Discussion Characters / WarhammerAgeOfSigmar

It's been a week since I proposed this so I have made some sandboxes for rough drafts of my proposed layout starting here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/WarhammerAgeOfSigmarCharacterPage

Edited by SebastianGray

For starters, if the page is split by GA, we would no longer have to reserve first-level headings for them, so we could probably put them to use somewhere else.

True, although neither the the 40K or WFB character pages use first level headings so if we go by precedent then we needn't use them at all.

What about my idea of moving the general and realm Endless Spells to the main page as they are usable by multiple factions (I don't know why they were on these pages anyway)?

Note: I have added some Alliance Symbols I found online to the sandboxes

Edited by SebastianGray

The difference is that the 40k and WHFB character pages are divided by faction (one faction per page), while this proposal divides them by GA (multiple factions per page). The first level headings could then be used to separate different factions on the same page, and within one single faction, we could follow the precedent of the 40k and WHFB pages.

The endless spells could be kept on the main character page (since they're usable by multiple factions). I'm not sure why they have to be moved to the main work page (they have their own models, and at least some of them have gained a 'life' and are treated as monsters in-story).

The Other Imperial Factions, Eldar and Warhammer Other Factions pages all include multiple factions, but the main question is, if we keep the sub-factions within the folders, what would we need the largest header for in the first place. As for the Endless Spells, the reason I think they should be on the main page is because they are usable by multiple factions but I have added them to the main Character page for now.

In any case as the main issue at the moment is the page length, should we go ahead with the Alliance split (especially as that is the first split GW uses) and continue discussing the exact layout once that has been sorted out? Even with the current layout, they still look better than some Character pages I have seen in the past.

I think it's a no-brainer that the page should be split by GA. In any case, the endless spells are still 'characters', and if they don't belong in any character subpage, they can be put on the main character page.

I'm not sure if the current layout is quite ideal (for one, it would probably look better if each faction's image and description were to be put inside the same folder as the general tropes for that faction).

Okay I split the page (had a little issue with indexing but fixed it now). We can still use the sandboxes to hash out the layout so if you want to edit one to show me what you mean about the pics then feel fee.

I am a bit pushed for time at the moment so will come back to the Endless Spell issue later.

EDIT: Okay I have some more time now.

It is because they are usable by all factions that I think Endless Spells should be on the main page rather than on the character page. I will admit that I am not caught up with all the law yet (which is why I am content to leave them for now) but, from reading the tropes themselves, I don't know if there is enough commonality to justify grouping them together.

Edited by SebastianGray

This is the definition of Blessed with Suck:

Blessed with Suck is one of those tropes that comes in a few distinct flavors. Generally, it's when a character is given a special ability that seems to cause nothing but trouble:

• By far, the most common variation is that the writers have seen fit to give you a special power that is, to be frank, stupid, humiliating or useless.[...]
• Sometimes your power sounds really, really cool at first, but it turns out to have a lousy limitation or weakness, control problem, lacks the Required Secondary Powers, or (in the worst cases) has very dangerous side-effects.

The old version of the Auric Runemaster's Holy Seeker fits this definition quite well (a special ability that aids the opponent more than you, to the point of making it not worth it to field Runemasters in matched play at all). It is definitely not an example of Scrappy Mechanic, as that trope deals with, well, mechanics, not a very specific special ability of a single unit.

The point is i have always been under the impression that the trope was meant to be treated as blessed with suck in the story not just by players. I could be wrong though, should we take it to the Is This An Example thread to make sure?.

Also I think any rule counts as a mechanic.

A few examples on the trope page itself (specifically, the video game subpage) are about abilities that are useless or detrimental within the gameplay itself that has little to do with fluff, so I think this particular example is perfectly valid.

As for mechanics, most of the examples detailed on the trope page deal with generic things and/or stuff that come into play frequently, not something specific like this one. I'm not even sure if it meets the 'scrappy' criterion, as this particular rule is not quite hated (more like ignored).

Considering the amount of misuse some pages get I don't tend to trust examples from pages on the Square Peg Round Trope list (as this is) to be entirely accurate but I will put it on Is This An Example? thread, especially as the unit gets the intended bonus/blessing and it required the opponent to be unsporting for it to suck.

As for the scrappy thing, there is a Scrappy Clean Up thread to consult as well.

