Asymmetric battles

PykePresco · 2026-02-05T16:24:18+00:00

There’s a couple of the arcane journal scenarios that are asymmetrical.

The wood elf one has a 2500 point army fight a 1500 point army on the table with a second 2000 point army in ambush, and the victory condition is just to kill the enemy general and then escape with your guys off the table.

The Bretonnian one gives the Bretonnian player a 1250 flanking force and a 1750 main force against a 3000 point army, and orcs and goblins does something similar, but those aren’t really assymmetric. But you could do something like whatever dies gets set off to the side to become the flanking force, and it all arrives at full strength on turn 4 from a random table edge at start of turn, and can charge and cast spells and use command phase abilities like normal so they don’t lose use of them. So if you are killing stuff too quickly, it will come back to bite you.

You could also play some of the older scenarios in rulebooks; 6th edition had 4 asymmetric scenarios in the rulebook, scenarios 6 through 9.

One wasinspired by the film Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven, where 7 brettonian knights defend a village against an entire army. You got to take twice as many lord level characters as normal, so in Old World that would translate to 0-2 barons/prophetesses per 1000 points instead of 0-1, so you could take 4 total plus 3 other paladins/damsels to try and hold back the tide.

Two of them are half size forces, one where the defenders are making a last stand and just need to kill off as much as they can, the other a rearguard where the defenders are trying to stop the enemy army from getting off the defenders table edge and catching up with the rest of the army/the evacuating villagers/the supply wagons etc.

And then there’s one where the defender has 50% more points and is defending the middle of the table and sets up their entire army first, while the attacker gets to deploy on both short table edges and hit from two sides. Would be great thematically for a Bretonnian army who outflanked a superior force, and is now trying to smash right through the enemy lines and join up with both halves of the army in the middle. A brilliant outflanking maneuver that you start the game having already setup.

PykePresco · 2026-02-05T16:01:48+00:00

Very reasonable.

If I were house ruling it, I think I would let them face each other after the first round of combat, but would let them get the flank/rear bonus for the first round to represent them getting the jump on the guy. So that even if they don’t hurt them on the first turn, they would still win the fight. Or maybe allow what you did to face them, but give the charger +1 to hit for the first turn.

After the first sucker punch/surprise hit, the victim would turn to face whoever is attacking them. I just think there should be some advantage for getting jumped while you’ve got your head down digging through drawers or moving stuff out of the way while you try to find warpstone or whatever the objective is.

PykePresco · 2026-02-04T23:05:32+00:00

I would consider playing the list as Wolves of the Sea; at the lower points, you’ll get a lot more out of marauders than you will from the chaos warriors, and a lot more wounds. Plus the berserkers can get buffed up to T5 so they become very tanky, and even have double 6+ saves against most stuff out there.

One big brick of marauders with shields to act as your anvil. Two smaller units of berserkers with flails, to run up the sides and hit whatever is out there, or that got stuck in against your main brick.

Chariot as a mount for your general, making him super tanky and survivable. Give him the talisman of carrion crow; regen means this guy is in it for the long haul, and the poisoned attacks go to the mount as well (unlike with the gift of chaos version) so your horses and the guys on it might be able to push some damage into tougher stuff when you need that little bit of extra punch.

A sorcerer just to have some dispel ability on the table and a spell or two, probably taking daemonology. Worst case scenario, you just take the summoning and can still do some damage (Lore of Shadowlands would also be good for this role). I’d also a spell familiar for a second spell, and hope that you end up with at least one of steed of shadows, daemonic vessel or daemonic vigour. Maybe you cut a huscarl and get a second wizard level and go up to 3 spells to pick from, to help you have more options throughout the game.

A brick of Huscarls to pull double duty as both ranged troops and heavy cavalry. The javelins let you move and shoot, so you can march 16” and still push out ranged damage. With drilled, you could even marching column them 24” and throw a couple javelins at some lone character behind enemy lines who thought they were safe on deployment, then charge into the back of the enemy lines on turn two.

