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How do!

So as ever I’m yet to get a game under my belt, and have largely only picked through the rulebook. So my part here isn’t going to be a complete rundown, more “oh I quite like that” changes which have immediately leapt to mind.

First and foremost? No native bonus for Sword & Board so far as I can see. This will dramatically reduce infantry saves in various armies. Not least Dwarfs, who now have a 4+ for Heavy and Shield, not a 3+.

But, somewhat balancing that? It seems armour save modifiers aren’t as common. I’d need a deeper dive to properly consider it. But I do notice things like Great Weapons don’t have a native, Strength based modifier, instead getting the Magic Six bonus here and there.

Also interesting to me is rank bonus is now better distributed across unit types, and few if any get a bonus of +3 for ranks (Horde does though) |. How that might impact army design remains to be seen for me, but I do like that Ogres and other, similar sized units only need a frontage of 3. That’s super welcome, and I think good for the game.

Cannons are also somewhat less deadly. They’ll still hurt a lot, but capping out at D3+1 wounds for the Great Cannon, they’re just not going to be one-shotting big scary Dragons.

And I think Bolt Throwers have a bit of a glow up. Because unless I’ve read it wrong, it causes a number of wound rolls equal to the depth (or width, depending on your angle of fire) of the unit. The Strength modifier remains, but the Bolt is no longer stopped as soon as it fails to wound. Again this is the sort of change where I suspect I’ve missed something. But if I’ve read it right, that’s a nice wee bonus.

Chariots are also less nimble. They’re still very nimble compared to Cavalry and Infantry, just not as hand-brake-turns as they once were. Which I like.

What wee tweaks and changes have you noticed? Good, bad or meh.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

And I think Bolt Throwers have a bit of a glow up. Because unless I’ve read it wrong, it causes a number of wound rolls equal to the depth (or width, depending on your angle of fire) of the unit. The Strength modifier remains, but the Bolt is no longer stopped as soon as it fails to wound. Again this is the sort of change where I suspect I’ve missed something. But if I’ve read it right, that’s a nice wee bonus.

I've not dived into the rulebook yet but that's how miniwargaming have been playing them in their bat reps.

In their Dark Elves vs Vampire Counts game they were also claiming that when a unit flees from combat you move the fleeing unit first and the unit is only destroyed if the pursuing unit can actually make it to their position, so if the pursuer is blocked by other units or terrain the fleeing unit can get away even if they roll less for the distance. I quick skim of the follow up and pursuit rules seems to indicate they are correct and if so that is a pretty major change. It also opens up some interesting options for placing units behind combats to block pursuits if things go south.

I assume you mean positive changes?

No lapping around
Combined warmachine profiles
Combined ridden monster profiles
Nuanced break test results
Things die SLOW so you actually have time to strategize and play the mission
Some surprising allowances for both modern and vintage models (Greater Daemons, Chrofs...)
Initiative matters
Leadership matters
Good balance of melee weapon types

Can be good, bad or meh changes.

Another good one? Large Target. No more +1 to hit me, and in return I can only see (and so with Fly, charge) over intervening Units, not Terrain,

One I think is really untidy is the unit's max rank bonus being something you have to calculate every time from multiple abilities buried in its list of USRs.

I noticed this in regards to Skaven, but I think there are a couple other units that are similar.
The Screaming Bell (and Plague Furnace) are now heavy chariots, so they can't join units of infantry.
To be Dragged Along, they need to be parked next to an infantry unit, not stuck in the middle.
I don't know how much that's going to affect play, but aesthetically it's a lot different.

 SgtEeveell wrote:
I noticed this in regards to Skaven, but I think there are a couple other units that are similar.
The Screaming Bell (and Plague Furnace) are now heavy chariots, so they can't join units of infantry.
To be Dragged Along, they need to be parked next to an infantry unit, not stuck in the middle.
I don't know how much that's going to affect play, but aesthetically it's a lot different.

The hidden cost of switching wagons to 60mm width so they would rank up with 20mm infantry, then switching the infantry to 25mm

The break tests is the big one.

