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Post by Harkovast on Aug 24, 2017 1:31:47 GMT
Oh no, I just read the wiki. Christ I wouldn't pay money for that kind of writing! I don't like to give GW money since they tried to shaft me on the cost of flying bases, and it would take something better than that to make me reconsider!
That was stuff from Achaons back story, and was presented in the context of "wow, achaon is so powerful! he was just wrecking shit across all different worlds!" (Yes achaon travels to different worlds now...I guess he just lucked out that every world he goes to has medieval tech or less. As soon as he lands on "Fantasy version of US civil war world" hes going to get blown to fuck.)
Inventing someone you declare to be unbeatable, then having the main character defeat them to prove that hes really powerful is just a lazy story telling device. There are far better ways to establish someone is a bad ass than this.
If you want to make chaos seem dominant, how about an actual map? With the places marked on it, so we can see how it looked before and how it looked now? The places here have no impact because they were just invented out of the air just to get smashed. No one was going "oh no! Not the Deepguard!" when they read that. Then we could know what the places are, how they were before achaon wrecked them and what state they are in now, and even if ther good guys are going to retake them. Instead it comes across like its being made up as it goes along...because it is!
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Post by Canuovea on Aug 24, 2017 1:36:35 GMT
There are actual maps of course, but we're talking about various planes of existence here basically. Hard to make a map for all that... which is one of my concerns about Age of Sigmar, I'm concerned that the iconic locations are going to have trouble popping up.
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Post by Harkovast on Aug 24, 2017 1:40:30 GMT
In fairness, the idea of the bad guys in power and the good guys fighting back is cool, thats a nice change from the wy their games normally go. The problem is I need to know WHAT the bad guys are ruling. I have no concept of what anything is or where it is. Like what is it like to live on the mortal realms? It now just seems to be a big apocalypse. Everything in this palce I have never heard and know nothing about has been destroyed...so why does it even matter if Sigmar gets it back from the seemingly endless hordes of angry people in horned helmets?
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Post by Canuovea on Aug 24, 2017 1:45:19 GMT
There have been several books (and some games) meant to flesh out life in the cities and such. Some stuff in the Chaos controlled places. I've heard some of these are good. But you likely are not going to get that from reading wiki fluff. Thing is, I've not read it either, just heard about it. I do like some of what I have heard... but its a bit difficult to link it all together because the setting is so new.
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Post by Harkovast on Aug 24, 2017 1:49:48 GMT
Honestly I think a lot of what I don't like is a feature not a bug. GW appararntly wanted it to be vague so they can add in new stuff as they want to and there are no issues of how side reach each otehr to fight. Thats what all that realm gate stuff is for.
Ive talked to other people and the reaction to the fluff tends to be "I dont really get whats going on". People get a loose sense of whats going on, but its all very broad strokes.
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Post by Canuovea on Aug 24, 2017 1:52:53 GMT
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Post by Harkovast on Aug 24, 2017 1:59:12 GMT
Hahah there is a place called "The wars of futility" Doing my job for me with that one!
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Post by StyxD on Aug 25, 2017 18:03:12 GMT
Hark, you mock it, but I could see a point of stories like that. Namely, they remind me of primitive myths: the hero goes somewhere far away, where things are inexplicably wondrous and odd, then he triumphs over all enemies, because he (or his patron deity) is just that awesome? As for name-dropping: isn't some old stories riddled with names that don't matter at all? And random genealogy? I remember Lord of the Rings, made to emulate myths, was chock-full of them. I doubt those stories are supposed to be entertaining on their own. They just build up Archaon as this mythical villain. Your snippets about Bloodlord could actually also work in that context. By the way, the first story you quoted is the classic "our hero is backed by our god and our god is awesome" (think David and Goliath) and the second is "our hero is just so guile" (think Gordian Knot). So maybe they are supposed to be in-universe myths that Chaosmen tell each other. They aren't very thrilling myths, but that's GW for you. some how the forces of chaos can keep having more soldiers, evne though its not clear where they come from or how they support all this or even if they have any women they dont eat. Yeah, it bothered me always, too. Somehow, this already inhospitable North, after having been blighted by Chaos, can now boast enough population to endlessly spew out barbarian hordes. At least with Chaos Space Marines you know where these guys came from. Well, if Ork™s are fungi, maybe Chaosmen are algae. I wouldn't worry about having any women. They have Slaanesh, they can organize some mpreg if needed. Maybe it's also how they supply their armies. They're sustained entirely on Nurgle's boogers and make weapons from Khorne's dandruff. By the way, are they even called "Chaosmen"? I just realized I've been using the name of a Planescape faction which is something different entirely.
