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DiscoKing wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
Here's the wording from the rulebook

Before your first campaign battle, you can add up to 20 fighter to your warband roster. These fighters can total any number of points, but it should contain at least 1000 points' worth of fighters to allow you to field a full warband during your first campaign battle. You do not have to add the full 20 fighters to begin with - you can instead choose to add additional fighters as the campaign progresses. You'll be able to add and remove fighter from your warband roster after each campaign battle. When adding fighters to your warband roster you must adhere to the following restrictions:

1. at least 3 fighters
2. max 20 fighters
3. All fighters hare the same faction runemark as the campaign quest chosen.
4. Only 1 fighter with the leader runemark.

yeah that's just your roster like Kill Team. Your warband for the game your about to play must be 3-15 models chosen from your roster of upto 20.

Except that in Kill Team the roster is used in matched play and campaign. I. warcry, the roster is just for campaigns. That’s a big difference that may speak to the lack of importance in tooling for a specific opponent (as perhaps the lack of unit flexibility removes the need).

 Sqorgar wrote:
Maybe that won't happen, but it feels like we are only seeing a piece of the big picture right now. Will Warcry have the equivalent of Rogue Trader, Arena, Commanders, and Elites? I mean, being all new models, Warcry can't poop out Commanders and Elites unless they release new faction models. Arena isn't necessary since they already label the competitive battleplan cards. I know Warcry will be supported, but I'm having difficulties seeing what direction they will go beyond the initial warbands...

More warbands are always possible(I imagine there is plenty of room in each realm for more than one type). But I'm hoping that GW will expand on the ones they have already shown/teased. Extra champions, cultists with different weapons, sorcerers, elite warriors and beasts could all be added to the known bands. As well as more generic beasts and monsters.

After watching the GMG video on how to play Warcry, I'm pretty excited.

I'm so used to doing the "Hit > Wound > Save" mechanic. Going straight to "Wound" really takes away some of the randomness and epic saves that you'd get in 40k and kill team, but this straightforward method has its own unique moments. You can use abilities to do some serious damage to an enemy or outflank them. The rounds only being 3 turns (only going on if you're tied in score) creates a VERY fast paced game where each turn really matters. I could see a whole campaign being complete in about a weekend.

The concerning part is that you really need to stretch a bit to make full 1000 point teams with the warbands out of the box. I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of incentive to get the chaos beasts or additional warbands to fill out the rest of your teams and give you the options you need. That means that if I wanted to get into Cypher Lords, I'd likely need two boxes of them, and if I wanted the chaos beasts for more options, I'd need the starter box as well. That's 270 USD for a skirmish game. :/

GMG review pretty much confirms my concerns about this game, not enough going on under the hood to hold my interest mechanically, an easy pass for me. Frustrating when you see a game with models you like but gameplay mechanics you don't care for.... such is the case for how I feel about most GW games these days unfortunately.

Replayability does appear extremely limited, both as far as core gameplay and campaigns go. There may have been talk about how the flexible campaign system gets and keeps people involved, but that has little value if people get bored after three games.

GoatboyBeta wrote:

More warbands are always possible(I imagine there is plenty of room in each realm for more than one type). But I'm hoping that GW will expand on the ones they have already shown/teased. Extra champions, cultists with different weapons, sorcerers, elite warriors and beasts could all be added to the known bands. As well as more generic beasts and monsters.

I mean, yeah, but we have no clue how the game will expand while pinning all of our hopes on the premise that it will. Right now, you can't even expand your Iron Golems without a second starter set (you can use chaos beasts, I guess). So, at launch, you can't even expand your starter armies beyond the 8 characters that exactly make up 1000 pts. I mean, you can expand your Cypher Lords, but you won't have access to any chaos beasts unless you get the starter set anyway!

Personally, I think there's two ways it could go. Actual model customization, which doesn't really exist right now. Or warband customization. If you have access to 30 different models you can put in your army, building your warband becomes something interesting because you can't take all of them, and you don't have to take multiples of ones you don't like. But as it is, you need three $50 warband boxes to fill out a 20 model campaign roster (assuming you can't reuse leader models, you'll only have 2 extra models even with that), and you'll have three of everything (or even 9 of one or two kinds). That's kind of, extremely boring and too expensive for what you get.