Edited by SebastianGray

I'm not sure if 'unsporting' is the right word here. There is no rules lawyering involved, the rules make it very clear of the benefits received by the units in question, and that it is the opponent who gets to pick the ur-gold carrier. If an opponent fielded an Auric Runemaster against me in matched play in 1E, I would choose a war machine or other backline unit as the ur-gold carrier any time, and I would expect my opponent to do the same if I were to field an Auric Runemaster (after all, in matched play, you are playing to win). I think the correct word here is competitive, not unsporting (after all, I'm not exploiting any loopholes or poorly-worded rules or other underhanded tactics here).

And yes, the blessing works as intended... for both you and your opponent. It's just that the opponent can benefit more from it than you do, which makes it not so great for you (which is what the trope entails).

As primarily a narrative player (since before that was even an official thing and was simply called "playing in character" or " not being beardy/a cheese-monger") I probably wouldn't. I don't think I have ever done anything solely to win, even when playing in matched play and official tournaments. But anyway I don't know if opponent trying to win counts as "lousy limitations" or Deus Angst Machina enough to make it this trope, which is why I posted it in the Is This An example? thread. I haven't had any reply either way yet but things often get missed/ignored in that thread so I will repost it if it goes to the next page before I get a response, ore possibly take it to Ask the Tropers.

I have an answer from Is This An Example?

"I've always found it difficult to distinguish Blessed with Suck and Cursed with Awesome; and I'm not familiar with Warhammer at all, so I'm not sure if I'm the person who should be offering feedback... but from that write-up I can't tell what the trope even is supposed to be, to say nothing about its use in the work.

I'd say delete as misuse or comment-out (as insufficiently explained example)."

So basically, even if it is a the trope it needs to be rewritten so that someone unfamiliar with the game is able to understand it (which is actually the desired form of all examples according to site rules, even if it is rarely enforced)

It would be preferable to stop reordering while discussion is ongoing. Also you shouldn't leave things half done. use a sandbox to make a page how you think it should look then see what the consensus is and only then should the page itself be changed.

While I do think things could do with reordering a little I think you are going a bit far. Moving all the different human sub-factions into a single General section isn't rally appropriate in my opinion. Additionally, it would be better to order Chaos by God rather than how you have done it.

As for different ages, I have always been of the opinion that that should only ever be done when the existing page is too big.

Agree with all points raised. There's no faction in the game named 'Realms of Sigmar', 'Aelfs of Hysh' or 'Aelfs of Ulgu'; once GW give them some attention then it would make sense to merge the folders for the constituent factions (plus Tyrion and Malerion; they have their own folders for now because GW has yet to get to their factions yet), but at the moment we have no idea of how these future factions look like, so we should continue to follow how they are organised in the GA Order book and the General's Handbook for now. That and it makes no sense whatsoever to put tropes for all individual human factions, general tropes for the Order GA as a whole and tropes for the Shadowblades into the same General folder for the 'Realms of Sigmar'; or to place the Legion of Azgorh under 'Chaos Tribes', or the Hedonites of Slaanesh (which consists of both mortals and daemons) under Daemons (with how GW has been giving each Chaos god a battletome, it is more approriate to arrange Chaos units by god instead of by mortals versus daemons).

The page itself probably needs some reordering (as it was originally organised just after the GA books were released, and the definition of a 'faction' has slightly changed since then) but this is definitely not a good way of doing so, and the page is not yet big enough to be separated.

Should we get a mod revert to how it was previously do you think?

I have (mostly) reverted the page to how it used to be, following moderator instructions. Now for the topic in question: I initially organised this page according to the Grand Alliance books, where a 'faction' can consist of as few as one single unit (Firebellies). Now that this is no longer the case, I'd propose that we follow what GW has done in merging many so-called mini factions into one, specifically:

• Merge the folders of each Chaos god's mortal followers with that god's daemons
• Merge all Skaven folders into one
• Merge the Spiderfang Grots, Moonclan Grots and Troggoths into one for Gloomspite Gitz (the Gitmobs seem to have been squatted)
• Merge the various Death folders except Flesh-eater Courts and Nighthaunt into one for Legions of Nagash

The point is to give each faction one and only one folder; no more, no less. Characters that lie outside of a faction altogether (like Sigmar or Dracothion) can have their own folder.