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Post by Harkovast on Aug 25, 2017 22:08:21 GMT
In the original warhammer, the north men at least had a land mass. They came from a vast land up north, where they had their own countries. I sort of assumed the power of chaos helped them thrive so there were loads of them. I can imagine women in the north giving offerings to the gods so they can have many strong sons etc (the down side being not all the sons being human). THere's something to work with there at least!
The new one, I have no idea where the forces of chaos come from. I mena I know where the daemons and stuff come from, but their limitless numbers of human followers just kind of appear. And when I say limitless, there are meant to be millions of these guys! Maybe more. I guess Archaon recruits from the worlds hes conquered? Where everyone is human?
I guess if you like the "achaon beats up some jobbers you've never heard of" legends then thats different strokes for different folks. THey get right on my nerves though!
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Post by Horsie on Aug 25, 2017 22:41:51 GMT
The setting is like the Middle Ages, and the estimates for the global population around 1000AD is between 250-300million people (so let's assume that's the case in this world); maybe Chaos has something like 5/6ths of the population under their control? And they all live in the north.
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Post by Canuovea on Aug 26, 2017 2:03:29 GMT
It isn't the middle ages anymore. We're talking several magical realms, each on their own potentially limitless in size but at least planet sized. They're mostly inhabited by humans and such too. So as Chaos spreads you either join it and probably die, or oppose it and almost certainly die. Frankly, the numbers here are more explainable because there are larger populations to draw from.
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Post by Harkovast on Aug 26, 2017 2:38:39 GMT
I dont know how the other worlds relate to the realms they are fighting over. The realms all seem like separate worlds, so I dunno how thats different to these poorly defined other worlds that archaon beats up on.
Basically what it comes down to is, Achaon has as many soldeirs as they felt like writing on the page. No one writing it really cared if it made sense, where the soldiers came from, how they are supported/organised. Organising and maintaining these armies (which are bigger than any armies that exist in teh real world or have ever existed ) is pretty silly. But like I say, if you think this sounds cool and you are up for it, go get some models and give it a bash.
Ive got my total warhammer now so Im a lot more zen about the whole thing.
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Post by Canuovea on Aug 26, 2017 2:56:32 GMT
Tiberia created some new units and rules for Kobolds for AoS and played a game against a friend of hers on Roll20 using stand in tokens. So Kobolds against Lizardmen. It was an interesting game and not unfun to watch. Small sized though.
It was pretty good actually.
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Post by Harkovast on Aug 26, 2017 12:45:55 GMT
Acutally something I think is a bit misguided just from a practical point of view in AoS background.
The game is meant to be more a skirmish thing than old warhammer (Which took WAY too many models to play...a crappy worthless unit had to have 40 models! the sheer volumes of plastic and metal involved were crazy) but the background features all these ridiculous numbers, with millions of soldiers fighting and stuff.
I'd have made it more like these are super elite warriors who are so powerful they can batter normal combatants, to make it so fights between dozens of them seem important in the scheme of the background.
What did Tiberia have Kobolds do? All I ever remember Kobolds doing in DnD is being bad at everything and getting killed a lot at first level!
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Post by Canuovea on Sept 3, 2017 8:39:44 GMT
Its not really necessarily skirmish... though there are smaller and smaller rulesets now. Including skirmish, which changes things a bunch.
The Sigmarines are pretty individually strong. They've two wounds and such, as well as larger bases (which actually... make things interesting in this game).
Tiberia's Kobolds are interesting because they work to overcome their slight statue through, well, guns. Or swarms. They have some similarities to Skaven.
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