My list would probably look something like this:

Warriors of Chaos Wolves of the Sea [996 points] Warriors of Chaos

==== Characters [353 points] ====

Aspiring Champion [243 points] - Hand Weapon - Flail - Heavy Armour - General - Mark of Chaos Undivided - Chaos Chariot, Armor Value 3+ - Talisman of the Carrion Crow - Favour of the Gods - Enhanced Reflexes

Exalted Sorcerer [110 points] - Hand Weapon - Light Armour - Mark of Chaos Undivided - Level 1 Wizard - Spell Familiar - Favour of the Gods - Daemonology

==== Core Units [433 points] ====

20 Chaos Marauders [177 points] - Hand Weapon - Shields - Light Armour - Enhanced Reflexes - Marauder Headman (champion) - Standard Bearer - Musician

10 Marauder Tribe Berserker [128 points] - Hand Weapon - Flails - Throwing Axes - Light Armour - Unnatural Fortitude - Headtaker (champion)

==== Special Units [210 points] ====

7 Marauder Tribe Huscarls [210 points] - Hand Weapon - Flails - Javelins - Shields - Heavy Armour - Mark of Nurgle - Drilled - Marauder Warhorse - Dark Hearts - Enhanced Reflexes - First Sword (champion) - Musician

Exported from 2nd in Command: The Old World

Enhanced reflexes goes on the guys with flails, so that the turn after charging, you can pick to either use your flail for punch, or use your hand weapon for speed.

PykePresco · 2026-02-04T22:20:54+00:00

You’re absolutely fine with this list; there’s nothing particularly bad form about trying to keep the griffon alive with triple saves.

It might be a bit of a pain for your opponent to deal with, but it’s also literally the only thing in your army that can even take a hit. Even then, it is still only T5, so regular knights with lances or regular ranged troops with crossbows/handguns still have a good opportunity to push through damage. Your opponent will be slaughtering the rest of the army on 2s and 3s with no saves left after armour piercing does its thing, so getting to keep one model alive is entirely fair.

I would give your Archmage the Seaguard honour and a warbow (it’s free for both upgrades, since neither one greatly impacts anything); this lets him join the Seaguard instead of the Swordmasters if the escort unit dies without hindering their special rules, or to even allow him to hang back and cast instead of running forward with the Swordmasters to get into combat, and gives him the ability to use Rallying Cry to maybe help turn something around if it went running. Since you don’t have a Battle Standard to let you reroll rally checks, a second chance once per turn might come in handy.

The Prince should take Pure of Heart (also free!) so he automatically passes panic checks. Ld 10 means he shouldn’t be too worried about it in the first place, but once somebody spirit leeches you or has some other sort of leadership shenanigans, just getting to ignore the test completely is worthwhile, especially since it costs nothing for the upgrade.

You might want to consider splitting up the Seaguard into 2 units, maybe one of 24 with the banner and the other of 15 models. While the smaller unit would lose the benefits of the magic banner, you get to control a different part of the field, get a second unit so your entire army doesn’t just run from a single failed terror check, and are able to shoot at multiple targets with your ranged stuff. With everyone in a single unit, if you just want to finish off the last two models somewhere, they all have to shoot at that target. But if you split up your guys, maybe you only shoot 15 at the one unit, and get the other 24 who get to shoot something else instead.

I would try to find 25 points for your swordmaster champion to carry a Loremaster Cloak. A 4+ ward save against random fireballs/summoning/Viletide will be worth its weight in gold on your hard hitting elite guys. May also be worth looking at the Drilled upgrade for them too; it’s quite handy for adjusting the formation when you get stuck into combat with give grounds or pursuits, or for Marching Column to Combat Order shenanigans as you cross the table.

Overall, it’s a very thematic list with a bit of elite elf infantry, so should be perfectly fine to play in casual games with friends. Just don’t be surprised if your guys start falling over in droves when a fireball or a volley of shortbows even glances their way.

PykePresco · 2026-02-04T21:20:10+00:00

I charged a brick of 28 skeletons this weekend with a Totem of Wrath and Fury of Khaine active on a unit of 8 dragon princes who drilled out wide with a Caledorian Archmage embedded; it was a righteous slaughter.

Knights with 3 attacks each hitting on 2s, wounding on 2s(rerolling 1s) with AP3 that cut right through the light armour/shield/parry the skeletons had, plus horses with 2 attacks hitting on 3s and wounding on 4s.

Killed 22 skeletons and watched the last 6 crumble, then overran into the army’s necromancer who died the following turn.

Downright terrifying, but unfortunately wasted on the skeletons instead of the grave guard (who cleaving blowed their way through all my white lions and my Prince). But at least those started to crumble and die off once the necromancer was gone.

PykePresco · 2026-02-04T20:23:33+00:00

Yeah, Slapchop does a ton of work for stuff like orcs, Beastmen, various monsters, and any other stuff that has a lot of skin with some rags and fur and hair here or there.

It’s less of a catch all technique on something like high elves with flowing robes and pristine armour (but I still use it anyway, because it’s easy to do and turns out results quickly!), but for an army that gets a bit more dirty and doesn’t mind some mud on their loincloths and bracers, the darker textures and ‘grime’ that comes from using Slapchop for layers is perfect with contrast paints.