If you roll under your Ld (whatever the combat result is) you are not fleeing (under your enemy has double your Unit Strength). That is a massive change from any older edition.

It avoids the old Herohammer scene of a character on a dragon charging in front of any unit and making it flee and after that destroy the enemy battle line from the flank or rear, but makes maneuver pointless to a certain extent: if you get your flank charge and end winning the combat with a +10 modifier, it doesn't matter that much. If your enemy passes the Ld test it will retreat 1D6" and regroup after that (and if you pursuit it and catch them, you'll just get a new charge, you won't destroy it).

I already played my first game of Old World. Unit restrictions are a big thing i'm not too particularly thrilled about. As skaven you have hard limits on stormvermin (1 per 1,000 pts and they're not even that good) whereas tomb kings can have a bunch of chariots and only have to take minimum skeleton units as core.

Poisoned shooting is still good as is theoretically anything that doesn't use BS to hit. Queen Khalida is gone surprisingly so no more poisoned skeleton archer shooting but they still always hit on unmodified BS. It's not super broken like full queen khalida archer shooting but is frustrating you can't do something about making yourself harder to hit against it.

Magic has been toned down and all the high level spells are gone as are 6 dicing a spell. Most magic is taken from the Big rule book except as an alternative to signature spells.

The did avoid hero-hammer by preventing how many heroes can go to the front of any combat. I think to a limit of more or less command units in a unit or how many models are left in the unit so i just never bothered using more than one model.

Heroes don't have to be in units and can't just be sniped out since you can't aim at them unless they're outside of 3" from friendly units (i think with 5 unit strength or a full rank per unit type).

Maybe most of my dice were cursed that game (except my poisoned shooting) but i was still horribly unimpressed with doom flayers due to 2 wounds at toughness 3. I imagine warpfire throwers would be better but there was never a time we didn't roll a misfire so my opponent literally threw our artillery dice in the trash and got a new one. Same goes for my ratling gun which never rolled less than one misifre per 2 artillery dice rolls (but never both rolls) meaning it always shot very little and very poorly.

Overall i'd say my skaven under-performed fairly hard but i always did fairly badly in 8th ed. Also rat swarms are absurdly points heavy and cost about 100 pts per minimum unit of 3 now which is ludicrous. Giant rats are still a thing and still effective. Skaven slaves are entirely gone as a unit which is a huge shame as i'd probably take them over poisoned wind mortars still being in despite the model currently not existing.

Most multi wound damage is gone or at least in the case for skaven for some odd reason. Cannons now do d3 instead of d6 damage. Monsters seem harder to kill outside of poisoned attacks.

A few potentially really potent things are in still like the fellblade (very slightly nerfed to d3 wounds per wound but goes through like i think all saves now), brass orb (heavily nerfed and only available in melee vs a single model in melee but a potential one hit murder of any monster) and death globes which are an initiative check per wound rather than 4+ to wound.

--------

Anyway those are my initial thoughts on Old World. I may have other thoughts but i can't think of anything else atm.

Just to clarify, TK can always take chariots *as* their core entirely!

In general, the wording is much more detailed and clear and if something is written out in a special way it can be taken literally

like if a rule say done "before movement" and another rule not allowed "during movement" than it is really that and you can do one before you move but not during the move

also rules that work only in your turn or in any turn are written out

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Poisoned shooting is still good as is theoretically anything that doesn't use BS to hit. Queen Khalida is gone surprisingly so no more poisoned skeleton archer shooting but they still always hit on unmodified BS. It's not super broken like full queen khalida archer shooting but is frustrating you can't do something about making yourself harder to hit against it.

Just wanting to point out that while Khalida is gone (though will hopefully return at some point given she is active at this time), Tomb Kings do have a magic item that gives the entire unit Poisonous on all their attacks (melee & shooting)

 Gir Spirit Bane wrote:

Spoiler:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I already played my first game of Old World. Unit restrictions are a big thing i'm not too particularly thrilled about. As skaven you have hard limits on stormvermin (1 per 1,000 pts and they're not even that good) whereas tomb kings can have a bunch of chariots and only have to take minimum skeleton units as core.

