Unified Warhammer Fantasy thread

I really like those Tomb Kings weapons, particularly the massive flail and the sword.

On G&F books: I think I actually prefer the Ulrika spinoff books to the core series, but then I was always a Vampire Counts player.

Edited by SebastianGray on Mar 13th 2023 at 7:35:33 PM

Ehh, Ulrika swerved from Anti-Hero to full blown Villain Protagonist abruptly enough to bother me. I was glad when it was chopping block time for her. Soured me on the character on rereads through the main series.

I've been thinking about the WF Beastmen a while, and I realized it kind of bothers me how their lore centers almost exclusively on their enmities with the Imperium and the Wood Elves and doesn't really have a whole lot to say about their interactions with other factions. Which is a pity, because there's interesting potential there.

I mean, for instance. Beastmen hate humanity specifically because humans build civilizations, right, and the Beastmen hate everything that deviates from their ideal of an endless savage wilderness and that challengers their position on top of the food chain — prey, they think, is supposed to die and be eaten; it's not supposed to cheat and try to change the rules. Logically, you would expect that they would hate the High Elves ad Dwarves even more than humanity, because they were the first people in the Old World to build great empires and push back the Beastmen's wilderness, and the Dwarves especially maintain huge, powerful cities right next door to where the Old World Beastmen herds are — but you don't really hear anything about that.

On another hand, what do they think about Orcs and Ogres? Their culture is centered pretty heavily on the idea that in a proper, monster-filled wilderness, they'd be the ones truly in charge. However, in that same kind of environment, Greenskin and Ogre tribes thrive. The Forest Goblins and their spiders have been living in the same wildernesses as the Beastmen for ages and the Beastmen have, evidently, not been able to dislodge them from their holdfasts. In Ogre lands, the Ogres are pretty firmly the dominant predators, but we know that there are also Beastmen around the Mountains of Mourn — so what does that look like from the Beastmen's point of view?

I dunno, I feel like there's a lot of potential there that never got explored.

Beastman suffer a lot from being the eternal minions of chaos: they dont have the quest for glory like warrior, or the utter elderich existent of demons, craft weapons of chaos dwarft so they are just monsters, to savage to craft anything like civilization.

Therefore they feel the least intersting, they are tyranids without nothing intersting to make for it

Pretty much . The beastmen were always the basic mooks of the Chaos forces. Age of Sigmar does attempt to give them a bit more motivation in that they believe they were the first people to dominate the Mortal Realms. To quote the Battletome:

Edited by SebastianGray on Mar 15th 2023 at 8:06:08 AM

In Warhammer Fantasy, Beastman are not even a branched evolution of humanity, but simply an aspect of humanity wholly consumed by Chaos from the moment of conception, body and soul. Humanity at large is still touched by Chaos, which is why humans can and do give birth to full blooded beastmen and turnskins who become Beastmen around maturity: but most humans are born with souls that belong to no god, and for most their destiny is their own. The conflict between humanity and beastmen is the deepest, most bitter blood feud on the setting, no matter what the Elves and Dwarfs like to claim, because humans and beastmen are fundamentally the same race (even the Dawi Zharr are fundamentally a completely different race to Dwarfs after their alterations).

Baseline humans possess so much the Beastmen covet-the ability to build and craft, master the terrain around them, and most of all the ability to choose their own path: the soul of a beastmen is forfeit to the Ruinous Powers no matter what they do, and consequently will never rise to become more than among the lowliest slaves to darkness. They have nothing to offer their gods, and no one else will accept them-they cannot even tread the path of glory, because any beastmen that reached the point of ascension automatically becomes a chaos spawn, with daemonhood categorically denied to them. It is little wonder they invariably surrender to their baser instincts and wallow in their hatred and resentment; their hatred of civilization is primarily driven by envy, though most commonly expressed in wrath and greed.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Mar 15th 2023 at 10:36:45 AM

While part of it is definitely the Empire being the viewpoint faction (although usually not to the crushing degree that the Imperium of Man is), there are some pretty good reasons why the Beastmen are more focused on humans.

Like, the elves built great cities in the Old World...but that period ended about four thousand years ago with the War of Vengeance, ultimately leaving mostly ruins. Similarly, the dwarves generally withdrew to their mountain holds after the war instead of trying to hold the Old World's open areas. They pushed back the wilderness...and then they left, and the wilderness returned. Meanwhile, the empire Sigmar built is right there, actively pushing them back in a way that the other two aren't.

There's also a proximity/vulnerability factor. Neither the High Elves nor the Dwarves are directly pushing into Beastmen "turf" the way the Empire is, immersed as it is in an ocean of forest; similarly, Empire villages tend to be vulnerable to Beastmen attack in a way that, say, a fortified dwarven outpost built into a cliff face is not. Ulthuan is even more resilient; to the best of my knowledge, there's nothing that indicates Beastmen are particularly good sailors.

