Nuln and Knightly orders, as we feared.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/bjde20vi/world-championships-preview-the-empire-of-man-is-united-in-war/

On the plus side, war wagon and Teutogen guard coming back?

Return of militia (yay!) and the insanely old knightly orders sprues from like 1887 (booo!)

Do we think they will update the FAQ when they publish the arcane journal. Teutogen guard are legit cool. There are the only models I regret not buying

I bought some for the storm of chaos campaign and then sold them and I have regretted it ever since.

Pegasus hero is back, with imperial ogres. Dare I hope for halfings too?

I wonder what the war wagon rules will be

It seems if they are releasing as a single model it will be a heavy chariot? Its got to be pretty cheap points-wise though becuase it can't exactly hit harder than a steam tank, and it can't have much shooting

I was wondering if it would be a light chariot so you could have units of them like in WTW, that would be cool

The army lists feel very safe, and I worry will not have much flair. You can easily make both of those concepts straight out of the book as it stands so whats the point?

Hyped for more of the older models coming back and hopefully some more weird mercenaries

Given GW’s track record, the War Wagon will either be under costed & over powered OR over priced & under powered. Based on how badly designed Empire is in the Forces of Fantasy book, my gut feeling is it will be the latter.

Nuln is not necessarily too bad. It is after all place where Magnus the Pious comes from. As for Knightly Orders, I hope they have come up with something better than Errantry Crusade & Heralds of Darkness which are both cavalry armies and quite lackluster. Nomadic Waagh did manage to become slightly different.

I would assume Teutogen Guard is something you can take if you field GA with High Priest of Ulric since just having them as proxy greatswords seems bit pointless. Imperial Ogres we already have via O&G AJ but the cannon guy is a weird option, especially since he gets an extra mention. Perhaps a new Mercenary unit with option to carry essentially a grapeshot cannon with them?

Old models being teased might mean old Dogs of War or somesuch unit. Blades of Manann seems obvious too unless fluff in Chaos AJ was just pulling our legs. So perhaps there will be many returning Units/Characters but only available if you satisfy condition X such as having high priest of Ulric as general which unlocks Wolf Kin & Hunting Hounds?

Harbinger of Doom? Hero level Flagellant character as new option? (or just typo since Flagellant champion is Prophet of Doom)

Btw, what flag is that what those imperials hold? The blue/white color scheme is not familiar to me.

Also, at least on the video one can see a Pegasus so I assume pegasus mounted wizard figures come along as well.

Blue & white is traditionally the uniform colors for Middenheim.

So, no Marienburg, this makes me sad.

But Templar Orders might be a nice cavalry army. Kinda our flavour of Bretonnian Exiles, with demigryph instead of pegasus. If we're getting a couple good special rules and magic items it can become a competitive army (empire knights and demigryph are some of our best units already). Also, it might be the return of White Wolf Knights with a reworked knight hammer? Maybe?

Nuln has potential too. Maybe i'm optimistic but... special Steam Tanks so we can field two in a 2.000 points army? I keep saying that since the rules came out, because of the STank limit of 1 per 1.000 points which is kinda pointless since it costs more than 250 points.

Quote from: Damar on November 22, 2024, 09:02:23 PM
Imperial Ogres we already have via O&G AJ but the cannon guy is a weird option, especially since he gets an extra mention. Perhaps a new Mercenary unit with option to carry essentially a grapeshot cannon with them?

No, we have Badland Ogre bulls, not Imperial Ogres. Ogres used to be part of the Empire army list back in 5th edition and this might mean we get a comeback of a unique, non-mercenary unit. Ot it just means we get some sweet old sculpts...

Quote from: Damar on November 22, 2024, 09:02:23 PM
Old models being teased might mean old Dogs of War or somesuch unit.

Why would they bother with dogs of war units when they have a literal treasure trove of old metal Empire miniatures? Spearmen, Swordsmen, Halberdiers, Archers, Crossbowmen, Handgunners, Flagellants, Reiksguard on foot, Knightly orders and more...

So many possibilities and they give us Nuln and knights. Oh well, I'll take what I can get. Teutogen Guard and free company are bad ass and I love the 6th ed knight models.

The knights themselves are ok, I just want better horses.

I’m not surprised about Nuln and knights. But I can’t say I’m thrilled. I just hope they can make it interesting.

If the nuln list has pistoliers that are not impetuous, that will cover many other deficiencies, and if somehow those pistoliers are core, then I will forgive a lot.

Interesting the article says “special characters, units and magic”. Think they means “magic items” or might we actually get unique magic?

Also I’m so tired of those effing knights. Been looking at those for over 20 years. Also I won’t be getting that boxed set. I don’t need 60 more useless states troops!!!

The war wagon looks pretty awesome however, definitely will be ordering one of those.

Quote from: Tiberius on November 23, 2024, 06:38:59 AM
Interesting the article says “special characters, units and magic”. Think they means “magic items” or might we actually get unique magic?

Well, there is always the possibility of a new War Priest for "Nature" to represent Taal & Manann. And units can include most anything like the Teutogen Guard (Some sort of proto-AoI Middenheim seems like an option). Some signature spells might be possible for Empire.