Poisoned shooting is still good as is theoretically anything that doesn't use BS to hit. Queen Khalida is gone surprisingly so no more poisoned skeleton archer shooting but they still always hit on unmodified BS. It's not super broken like full queen khalida archer shooting but is frustrating you can't do something about making yourself harder to hit against it.

Magic has been toned down and all the high level spells are gone as are 6 dicing a spell. Most magic is taken from the Big rule book except as an alternative to signature spells.

The did avoid hero-hammer by preventing how many heroes can go to the front of any combat. I think to a limit of more or less command units in a unit or how many models are left in the unit so i just never bothered using more than one model.

Heroes don't have to be in units and can't just be sniped out since you can't aim at them unless they're outside of 3" from friendly units (i think with 5 unit strength or a full rank per unit type).

Maybe most of my dice were cursed that game (except my poisoned shooting) but i was still horribly unimpressed with doom flayers due to 2 wounds at toughness 3. I imagine warpfire throwers would be better but there was never a time we didn't roll a misfire so my opponent literally threw our artillery dice in the trash and got a new one. Same goes for my ratling gun which never rolled less than one misifre per 2 artillery dice rolls (but never both rolls) meaning it always shot very little and very poorly.

Overall i'd say my skaven under-performed fairly hard but i always did fairly badly in 8th ed. Also rat swarms are absurdly points heavy and cost about 100 pts per minimum unit of 3 now which is ludicrous. Giant rats are still a thing and still effective. Skaven slaves are entirely gone as a unit which is a huge shame as i'd probably take them over poisoned wind mortars still being in despite the model currently not existing.

Most multi wound damage is gone or at least in the case for skaven for some odd reason. Cannons now do d3 instead of d6 damage. Monsters seem harder to kill outside of poisoned attacks.

A few potentially really potent things are in still like the fellblade (very slightly nerfed to d3 wounds per wound but goes through like i think all saves now), brass orb (heavily nerfed and only available in melee vs a single model in melee but a potential one hit murder of any monster) and death globes which are an initiative check per wound rather than 4+ to wound.

--------

Anyway those are my initial thoughts on Old World. I may have other thoughts but i can't think of anything else atm.

Just to clarify, TK can always take chariots *as* their core entirely!

Nope, they have a 1+ requirement on warriors or archers they have to fulfill, so they can't bypass taking infantry. The Royal Host army of infamy allows them to bypass that requirement IIRC, but the grand army list does not.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Gir Spirit Bane wrote:

Spoiler:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I already played my first game of Old World. Unit restrictions are a big thing i'm not too particularly thrilled about. As skaven you have hard limits on stormvermin (1 per 1,000 pts and they're not even that good) whereas tomb kings can have a bunch of chariots and only have to take minimum skeleton units as core.

Poisoned shooting is still good as is theoretically anything that doesn't use BS to hit. Queen Khalida is gone surprisingly so no more poisoned skeleton archer shooting but they still always hit on unmodified BS. It's not super broken like full queen khalida archer shooting but is frustrating you can't do something about making yourself harder to hit against it.

Magic has been toned down and all the high level spells are gone as are 6 dicing a spell. Most magic is taken from the Big rule book except as an alternative to signature spells.

The did avoid hero-hammer by preventing how many heroes can go to the front of any combat. I think to a limit of more or less command units in a unit or how many models are left in the unit so i just never bothered using more than one model.

Heroes don't have to be in units and can't just be sniped out since you can't aim at them unless they're outside of 3" from friendly units (i think with 5 unit strength or a full rank per unit type).

Maybe most of my dice were cursed that game (except my poisoned shooting) but i was still horribly unimpressed with doom flayers due to 2 wounds at toughness 3. I imagine warpfire throwers would be better but there was never a time we didn't roll a misfire so my opponent literally threw our artillery dice in the trash and got a new one. Same goes for my ratling gun which never rolled less than one misifre per 2 artillery dice rolls (but never both rolls) meaning it always shot very little and very poorly.