(Meanwhile, the Wood Elves, who do live on the Beastmen's turf, do have a relatively detailed enmity with them.)

Beastmen don't have detailed multimillennial histories of the precise wrongs that have been done to them the way the dwarves do. They don't seem the type to particularly single out enemies from 4000 years ago whose attempt to tame the Old World's forests is present mostly in the form of ruins. They seem much more likely to be mad at the people who are building cities on their turf now.

Yeah, the Beastmen's entire racial identity is being angry and jealous of what humans can do, because as the eternal slaves of Chaos they're denied that sort of thing.

There have been a few articles in the Warhammer Community about the upcoming Vanguard-boxes for Khorne and Slaanesh, as well as the recently revealed new models for both Chaos sub-factions. I've noticed that plenty of the Slaanesh mortal servants look a bit like they could be converted into Dark Elves, because with their ornate armour and jewelry they resemble Drow a lot. All they need are some pointy ears made with green-stuff and a different paintjob. Shouldn't be too difficult to add some spider-imagery to them, as well. The Blissbarb Archers, Myrmidesh Painbringers, Lord of Hubris and Shardspeaker all look like they could fit with bluish-black skin and white hair for Drow, or then Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette for Warhammer Dark Elves.

Edited by Mara999 on Mar 19th 2023 at 12:52:47 PM

Adapticon Update: More new Seraphon, including some nice looking Kroxigor and mounted Saurus.

EDIT: Ossiarch Bonereapers (with new Mortisan◊) & Soulblight Gravelords (with new named character: Ivya Volga◊ - who looks very cool with her bats)

EDIT 2: First new Cities of Sigmar models. Quite heavily armoured compared to the old Empire models◊ (and a bit more gothic).

EDIT 3: New season of Warhammer Underworlds with a Stormcast vs. Disciples of Tzeentch box. Both the new warbands look awesome.

Edited by SebastianGray on Mar 22nd 2023 at 4:11:34 PM

Those are some very nice lizards. I really like the raptors and the crocodile heads on the new kroxigors.

The Lizardmen/Seraphon keep delivering. I like how their disnosaur-mounts mix elements from various outdated dinosaur reconstructions, as well some Slurpa Saur-bits. The Aggradons' faces look quite a bit like iguanas. I also still enjoy how the Saurus and Kroxigor have been tweaked a bit to look more draconic, so they could be given wings to be dragon-men.

I like Ivya Volga, except for the exposed wolf-leg. Overall I feel that GW has failed with realizing the wolf-theme of the Vyrkos, with most of them looking more like misshapen chicken-men. Belladamma and Radukar's first model were really great, mainly because they had outfits reminiscent of Cosacks, Tatars and Poles. The same thing works excellently with Ivya, but I would use green stuff to give her either pants or a skirt. She looks like she could during a hunt pretend to be a defenseless peasant-woman, before attacking those who would take advantage of her.

I really like those new Sigmarite soldiers. They remind me of the English military in Brave Heart, as well as the Bretonnian Men-at-arms. While they aren't an exact match for The Renaissance-style Empire troopers of old, they do look like they could be from The High Middle Ages equivalent of the Empire's history. Since the Old World takes place about 500 years before the present-day Empire, the Sigmarite soldiers could be used for that period.

Those Wyrdhollow minis look really good, both the Stormcast and the Tzeentch coven. I particularly like Ephilim himself, for looking otherworldly like a creature designed by Guillermo del Toro.

Edited by Mara999 on Mar 23rd 2023 at 7:37:24 PM

While I hadn't thought of giving them wings, I agree that would look cool. I also like the Scar-Veteran's crest which would make it dificult to choose between the helmeted and non-helmeted version.

I quite like the wolf legs, although I think they would look better in a running pose than standing still. I like that you can almost feel the wind at her back as well.

Ah, that's what it was. I knew they reminded me of something.

Going by the style of their robe, I'm pretty sure Ephilim is (or at least was before the mutations) female. I do like that she appears to be turning into a Gaunt Summoner◊ after being an apprentice to one. I think one or two of them are currently dead so she cold be trying to take their place before they resurrect.

Looking more closely at the model, that is likely the case. My first impression was that she/they would be a very androgynous figure, which I at first assumed to be a Bishōnen male due to the swimmer-like torso on them.

I'm torn whether to give them typical dragon-wings, or feathered wings to go along with the Mesoamerican influence. With or without wings, most Saurus look like they could be used as badass tropical Dragonborn in D&D.