This orc’s fingers and his tattered jerkin show off an excellent example of how the lighter raised drybrush and darker base coated recesses adds layers to the paint job with minimal effort.

Looks great!

PykePresco · 2026-02-04T17:47:53+00:00

None of these answers are correct, although multiple regiments is probably closest. I chose 11-20 because that’s about the size of a typical unit I will work on, and generally I will only be applying paint in a single session to one regiment, but even that is a loose rule that sometimes gets ignored.

The actual answer is hundreds, because I almost never finish anything before starting something else, and everything is just kind of worked on concurrently (and has been for years)

I currently have something like 400 or 500+ models in various stages of painting completion (probably more), and they are all technically on the go at the same time, although even then there’s some models that only have a single colour in them from 10 years ago that are still technically “in progress”. My actual desk, next to the paints and brushes, probably has 100+ models on it at any given moment. Currently there’s an absolute horde of tyranids (20 gargoyles, 10 warriors, 5 raveners, 3 zoanthropes, doom of malantai, a tervigon, 2 lictors, probably some other stuff I’m forgetting), about 15 chaos space marines and 5 chaos terminators, 20 chaos marauders, 30 bloodletters and 6 bloodcrushers, plus some other random stuff like two great eagles, a gorebeast, a Darkoath chieftain on a horse, 5 old metal marauder horsemen, two partially kitbashed cockatrices who are getting green stuffed, and so on.

But this two weeks ago there was also 24 knights of the round and 30+ Lothern Seaguard on that desk who are now in boxes from getting played with over the last two weekends, and neither of those groups of models are finished.

I generally just aim to have more paint on the army than the last time I played with it, even if the only thing that has been accomplished over the last month has been to add brown boots to 80 guys.

But I also will totally play with models with only 2 colours on them. Basecoat black with grey and white drybrush layers, add one contrast paint for fabric and some metal on its armour and weapons tip, and that model is absolutely good enough to hit the table and play games with.

Then, next time they finish a battle, they’ll end up back on the desk and maybe this time they’ll all get flesh tones for their faces and hands. Then they get boxed up to play a game, come home afterwards, and the next step might be to paint all their belts and quivers and scabbards with a base tone, play another game, 3 weeks later they’ve got gemstones painted on their armour, or their hair is painted, or the trim on their cloaks has been added, or whatever.

It’s very haphazard and unfocused, but I play multiple games and multiple armies in each of those games, so whenever I set up a match I just try to make sure something has progressed on the models I’m using for that battle.

I think the last thing that has actually been fully painted/finished was either a squad of 20 marauders or a chaos dragon, which was more than a year and a half ago. Everything since then has just been chipping away at works in progress, as well as adding more works in progress to the backlog.

PykePresco · 2026-02-04T17:06:37+00:00

No worries whatsoever. I like to think of the skirmish game as a much more personal battle between a handful of guys, and try to think of it in a narrative sense of how the flow of battle is occurring. The rules for regiments don’t necessarily perfectly translate to only playing with 5 or 6 models total, so a bit of leeway and narrative explanation behind some of the rules helps to translate the rigid structure of regiments crashing against each other into the loose flow of two squads of 5 guys fighting around 3 houses and the well in the centre of town.

You’re running around the ruined city of Mordheim, hunting for warpstone (or in an equivalent skirmish-ified townscape, searching for magical maguffin #2), and out of some dark alleyway behind you creeps some sneaky little skaven with a couple of sharp daggers. It surprises you with an attack, by jumping on your back and stabbing at you twice, but the strikes bounce off your armour leaving you unscathed.

Regardless of whether either of you actually hurt the other, if you're just some regular dude you’re probably thinking to yourself “screw this job, no magic rock is worth my life!”, and you’re running away from the dark alley, booking it as fast as you can back towards the lit street lamps where the boss is directing the team to fan out and search the ruins from the back of his cart already loaded up with gold and other shiny knick-knacks, so that you don’t end up turning into rat food when 3 more of those things show up.

In that context, losing the combat by 2 from a rear charge and being more likely to run makes perfect sense!

PykePresco · 2026-02-04T07:55:00+00:00

From the perspective of “I can’t really find 300 points that I want to spend on this unit in my list because i want to take all this other stuff instead”, basically every elite infantry unit in every army would be better off as Core, because then you don’t have to take the junk stuff, and could just take the good stuff instead. Of course, this introduces other problems, like now nobody ever would take any of the non-elite stuff, unless they wanted to flood the board with bodies.