So, I'm sort of here wondering at what point that is going to change. The game only has legs if there are legitimate options, and right now there's no options for building models and extremely limited (and expensive) options for building warbands. So what is the direction that this game is going to go? How long will Iron Golems be limited to only 8 different models? The Daughters of Khaine card pack has 14 different model profiles, at least.

The battleplan cards are great though. The mausoleum has 36 terrain cards, which means 36 different layouts, while the starter set has 36 terrain cards - that's 72 different terrain layouts that you can play your 8 different models on!

 nels1031 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Anyone else think Iron Golems seem pretty strong for AoS? Might be looking to them as an ally choice.

Haven’t checked out Warscrolls yet, but I heard the same on one of FB AoS pages. Edit: Checked them out, not seeing it. What am I missing that makes them pretty strong?

Furies = Flying Skinks?

Untamed Beasts get a rend missile attack and are highly mobile, having the run/charge ability. Hmmm...

70 points for a 10-wound 4+ save unit that re-rolls saves if they didn't move that turn (so they will always be re-rolling in the opponent's turn). Sure they aren't dealing much damage but that is a really tanky option to hold objectives, and having that little shooting attack is nice. But there's another thing, you can take them in units of 32... So for 280 points you have 40 wounds of rerollable 4+ save that runs to the middle of the board and shouts "hope you have rend!"

Untamed beasts and cypher lords are really useful as well, but I wouldn't consider running more than min-sized units as skirmish/support.

anab0lic wrote:
GMG review pretty much confirms my concerns about this game, not enough going on under the hood to hold my interest mechanically, an easy pass for me. Frustrating when you see a game with models you like but gameplay mechanics you don't care for.... such is the case for how I feel about most GW games these days unfortunately.

There was a live "talk about" with Owen and Ash from GMG and while praising the pre-game mission generator they confirmed my initial impression that it is a very, very light and straightforward game.

Yes, it is cleaned up, and yes over the course of the game the +-1 modifiers to the wound roll stack up, but …. it just feels to me very underwhelming.

The game is pretty short and brutal - you get on the board and you get straight into the fight - with 3 turns only there just isn't enough game time. This may be mission specific though...

The combination of short game time, being light on abilities and possible model actions is somewhat of a let down. To be honest I build up my expectations a litle too much even though I read the leaked rules. It seemed to me that was a real polished gem somewhere in these slick, clean rules.

Kill team as simple as a game as it is is still a richer experience...

Still the box is IMO well worth it for all the terrain and miniatures alone.

anab0lic wrote:
GMG review pretty much confirms my concerns about this game, not enough going on under the hood to hold my interest mechanically, an easy pass for me. Frustrating when you see a game with models you like but gameplay mechanics you don't care for.... such is the case for how I feel about most GW games these days unfortunately.

Mechanically, most skirmish games (heck, most miniature games) boil down to move + attack. I don't think the design space for the game mechanics is particularly limited, but that the problem is, these are the basic foundation troops that both armies need to have. You've got a leader, a big guy, a fast guy, and your basic infantry. There's nothing innately interesting in basic troops and they are generally going to play the same. With some unique characters or unit types for these factions, it'll open up in a grand way.

I think they are somewhat limited by how the special abilities are global rather than unique to the model (this reeks of a localization shortcut). They can play with it a bit by releasing new ability cards and having models with multiple runemarks, but I think skipping out on things like keywords, unique abilities, and character text (maybe on the backs of the cards), it's going to make it difficult to make the individual models too unique.

I prefer starting simple, it leaves room for them to add more mechanics later based on feedback. Stuffing it full of mechanics early on doesn't leave that space.

Also remember that if this is trying to be the AoS Killteam game then simple is what it wants to be. Because one of its core target market is newbies totally new to wargames and on limited budget.

For the cost of 1 box of models and the tools to get them together they can get started at any local club. A bit more and they can buy their own rule book etc...

It's not really tying to be the next Necromunda nor Infinity; those are different products for a different target market segment. That said there's room to expand Warcry from its basic starting point; to build in new mechanics and ideas and concepts to the game and I'm sure GW will do that. They want to build it into the game that naturally takes a person to say, around 500 points of models total- then lead them into AoS etc...


