GW News: SKAVEN VICTORY! #NewAoS

I kind of realised this the other day- where did their bows go?
I thought it was more of a game balance thing. The lizzies are already hard hitters in combat and have some big monsters and powerful spells so perhaps giving them a decent ranged weapon unit would be too much?

 

Meh, there's plenty of bow variatns you could go for.
Long bows, short bows, recurve bows, weird nonsense like the lumineth bows with a billion strings.
If that's it it'd be a silly reason.

 

This, basically. While Native Americans are well known for using the bow in media, I personally can't think of any instance where an Aztec/Mayan/Inca has used a bow in film or TV, they either throw pointy sticks or use blow darts.

The distinction being that I personally can't think of it, but I'm not going to say that they've never been depicted with bows. I can only speak from my own experiences and such.

What it all boils down to. Silly reasons.

Seraphon are still beholden to their WFB design choices, so... as silly as it is to say when they have giant frickin laser beams... they weren't going to go for such a fantastical and unrealistic bow choice as that.

It's one reason why I was saying that the fact GeeDubs didn't take advantage of the refresh to Cities of Sigmar level redesign them is a bit of a wasted opportunity, especially as it would then help the lizardmen of The Old World still have their own identity (and help them not be a legacy race if you don't trust the "the narrative is set in the Old World continent, so that's why no lizards or Druchii" ¬_¬)

 

I believe it to be a perfectly sound reason. You want differentiation between armies, otherwise the game gets boring. Replacing bows with javelins/blowpipes, not only grants the Lizardmen aesthetic uniqueness, but also a gaming variety. I don't want every army to have bows. Add a little flavour, spice things up.

 

I hope we don't get a strong gust of wind!

 

There's plenty of reasons for why Lizardmen/Seraphon (especially saurus and kroxigors) don't clad themselves in armour and instead rely on really thick hides most of the time, between their native environment making armour a detriment and their physiology imposing challenges in armour design. Magical elements and fashion statements aside, their warfighting capabilities reflect those kinds of challenges, especially for orphaned servitors whose concept of metallurgy is kind of stunted at cold-smithing at best.

None of that's to say that they couldn't adapt to local conditions that would make armour more amenable, let alone possible, but those tend to be exceptions that prove the rule.

 

Azyrite, which in Age of Sigmar is only behind Sigmarite in terms of amazing metal to be used, though that could be propaganda. *Shrug*

It goes to my argument that even after the refresh last year, the Seraphon haven't been given any changes to differentiate them from their Old World counterparts, which makes sense narratively. They are the same race after all. But when we get a faction-wide split in the starborn/coalesced, it especially would have been a nice visual difference; keeping the starborn as the naked lizards while the coalesced adapt and change as they live and mingle with the free cities and various other cultures - or the other way around, the coalesced show their feralness by being nudists, while the starborn take a few cues from their allies.

But I think at this point I'll have to step back and pull an agree to disagree. I feel they should have been given something, but respect that its not the choice made for them.

 

I don't blame you for coming to that conclusion. I for one wasn't happy with how the new Freeguild models turned out for Cities of Sigmar, especially as someone whose intent was to run an army themed around the Living City. Granted, finding suitable replacements more or less just had me going to Victrix Miniatures instead of GW for the vast majority of my infantry. The same could be said for the orcs in my Angmar collection as well, picking up the Oathmark kits instead of the official GW MESBG kits on account of both price and aesthetics.

In the end, unfortunately, in terms of tabletop aesthetics GW is really only going to cater to one or two themes per faction even if there ought to be countless more made possible via lore alone (the Imperial Guard say hi). The only way the ones not featured can see the limelight on the table is if you put in the effort to make them yourself.

 

Honestly, the weirdest thing about all this is that we do get armoured lizards in some official artwork:

Spoiler

But when it's translated into a miniature, those plates of armour are nearly always minimized. The shoulderplates and legplates are only on a few models. The chestplate is often reduced to a necklace. The skull-helmets and bones/horns are reduced in size compared to the artwork.

Clearly there is some potential, it just isn't really used in the models.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com...and-true-with-the-ingenious-burlok-damminson/

A beloved 4th Edition classic returned to the fold... great to see Burlok Damminson's TOW model appear at last!

And for those who miss 8th Edition, he still serves a purpose as the father of Grimm Burloksson, the engineer character from the 8th Dwarf book.

Though he's Forge World resin he is still an excellent model, to either serve as the great Dawi himself or as a generic Master Engineer depending on which Warhammer Fantasy edition you play.

 

I knew that one would be popular on here

 

Nice model... he would definitely fill out his 8th edition 20mm base!

 

Nice to see The Old World get some much deserved love from Games Workshop.

 

Yea, yea, yea... get to the Wood Elves already. GW better not leave them for very last.

 

They're totally going to be last. Current trend is to do an Order and a Disorder faction at more or less the same theme, I wouldn't be surprised if next on the roster was Empire and Beastmen. High Elves would follow that... wait... maybe a double elf release? High and Wood Elves having a bit of a brawl?

What villainous factions haven't had a release yet? My Old World books are in another room, and I'm too lazy to pull them out just to check...

Edit: Villainous factions that aren't legacy, before some smart-alec starts commenting on Vampires and Rats.

 

Judging by the road map GW released, I figured the next two armies would be Empire and High Elves (in 2025). I would then guess that the Beastmen would be next, followed by lastly by the Wood Elves. I hope I'm wrong though.

 

Erk... Right... The napkin crayon doodle.

I don't think the High Elves and Empire being the only one depicted means that they are guaranteed to be the next two, just that they're the ones GeeDubs are counting on to build hype. Honestly, I'm just waiting for the Empire right now for their arcane journal. Not fussed about the others myself.

But I feel for the ones who play as the others, so I'll offer my sympathies for the destined last to be picked for the GeeDubs sports team.