While I am trying to slowly catch up, I am still very behind with the current organisation of the various factions but I would suggest giving each sub-faction (the verious Skaven clans, the different Undead sub-factions - although these could be changed to the various Legions each Mortarch leads, etc.) their own section within each faction folder, at least until the release of the 2nd Edition Grand Alliance books that GW have said they are working on are released, which is when we can see where they officially stand. There are also the Darkoath who will be getting their own wartome and replacing the Chaos Marauders at some point. Also, from what I remember, the Kill Team inspired War Cry will be introducing a number of different Chaos tribes as well so I don't know what should be done with them

The changes I mentioned are more or less all that happened regarding the consolidation of mini factions into proper ones (plus the merging of the Brayherds, Warherds and Thunderscorn into Beasts of Chaos, which I had already integrated into the page). I'm aware of all those juicy rumours about Darkoath and so on but did not mention them because they are for the future (we can and probably should only implement these changes when the products in question hit the shelves). As for giving each subfaction their own section within a folder, I'm not quite sure of how exactly we should do that.

Edited by HTD

Warcry is confirmed for the end of the month so we can see then. As for the different sections for sub-factions, I meant organising them like in a similar way to the current Stormcast Folder just with General, sub-faction, sub-faction, etc. rather than general, character, character, etc.

We could add the Warcry stuff at the end of the month then. As of now, I don't think we should give subfactions and characters identical headings within folders for consistency purposes. And in case of the Skaven and the various Death mini-factions (now part of the Legions of Nagash, except the Soulblight), and the Gloomspite Gitz to a lesser extent, I don't think that subfaction headings are even necessary, since each mini-faction has very few general tropes to it (those that are not specific to one or two units and not shared with the parent faction).

Also, from browsing the GW store, it seems that all human factions plus the Ironweld Arsenal have been merged into the Free Peoples; all aelven factions without a battletome merged into one 'Aelf' faction (although I don't expect this to stay permanent when GW releases a battletome for them); and the Firebellies and Maneaters are now part of Gutbusters.

Cool. As I said I am a bit behind with AoS (too many other hobbies and Real Life issues)

I have merged the Skaven folders into one. Will do the rest later (or revert it if it's not a good idea).

It looks okay, if a little bland, but as I said I'm behind on Age of Sigmar. One thing I would suggest however, as I did in my first reply to Onomateopoetic, making a Sandbox to try out the changes first would be a reasonable idea.

I have no idea of how to use sandbox pages, so I put the tentative changes at the bottom of Wiki Sandbox. I did not include descriptions for the factions in question (as I'm not sure of how to handle it) or character profiles (I think we can assume that these will remain unchanged).

On another note, how should we handle the squatted Gitmob Grots?

That page is a bit big for my rubbish computer to deal with so I have made an Age of Sigmar Character Page Sandbox (Linking directly to Sandboxes doesn't seem to be working at the moment so just copy/paste the address into the bar https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/WarhammerAgeOfSigmarCharacterPage)if you want to copy your changes onto there.

As for the Gitmob, do we know for sure they have been dropped? (I hated the term squatted even before their return to the background material in 5th Edition 40K and to the tabletop in 3rd Edition Necromunda made it pointless and wrong). I think they are still a valid army at the Warhammer World tournaments (although don't quote me on that).

On a general note, we could use the Keywords as a guide to how to organise things.

Edited by SebastianGray

Changes copied over. I'm leaving the faction descriptions blank for the moment as I'm unsure if the merged folders can use the descriptions of the original folder or not.

Since the Gitmob are no longer sold on the GW store and do not appear in the newest General's Handbook, I think it's safe to assume that they are no longer being supported. I'll have to double check about the keywords, but it doesn't sound like a simple way of organisation to me.

I did a bit of looking and it does seem that the Gitmob are currently out but that doesn't mean they will be out forever, it wouldn't be the first time that a faction was only removed for a limited time from the tabletop before comming back. I suppose, once we sort out the layout and move it over to the main Character page we could use the Sandbox to keep some information on removed factions.

What I meant about the keywords is that, even in the Legions of Nagash Battletome, the Deathlords, Deadwakers, Deathmages, Deathrattle, etc. Keywords are still used for there respective units. The same is true of the Gloomspite Gits, with their units having the Moonclan and Spiderfang Keywords so soft splitting the folders could be an option.