Start with basic troops - add in more rules for wild beasts - add in leaders - add in cavalry etc.....

 Overread wrote:
They want to build it into the game that naturally takes a person to say, around 500 points of models total- then lead them into AoS etc...

But does that work when these warbands are not even in AoS proper? They are a single unit that doesn't even have points yet, and the way you would expand into Warcry is different than how you would expand into AoS. A second Iron Golems box makes sense to Warcry, where it doubles your options, but it only doubles your unit size in AoS.

I don't think this is a gateway into AoS. I think Skirmish is that. There's a straight line from Skirmish -> Meeting Engagements -> AoS. I think they only included a few factions from AoS in Warcry because they knew people would ask for it, not because the game is about that.

The warbands have AoS warscrolls and points in their download section on the site so they are proper AoS games.


And yes Meeting Engagements are AoS, its just AoS at a regular 1K point level. It's the natural springboard next stage after Warcry

Too bad they're not battleline.

I want my Snake Bois.

 Crimson wrote:
Too bad they're not battleline.

Agreed, hopefully it might be something we see in an updated Battletome for Slaves. If not Battleline for the "core" army then perhaps there will be an army with some restrictions that makes them battleline. I can well see GW splitting Slaves into 2 or even 3 divisions.

All Slaves
Chaos Warrior Slaves only - so no marauders or cultists or warbands
Entry level - ergo no chaos warriors or chaos knights, but more cultists and marauders.

It seems to me, having not played yet, that a significant part of faction uniqueness is the triggered abilities. Yet, one is only getting to use those abilities (which mainly affect individuals) no more than 3 times per turn. And this quantity seems unlikely due to odds, though the wild dice helps. Perhaps allowing each player a once per turn, free access to the basic double of their faction (first line) would help. Too early for house rules, but perhaps this is a simple enough change.

Yeah I don’t see the models as a gateway into AoS.

The game yes, and you could then bring them over, as yes they have rules. But are they really going to be any good in AoS, and it’s hardly going to be the core forming of an army, even if they were battleline..


Anyway, I just want to see models for the last three warbands!

Yeah, I don't know. To me, warband creation and the personalization therein is a huge part of Skirmish gaming. Even if a warband has a certain troop profile that is going to be in the warband more than once, I like being able to really determine what they are going to be armed with from a selection of at least 2-3 worthwhile weapon choices, even if those are just something like: Single weapon/shield, two weapons, great weapon.

I know of several indie fantasy skirmish games (a couple that are totally free!) out there where nearly every model that is going to show up in a warband might have several different equipment options they can take, from ranged weapons vs. melee weapons, different types of ranged or melee weapons, armor quality, or even mounts to ride. Unfortunately those types of games are going away, especially in the case of GW stuff, because of the severe monopose nature of modern plastic models. Mordheim was great because it came out in an era with extremely modular models being the norm, even for basic troop kits.

Now, even those games will usually fall prey to the lack of options present in a skirmish game (usually it's the big 4 of: move normally, or move and shoot, run double speed but do nothing else, or charge into close combat). It's usually a truly special game where a model can do one of 5-6 different things during their activation, like do things to modify their defense at the cost of speed, hit harder in melee at the cost of lowering their defense, etc.

Leader look cool but had boring rule, basically a walking critical beatstick....just like the leader of Iron Golem, Untamed Beast, and Splintered Fang. At least Cypher Lords can teleport dudes, and Necromancer can spit fireball.


I'm surprised how hard it is to find picture like this. Guess no one want to share when they paid for tickets...

Mordheim was great because it came out in an era with extremely modular models being the norm, even for basic troop kits.

Mordheim was also an absolute mess as far as balancing goes, all you had to do was to field a swarm of naked dudes with slingshots and let the statistics work for you.

The game yes, and you could then bring them over, as yes they have rules. But are they really going to be any good in AoS, and it’s hardly going to be the core forming of an army, even if they were battleline.