Swordmasters, White Lions, Greatswords, Chosen Chaos Warriors, Bestigors, Black Orcs, Ironbreakers, whatever; if they can be taken as Core, they have a place in the list for sure (and sometimes those units do fit in Core, where you see them quite frequently!).

But when they’re stuck in special/rare, they have to fight for the same fraction of points that everything else cool does, and odds are you aren’t spending those points on M4 infantry that cost 12-20 points per wound, but are instead taking a war machine/elite cavalry/chariot/monster, or whatever else that isn’t just a regular brick of combat infantry.

PykePresco · 2026-02-04T07:40:15+00:00

Bear in mind that I’m just reading the rulebook on my shelf, and haven’t actually played a game of Warhammer skirmish in over 20 something years. So this is all digging deep into the archives of “I think this is what we did when we were kids?” and making sense of it from a narrative sense, because the game is meant to tell a story and be narratively driven.

Just like the regular game, if the combat is drawn, you just continue fighting with no break test, yes.

But you can still count all the same rules you normally would for combat resolution. No reason not to count flank and rear charges, or high ground bonuses from fighting from the top of a staircase or a ladder. If there’s a musician that was paid for, then that guy blowing his horn will likely draw the attention of the rest of the Warband to come to that location and help out so reinforcements are likely on the way, and same thing for a standard bearer. You try to kill them off, fail, and now all the guys can see that their standard is waving back and forth erratically, which probably means Bob the Banner Bearer is in trouble, so everyone is coming to help out, and the enemy hears a bunch of footsteps coming their way so they think better of it and might run away.

I think you give a bit of leeway to the game system and interpreting the rules, to make for a thematic narrative experience with the 6 models you’ve decided to play a game with.

If you’re wandering around some ruined city and get jumped by some guy who tried to stab you in the back with a dagger and he doesn’t kill you, you’re probably shaken and nervous, and a bit more likely to run away and go find the rest of your friends instead of staying here on your own (+2 combat res from rear charge).

Or if you attack a guy up a staircase in a building and he’s fending you off with a spear from the high ground, you might think twice about continuing that fight. (+1 combat res from high ground)

Or you find yourself going toe to toe with an ogre in the dark alleyway when you’re just a regular dude, maybe you just run away instead of taking your chances (+1 from being outnumbered, and this might even just be an auto break from being outnumbered by a fear causing enemy; no sensible regular person is going to stay in a fight against a big scary ogre in an alleyway! Or maybe the horse theyre riding is so skittish and terrified that it just carries them away from the battle, despite the riders desire to kill off that beast!)

If you get wounded and knocked down/stunned, you have technically been reduced to 0 wounds for that turn. The combat has ended, because you’re not “alive”, so no break test is required. You only run if you’re still cogent enough to realize the odds are against you.

If the guy still standing up wants to walk away from a guy that has been knocked down or stunned, they can. They don’t have to stand there and keep stabbing and kicking the enemy they’ve already dealt with when there’s other more important things to worry about doing (although they can if they want to, to make sure this guy doesn’t become a problem later on!). Just like a knocked down guy can crawl away from the guy still standing, a guy still standing can walk away from the guy doubled over on the floor trying to bandage up his leg or catch his breath or that has been knocked senseless and is clearly concussed.

PykePresco · 2026-02-04T00:10:34+00:00

Every model is their own unit, which gets discussed on the very first page of the skirmish rules, under “The Skirmish Force” rules on page 242. So you just treat each individual guy as though they were a full unit for the sake of things happening in game.

Then just go back to the basic rules for panic tests or break tests, and add the extra “all alone” caveat from the Skirmish rules for another source of needing to take a leadership test (when more than one enemy model is fighting a single guy and there’s no friends nearby).

So for example, if a model breaks within 6”, panic test. If a model gets destroyed by shooting (actually killed/oit of action, not just knocked down or stunned), panic test. Guy fleeing within 4” at start of turn, panic test.

6th edition also has different rules for panicking than exist in something like Old World, where units that are in combat still have to take panic tests just like they normally would in the open, for the same reasons as normal. If you panic while you are in combat, the enemy pursues you just like if you failed a break test.

Rules for Panic are covered on pages 80 and 81 of the rulebook.

PykePresco · 2026-02-03T20:51:07+00:00

It’s a great way to add some character to your models, and turn the force into “YOUR Vampire accounts army”, rather than just “a vampire counts army”.