As I said, the main problem with doing so would be that we have to split off these keywords as if they were characters, which doesn't seem like a good idea.

I'll work on some things to see if I can show what I mean and post something at some point over the week.

I've added a rough draft of my proposed layout (named Forces of Death)

Edited by SebastianGray

I think that one could work for this particular case, although the tropes concerning Zombie Dragons and Terrorgheists and some others would fit better in the general Death folder, as they apply equally to the Legions of Nagash as they do to the FEC and/or Nighthaunt.

Edited by HTD

Yeah, it still needs some shuffling around

Also, on the more minor sub-factions, I am reading the 2nd Edition Fyreslayers Battletome at the moment and that still lists the Ironwald Arsenal as allies in the Pitched Battles profiles section at the back so I don't know what that means for such factions.

That means GW hasn't gone around to merging them into a proper faction yet. Same thing for a lot of Order and ogor mini factions as well.

As for the division of other factions: Stormcast could likely be divided into chambers. The Warcry warbands could be listed as part of Slaves to Darkness. Not sure about each Chaos god's mortal followers and daemons. Dividing the Beasts of Chaos is probably unnecessary.

GW just announced two new battletomes: Orruk Warclans (merging Ironjawz and Bonesplitterz; Greenskinz are gone) and Cities of Sigmar (merging all Order factions without a battletome into one). There's also a teaser for the Mawtribes (which seem to be a soup of all ogors), and the Warcry warbands are announced as part of Slaves to Darkness now. It looks like once these battletomes are all released, there'll be no more mini factions left.

Hmm. Interesting, though we will probably have to wait till closer to their release for a full list of what's in and whats out.

I was thinking about suggesting organising the Stormcast into Chambers myself.

I made the tentative changes to the Orruk Warclans on the sandbox page. Is it ready to be implemented on the actual page now?

Sorry for the lateness of the reply (I had an unplanned hospital trip). Anyway, it looks reasonable (although there are some minor stylistic tweaks such as bolding the titles). As for when to implement it, while I am unsure what they are (I think they mostly cover YMMV stuff though) I do know the site has rules about pre-release trouping I generally of the opinion that waiting until the release date has been officially announced is best, but if you think it is okay then you could add them (I am a slow and steady sort of person in most respects)

I'll implement the changes when the exact contents of the Cities of Sigmar book are announced.

Cool.

I would just say though that I believe I read somewhere that there is a little know, often ignored and rarely enforced rule that all entries on a Character page should have at least a brief description, so there are a number of entries that still need work.

Changes have been implemented following the announcement of the Cities of Sigmar battletome pre-order. I had to delete the folders for the factions that were wholesale discontinued (Eldritch Council, Lion Rangers, Devoted of Sigmar, Order Draconis) since there was no room I could spare for them.

Devoted of Sigmar are still around as part of the Cities of Sigmar according to the Warhammer Community faction preview: "Cities of Sigmar have perhaps the largest potential army roster in all of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, capable of bringing units from (deep breath now) the Freeguild, Ironweld Arsenal, Order Serpentis, Dispossessed, Wanderers, Shadowblades, Collegiate Arcane, Phoenix Temple, Devoted of Sigmar and Darkling Covens."

I am expecting the others to make an apperance in some form (possibly with a new name and models) in a future Aelf book but that is something for the future.

On a different note, Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave have a non-Gloomspite Gits warband of Grot Wolf/Snarlfang riders who I am guessing will be part of a faction that will be replacing the basic Grot faction and then there is the new Death faction being introduced as well

To be honest, with all the changes it may be best to start from scratch.

I'm assuming that 'Devoted of Sigmar' refers to Flagellants, as I can no longer buy Witch Hunters, Warrior Priests and War Altars from the GW store. For the moment I'm tentatively grouping them with the Freeguilds. We still don't know anything about the faction that Rippa's Snarlfangs belong in, so I'm leaving that stuff for the future too. As for the Ossiarch Bonereapers, they are a brand new faction so adding them to the page shouldn't interfere with others in any way.

Did they go to Last Chance to Buy with the other stuff a month or so ago, I can't remember? If they didn't then they could just be being rebased and repackaged, and will be rereleased alongside the new Battletome.

In that case I would add them back once the battletome is released for real. At the moment there isn't enough information on how the Devoted of Sigmar will look like yet.

Yeah we should probably wait an see when it comes on general release Saturday week.