Edited by Mara999 on Mar 23rd 2023 at 10:13:54 AM

Double-post: A new mini for Blood Bowl, a two-headed mutant Ungor. Yet another BB-figure that would fit WHFB or AOS, without any converting. The shorts could be made more ragged, but Withergrasp Doubledrool would make for an excellent Beastman character in a skirmish game.

Withergrasp is a cool model. His tentacles are bigger than I thought they would be but they still look good.

The tentacles being as big as they are, he looks like he's swelling mid-transformation. He reminds me a lot of the Possessed models for Mordheim, or like he's in the process of turning into a Chaos Spawn. Speaking of the Possessed, the Cult in Mordheim is probably the most visually interesting band of Chaos-worshippers for me, and I would like to field a a whole regiment of them as part of a larger Chaos army.

Im really surprise they haven try to do a mordheim style game in AOS, the closest is shadespire and that kinda dosent count

Cursed City is at least visually very reminiscent of Mordheim, except with undead instead of mostly Chaos-related monstrosities.

Its Warhammer Underworlds, Shadespire was the name of the first season/setting and it isn't really anything like Mordheim.

In general though it is probably Warcry that is the closest to Mordheim, as they are both games about Warbands fighting each other. Mordhiem had a number of different flavours of Empire warband with other factions getting their own individual Warbands while Warcry is multiple different flavours of Chaos Cultists with other other factions getting their own individual Warbands. It wasn't like Mordheim was set solely in the City of the Damned itself either as their were also rules for campaigns in the countryside of the Empire and in Lustria.

I remember liking a lot the scenarios set in the countryside of the Empire, with the Carnival of Chaos and the Thing in the Woods. It was a bit like taking something like Ravenloft to the Warhammer setting, which is what I imagine a good campaign in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to be like.

Double-post: An article focusing on the Ossiarch Bonereapers, who will soon get a new rulebbok. I am torn on how to feel about this faction. Conceptwise, I like skeletal constructs that aren't made up of just one type of creature and I also like it when necromancers are allowed to channel Frankenstein and other Mad Scientists, to create some bizarre mutated horrors. That said, most of the miniatures in this faction don't really do it for me, but that is probably because I dislike their chosen colour-scheme. I would prefer to paint them looking more Gothic, with stark contrasts between black, white and a more vivid shade of purple than they have now, or blood red along with neon-green for the magical effects. Colour aside, I overall quite like the big monstrous models, like the Gothizzar Harvester, the Morghasts, and Arch-Kavalos Zandtos. I think I like these because the models are among the crazier designs, while Zandtos has brighter colours than most models in the range.

I've been reading a PDF of the Sea of Claws sourcebook for WFRP and it's got some interesting lore bits.

I like what WFRP generally does with the Norscans by emphasizing the differences between the various tribes, with the more northerly ones like the Graelings, Vargs and Aeslings being the most purely Chaotic and the southerly ones like the Bjornlings, Skaelings, Sarls and Baersonlings being somewhat less hardcore about it (albeit that's as much a deliberate characterization choice as an attempt to smooth out differences between editions, since WFRP 1st and 2nd Eds. were written back when Norsca and the Chaos Warriors were mostly distinct factions).

One thing I found especially interesting was the Bjornlings in particular opportunistically worshipping whatever deity they think they'll get something from, so they might end up invoking "the Bloodwulf" with one breath and "Olric" with the next, or having a sea temple filled with absolutely every sea god, spirit, daemon and idol that they can get their hands on just in case. It's an interesting bit of variety in the usual depiction of Chaos worshippers.

And of course the Norse Dwarfs are always fun.

That is a pretty apt description of what religiosity used to be like, without demands of sticking to just one faith. Like modern-day Japan, European societies used to simultaneously practice different faiths and worship different gods, depending on what they needed at a given time. This is especially true for cosmopolitan hubs like Ancient Rome. With the Norscans being Horny Vikings it is appropriate for them to be exaggerated versions of real-life Norsemen, who were very pragmatic and opportunistic about religion. It was ridiculously easy to convert Norsemen to Christianity, but very frustrating for missionaries to get them to stop also worshiping the Aesir, ancestral spirits, nature entities and whatever else seemed useful to worship. Like the 10th-century Icelander Helgi the Thin, who prayed to Jesus at his home, but made sure to sacrifice to Thor when going to sea, because Jesus is busy and can't be of use everywhere. With the same logic, there could be lots of Sigmarite Norscans, who pray to Nurgle when sick, or to Slaanesh for seduction-magic.

Going back a bit

The Mortis Praetorians' colour scheme isn't the best of the Bonereapers schemes, the others are all more interesting:

• Petrifex Elite◊
• Stalliarch Lords◊
• Ivory Lords◊
• Null Myriad◊ (my favourites)
• Crematorians◊