Total Warhammer 2

[sonson]

Throgg is hilarious. Beat the Campaign with him in the first game. His constant shouting is adorable. Very difficult game though as you have to raid constantly (Norscas income is atrocious) along a very long frontier leaving a very weak underbelly at home.

Plus Side is once you eventually establish your infrastructure you get to field entire armies of steroid imbued trolls, Skinwolves, Firmir, Ice Drakes and War Mammoths and become ragnarok incarnate.

[LexW]

I got Lebron’s swords now, the broken ones, and they are definitely a bit broken. Not like, disastrously, but noticeably OP in specific situations (i.e. where Lebron is fighting a bunch of kinda-weak units close together).

That said, they’re no “Tyrion with powered-up Sword of Khaine”. Dude one-shots some lords.

Hilariously though in my game, my stupid Blood Voyage army, managed to attack and kill Tyrion who had the Sword of Khaine (at minimum power, I think) and then burned down a couple of cities before finally losing it to a garrison. I don’t think anyone has it right now.

[Zephro]

I’m playing an Alarielle campaign now and enjoying it plenty. I managed to confederate Alith Anar who is running a guerrilla campaign for me in Naggaroth. Only snag so far was Hellebron’s fucking raiding/blood drinking party took the Blighted isle and burnt the Shrine of Kaine to the ground, which Chrace then Lothern swallowed up. I’ve reached the annoying point in an HE playthrough where I am biggest but Lothern and Ellyrion are too big to agree to a confederation, unless they get a bloody nose in a war. Playing as Alarielle I’m not starting a civil war. Grrrr.

Disappointed to find I can’t get her a giant beetle, even if it is an End Times model:

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/920x950/99120204015_AlarielleEverqueen01.jpg

[LexW]

I thought it was AoS not Endtimes?

It is 150 percent awesome either way.

[Zephro]

Ah you’e right and its Alarielle + Ariel + Isha in weird dryad wood elves no longer really exist mode. Which booooooooo! But yeah the model is fucking awesome so they should have just chucked the beetle in for laughs.

[Zephro]

So I’m coming toward the end of a Long Campaign as Alarielle in Mortal Empires, which is my first Mortal Empires run. I’m not sure if I should have gotten involved in the Old World a bit earlier. Basically I went super roleplay and never started a war in Ulthuan (I did finish a couple) and focused all my attention on battering the Dark Elves and invading Naggaroth. It kept getting delayed by the Servants of Chaos fleet rocking up and smashing everything in the warzone, e.g. the fleet kept turning up in the water between Ulthuan and Naggaroth. There were basically 3 of those events, the last of which coincided with me prepping a full scale invasion of the Old World.

Anyway the Empire fell to the first chaos invasion, which actually allied with the Vampire Counts which rolled across the Empire and Bretonnia. The Orcs completely knackered the dwarfs. So when I tentatively sent a single stack expeditionary force to try and save Bretonnia everything was basically on fire and the Vampire Counts had absorbed the entire empire. Which made eventually getting up to where Archaeon was setting everything on fire a massive pain due to vampiric corruption attrition.

So I’m now waiting to see which alliances fall apart as peace descends to finish up. Hopefully the Wood Elves side with me and not the vampire counts. There is a single province of humans left in Tilea. The Dwarves are just the very far south ones surrounded by Lizardmen. The Old World is just Orcs, Vampires and Wood elves.

I do wish they’d rename the old factions to something more flavourful.
Warriors of Chaos = Everchosen
Wood Elves = Athel Loren
Dwarves = Karaz a Karak

Also that the Empire starts out as Reikland and like EU4 there’s an event to form into the Empire, which is accessible to any of the Elector Counts.

Oh and I realised another thing missing for TW3, Nagash. They’re doing the End Times aren’t they… that sounds bad to me.

[mrpier]

Yeah, there’s lots of speculation about what will be included in TWW3. Safe bets seem to be Ogres, Chaos Dwarves, and Daemons of Chaos, with the map expanding to the east (for the ME map at least), no hint of Nagash there, although maybe there will be room for Neferata in the Silver Pinnacle and some shenanigans from her.

The Empire and Dwarfs never seems to do well in my campaigns anymore, unless I help them out in some way. In my Ungrim campaign I made a point to exterminate the northern orc tribes and liberate the two Dwarf holds in the silver road, this seems to have been enough to take some of the pressure off the dwarfs so they actually managed to expand into the wasteland a bit.