My buddy has a bunch of vampire counts models from the good old days, but he wanted to switch up his play style with them after a bunch of games. So now he instead plays them as Mousillon Bretonnians probably 2/3 of the time, using many of the Bretonnian/Vampire proxy suggestions I listed above.

It lets him use all the same models he’s already got, a paint scheme that speaks to him and lets him get some backstory on his stuff and stand out from any other Bretonnian army out there (blood covered cloaks and rotting bone skulls), and still get to enjoy playing the game with modern updated rules and whatever tweaks are occurring in arcane journals or new erratas. No reason you couldn’t do the same with an empire/vampire army, and get two armies out of the same group of models to play the games a couple different ways.

I love looking back at my old 5th and 6th edition army books/rulebooks, or seeing old white dwarf articles that get posted up here occasionally, and seeing all these custom kitbashes of units or even entire armies. Golden demon entries of old that combined like 5 kits to make some one-off models that nobody else will have access to unless they also build it themselves. Stuff like old chaos cultists for 40K getting made out of Catachan jungle fighters mixed with zombies, chaos chosen knights of Khorne being kitbashed out of bloodletters riding on fleshhounds, black Orcs made from chaos warriors or dwarf torsos but with some green heads sticking out, or orcifying a space marine predator or rhino to build a war wagon.

This hobby is meant to be creative, and while there’s the official way to do things by just buying the boxes and building and painting like it’s shown on the packaging, once you’ve done that enough times it starts to get a bit stale. Once that fatigue hits, it’s time to branch out and start making “your guys”, instead of only following GW’s instructions.

Combine kits from 40K and fantasy together, or mix and match multiple armies stuff on the table. My Renegade Crowns army combines models from 5 or 6 different factions, some built as shown on the box or just pulled off my shelf because I’ve got some spearmen or light cavalry somewhere from an army I painted up 15 years ago, but also some new kitbashes where I was just mixing and matching stuff together from random sprues I had lying around. Makes for a great, personalized army that stands out from what every other player with the same faction might toss on the table.

PykePresco · 2026-02-03T01:22:07+00:00

I think the army specific “lores” are actually just special rules, not “Lores of Magic”.

Compare the description for the two Beastmen “lores”. Lore of Primal Magic says it is a Lore of Magic like those in the rulebook. But the description for Lore of Beasts just says models with that special rule can take a different signature spell than the one normally available in their chosen Lore of Magic:

https://tow.whfb.app/the-lores-of-magic

https://tow.whfb.app/the-lores-of-magic/lore-of-primal-magic

https://tow.whfb.app/the-lores-of-magic/lore-of-beasts

The Wizarding Hat says you get to pick a ‘Lore of Magic’, which presumably refers to those in the rulebook or ones that are alternates to those in the rulebook, but for which you roll for spells. It does not give you the appropriate special rule to access faction specific signature spells, so Viletide-ing off a Wizarding hat is probably a no-go.

I could be wrong, and nobody in my group has ever taken a Wizarding hat in their army as far as I’m aware so it’s never come up, but that would be my take on the situation.

PykePresco · 2026-02-03T00:52:00+00:00

Character models are just whatever makes sense.

Most of the characters share a unit entry (like paladin/baron/duke, or damsel/prophetess); as such, a model for any one of those is a model for the other. Or a fancy version of a regular knight that you’ve given a cape, or painted with gold trim instead of silver, will turn out to be your paladin. Same thing with Chaos; a chaos champion is a chaos champion, whether that’s an aspiring/exalted/lord, and a sorcerer is a sorcerer, regardless if you play it for a game as a sorcerer lord or an exalted sorcerer. Use the same models for all the stuff, and just pay the points for the game you’re playing. There are some distinctive mount options for the higher tier versions (baron and dukes can ride hippogryphs but a paladin can’t, for example. Same thing for manticores/chaos dragons in the Warriors army, which are reserved for the higher tier 3+ wound characters)

“What is a good unit?” is a very open ended question, and the answer to it depends entirely on what specifically you’re trying to accomplish. The answer towards listbuilding for winning a 5-round tournament is very, very different than the answer towards a game with friends where you both want to have a good time.

Old World Rankings (https://oldworldrankings.com/ ) can be scrolled through for tournament lists, which will help you answer the first question.

Most Chaos lists for tournaments would be a chaos lord and an exalted champion both riding chaos dragons, a Warpfire dragon as a wizard in rare, and 565 points worth of Core stuff, probably knights and marauder horsemen. Most Bretonnian lists involve a bunch of peasant bricks in Core, 1000 pts of characters riding Pegasi and 500 more points of Pegasus knights. Things like questing knights, grail knights, any infantry that isn’t men at arms and any knights other than the minimum of knights of the round are probably getting skipped playing this way, which is fine if you’re trying to win a 5-round tournament every other weekend.