Overall i'd say my skaven under-performed fairly hard but i always did fairly badly in 8th ed. Also rat swarms are absurdly points heavy and cost about 100 pts per minimum unit of 3 now which is ludicrous. Giant rats are still a thing and still effective. Skaven slaves are entirely gone as a unit which is a huge shame as i'd probably take them over poisoned wind mortars still being in despite the model currently not existing.

Most multi wound damage is gone or at least in the case for skaven for some odd reason. Cannons now do d3 instead of d6 damage. Monsters seem harder to kill outside of poisoned attacks.

A few potentially really potent things are in still like the fellblade (very slightly nerfed to d3 wounds per wound but goes through like i think all saves now), brass orb (heavily nerfed and only available in melee vs a single model in melee but a potential one hit murder of any monster) and death globes which are an initiative check per wound rather than 4+ to wound.

--------

Anyway those are my initial thoughts on Old World. I may have other thoughts but i can't think of anything else atm.

Just to clarify, TK can always take chariots *as* their core entirely!

Nope, they have a 1+ requirement on warriors or archers they have to fulfill, so they can't bypass taking infantry. The Royal Host army of infamy allows them to bypass that requirement IIRC, but the grand army list does not.

Taking a single unit of archers to sit on your backline and babysit your mandatory wizard isn't the worst tax in the world for only 50 points. That's only a smidge over the cost of a single chariot. You then get to have all the chariots you want with no restrictions.

As an Empire player, what jumped out at me was the loss of layered defensive and morale buffs on my staties. They used to be a most excellent anvil, swordsmen did. They didn't dish any damage in melee, but they tended to get decent saves and be nigh-unbreakable. I feel like my ability to do that is toast. LD8 from the BSB, hold your ground, shield of faith, bonus banner in one unit... But one less rank bonus, colleges of magic gone, I vaguely recall my Hurticanum doing something for them, and no parry. And on top of that, it feels like the supporting stuff costs more? I used to run 2x40 staties, 30 greatswords, 30-40 shooters, 10 knights, wizardmobile, 2 priests, general, BSB, and 3-4 artillery pieces, maybe a bonus wizard besides the hurricanum, maybe some pistoliers, in a standard list.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
First and foremost? No native bonus for Sword & Board so far as I can see. This will dramatically reduce infantry saves in various armies. Not least Dwarfs, who now have a 4+ for Heavy and Shield, not a 3+.

Cannons are also somewhat less deadly. They’ll still hurt a lot, but capping out at D3+1 wounds for the Great Cannon, they’re just not going to be one-shotting big scary Dragons.

It's true that parry is gone, and that bothered me at first. But the upcharge for spears or halberds is pretty severe. For me, swordsmen remain easily a no-brainer just due to points efficiency and given that melee staties aren't there to kill stuff, they're there to die slowly so something heavier can get in the flank of the enemy unit. If anything, you put halberds on 10-man detachments for supporting charges to claim a flank and hope to disrupt.

Cannons are less deadly, but still the cat's meow. All the batreps I watch, I see stone throwers just scattering off of the big scary monster. I'll take a laser, please! The size of the target makes it hard to fall short. Plus, the black powder misfire table is toned down to match stone throwers.

flamingkillamajig wrote: Monsters seem harder to kill outside of poisoned attacks.

Yes, poison is still super nasty against monsters, but they just seem so fragile to me in general now. 6 T6 wounds and a 5+/5+++ on a necrosphinx? A brace of great cannons will blow that off the table on turn one. Greatswords with an Ulrican priest to give them multiple wounds will shred it even though they need 5s to wound. Multiple wounds might even be overkill.

Afrodactyl wrote:
Taking a single unit of archers to sit on your backline and babysit your mandatory wizard isn't the worst tax in the world for only 50 points. That's only a smidge over the cost of a single chariot. You then get to have all the chariots you want with no restrictions.

