Several years ago there was a campaign that included an army list of army of BArrow kings lead by Heinrich Kemmler. I liked the idea of an ancient bronze age/celtic/early medieval army.
I decided to attempt to create armylist and 2 pages of background history that weould have WD format, nothing so complicated as an army book, but first and foremost playable, not too complicated, no rules deriveratives. Something unique.
This is a first draft, no fluff, no disclaimers, there are very brief descriptions of units that hint overall direction of background story.
I would appreciate very much any feedback you can offer, both fluff and gaming oriented.
Hi there - you may or may not find this useful, because I don’t know whether English is your first language or not - but I find it quite difficult to be objective about your rules because there are some fairly basic grammar and spelling errors. I know the fluff is just basic at the moment (which is good: don’t go writing huge reams of background at this stage because you never know what might need to be changed or removed!) but I’d really concentrate your efforts solely on the rules.
When I start writing an Army List like this, what I do is start with the army list and then just detail the special rules at the start so that you have a playable list and that’s all. That way you can get all of that stuff right before going back and justifying your rules with background and so on. Obviously always keep the background in mind, but it’s so easy to discourage criticism at this stage by putting in something that someone just doesn’t like or just hurting the overall impression of your work by making elementary writing errors.
Looking at the list though, here are some things that jump out at me:
You don’t need to tell people to refer to the Warhammer rulebook for the standard rules - just put the name of the rule in their unit entry.
Unit types?
Lords can’t usually be battle standard bearers - you should probably drop that option from your Barrow King.
Wights don’t get magical attacks in the current Vampire Counts book. I’d lose it.
1+ choices aren’t really done in 8th Edition books, so there’s no need for that on your Skellies.
Command models are now almost always 10 points each. You still have musicians for 5 points.
If Simulacra are monstrous infantry, you don’t need to specify that they have Stomp.
Apologies if any of this comes across as harsh. I have the White Dwarfs with the Lichemaster list that this is obviously adapted from, and I can see that it’s an 8th Edition update to it, but there’s probably a bit more work that needs doing. Do you have the current Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings books? If not, I’d get them both because this is really a combination of them, and you should probably start with their equivalent units and tweak them to fit the theme rather than updating an old White Dwarf army.
Thommy, Thx for so much input. Yes indeed English is my second Language, i will have it beta’ed by professional translator, a friend of mine. I did approached it as game design, so i have defined what’s armys idea, strategy and how to more or less put in place.
I dont want t make an armybook, something more akin to WD release, so up to 10 pages. I will not rewrite any original fluff, and will use dates that appear in WFB timeline. I want to place the living civilisation in Old World -2000 before Sigmar, spanning for around thousand years, perhaps 1500.
- I wished to have a living referrence. I didnt remember the exact wording of ethereal at the time.
- I totaly forgot about that, i only mentioned it once:(, i will add it.
- I had 2 things in mind, there is no spellcaster lord, which is purposefull, so Lord choice BSB could help the army, I think Slann can be a BSB and general
- Good point, will change it to KB, do Wight lords keep their KB with magic weapon taken from magic items allowance?
- I belive it was the first list designer’s idea to have skeletal infantry, there is an underlying duality in this army Sworn vs Thrall Units, i wouldnt want it to be viabale to only focus one one type, i would rather make any poptential players to have to look for balance between the 2, i wouldnt want anyone to field 1 huge unit of simulacra and few scouting ravens.
-Thats my lazyness foult, i did copy/paste the list and then started to delete things, now musicans are usefull to everyone, i will change it.
- I misled myself, original models were “spirit host” type, with 3 oldschool models, they also had 1 more attack, so i reduced the attacks and added stomp, with added unit types this will be sorted out as well.
- Another copy/paste mistake.
I think the old army did just that, it mixed units from both armies and added 3 more from 4th edidtion, horsemen, ghosts, and regimented mummies. I started with original list as point of exit. I decided to remove some of the units entirely so list is not crowded and to get playable base. I had some real thinking about magic, and decided that what would rly make this list fresh is lack of lvl 4 caster and resurection. I hope that various sources of reducing lost combat damage would make it.