[sonson]

There’s a mod that renames all the factions to Lore friendly. Can’t remember it but it’s easy enough to find.

One thing I really like about the ME campaign is how unpredictable it tends to be. But what seems to be an objective truth at this point is that if you don’t help the Empire then it’s fucked. They never confederate fast enough and without that or the repeated miraculous intervention that in the Lore saves then from their essentially shitty position then it’s elementary that they just get run over by one of the dozens of less vulnerable surrounding factions.

The problem with the Empire is that it is, by design, too big, as a means of facilitating tabletop encounters with any of the other races. But in a strategy game it’s the equivalent of controlling Rome circa 400 AD. Everywhere is porous, infrastructure is shit, you can’t keep everything, you need to play very strategically and often invade just to sack rather than to conquer. I found after a certain point as the Empire the bigger you get the harder it is which is the opposite to most factions. The AI is very good at confederating and rolling over things. Not so good at doubling down and reinforcing though.

I also feel the “good” factions are unreasonably dour towards Empure. I’m open to the sandbox aspects of it but Wood Elves declaring war on the Empire when there’s Chaos and Dark Elves around dosent sit right. I’m not feeling dwarves declaring war on humans either, not on a national scale at any rate. When you’re essentially the fulcrum against any attempt to prevent Chaos Armageddon, you should have pals from the elder races far more readily.

Even playing them myself I found it essentially futile to try and unite everything. I didn’t go any further North than Talabecland so that I could concentrate my defense around one point. Didn’t go further east either. Ostland and Stirland are massive and open to invasions from every direction but West, and very hard to control with either settlements or army areas of control. No point.

[Zephro]

It could do with starting with some more interesting HRE style mechanics. So instead of all the atomised bits being picked off they can form a coalition against outsiders.

Then again interesting campaign mechanics might as well ask for the moon on a stick.

I’ll look up the mod but some actual cool campaign mechanics are kinda needed.

[sonson]

There’s a mod for the first one that essentially gives you quests from the respective Electors to woo them. Dunno if it’s in 2. There were some interesting regional recruitment mods but I don’t think they’re supported any more.

I think the game in general has great mechanics per race, just not for the Empire. Fundamentally they’re treated as a vanilla faction but they’re not remotely normal. And given that you’re the anvil on which orc, vampire and Chaos hammers fall (and not infrequently every other race at points), in respect to not just armies but corruption and agents as well, they’re always going to be the hardest to win with I think, because they get no mechanical help to assist with that reality. The strength of their armies mitigates it somewhat but even then they require entire armies and combined arms even late game at a point where many of your natural opponents can field ten monsters that will smash through most things alone.

So I guess they’re quite “realistic” but if the Lore had a realistic Empire it wouldn’t exist in the first place. There needs to be more in the way of religion as a power I think. That’s basically what holds the Empire together and it’s barely represented in TW.

[Zephro]

I was thinking something a bit more extensive than missions. E.g. the Empire exists as a loose coalition with the Emperor at it’s head from turn 1. Just it has low centralisation or low authority or something, then there’s elections and a separate Imperial Army etc. So there’s a campaign game to pull it into a centralised system to fight off all the external threats. Or at least during an emergency, which is how the fluff works. The elector counts tend to stop bickering when a Von Carstein is rampaging through the place.

Honestly the HE need it as well for fluff, but they’d end up stupid overpowered. Seriously which High Elf prince(ss) is going to declare war on the Everqueen while there’s a war going on with Malekith? Oh to go with that they need to change the voice overs for the High Elf factions “what do you want with the Phoenix Throne?” I’m the fucking Evequeen, own Lothern and the court you numpty, you just have Chrace so don’t talk to me like that!

Basically everything ends up conforming to a TW blob system.

It’s like Rome 1 had a very ahistoric way of doing Rome, the different factions being independent. But it had a more organic civil war because of it. Then R2 it’s just “here’s an event and I’m dumping loads of armies on your doorstep from nowhere”. Everything is too stable.

[mrpier]

Hmm, never found the empire especially hard to play in the campaign (I’m just playiing on normal/normal though). You can get a really good economy going decently fast (Marienburg). I had 6+ full stacks when the chaos invasion started last time I played them.

[sonson]

Normal is easy with anyone though. I don’t mean that in offence, if you enjoy it it’s the right setting! But it’s not hard at all.

