GW News: SKAVEN VICTORY! #NewAoS

Missed opportunity to have the three saurus in this underworld band be updated sculpts of the three saurus hero characters. Obviously Gor-rok is here, but then instead of generic spear saurus you could have had a new 'Kroq-gar under a different name' and instead of generic club saurus, they could have given us 'not-Chakax'.

Come on, GeeDubs, I thought of that within five seconds of actually thinking about it. It isn't hard to give us things to be excited over.

 

Nearly every modern video game company relies heavily on psychological tricks to market and sell nonsense at inflated prices.
For physical games it's a little bit less common, probably since most physical games don't really get those big-spender customers that can be manipulated. The game needs to be something you can obsess about so you can be tricked into buying more. For example WoTC regularly tries similar psychological tricks for its TGCs like MTG to push more boxes. And they have a similar obsession with pushing out rulebooks on a frequent basis with minor updates for things like D&D.

 

That would have been pretty awesome!

 

Agreed chaps!

 

Spoiler: The Vampire Counts essentially got their version of it a while back...

 

I think Seraphon getting a "Saurus Hero Redux" warband would have been epic. But a warband like that would likely be too good in that game (or should be too good). Plus, the Lizard community would have been disappointed to not have AoS rules for those characters. And any rules that did come into AoS would likely be lackluster, since it would be an Underworlds warband. To that point, I guess this warband is a double-edged sword, since it probably means we will not have Gor-rok/the Sunblood as part of the official Seraphon army.

But, to the spirit of the comment, all of the models could have been a bit more interesting. Take the vampire warband that @NIGHTBRINGER references. Most of those models just look like optional "Vampire Lord" to me (at least I don't think they're redesigned Vampire heroes). But each one looks like their own character and one where I'd like to know his or her backstory. Sadly, our Lizard warband follows the more common pattern of cool hero with standard-looking support models. Maybe it's just easier to single out more "human-looking" models?

 

Can't speak for the female or the winged chap, but the chrome-dome makes me think Manly Mannfred (that's sarcasm by the way, I do not think of Mannfred as manly, I think of him as a twot), and the red armour of the other one automatically makes me think of the Red Duke, even though I have no idea if that's accurate, I've never actually seen an image of the Red Duke to compare, but the red armour is making me think that way.

No, stop, please... I need my copium fix! Please don't take away my fix!

 

The Crimson Court more or less embodies the main vampire bloodlines from the World-That-Was, with Prince Duvalle being a Blood Dragon, Gorath (baldy) being a Von Carstein, and Vellas (the chick) being a Lhamian, though that's not all for certain. Ennias (the guy with wings) especially kind of falls into the category of "random vampire of unknown lineage".

 

I think a saurus warband is just doomed to suffer from this. Saurus simply don't have enough to easily distinguish them as individual characters. They all kind of look the same. There isn't a lot of detail to play with, since they're mostly naked and don't wear a lot of armour/weapons, and what little they do wear is very similar across the models.

There's also very few physical differences between them. For example look at those 4 vampires, their heads & hair alone has more variety then all saurus combined.

 

I always thought the Crimson Court vampires were pretty good stand ins for the Von Carsteins: Vlad, Isabella, Mannfred and to a lesser extent Konrad.

 

That's a great point. The Saurus inherently have less points of potential distinction.

 

*grumbles* Wouldn't be so bad if we had updated Guardians alongside the standard warriors... and GeeDubs could have given them some clothing options with the update... I have no issue with naked lizards, I think lizards have beautiful bodies they should be proud of... but I am damned tired of fictional lizard people being nudists...

Come on, my post a couple of months back about alternate cultures... we could have had Greek toga-wearing Seraphon! I wouldn't have complained!

 

Meh, even guards only really added a helmet compared to regular saurus. There's still not a lot to work with.
The new astrolith bearer is probably the fanciest Saurus. And even then the only things that truly stand out are his banner and his facemask.

Anyways a sharply dressed Seraphon will clash with eh, 40? years worth of design. So I don't think we're going to see them get dressed up any time soon. It also doesn't help that the cultures the designs are inspired by didn't exactly have much in terms of ornate armour to take inspiration from.

At least Skinks have a bit more options, since they use a greater variety of tools & clothing and occasionally carry extra a pouch or a magic rock or something to provide a bit more detail.

 

30 years, for the lizards at least. They came about in 1996. If there were any models for them before that, I've not seen them.