I think it's less of "this unit is core of the army, I should start playing AoS" and more "well, I already have these models, why not try AoS". It might sound silly, but it works even with single models. "yes, starting 40k will cost me literal arm and a leg, but i got this single marine free, it'd be a pity to let it go to waste".
Humans are very easily manipulated when it comes to collecting.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Yeah, I don't know. To me, warband creation and the personalization therein is a huge part of Skirmish gaming. Even if a warband has a certain troop profile that is going to be in the warband more than once, I like being able to really determine what they are going to be armed with from a selection of at least 2-3 worthwhile weapon choices, even if those are just something like: Single weapon/shield, two weapons, great weapon.

I know of several indie fantasy skirmish games (a couple that are totally free!) out there where nearly every model that is going to show up in a warband might have several different equipment options they can take, from ranged weapons vs. melee weapons, different types of ranged or melee weapons, armor quality, or even mounts to ride. Unfortunately those types of games are going away, especially in the case of GW stuff, because of the severe monopose nature of modern plastic models. Mordheim was great because it came out in an era with extremely modular models being the norm, even for basic troop kits.

Now, even those games will usually fall prey to the lack of options present in a skirmish game (usually it's the big 4 of: move normally, or move and shoot, run double speed but do nothing else, or charge into close combat). It's usually a truly special game where a model can do one of 5-6 different things during their activation, like do things to modify their defense at the cost of speed, hit harder in melee at the cost of lowering their defense, etc.

I’d disagree that those types of games are going away. The new Necromunda has everything you mentioned (well, no mounts) and much, much more. It also happens to be my favourite game ever! Doesn’t seem like Warcry is even trying to appeal to that audience though.

Specialist Game team and the fight against GW's monopose, mono option epidemic . They're at their production limit right now so you'd probably won't see something like Mordheim for a very very long time.

Chopstick wrote:



I'm surprised how hard it is to find picture like this. Guess no one want to share when they paid for tickets...

It's most likely that many who do take photos never bother to get around to uploading them; whilst those who do likely don't tag and keyword them or run big blogs about wargaming. So Google doesn't rank or list them high enough to find easily. Plus if you're there in the moment you sort of tend to just focus on enjoying your time rather than snapping photos of everything and anything you can see.

anab0lic wrote:
GMG review pretty much confirms my concerns about this game, not enough going on under the hood to hold my interest mechanically, an easy pass for me. Frustrating when you see a game with models you like but gameplay mechanics you don't care for.... such is the case for how I feel about most GW games these days unfortunately.

This.

The models, terrain, and game board look lovely, however the mechanics seem absolutely half finished and rushed, a 'yeah that'll do feeling'. I wonder if the mechanics feel this way due to GW's insane release schedule? Every week we are getting new things, that level of production is going to bite into play testing in a big way.

I was put off Warcry by the price,€40 for 8 man sized plastic models, is quite frankly taking the urine. Seeing how weak the game play is makes it all the easier to forget about this one. I suspect it will sell well, as GW has cultivated a very loyal fan base.

I hope we see some of the model designs for this come over to Warhammer Underworlds, as that is a game where I think GW show off their creative ideas when it comes to game mechanics. Also the models may not be customizable, but the game play of a warband can be radically altered by the cards being changed. So offers a lot of replayabilty.

Cronch wrote:

Mordheim was great because it came out in an era with extremely modular models being the norm, even for basic troop kits.

Mordheim was also an absolute mess as far as balancing goes, all you had to do was to field a swarm of naked dudes with slingshots and let the statistics work for you.

And yet it's still popular 20 years after the original release. I suspect Warcry will be dead a few months after the last expansion.
Players have created their own solutions to the specific gameplay issues that Mordheim has. The fact that this to an extent is genuinely necessary may not be a good sign, the fact that people are passionate enough about it do so is. The idea that a game with some clear flaws is still the gold standard two decades later seems ridiculous, but it just so happens they got so many other things right. Cinematic moments like diving charges, meaningful dice rolls that can save or kill a character in one go, rare events in post-game exploration, meaningful level-ups and injuries. And all of that happens to a small group of figures you selected and armed is a specific way, a unique warband with a history that started when you looked through the catalogue or your bits box, and ended when you rolled a few too many 1s on the injury tables after one game.