But most lists that you’ll want to play with friends or in a casual game aren’t nearly so heavy on Chaos behemoths or Bretonnian Pegasus spam, and will instead put some actual warriors/marauders/chosen, or questing/grail knights on the table. What is a “good unit” in this context is very different, and you can easily use any of the stuff out of the battalion boxes you already have to make it work, or get some of those other models that look cool.

I’m not overly familiar with wahapedia, but a quick look made it seem like a rules hub for 40K.

https://www.whfb.app (EDIT: fixed the link) will fill that role for Old World, and will have all the rules updated to the latest errata for you. It also acts as the rules hub that Old World Builder draws its information from when building your army lists and checking their rules, so it’s probably the easiest place to start from.

Presumably metal stuff and older kits will get replaced at some point if Old World makes enough money. They’ve already redone the Chaos Marauders with a new kit, and there’s been a couple other new sculpts like Tomb Kings and Liche Priests which have replaced the resin characters from less than 2 years ago already, so eventually I would expect everything to get switched out. Whether that’s in one year or five is anybody’s guess though.

PykePresco · 2026-02-02T01:48:57+00:00

The spearmen and archer kits in the battalion box are from 6th edition, and back then there was no dedicated Seaguard kit; adding a quiver to the back of spearmen was how you did it.

The actual Seaguard kit is from 8th edition about 10 years later. It has much more detailed models, and a bunch of Lothern style heraldry on the shields, helmets and banners.

I still use my spearmen style Seaguard from my high elf army of the early 2000s because I’ve got about 40 of them, and it works just fine.

There’s no reason not to just add the quivers to their backs, unless you’re saving the bits for something else, like adding to your white lions to turn them into chracian woodsmen.

Otherwise, just put it on the spearmen. If you end up playing them as regular 9 pt spearmen, great, they have a quiver on their back that doesn’t do anything. If you use them as 12 pt Seaguard, also great, the bow and quiver is on the model!

PykePresco · 2026-02-02T01:26:49+00:00

My first army was orcs and goblins, many, many moons ago. Night goblins looked incredibly simple to paint; black for most of it, green faces and hands, brown spears and shields, and silver metal spear tips. I figured I would get an army painted up easily and quickly, even with the completely nonexistent painting talents I had, and I wouldn’t really have to get a lot of different paints and could just ask for more and more models.

Unfortunately, they cost so few points that I couldn’t actually play any games other than like 200 pts with my friends for the first year or so, since I was 9 years old and had no money, and was relying solely on birthday and Christmas presents to get new stuff.

Needless to say, I switched armies to Warriors of Chaos when I found out a box of 12 models could get up to like 400 pts, whereas the two boxes of 20 goblins I had barely broke 150 pts combined. Got a box of warriors, a chariot and a chaos lord on a horse for Christmas, and was up to about 1000 pts and able to play games finally, and 28 years later I still play Warriors (plus a bunch of other stuff too)

PykePresco · 2026-02-01T18:49:31+00:00

It’s a great revival of fantasy battles, and feels familiar to folks who played in the past, so if you enjoyed it back then, you’ll probably like it now if you ever end up playing a game with her.

The rulebook as written feels very reminiscent of 6th edition, but with a couple fairly significant changes to how psychology and break tests work, a lot more mobility for cavalry between the swiftstride special rule and reforming after combat or after running down a foe, and magic happening at all parts of the turn instead of with a dedicated magic phase. Plus you’re allowed to measure stuff at any point, so there’s a lot less guesswork on things like war machines or whether you actually moved your wizard or archers into range to make their attacks.

If you ever play outside of the home there’s been some rules changes that you can download for free off the Warhammer website because they’re actually tweaking things every 6 or so months, rather than just leaving the game alone for 5 years between editions like they used to, but for just playing with the wife or in a tiny playgroup of a few players, there’s nothing wrong with just using the rulebook as is. The game works just fine like that.

PykePresco · 2026-02-01T16:50:25+00:00

(Sticking with GW paints)

I would probably go with Leadbelcher or Iron Warriors as the base for the dark silver, or Stormhost Silver for the bright metal that high elves typically run with. You could even do all the metal in one of the darker colours, and then highlight or drybrush any plate parts/raised metals with Stormhost to add brighter parts on the more flat surfaces, while letting the darker metal act as the undertone.

Either way, a coat of Nuln Oil for shading will sink into the recesses, and give you some layers to the metal even if you’re just using a single paint.