And remember that last year's refresh was their first since the shift to AoS, where the Cities of Sigmar now have a distinct and new look rather than just being updated empire landsknecht.

If they had made the Seraphon more Greek influenced (just to continue my example), they'd have given the AoS seraphon a new look that is distinct from The Old World's lizardmen, and opened up more model opportunities - hoplite saurus guardians, anybody? Yes, I have no doubt that there would be those that would complain, because change is bad, etc etc, but, especially with the Old World, it hardly invalidates the old design. (And with such a distinct AoS look for the Seraphon, maybe the lizardmen would not be considered a legacy race in TOW?)

Meh, wasted potential grinding up my gears as ever.

 

Meh, it's kind of an inherent problem for humanoid lizards. They naturally end up rather naked.
It doesn't make much sense for lizards to dress up, on account of being coldblooded.
And since their scales already provide significant protection, armour also isn't terribly helpfull for them.
Of course you can ignore this "logic", and just dress them up anyway. But then they quickly stop being "lizardmen" and just become "humans with a crocodile face"

Plus, they lack things like hair, beards, etc. So you also can't use that for customization. And you can't just go and add random crests or horns because then they won't look consistent as a species.

So even if you themed them differently, it'd probably still be quite difficult to create truly unique individuals of "lizardmen".
Having said that, GW could definitly do more. Right now there's a handfull of saurus with masks and shoulderguards, or a basic chestplate/necklace thing. Do more with that. And maybe offer some weapon options besides "club + shield" and "spear + shield".

As a minor sidenote; the lumineth already stole the hoplite theming, so that's not an option regardless

 

Well fine then, go Roman centurion My converted Oldblood shows how badass that is as a look.

Being coldblooded is all the more reason to dress up in nice warm clothing, since they aren't able to generate their own body-heat, they're dependant on external factors like the sun.

Argonians.

*pause*

Argonians in Morrowind rather than Oblivion/Skyrim.

As above. But I'll admit that shifting from just the bone crowns to that level of variety for natural features would be a little jarring.

The problem is the choice to stick with the Meso-American theme, which limits the choices of weapons, even for the skinks. Remember the days skinks had bows and arrows? But those were removed because not Meso-American enough. I brought up the Greek idea because togas (and yes, I do know that togas were Roman not Greek, I just can't recall the term for the Greek style) feel like it'd be a choice of clothing that could actually work for them, not constricting but loose drapery that can be discarded easily if need be. And as for armour... sure, scales offer protection, but why not add on that? Guardians were supposed to be the ultimate protectors for slann, why not stack their odds and wear a layer of armour on top of the protection their scales provide?

End of the day, I get the choice for GeeDubs to stick to their chosen theme, but they've crippled their ability to provide variety because of it.

 

Counterintuitively clothing only really works on warmblooded creatures. Clothing keeps you warm by trapping the heat you produce. A coldblooded creature doesn't produce heat, so there's no heat for your clothing to trap.

Argonians are kind of my point. It's just humans with lizard heads.
Sure you can make them look like that. But there is very little lizard left in them. Or at least, I can't find any particularly interesting artwork.

How are bows not meso-american enough? Is this the tiffany problem again?

Anyways, even if we stick with meso-american, there's plenty that just hasn't been explored.
Give a 2-handed variant of their "swords", give them slings, give them axes, give them daggers to hang by their side. Those all fit with meso-american.
Also, why are seraphon limited to wood + obsidian weapons? Why aren't they use the bones/tusks/scales/horns/etc. from the various big dinosaurs? Like why isn't there a saurus that uses a sword made out of a carnosaur fang or something? Or a cavalry unit that uses stegadon horns as heavy lances? Or shields made out of bastiladon scales?

Don't get me wrong; there's still going to be a lack of variety compared to something like the vampires who have things like hair, and can wear anything from elegant clothes to heavy armour. But it's not cuz they're meso-american.

Saurus seem to have big heavy scales with large backspikes, that shift a bit as they move. Kroxigor have even more pronounced ridges on their back. Laying armour (or even just clothes) on top of that, and keeping it in place, without damaging things or restricting movement, would be difficult.

Though they could go the ork route of just sticking a slab of metal in random places and hoping for the best. (which in fairness, they kind of do with their shoulderplates and such)

 

Maybe they suffered from the tiffany problem?
I can't really think of another reason why bows would be deemed unacceptable.