I mean, we had one person fielding one nurgling as a swarm of nurglings. And because that guy was a that guy, he had a half-hour tantrum after we stopped allowing his "elite nurgling black ops team" to get five attacks each (the logic went along the lines of if you want a swarm to get 5 attacks, it needs to have for example a minimum of 5 nurglings).

2. When after your opponents turn, and halfway throughout yours, they realise that they forgot to use a really destructive command ability/spell/unit, and try to get you to rewind the game so they can do it. Not that this is a problem for the first time, but it gets quite... vexing, shall I say.

3. When a GW staff looks at you like you're a peasant after you mention kitbashing models, or conversions, or how you just can't afford two boxes of Ripperdactyls to get both troop types. I mean, come on, how much do you get paid mister? I bet you couldn't buy two boxes on a whim.

 

I have not encountered this problem. The GW employees took pictures of my models. Must just be the one snotty guy at your store.

 

My list is badly in need of an update... my new personal version of the Unholy Trinity of Evil in Warhammer looks like:

1. Age of Sigmar
2. Age of Sigmar
3. Age of Sigmar