Shadespire

[The Other Dave]

A bit of a preview of the Skaven in the latest White Dwarf, apparently:

They've got a leader, a lieutenant (Krrk the Almost-Trusted, which is a lovely name if you ask me), and three generic clanrats - who the leader can re-summon after they die, so they've basically got a resurrection mechanic like the skeletons do, and explains how they can be a "swarm" with only 5 guys. It also means that, very skaven-ish-ly, the leader will want to stay out of the fight and just overwhelm you with crappy clanrats. Also, naturally, the fastest warband in the game, and they Inspire when they have a ploy played on them - very tricky-tricky.

Which means I imagine they'll be a bit challenging to use like the skeletons are, since having lots of low-quality dudes who come back to the fight is a recipe for giving up lots of victory points if you're not careful.

[me_in_japan]

sounds interesting. I like how they're using game-mechanics to encourage fluffy play. Tip of the hat to good game design, there.

[The Other Dave]

Dorf rules preview:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/201 ... ge-post-1/

Basically, they're hella slow, with a base move of 2, exacerbated by the fact that holding an objective is their inspire condition, so first turn you're really going to have to make a decision about moving to attack the enemy or grabbing inspiration - which not only makes them ever-so-slightly faster but makes them much less vulnerable to being one-shotted. So they'll want to get glory from grabbing objectives early, power up with inspiration and upgrades, then smash face late game (on anyone who happens to be nearby.) Seems like a canny opponent who gets to choose board placement could dictate the flow of the game much more effectively than against pretty much any other warband, though.

Unsurprisingly, on the other hand they're super-dangerous in combat, with a beast for a leader (every bit as dangerous as Gurzag, which is saying a lot), two mid-range fighters and only one (relative) scrub. So while they lose a lot in terms of speed, they really make up for it in smashing.

Skaven should be up tomorrow.

[The Other Dave]

Thinking about the dwarf models, here's something I posted on FB:

I'm a bit eh on the models - not so much because of the aesthetic, which is what it is, but because you've got guy with two axes, more different guy with two axes, guy with double handed axe, and guy with huge double-handed axe, and basically nothing else to distinguish them from one another visually. Even seeing the models and the cards I couldn't tell you which two-axe guy was which without having to squint at the model picture in the upper left of the card. Which, in a game where distinctions between individuals is important, strikes me as something of a design failure. (Contrast with the Stormcast, who are very uniform in AoS, but all three are completely and instantly visually distinct in Shadespire.)

[Primarch]

Is it possible to get a full set of cards without buying the faction boxes?

[The Other Dave]

Is it possible to get a full set of cards without buying the faction boxes?

No, the cards only come together with the models.

That said, there's a card database online with all the objectives, ploys and upgrades, so there's really nothing stopping you from just whipping up cards to play with using whatever models you like - print something out and slip it in a card sleeve with an old Magic card or whatever. The database doesn't have the model stats, so you'd have to find those online, but they're easy enough to find - the dwarf preview shows both sides of all the cards.

[me_in_japan]

Is it possible to get a full set of cards without buying the faction boxes?

welcome to the wonderful world of card based miniature games. X-wing suffers from this big time, and the presented solution is "buy all the boxes for all the factions".

And people do.

tbh, I'd be amazed if there wasnt some dodgy online repository of all the cards, all ready for a handy print out, sized for Magic cards or summat.

[The Other Dave]

welcome to the wonderful world of card based miniature games. X-wing suffers from this big time, and the presented solution is "buy all the boxes for all the factions".

And people do.

tbh, I'd be amazed if there wasnt some dodgy online repository of all the cards, all ready for a handy print out, sized for Magic cards or summat.

It may be cold comfort, but at least Shadespire wins out over X-Wing in that the limit of a single instance of any given card in your deck means you don't need to buy, say, multiple Corellian Corvettes to get multiple copies of the R2-D2 card or whatever.

(And this is getting into apologism territory, but I can't stress enough that you can make entirely competitive decks, with room for customization even, with the contents of a single warband box.)

[The Other Dave]

Skaven!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/201 ... ge-post-1/

Looks interesting - none of them, even the leader and his lieutenant, are particularly strong fighters, but they're fast and, when inspired, pretty dodgy, and they have some nice gang-up ploys and a sort of devious inspire condition (getting a ploy played on them from any source). None of them getting inspired is as "aw, crap" a situation as, say, Gurzag or the Dwarf leader - inspiring universally boosts their defense, so it's more annoying then dangerous as such - but it'll still make your opponent maybe think twice about pushing one of your dudes.

The leader's resurrection skill is nice too, as - unlike the skeletons - you can bring back your scrubs on anybody's board, which allows for some nice flanking and objective-grabbing shenanigans.

Still, though, it'll be a death-by-a-thousand-cuts kind of warband, as you don't have anybody with the sheer damage output of a Stormcast or an Orc. Which, again, is pretty Skaven-y, although you'll have to be careful about hemmoraging victory points against tougher warbands who can one-shot your scrubs as you bring them back - and, like the skeletons, while you have some tricks to make him more survivable, losing your leader will pretty much end it for you.

(I'm sort of surprised the lieutenant's attack isn't range 2 even though he has a spear, though.)

[The Other Dave]

Speaking of cards...

There was some discussion at the Nagoya games day the other day about cards, and getting them. I did just notice that the official card library (https://warhammerunderworlds.com/card-library/) brings up a full image of each card when you click on it - so for casual games (which means, in our little context, all games) you could certainly just print-screen out whatever cards you wanted to use and slip them into a sleeve with whatever cards (from whatever game) you have hanging around.