8th Ed. An unofficial 9th Edition - Brainstorming Thread

That is the idea, so we don’t have anything ridiculous like units of 40 or 50 Chaos Warriors running around the board. Chaos Warriors are elite troops so would normally be in smaller units.

 

Because why?

There is no in-universe reason to cap the size of a unit at such a small value. Regiments from the real world could be 200, 300, 400, even 600 Strong.

 

It mainly fits better thematically. Chaos Warriors are elite troops - they take longer and cost more to train and recruit than chaff troops and demand higher skill standards for those willing to join, so only the best end up in these units and as a result these units are smaller, but they are more disciplined and dangerous in battle due to the improved combat skill and power of the soldiers in them. To use real world examples, look at units like the Roman Praetorian Guard and Carthaginian Sacred Band - because they’re elite troops, they had much higher standards of recruitment and units of them were relatively small compared to those of the regular infantry or chaff troops like peasant levy because of this. Remember that all battles in this game have always been in a smaller scale - if you want to have units of several hundred blokes on the table, go and play Warmaster which deals in much larger scale battles than Warhammer Fantasy.

 

Obviously.

You mentioned Warmaster which deals in larger scale battles. Unfortunately, it kinda proves my point. Both games are set in the same universe.....therefore, if a block of Chaos Warriors 100 or 200 strong is possible in Warmaster no reason exists that would rule out 40 or 50 man units in Warhammer.

The real and only limit on the size of a unit is communication-command-and-control. (How big can it get, before it is so big, portions of it won’t notice the order to advance, etc. ?)

I really am suggesting that you go for and be guided by reality-based-warhammer. The core fundamental premise of Warhammer was “the Olde Worlde is just like Earth” but with “Goblins, Magic, Dragons, Wizards...”

Somewhere that got lost.

 

100 men in a Century; 160 men in a Maniple? It depends on which era of the Roman period, they made changes over time, but their base units were larger than 10, 12, or 20.

The example supports my point?

 

Apart from it being so broken-level OP it is an essentially auto-win tactic with the ridiculous profile of Chaos Warriors. I honestly was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but I’ll spill the beans. The other reason I was trying to include this limit is because I think that the horde mechanic in 8th really made some units broken beyond belief, Chaos Warriors being one of them, which is not right by all accounts. I was really saddened to see in every White Dwarf battle report once 8th came out, both sides would always be given hordes as their backbone, including elite armies having hordes of elite troops, encouraging people to use this silly mechanic in places when it just wouldn’t be realistic. Hordes should be cumbersome, inflexible and used more often by chaff types of infantry because they feel safer in numbers as they always were, while stronger troops should be in smaller, more flexible units because they’re more confident in their skills and feel they don’t need to go round in such big masses. I wanted to include a method that enforced this and made armies more thematic and less game-breaking without having to resort to such cruel activities as profile-nerfing, but I am quite happy to go round nerfing profiles of units that are far too broken for what they are or moving units between the different army list categories instead. GW were too blind to see the over-competitive atmosphere they were brewing when 8th came along, but I am not and I’m going to make the game more balanced for all one way or another.

I was just trying to make the game more balanced and fun for everyone. While 8th was largely OK, there were some cases (indeed some particular armies like Warriors of Chaos) that made it highly unbalanced - WoC players could take units of 40-50 Chaos Warriors quite happily with the only limit being the points, then being able to steamroller balanced, thematic armies into the ground due to Chaos Warriors’ OP profile. This would then lead other armies to develop equally unthematic gun lines in an attempt to defeat these megahordes so that an arm’s race is launched. I want to include a mechanic that puts a stop to this and I felt that including maximum sizes would be a more humane way of doing this. You talk about lack of realism in what I’m proposing, but I think the presence of Death Star units in general is far more unrealistic - the vast majority of the most famous historical battles were won through tactical genius, not metabuilding your army, and I want to make sure the former is encouraged while the latter is suppressed.