But who would want that? Chariot squadrons are only decent on the charge, and only against lightly armored T3 infantry, provided the target unit isn't too large. In protracted melee, they're just awful, and chariot charges just bounce off of anything with decent armor. I'm in love with the idea of chariot hordes and have 117 in my collection, inclunding one TK/TP and Settra, but I can't see myself running more than 3-6 of them in a game.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do!


First and foremost? No native bonus for Sword & Board so far as I can see. This will dramatically reduce infantry saves in various armies. Not least Dwarfs, who now have a 4+ for Heavy and Shield, not a 3+.

A model’s armour value can be improved (to a maximum of 2+) by other equipment carried. For example, a shield improves its bearer’s armour value by 1, meaning that a model wearing light armour and carrying a shield would have an armour value of 5+.

Yes, both quotes say the same thing and MDGrotsnik is right. What's the point of posting that?

Yeah, the observation is that in 7th and 8th (maybe 6th as well?) Hand weapon and Shield granted +2 to your save. Now it’s back to just +1.

Whilst there will be means of increasing a units save (such as spells and that), basic Stunties not saving on a 3+ basic is a life saver.

Ah, my mistake.

8th wasn't +2. Sword and board was a 6+ ward save. So the armor saves are back to where they were, they don't have the extra ward save.

I don’t recall that at all?

It was the old "Parry" rule.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/290823.page#1509590

'Parry
[*]The hand weapon & shield combination grants a 6+ Ward Save in combat to the front only. It provides no benefit if you are attacked in the flank or rear and does not work against impact hits and crush them/destroy them attacks. This replaces the +1 to Armour Save gained by fighting with HW & shield.'

I know a lot of people missed that change at first. It was pretty fun telling people that actually they didn't get an armor save against Greatswords now, but they could take a 6-up ward save.

 Robert Facepalmer wrote:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/290823.page#1509590

'Parry
[*]The hand weapon & shield combination grants a 6+ Ward Save in combat to the front only. It provides no benefit if you are attacked in the flank or rear and does not work against impact hits and crush them/destroy them attacks. This replaces the +1 to Armour Save gained by fighting with HW & shield.'

I know a lot of people missed that change at first. It was pretty fun telling people that actually they didn't get an armor save against Greatswords now, but they could take a 6-up ward save.

That's actually minorly incorrect. In actual 8th (that appears to be a pre-release rumor thread), the shield gave both a +1 Armour Save *and* a 6+ Parry save (when fighting with a hand weapon, being attacked from the front, and not by impact hits or stomp attacks).

Yeah, _just_ +1 and not +2. I seeing a lot of people that are remembering Parry as a +2 to overall armor save and have no memory of it being a Ward.

Huh. Guess I was misremembering, or confusing my editions.

Nice to see some tow threads. Our whole group is experiencing a revival and it's been great. Not as busted as first thought.

Anyway a few I haven't seen mentioned here yet..

Bsb magic standard allowance is in addition to magic item allowance.

Killing blow effects monstrous (cav and infantry) units now. This will cause some uproar but it is a good change from my perspective and experience, to help keep vanilla infantry and cav on more equal footing.

Commanding presence for each character now equal to leadership.

Dispel attempts can miscast.

Skirmishers no longer stubborn in woods.

Stomps can now hit most units types not just infantry.

Lots more but that's enough for now.

 Robert Facepalmer wrote:
Yeah, _just_ +1 and not +2. I seeing a lot of people that are remembering Parry as a +2 to overall armor save and have no memory of it being a Ward.

In 6th and 7th, having a hand weapon and a shield gave you an additional +1 to your save, on top of the +1 from the shield itself. For example, a model armed with a hand weapon and a shield and not wearing any other armor whatsoever would have a 5+ save.

Maybee i am just dumb but in the german rulebook there seems to be no declaration of how many spells a mage can cast, beyond the every spell the mage knows once.

Yes, except if you miscast and get the two last results, you can cast whatever you have once. There is not even the "concentration broke"rule from 8th in which of you failed one you could not keep going.