GW News: SKAVEN VICTORY! #NewAoS

there is the possibility that they are resculpting them but wanted to fake us all out.

 

Possibly... place your bets!

My dream was a Chaos War Mammoth vs Khemric Titan TOW starter box... with a Chaos Dwarfs army book thrown in for good measure!! Even an 8th edition die hard like me would have been forced to give it a try then... and it would be a day one purchase!

In all seriousness, why make a TK dragon when the Khemric Titan could have served as a much more fitting centerpiece? They already have the idea and the concept art. I love dragons, but it makes no sense in this context. I wonder what the wargame community as a whole will think of the model. Are we in the minority or do we represent the dominant opinion?

Another blemish against TOW.

 

Because you can't put a tomb king on a priest-sarcophagus- titanic-battle-creature?

 

Because the Khemric Titan would just be too big to fit on an Arachnarok Spider base, unless it was going to have it's profile downsized along with its model.


I was honestly afraid of this happening ever since some other people mentioned rumours of this happening. GW have gone and done it, and I'm most disappointed by it. It definitely feels like they're going back to the 6th Edition era when they were more focusing on Tomb Kings having bone constructs rather than stone statues, a definite regression in my view as it takes away some of their uniqueness compared to the other and grossly inferior undead faction.

Undead dragons should have been left as a Vampire Counts thing, it just looks so out of place in the Egyptian Tomb Kings army. Also I really don't like the regression to the animated corpse idea when they should have continued with the 8th Edition focus on statues, and whoever designed this unit clearly doesn't understand what 'Necrolith' literally means. I can easily see them changing the Necrolith Colossus back to 'Necrolith Bone Giant' now .

The only saving grace is that it has a crocodilian head which means one could potentially reinvent it as an idol of the Tomb Kings' version of Sobek, but even then that wouldn't explain the wings... and it's still not a statue! This model is just so wrong on so many levels.

But at least there are options for both a plastic Liche Priest and Tomb King, which saves the need to buy any of the inevitable Forge World Resin versions that will inevitably accompany it in the TOW release.

 

Some good news though, the game's Facebook page said there's more to come for Tomb Kings, so we shouldn't give up hope for anything better:


I mean if they don't update the three main Skeleton sets when they've given Vampires two different Skeleton sets, that'll be an unimaginable insult.

 

At this point, they've burned away my hopium.

I'll take what I get, but I'm going ahead with my Wargames Atlantic skeletal hordes to begin with.

 

And why is that? They could have made a sweet duel kit that allows it to be fielded mounted and unmounted.

What's this, do we find ourselves in agreement??!!

I'd be perfectly happy with a Khemric Titan on an Arachnarok base. That Arachnarok base is pretty big and you can fit a mighty impressive sized model on it. It would be something that looks amazing but is still a feasible model on the battlefield. How big would you ideally want the Khemric Titan?

Also, they are not bound to the Arachnarok base, if they wanted the Khemric Titan bigger, they could easily do it.

Unless they deliberately stuck the old skellies in the background to throw everyone off, it would appear that one of the three will be sticking with the classic models. That leaves us with the Skeleton Chariots and Skeleton Horsemen / Horse Archers as potential updates.

 

Were they promised a complete overhaul? They got so much stuff all of a sudden.

 

O definitly, and it's a great improvement. Just feel it kinda came out of nowhere.

 

Quick, take a screenshot!

Well judging by the original profile in Monstrous Arcanum, I imagined it to be a massive thing like the Dread Saurian, something only reserved for the closest Warhammer Fantasy equivalent to an Apocalypse game, but I've just looked up some Khemric Titan conversions and seen a real cracker that's small enough to fit on what looks to be an Arachnarok base.

But that is a good point... a Tomb King player with taste could convert a suitably-sized Khemric Titan (looking at you Alarielle's beetle), put it on an Arachnarok base, mount a Tomb King or Liche Priest on top and use the Bone Dragon rules for it in the game.

To be honest though it would make so much more sense to just update all three sets together - they all stem from the original Skeleton Warriors kit as it is, and all three are in equal need of improvement.

My main hope now is that they'll do it when they start releasing the army books for the individual factions, after the initial release and rules drop.

 

That's a good option for someone looking to improve the TK flavour of their TOW TK army. Less good though for someone not interested in the TOW game system but who wanted to poach a TOW Khemric Titan for their 8th edition games!

Once again my wallet is safe from GW and TOW keeps falling further and further behind 8th.

To be fair, the new bone dragon does spill out over its Arachnorok-sized base on all sides (head, wings, tail). If GW followed the same precedent, they could fit a fairly large Khemric Titan on the same base. Maybe not as big as you point out in the Monstrous Arcanum publication, but close enough. Also, a slightly smaller (but still impressive sized) Khemric Titan is better than no Khemric Titan at all. What are the odds that GW ever releases a full sized one? Not impossible, as they really love their expensive large centerpiece models, but still a bit of a long shot I might imagine.

We're again in agreement, but since when has GW cared about what "made sense"?

 

Yeah, I was very interested in TOW but since they announced that it's only effectively going to have half the armies that Fantasy did and the New World armies are getting PDF rules so you can use them "for old time's sake" took a lot of the wind out of my sails. You just know that the armies that only get PDFs are going to be weak AF compared the actually supported armies

 

Exactly! This is precisely what killed the game for me. To be honest, some of the rules they have been revealing look very interesting. What we've seen of the artwork is beautiful. There have been some nice models previewed. But relegating nearly half of the armies (most of which unfortunately happen to be my favourite armies) to irrelevancy is unforgivable. Literally five of my top eight favourite armies are being given the legacy army pdf treatment.

As you say, the armies outside of the nine they will focus on will be underpowered and under-supported. We've seen it with AoS, why would TOW be different?

 

I also had thought of Alarielle's beetle. I agree that it wouldn't fit if you're looking to exactly recreate the illustration from Monstrous Arcanum, but if you're not worried about the design specifics, have the patience to cut all the foliage bits off and give it a stone colour scheme, I'm still willing to bet it'd work.

 

You're probably right... no Titan for me. Too many projects ahead of it.

Alarielle's beetle could work, but I wonder if there are better options out there... or even a scratch build.