Ld10 is over the top for sure
Is it? I was under the immpression the General was the least usefull of our lord choices. Would giving him a 'thing' that makes him better be so unheard of? Is it so over the top for a General of the Empire to have +1 leadership than an 8 point dwarf clansemen?
Grudgie
In my opinion it is. Ld10 ei reserved for those races of a bit more epic scale than plain humans, and fluffwise I'm totally okay with this - here the older races would be elves and dwarves. And once again, the generals of Empire aren't always military leaders, but rather political leaders, and Ld9 is already reserved for some great leaders of Warhammer world. I'm talking about bretonnian lords, chaos lords and the such. Leadership of 10 should in my opinion be scattered around Warhammer scarcely.
The dwarves here are an exception, where I've always seen the Ld9 of every single dwarf more or less overkill. The issue of powercreep comes into discussion here once again - it shouldn't be the Empire that is compared to other armies in case of single and independent cases of game mechanics and unbalance, but other armies also compared to the Empire, and eachother. Where, for example, the deamons are just aweful overall, I wouldn't like to compare the Empire and their general competence to that of the deamons, and this is solely because in my opinion - and in the opinion of many of us I'm sure - the deamon book was a mistake. I would somewhat add the Dark elf book, or at least various single aspects of it, to a line where deamons stand.
So, basically, I'd be more than happy to give the lower classes of dwarf warriors Ld8, for example cannon crews (the stubborn is driving me nuts as it is...) and perhaps missile troops.
We should, in my opinion once again, try to find a role in fluff and game mechanics for all of our heroes and lords, and try to find good solutions to make each of them viable in their own ways. I really can't see why the GotE should be brought, especially with special rules that are too wide spread and used in warhammer circles as it is, to a level of combat skill of our Grand Master. Asking a question 'if this model has an option to this rule, why not then the other?' is sometimes a viable argument to say it's not worth it.
I've been personally wanting to ask this question many, many times considering the new skaven and dark elves for example... Ring of Hotek, pendant of Kaleth, Cauldron's 4+ ward and it's indestrucibleness, 'dodge' ward of skaven assassins and gutter runners -- I mean, WHY?!
Oh yeah, and I'm not even going to start with either of the Tzeentch lores, or other new chaotic lores.
Runedit\\ Keeping things as simple as clean as possible is always one of the most important ways of balancing games, not adding special rules, but I might find one another 'set' idea feasible:
GotE as it is right now - 80 points
+20pts makes him a warrior general with +1WS, +1I and +1A
+20pts makes him a leading general with 15" LD-radius and increases the magic banner option to 60-70pts (depending on what kind of banners there are available)
+20pts might make him a political general, which adds you one Hero slot or one Special slot.
Or something like this? I mean, making things difficult is always a bad idea, and giving models special rules they don't really always need or deserve (when compared to other armies and models) isn't a way to go when you could always do something to the most basic of things - ie. stat lines, army structures and already existing special rules.
Then again, having these sorts of additions to the GotE build would render the grand master near useless. Maybe give additional army structure rules to the Grand master also? As in make one unit of IC-knights core when a Grand Master is present?