I know this largely boils down to what people are looking for in a game. Simple versus complex (though I would hardly put Mordheim in the latter, but there certainly is more going on), perfectly balanced versus more versatile or random. The second argument often resolves around people championing player skill. But in order for a game to be interesting in that sense, there has to be enough strategy and choice involved. And for those who are more attracted to unlikely, narrative-driving events, Warcry is even more severely lacking.

Thing is, I would love to like it. I would be incredibly excited for a successor to Mordheim, something equally enticing and evocative. One of my favourite aspects of skirmish games is the ability to collect just a small range of figures that truly are your warband, by how you build them, painted them, and what happened to them along the way. Not only does Warcry clearly not offer that, it's a shame to see a company trying to trademark "the hobby" so utterly fail in grasping what the hobby involves. Terrain that has to be build and set-up in a very specific way, miniatures with a near-complete lack of customization both as physical models and in gameplay, and a campaign system equally limited in options.

It's not difficult to come up with restrictions to create a more level playing field if that's what you're mostly looking for in a game. But fewer people are going to come up with extra options to make the game interesting in the first place. Instead, people are already waiting for the next official expansion by GW to hopefully add new things. I doubt those will solve the issues inherent in the system, and I am unsure if GW currently has the capacity or willingness to create something with a lasting appeal. Better to have customers come back every few months for a new expansion, and every few years for a new edition or a new game?

I am very confident that specialist games will get round to doing Mordheim eventually. I think an autumn 2021 release is likely. Bloodbowl will have about 20 teams by then and Necromunda will have about a dozen gangs. The Warcry release provides the multilayer plastic terrain that is needed. The remit of specialist games is to provide the kind of crunchy, mechanics , and customisation heavy games that the older gamer prefers.
Warcry has probably been kept deliberately simple in order to contrast with this.
Personally I’m in two minds. I would have liked a little more complexity but it looks like an ideal entry point into the hobby for my children, while giving me some cool stuff to paint.

I completely agree with Coenus Scaldingus.
One thing that many of us like about Mordheim is that it's not just a game with fancy tokens, like so many GW games seem to be this day. Underworlds, as good as it is, is exactly that.
It's about creating a small band of guys, with some personality, and then fighting battles with them. Coming up with a theme, converting your minis, and then watch them grow/die/get injured over the course of the campaign is the driving force. The actual games are, to me, secondary to the postgame and warband advancement. They're the thing that makes your warband evolve, they're a mean to an end. It's the opposite of most GW games, where listbuilding is the mean to the end (the actual game).

I think that's the main reason why many people don't mind Mordheim's flawed game mechanics, because the crux of the game resides in the setting and campaign system, which are absolutely amazing. And many rules are also great for narrative aspects, like the diving charges mentioned earlier, or the hiding mechanism (who doesn't like to hide their poison-weilding skavens?).
Warcry is very much in the "game with nice-looking tokens" category. There's nothing wrong with it, but that's why no matter how good the in-game rules might be, some people will not be interested, as that's not the prime factor for choosing a skirmish game.

Chikout wrote:
I am very confident that specialist games will get round to doing Mordheim eventually. I think an autumn 2021 release is likely. Bloodbowl will have about 20 teams by then and Necromunda will have about a dozen gangs. The Warcry release provides the multilayer plastic terrain that is needed. The remit of specialist games is to provide the kind of crunchy, mechanics , and customisation heavy games that the older gamer prefers.
Warcry has probably been kept deliberately simple in order to contrast with this.
Personally I’m in two minds. I would have liked a little more complexity but it looks like an ideal entry point into the hobby for my children, while giving me some cool stuff to paint.

Even if SG manage to squeeze in another game while maintaining Blood Bowl, Necromunda, AT, AI, BFG production we'd still had to wait for 2,3 year to get the bands back like old days. They don't have big budget or many machine to product the mold like GW.

Or worse, some games will had to go to make way for newer game. I guess by then they could retire Blood Bowl.

The real test is how GW will continue to support games like Bloodbowl and keep them current and popular without big model releases. That's going to be a lot easier though now that they've got lots of social media outputs; but its still going to be interesting to see how they do it.

Then again they've still a lot of AoS armies that can slip into Bloodbowl so there's a while yet.


Also lets not forget that hopefully GW's new factory comes online this year or next and that will expand GW's production considerably, esp for specialist games .