No it doesn’t support your point. You’re talking about the numbers of men in a Roman century and maniple, I’m talking about how elite troops like Praetorians appeared in much smaller proportions in battles compared to regular troops. Having an entire army made out of units of 40-50 Chaos Warriors purely because the horde rule makes it a much stronger tactic doesn't follow this ratio. It is instead a broken army combination that propelled WoC to the top tier and, in my view, an unrealistic army build for the scale of the game. Again, I want to enforce that metabuilding is unsportsmanlike gameplay and should be discouraged.

 

Consider rewriting the Horde Rule, if the Horde Rule caused the problem.


Also, if Chaos Warriors were so OP (you mean OverPowered, yes?) then that means they were underpointed.

 

I almost forgot about your disdain for WoC!

 

I would love to see rules for some more beasties from Ellison potentially, especially given how fleshed out certain beasts are compared to others that GW name-dropped and then forgot forever. Anyone willing to take a swipe at some rules for this fellow? Seems to fit my image of what a "Pliodon" or Lustrian giant crocodile would be. (Kadamastar from Mierce Miniatures if you're interested!)



Likewise, Fangadons, some sort of replacement creature for the old metal Carnosaurs, Arcanodons, Thunder Lizards, ... there's lots to play with potentially, it feels like.

 

I’ll look into working out rules for those - many thanks for the contribution! The existing armies should get new stuff as part of my unofficial 9th Edition and some of those will be great units to add for the Lizardmen!

 

Mierce Miniatures, it's part of their Darklands range, which includes a number of Crocodilians, Basilisks, Serpents, Lizards, and Hydras, all part of the same faction, which can be good proxies for Saurus, Kroxigors, Salamanders, Razordons, and larger beasties.

He's HUGE. Bigger than a carnosaur, given the tail and head length. A bit big for a monstrous cavalry unit perhaps, but a great centre-piece.

 

I smell a Tomb Kings beast here - @NIGHTBRINGER, I believe there’s something here worth your attention - a Ushabti riding a giant avatar of Sobek!

 

I'm on board with that!

Lovely!

 

I would say that metal would be really out of place for any Greenskins wizard - they’re a bunch of savages that know nothing about alchemy or shaping metal. Similarly would they know much about the illusory magic of Shadow or the Druidic lore of Life? Again, I don’t think so. However Beasts is a good one that would fit well with Savage Orc, Night Goblin or Forest Goblin shamans, while Fire would work well with regular Orcs and possibly regular Goblins.

 

Just a little update - because I'd like to think I'm a nice chap, I'm going to give you a preview to some key Lizardmen unit profiles from the reference section of the unofficial 9th Edition rulebook I'm making (haven't worked out points or special rule changes yet, just doing some tweaks to profiles at the moment based on forum discussions, and the space at the top left is reserved for some intro lore stuff):

And yes I'm including some of the new Warhammer Total War art in it!

 

Some thoughts:

Overall I like it, however I do find Toughness 6 and 6 wounds on the Carnosaur to make it too much of a tank, unless Toughness 6 and 6 Wounds were to be the new monster standard.
Generally with Saurus I think Initiative 3 should be the highest possible before items or buffs, but that is just my opinion.
Regarding the Slann, and this is not critique of your stats as such, but I always found it weird that they had 5 wounds, I think it would be more appropriate for them to have 4 wounds.

 

Thanks for your critique!

Concerning the Carnosaur, I just saw that there were quite a few complaints about the Carnosaur having not enough wounds or too low Toughness so I decided to rectify both at once. Of course this will result in a bit of a points increase.

In the case of the Slann, I simply used the profile from the past couple of editions. My intentions were to particularly buff Saurus lists as I was disappointed to hear that they were being rejected, but I wanted to keep Slann the same so that you can choose to take a Slann if you want and he’ll be a great help if you do, but at the same time it’s a more viable tactic to go without a Slann and focus on a Saurus list. In other words, I didn’t want to nerf an already popular choice, just make the other choices more useable.

 

It's not that I hate the change, I actually like it, but I am biased, and would probably not give it both. 6 wounds I would think is fine though, and would not warrent a point increase in itself.

Sure it would be a slight nerf, but I think it would be fine. It would allow him to be slightly cheaper, and give opponents a bit of an easier time dealing with him, granted they have the correct tools. I just find it odd that he has the wound statistic of a monster that's all.