Ulthuan

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... the-rules/

Looks like we've got a Turn Sequence for the Old World now. Looks pretty reasonably familiar just with magic moving into relevant phases based upon the type of spell. Certainly seems like it'll be exciting to see for high elves as they'll likely have access to a fair amount of magic to play with I'd imagine.

And it seems that both players will be able to cast spells in at least the Strategic Phase. However, as they've made clear and the description for Cursed Blades indicates, casting and dispelling will be more localized to the vicinity of each respective wizard, so having a single powerful wizard may be less efficient. Since High Elves typically have a high points cost per model, this may put them at a slight disadvantage to, say, Orcs & Goblins with cheap goblin shamans.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what the rules are like for Archmages and Mages. I like that magic has been unshackled from one single phase of the game. And it's far too early to assume we're going to be at a disadvantage based on what other editions are like. I could imagine a world where Archmages may be costlier than the average wizard, but have an unlimited dispel range, or other special rules to make a single mage as powerful and as versatile as a handful of other wizards.

I'm glad the phases and sub-phases are looking familiar and seeing that, I'm far more interested in seeing what they have in store for morale since they've said they've added complexity there.

Movement phase info is out: https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... &utm_term=

Looks good, though I will miss just measuring the closest distance between units for charges - looks like we will have to accounting for wheeling. Nonetheless there are some fun new rules around marching columns and what not. Skirmishers will also be able to do "hit-and-fade flank charges" somehow which would be fun. And there's something called counter charging... fascinating.

Marching and countercharging seem to come directly form Warhammer Ancient Battles. Interesting.

I do kind of wish they had kept the charge rules for 8th as it concerns wheeling. But since a failed charge moves the whole distance rolled, it'll still be neater and faster than having to move only half their charge range like in 7th. It was always a slow arduous pain to have to miss the charge, then move things back.

Shooting rules have appeared:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... ng-skulls/

Some familiar mechanics (long bows keep their range), though some changes too.

Modifications to armour saves - are they no longer directly linked to strength? Not sure.

"It’s a familiar process: compare the Armour Penetration of the weapon with the armour value of the model it’s hitting."

That language sounds 40k to me - I would have expected 'modify' the armour value of the model by the Armour Penetration of the weapon?

There is also now a separate category of armour penetration for weapon characteristics. I hope that armour penetration is still linked to strength though, as I like the Seredain and others model of bringing a high strength can opening hero to take out heavily armoured enemies and high toughness heroes...

On strength, lower level strength also is capped again, similar to (4th? 5th?) ed, so that it can't hurt the biggest and baddest monsters. Make sure you bring your own beasties, or heroes armed with high strength weapons, if you think you'll face high toughness enemies... I read somewhere though that chaos demons will be rare/not existent for the warriors of chaos army in this game, so I think this more relevant to monsters.

High BS shooting can reroll misses too, which sounds fun (surely high magic will have a spell that can augment shooting).

There's also going to be some fun special rules. "Fire and flee" will hopefully be available to Ellyrian reavers. Long bows will have something called armour bane.

Finally there is something called 'battle magic' as a lore of magic. Does that mean human wizards from the colleges of magic have worked out how to use spells from each college? Without more details on how magic works, this is just speculation though from me.

Nothing spectacular, and I find that good.

I really like the idea of formations and things in the movement phase with the different formations. I like that there's a lot of crunch to what they're previewing. Rerolls for people with a high BS, rules for hitting when you need a 7+, etc.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... bat-phase/

The close combat looks like the best features of 6th and 8th put together with a bit of influence from WAB and 3rd.

While conceptually the changes to breaking are interesting I have low confidence GW will able to write the rules in a way that will not require multiple pages of FAQs dealing with the fallout from the rule.


In HE related news Swordmasters are Initiative 6 and Leadership 8.

Against my better judgement I'm getting pretty hyped about TOW.

I've been done with GW's rules churn and codex creep basically since AoS hit the scene... but this is getting my attention again. I even started painting a few of my half-finished Ellyrion Reavers the other day. And, of course, I just logged in here for the first time in years (I mostly lurked back then anyhow).

I expect to get a few games in at my local game store on release. There are a bunch of old GW store ex-staff there, so I'm sure they'll support it. I don't know how deep I'll get... we'll see.

I do like what I've seen of the rules sp far. The new melee phase seem to make cheap but massive tarpit units less viable on first look - since as long as the other unit wins, it can keep fighting until the tarpit is finished off.

Excitingly I managed to recover my old account (a little over 100 posts vs about 4), so I'll be using that now.

Back when 8th edition was about to drop (or maybe the HE Army Book) one of the guys at my FLGS was talking about how Lothern Sea Guard were going to be great, with spears and bow, able to be threat in multiple phases and so on. I was convinced, and to get ready I bought some boxes of spears and assembled them as Sea Guard.

In actual practice they turned out to be pretty underwhelming as a core troop choice - at least I never got them to seem worth their weight in points. Since they were (mostly) painted, I didn't want to take the bows off of them, and I'd be damned if I painted a whole other chunk of spear elves... so since then as I've dabbled in other fantasy sets I've always been on the lookout for rules where spear armed elven archers were decent to field. So far, I've had no real luck.

What I'm trying to say is my fondest wish for The Old World is that Lothern Sea Guard are not clearly suboptimal to include in an army.

It feels like Warhammer. I like it. Yes, it's a different edition of warhammer, but it's familiar enough to feel like what the game is supposed to be. It's hard to say anything specific about the rules, since a lot depends on how stuff interacts and the small details everywhere. But I think it will be balanced and fun enough for my casual gaming

GW has figured out how to build hype, that's for sure. Do we have an idea of when they want to release it? The rules published look like snapshots from an actual rulebook pdf file. Which suggests they're quite far in getting it ready for launch.

Word on the grapewine is the February-March release window and I know from testers that the rulebook had been finished early this year. The testing of the lists had continued some time after that.

Psychology Rules revealed today > https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... sychology/

Things look pretty familiar.

Oh and unit strength is back!

I'm very happy to see unit strength return. Especially for things like fear.