Apparently in stream they said all knightly orders get their own rules so this might be nice. Especially if they carry over to GA lists with stuff like White Wolves.

They need to do something to make Knights of the White wolf good. Them being on a reduced save with a great weapon is not very good IMO, not with the way combats work in TOW.

I wonder if we get a Morr themed knightly order. That would be cool. Not least since the knights I have are painted as one.

Damar, any idea where the source of that stream can be found that speaks about the knightly orders?

That would be very cool, excited to see what those orders might be.  I can’t imagine that would do more than 3 or 4.

Now if only they have something like that for our poor state troops.

Quote from: Tiberius on November 23, 2024, 06:51:53 PM
Damar, any idea where the source of that stream can be found that speaks about the knightly orders?

That would be very cool, excited to see what those orders might be.  I can’t imagine that would do more than 3 or 4.

Now if only they have something like that for our poor state troops.

They mention them at 18min mark. Blazing Suns & Knights Panthers mentioned specifically. Along with two special characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmcDMPj7D2o

It is also important that they call Nuln army of Infamy a "Nuln Gun Line" if anyone was thinking it might be something else than full Dakka-army.

Anyway. If we go with Bretonnian AJ, it had 10 pages of new units/characters, including fluff.

Empire has two special characters so that's 4 pages (1 fluff, one rules). This leaves us 6 pages with new rules. I would think that Knightly Orders with all their special rules take two pages*. I don't really see War Wagon taking more than one page unless it is really complicated (= game slower) piece of work. Teutogens and Ogres can probably fitted to one page in a pinch, though I do not think that has been the style of AJ's (though it was done in Forces of Fantasy with some unts).

So that leaves 1-2 pages for new units**. What might they or it be? Harbinger of Doom was mentioned but surely a hero level Flagellant would not require much in the way of rules.

* I assume we might see foot knights here as well.

** (Unless Knightly Orders are handled in Army Composition pages in which case we have 3-4 pages)

War wagon will be 2 pages.
They are making a deal out of it - one page will likely be fluff. In the 5th ed, I recall it had a page of fluff.

I think we get what you describe above.
Hero level flagellant like a demonslayer is a cool idea though.

So now we can wonder what kind of magic items we might get. Bretonnian & Orcs both had 18 but I think Orcs were not stickler on what army used magic items. I would assume Empire would not have much limitations here either. Perhaps some are only for GA & one of the armies of Infamy, such as Banner of Demonslaying which might be something Nuln would not have but GA & Knightly Orders certainly would.

Bretonnia had the following spread.

4 x magic weapon (2 for all armies, 1 for each AoI)
2 x Magic Armor (1 for Exiles, 1 for "Grail virtue" = GA & EC)
2 x Talisman (1 for Exiles, 1 for "Grail virtue" = GA & EC)
4 x magic standard (2 for all armies, 1 for each AoI)
3 x Enchanted item (1 universal, 1 for each AoI)
3 x arcane item (1 universal, 1 for each AoI)

I'll throw my guesses that two old banners will make an appearance:

Banner of Demonslaying (Knightly order only)
Banner of Arcane Warding (Universal)

Banner of Sigismund could appear as well. While it duplicates currently universal Iron Resolve Banner, this could be cheaper option with some caveat such as "infantry model only" so it would be good banner for Veteran State Troops for example.

What have the previous iterations of rules for war wagon been? I can’t find my old books

Quote from: drweir4 on November 24, 2024, 03:08:29 PM
What have the previous iterations of rules for war wagon been? I can’t find my old books

Chariot with crewmembers that each had a special experimental weapon to use.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarhammerFantasy/comments/1avxx68/empire_war_wagon_empire_army_list/?rdt=43821

The four 'traditional' knightly orders are Reiksguard (who don't currently exist?), Knights of the Blazing Sun, Knights Panther, and Knights of the White Wolf.

That's probably enough for some neat rules variety, though they need do so something with the reiksguard knight (maybe just make them generic knights?)

The sun, panther, and wolf knights all had really cool metal grandmaster miniatures which are coming back.

Quote from: Skyros on November 24, 2024, 05:09:52 PM
The four 'traditional' knightly orders are Reiksguard (who don't currently exist?), Knights of the Blazing Sun, Knights Panther, and Knights of the White Wolf.

That's probably enough for some neat rules variety, though they need do so something with the reiksguard knight (maybe just make them generic knights?)

The sun, panther, and wolf knights all had really cool metal grandmaster miniatures which are coming back.

Reiksguard was not a thing yet but there are regional variants and Knights of Morr. Knights of Morr with crossbows would be pretty neat and definetely a slightly different than all others. We will see. I do expect Foot Knights as general choice for all arnies (kitbash with bretonnian and imperial bits).

I also think that KO-AoI infamy will have army wide rules and these special orders have some other rules seperately (I think in TW Knights of the Blazing Sun had magical and flaming attacks?). This is because I assume them to be available for Grand Armies with caveats such as if your general is CM or GM, you can take one unit of special knights.

For White Wolves I assume that High priest of Ulric will also suffice (since it offers some regional variety to be shown).

With a knights army I would assume we will get some foot knights. And I hope we do. As long as they are core!