Sunday 7 September 2014

The End Times army I'd like to see

Okay, this is not so much a wishlist as working out a grudge with Games Workshop. In fairness, though, it is my only grudge. If you're expecting one of those bitter anti-GW rants that inevitably involve the phrase “Games Workshop has ruined my hobby” followed by unnecessary numbers of exclamation marks this is not that. This is a bit of nostalgia that just might come to pass if things are going the way they seem to be.

You see, if there's one thing we can confidently predict about The End Time its that one of the supplements will be about Chaos. GW's basically doing an all-singing all-dancing remake of Storm Of Chaos and you can't really do that without a Chaos supplement of some sort.

And if that's what they're going to do they couldn't do better than resurrecting the Horde Of Chaos method of army building.

The way this worked, for the benefit of the young, is that in the hallowed 6th edition we had two Chaos army books: Hordes of Chaos and Beasts of Chaos with Chaos Warriors and Daemons lumped together in the former. You chose your general (a Chaos Lord, a Daemon or a Beastlord) and then Core units like him stayed Core and other Core units became Special. So if you had, say, a Great Unclean One as your general then Plaguebearers and other Daemons were Core whilst Chaos Warriors, Marauders and the like became Special.

Specials and Rares stayed as they were, incidentally.

Having read the Empire vs. Nurgle Chaos Horde sections of Nagash it really tickled my sense of nostalgia but also my sense of annoyance. You see, in the Hordes Of Chaos days I loved the idea but all the Daemon models back then were metal and super expensive. These days they're all plastic but they've also been hived off into their own army and because I like to personalise my generals and get inside their head when I write them a pure Daemon army just doesn't grab me. So the army I loved was first too expensive and then not game legal.

I say this might happen because a) a Chaos supplement seems inevitable and b) the Undead Legion was a nostalgia trip to the old Undead Army Book of 5th edition.


If nothing else, I'm a Bretonnia player and hope comes naturally to me. 

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