[Zephro]

Yeah I’m not fussed about difficulty, partly as TW games habitually scale difficulty with arbitrariness. Just some of the playthroughs being a bit more fluffy and throwing the AI a bone in my playthroughs as someone else. I mean difficulty in TW is a measure of how big the random stack that’s going to appear on your doorstep is.

[sonson]

Forgive me being off topic but joined the dark side and painted my first AOS model yesterday.

Say what you like about the setting and the system, the models are outstanding. The narrative pose and stoic dynamism in this humble Sigmar Boy (they also have girls in their ranks, and better ethnic representation, yay!) was just a joy to work with when painting.

I have quite the collection of models from 5th and 6th edition and while their charisma is undeniable the dimensions (hands in particular) are frequently way off and the poses stiff. Whereas I have to admit that most of the new stuff is uniformly excellent in respect to its proportional accuracy, body language and thematic intent. I think it permits for more subtle, “historical” paintjobs than was the case with many of the older models which seemed to require that horrible dayglo bold highlighting that GW exhibit so much.

The new NightHaunt faction is like a Dark Souls wet dream:

Faction Focus: Nighthaunt - Warhammer Community

The new edition is out a week Saturday so I think I might take the plunge. It feels like it’s become its own thing at this point rather than a bastard hybrid of something from a completely different era.

[Zephro]

Looking very good. The new models are amazing, the poses they can get out of them are so more dynamic. Though tend to create annoyingly hard to paint spots and I never got the hang of painting before gluing. Tried the AoS rules yet? I hear they’re excellent but have never seen a faction that grabbed me. As they all seem to take a single unit/idea from a faction and turbo charge it. I think I was quite taken by the chaotic mix of old warhammer.

Though I know people who’ve started 8th Edition 40K and I should be able to form up some Imperial Agents by randomly splatting a load of models I like/have together and just claiming it’s an army.

Oh there’s a thread: Miniatures Gaming (GW + Others)
Though i’ve not updated it in a while as I didn’t do any painting for 6 months.

EDIT: Also after 20 years I finally decided on a colour scheme for the 30 or so original Sisters of Battle I bought back in '97. Which is probably quite fast going for me. Just in time for them to announce plastic Sisters:

[sonson]

The rules seem very exciting but also a bit exhausting. I think it’s great that they’re so emphatic and characterful but they also seem quite reminiscent of something like Hearthstone in that tactics tend to be built around a few race mechanics designed to cause a collateral number of dice rolls to win, over general manoeuvre and combat strategy. I didnt like that when it cropped up in Warhammer either, I would prefer something more orthodox with sparse but powerful intervention mechanics I think. I also don’t have the mind to put those game ending on turn 2 synergies together. Or the desire to end the game on turn 2 for anyone.

BUT people seem to love it, especially for its narrative value. I think matched play probably would work out as the power gaming I noted above, but if you’ve got all these balanced scenarios I can see a handful of Sigmarines taking on a regiment of daemons etc as being great fun. It seems like it could deliver in terms of creating a sense of “epic” in a way that was never truly believable in Warhammer.

Warmaster on the other hand was something else in terms of delivering epic spectacle and it still makes me furious that it’s dead.

[arathain]

Can I get some quick advice? I’m a fairly inexperienced player overall. I want to get a Lizardman Mortal Empires campaign up and running. There is a Norse settlement to my east, and getting rid of it seems like a solid plan. They have an army that is almost all horse archers (Marauders, if I have the name right. Those units counter my early army solidly. They don’t much like Skink javelins, but those run out fast, and in the meantime they wear down my Saurus infantry by sheer weight of fire.

Is there a unit I should be going for to deal with them? Do I just need to wait until I can hit them with overwhelming numbers or a solid tech advantage?

[mrpier]

Which difficulty are you on? You should be able to do, turn 1 Kill the skeggi army, retreat back to Hexoatl, recruit three skinks, turn 2 move towards skeggi, turn 3 fight skeggi garrison and new army, Lots of forest on that map which makes missiles far less effective.

Otherwise, all the skink missiles have poison, which makes the target much slower, so you could get skink skirmishers/javelins and pair them with cold one spear riders to catch the marauder javelins.

[sonson]

Worth checking your magic capabilities too. Many of the lores available have accessible spells that can massively improve physical protection, buff your own missile damage, improve movement speed of your own troops or reduce that of enemies or even outright trap then for a time. All you really need is the ability to reliably kill a unit at a time and numbers to withstand their damage output while doing so.