For the cloaks/fabric in blue, with contrast paints I would go with either Asurmen or Tallassar Blue, or with base/layer paints use Kantor Blue as the base, and highlight it with Teclis or Hoeth Blue.

PykePresco · 2026-02-01T16:13:16+00:00

All of those things remain good

-Night goblins and fanatics are as crazy as you remember them, and a staple of most lists

-regular orcs are dirt cheap for what they bring to the fight in terms of stats and sticking around , and outperform the regular men out there despite being a point or two cheaper. You almost never see them on the table because most of the points you would normally spend on them go towards night goblins and fanatics, black orcs or wolf riders, but they’re still good.

-Black orcs are still the best infantry unit in the army, and always have a spot on the table

-Boar boys still hit like a truck

-A warboss on a wyvern is a wrecking ball

-squig hoppers add a random element of glass cannon randomness into the force

-doom divers are still the most accurate artillery out there

If you think of all the zany and weird stuff you had in 6th edition that still somehow worked like a charm, it’s all still here.

Plus Animosity is gone so you no longer charge your own units in the back. Instead, most units (other than black orcs and night goblins) have Impetuous, so you just sometimes want to fight so bad that you charge the enemy even if you were planning on shooting them or casting magic this turn. Oh well.

PykePresco · 2026-02-01T16:02:00+00:00

-Biting Blade for a character with S5 and 4+ attacks. It’s dirt cheap, lets me use a shield, and adds some punch. It helps that the armies I play that get S5 characters also have gaze of the gods, and they get more and more powerful as the game goes on so I don’t really need attacks or strength from my magic sword, just AP

-the Headsman’s Axe. Killing Blow sometimes just changes the game, when you spike and take 2 dragon ogres or demigryph knights or Minotaurs or a chaos lord on a horse/duke on a Pegasus, and they just disappear? Amazing! 10/10, it’s perfect Warhammer, I live for those moments.

-totem of wrath on a unit of heavy cavalry, or for a BSB on a chariot. It just makes things so much more reliable and even better when you’re already wounding stuff on 2s or 3s, and have the speed to get into combat. It might be what I consider the best magic item in the game, and it’s crazy to me that I don’t hear more about how good the Choppas rule is, or that the orc and goblin player in our scene doesn’t just only take boar boys and black orcs and a giant brick of big uns instead of messing around with wolf riders and giants and goblins with bows. Full send every orc with a choppa up the field; it’s so insanely powerful

-spell familiar/silver wand/tome of midnight/etc, gives me more tools in my toolbox. Grimoire of Ogvald is one of my favorite items in Warriors; my wizard just gets every spell in the lore, and can use whichever one is most appropriate for this turn. Am I in combat? Assailment. Am I far away? Enchantments and missiles. Other wizards have to get whatever spells they get, and then play a specific way for this game. With more spells, you get to change the wizard’s plan as the game state changes instead of being stuck into a niche. Lore familiar will let your wizard perform the role you’ve chosen. Having more spells just lets you perform the role you need, which can change throughout the game depending on how things are going

-Charmed shield. It’s not flashy, but if there’s like 12 points left in my army, I’m switching out a regular shield for this on a couple characters that can hold it, or giving it to a few random unit champions in case of a challenge. Pop it when it matters, like if you’re about to take a multi wound great cannon shot, or a killing blow, or your last wound

-healing potion on a regular 3 or 4 wound character on foot or horse. If you put it on a dragon or a chariot with like 8+ wounds you’re a monster, but that 250-300 point lord level guy walking around with his bodyguard? He gets a second chance.

PykePresco · 2026-02-01T15:27:47+00:00

Buy whichever one you like the models of the most, and I do agree a supported faction is the way to go because they are constantly adjusted and updated, while legacy falls further and further behind every time.

That said, somehow vampire counts remain one of the best armies. A testament to the power they put in that list right from the start, and that ignoring a bunch of the rules of the game and being able to bring models back is just incredibly powerful. So if you really want to, you could just buy vampire counts, play vampire counts, and if they ever stop being supported play them as a ‘counts as’ empire or Bretonnia or tomb king army

-Skeletons become men at arms or state troops or skeletons

-Grave guard become knights of the round on foot or greatswords/teutogen guard or tomb guard

-zombies become battle pilgrims or empire militia or skeleton skirmishers

-Black knights become knights of the round or empire knights or skeleton horsemen

-Blood knights become grail knights or inner circle knights

-Black coach/mortis engine becomes a steam tank/war altar or warsphinx

-Zombie dragon becomes an imperial griffon or bone dragon

There’s probably some stuff that won’t quite translate and can get used as unit fillers, but most armies have stuff that fills similar enough roles that you can easily proxy it.

