GW News: BIG N' SMALL WAAAGH! COMIN'

No conversion required!

 

I'm not that familiar with the Tomb Kings miniatures, so I did a quick image search. Despite slightly duplicating the look of some other models in the TK line, not designing a sphinx-dragon, or a cobra-dragon, or a scorpion-dragon, or a scarab-dragon feels like a missed aesthetic opportunity. That said, I guess GW didn't do a couple of those designs because Sphinx = Teclis, Scarab = Alarielle.

Whereas I don't hate this new TK dragon, it just feels a bit on the nose. I wish GW would have taken the idea of "dragon" as meaning "big, centerpiece monster mount" and not necessarily as a straight up (bone) dragon mini.

 

At least it has a crocodile-like skull I guess.

Has there ever actually been artwork or at least a more detailed description of the thing before to set some expectations though? Cuz while it isn't exactly the most inspired model it's also kind of what I'd expect based on the name.

 

Well what's holding you back to kitbash one

Grrr, !mrahil

 

In fact that one looks like the one I thought to be a conversion or scratch-build:


Very nice it is too, significantly cheaper than Alarielle's beetle and requiring no conversion work. Now to wait until the Bone Dragon sprues are previewed so that we can confirm if the rider's seat is separate from the beast itself, then wait until other folk buy the kit, break it up and sell the dragon and riders separately online, and try and get the riders for a good price...

Only in AoS - neither of those characters had a sphinx or beetle for a friend in Warhammer Fantasy, so Tomb Kings would be at perfect liberty to include a giant scarab in their army for TOW. Indeed one could argue it was AoS Teclis and Ariel 'Alarielle' that pinched those concepts from the Tomb Kings in the first place.

 

Way too many projects that are ahead of it in terms of priority.

 

seconded.

 

TOW close combat phase reveal:

https://www.warhammer-community.com...ack-fight-the-good-fight-in-the-combat-phase/

 

I want to reserve my opinions until we have the full rules for TOW, but I'm kinda not liking the combat result table; specifically the saved rolls. A little too much to keep track off, I'd rather have Overkill and Unsaved rolls combined into straight Kills to make it simpler to track.

 

I'm annoyed we don't have a basing chart yet. I want to prepare.

 

So you're in no matter what? Even if the game turns out to be terrible?

 

Indeed. But I suspect GW wants to keep its models more visually distinct, despite the game system. That's why I'm assuming they didn't use either of those designs for this dragon.

 

since for friendly games, the basing is irrelevant, I don't intend to rebase any of my armies

 

That's probably the best strategy. You can always use specialized movement trays if you wanted to maintain the new standard without rebasing.

 

This does appear rather overly complicated...
It also basicly guarantees certain unit types will never win a combat, which generally isn't great... Though depending on unit design it may not necesarly be a problem in practise.

As an aside; what's the point of soul eater? A single strength 3 hit doesn't seem particularly great, even if it can allow you to snipe a banner when lucky.

 

All in all once again a promising set of rules - loss of supporting attacks in an extra rank is a shame, but allowing models that are out of base contact to contribute one attack is essentially its successor, and from what I can see in the rules Step-Up seems to be still there which is a necessity. Chargers getting an Initiative bonus (but not necessarily striking first) was sorely needed, and good to see the High Ground combat resolution bonus (which was short-sightedly missed out in 8th) returning.

And the new Break Test rules I particularly like... again this is a really nice nod to historical rank-and-flank games, particularly Napoleonic rulesets, that will add some additional strategic complexity to the game.

Overkill is specifically related to Challenges - if one character kills the other in a challenge and inflicts more wounds than the character had remaining, then the leftover number of wounds is the Overkill Combat Resolution bonus.

Well, if you can wound with that Strength 3 hit then it'll ignore all armour saves and has Multiple Wounds (3), so will kill standard Lord and Hero-level characters that don't have a Ward Save instantly or take 3 wounds off a Monster (which is much bigger in Fantasy than it is in AoS as most monsters have only 5 or 6 wounds). Of course the to Wound roll is the tricky part, but if you pull it off it certainly puts pressure on your opponent to make any Ward or Regeneration save their model has.

 

This was the one rule that seemed potentially suspect to me. I'm envisioning a scenario where players start to field extremely wide units of troops in order to maximize their attacks. If that is the case, I definitely like the supporting attacks system from 8th edition much better. That said, it might turn out to be perfectly fine, as rules can only be judged within the context of the entire ruleset that they are a part of (and we have but the smallest fraction of that entire ruleset). There very well might be rules that either control or limit such a scenario from occuring.

Looks interesting.

Exactly. This seems extremely simple to me. Same old, same old.

 

I do agree with some of the concerns about this, but there are clear cons of extremely wide units as well as the new pros:

• Wide units are going to be more easily hampered by terrain (if anything it's a big encouragement to put terrain in the middle of the battlefield where it can contribute to the game, rather than on the outskirts of the board where it won't)
• Wide units are going to get within range of more missile units and will be easier to shoot
• Wide units are more susceptible to being charged by multiple enemies at once, where their attacks will be divided - this is particularly important now that we know chargers get a bonus to their Initiative and get a significantly improved chance of striking first

And of course, as you say, hopefully there may be some additional rules introduced to enforce limits on unit width to stop it from being exploited. We won't find out fully until the game is fully released and people start playing it.