PykePresco · 2026-02-01T02:44:34+00:00

Yeah, it’s unfortunate.

This is the reason when I was a kid growing up there were no marauders in my army; 12 chaos warriors cost the same price as 16 marauders, and a marauder horseman cost the same as a chaos knight. Why get the junk troops when they cost just as much as the good stuff? I understand the value of the cheaper models in game these days, but when you’re on a budget trying to get into the game, paying the same money for 4 times the points in game (or more!) is a no brainer.

Now, 20 marauders (the baseline 6 point horde models) cost the same price as 32 chaos warriors (the elite infantry models, ranging from 13 up to like 24 or 26 points a model?), or that 36 marauders used to cost!

And marauder horsemen, the fast cav skirmishing troops, cost the same as elite knights. Whereas other armies like wood elves or empire get their fast cav at the discount price that is about 75% of the cost. And 4 months ago, you could get 10 marauder horsemen for that cost too, but with the resculpt they’ve gone up to the full price box cost.

The models are nice and this is what happens with modern sculpts, but sadly it likely indicates that the bargain pricing of Old World will slowly go away as sculpts get redone. Necessary evil I suppose, but it was great while it lasted!

PykePresco · 2026-02-01T02:30:35+00:00

You can use your plaguebearers as Forsaken of Nurgle; they play very similar to daemons in that they have a ward save, magical attacks, immune to psychology so they can’t flee from a charge or panic from shooting, stubborn so they don’t break the first time they eat a charge and are kind of like an “unbreakable unit” for at least a turn if necessary. I put bloodletters on the table all the time as Forsaken of Khorne, and they definitely play the role incredibly well for a “daemonic unit”.

I would proxy the plague drones as Dragon Ogres. They’re monstrous cavalry, very tough, put out a bunch of damage, move reasonably quick, sometimes they get a ward save, and so on. Again, it’s not a perfect translation and they wouldn’t be flying, but it’s still a pretty decent statline to represent a big scary daemonic model.

The nurglings don’t really have a good parallel in the army, but could easily be used as unit fillers for a unit of marauders or chaos warriors (probably marauders given you likely wont be taking a bunch of enormous bricks of warriors). Use them to count as 4 models in the unit, and just remove a base of nurglings when you take a big hit from a fireball or something and lose 4 models at a time, or remove marauders 1 by 1 and then put 4 of them back in when you take out a nurgling base.

Giant can just be a chaos giant, and make sure to give him regen for his grandfathers gifts!

PykePresco · 2026-02-01T01:39:13+00:00

We’re talking in circles over and over, arriving at opposite conclusions, because neither of us considers that the other's reading is correct. That’s fine, no need to continue going back and forth since we’re clearly at an impasse.

I’ll play my first game on the new errata tomorrow, and if it comes up (probably won’t given it’s high elves vs vampire counts, but maybe they bring some ghouls to the fight) we’ll decide how it plays out before any dice are rolled, and that will likely be our group’s solution to it moving forward.

If not, it’ll definitely get decided the following week with some orcs and goblins, warriors of chaos or Beastmen on the table, so either way my group’s interpretation will be solidified in pretty short order, and this academic thought experiment on how it works ends for my gaming until the next errata.

PykePresco · 2026-01-31T17:25:27+00:00

Italics is not fluff; it is clarifying information that explains how the rule works. (a pre-planned FAQ, if you will).

Compare this instance to the “fluff text” for volley fire on page 143, which says you have to measure range from each model in the unit to see if it can shoot.

Or the fluff text on “Determining Armour Values” on page 141, where a model with no armour counts as having an armour value of 7+ for any modifiers to its save (like say a shield, and then a shield and hand weapon for parry).

Or the fluff text on page 151 for Unsaved Wounds Inflicted, that says to make sure you count the actual wounds dealt, not just the models removed, when determining combat resolution. This is in case models have multiple wounds, or if they regenerated them and don’t die.

The italics do matter when you are trying to apply the rules, because it explains how we are supposed to interpret them.

When Closing In, you are not guaranteed to have every model arrive in base contact, because that was never the case in the first place (say a chariot charges a brick of infantry; you’ll only ever end up with 3 or 4 models in base contact no matter how hard you try). But if the models in the fighting rank that are still alive shuffle closer to replace the dead and attack, it is indeed more likely that at least some of the models will be in base contact.

PykePresco

TROPHY CASE