The Best Lore in Warcry - Rating the Gnarlwood Adventurers
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- Опубліковано 26 лип 2024
- Patreon.com/thesaltysea
00:00 Askurgan Trueblades
02:57 Chaos Legionnaires
05:40 Claws of Karanak
08:52 Horns of Hashut
12:10 Hunters of Huanchi
16:57 Gorger Mawpack
21:50 Jade Obelisk
26:43 Kruleboyz MonstaKillaz
30:12 Questor Soulsworn
36:12 Rotmire Creed
41:33 Royal Beastflayers
46:10 Vulkyn Flameseekers
51:04 Wildercorps Hunters
56:03 The Winners
This only makes me realize how long we've been stuck in the Gnarlwood.
We were in the Varanspire for three years, though with a slower pace of releases. Presumably we'll be in the Gnarlwood either until the AoS 4 setting change away from Ghur, or until Warcry 3.0 if that happens.
Really cool idea for the video 29/30😅. Just a note on the Questor Soulsworn and their belts; belt is medieval attribute of a knight, alongside spurs and sword (other stormcast knights have belts on too). In some languages being sworn as a knight/dubbing is called 'belting;being given a belt'. So possibly this is behind this belt idea. Cheers!
Hey that's a sweet factoid! That probably explains it, though I wish they'd put that into the blurb.
I completely understand your take on the Horns but mine was opposite. I completely hated the models till I read the lore then everything made sense. They are the bottom rung of that society and they know their place. They strive to strip the lands of everything so the great foundries can be created. They are the base that everything else uses to build upon and they take pride in it. The bull helms they fuse to their bodies out of dedication. Love it.
Enjoyed the video. I never really thought of skaven being as particularly British... that's food for thought.
Not sure about that take - I've read elsewhere that they were inspired by the rat-people who had cameos in Fritz Leiber's Grey Mouser books, though those had a very different tone (just standard behind-the-scenes-manipulator bad guys) and showed up rarely. Leiber was American.
As with most of GW, the humour seems more British than the horror element. Not sure what's offputtingly British about Cities, and I imagine if they like orcs/orruks/Orcs non-Brits will have a high tolerance for our culture. The only thing more British in GW games than greenskins is the fact that measurements are in inches but model and base sizes are in millimetres.
@@philipbowles5397 I do think Skaven fit our idiosyncratic mixture of silly and horror. I'm not sure what that has to do with our history. The Black Death?
@@isaactomangrief9158 I assume so (and the Skaven were behind the WFB version of the Black Death), but it's hardly specifically characteristic of the British - it affected most of Europe and Asia.
Cracking video chap! A really nice refresher of just *how* much has happened since we arrived in the meat forest!
They've also snuck a few warbands into White Dwarf, so Chaos Legionnaires do get a full write up (i scrawled a lore vid for them together back in September which will appear one day...) but, will admit their leering be'lakor armour details is not subtle 😅.
PS - I'm in the Ushoran mini fan club, but the "hairy meatball" nickname is on point!! 😂
im not gonna lie i think the beastnob is the bet model in the kruleboyz range haha, I adore how busy he is
Different strokes for different folks!
I love it when you do videos like this - keep ‘em coming! I got big into the game just before it went to v2 - a great change - and switched to the Gnarlwood - a not good change IMHO. I really, REALLY liked the original Eightpoints setting where you had Chaos warbands questing across the land to earn a place in Archeron’s armies and the warbands of (especially) Order, as well as Death and Destruction there undertaking missions to counter Chaos and/or advance their own agendas. So: I’d welcome a lore video about those warbands!
My fave thing about the 1.0 warbands was guessing which chaos god each warband was leaning towards.
@@thesaltyseagames Weren't they meant to be worshipping minor Chaos deities rather than the big four under other names? Hence being Slaves to Darkness in AoS rather than god-faction warbands (even though in Warhammer snakes are so heavily associated with Slaanesh and birds with Tzeentch that Spintered Fang and Corvus Cabal could reasonably have been in those books).
I think you missed an interesting part of Wildecorps lore in the video. Most of their number are pulled from the Reclaimed - the uncorrupted human survivors of the civilizations that didn’t retreat to Azyr but instead lived nomadic lives to evade the forces of Chaos. They should be the most distinctive human civilization that there is, outside of Chaos, since their culture progressed independently for thousands of years. Unfortunately, this element isn’t represented visually, at all
That's fair. I remember reading that bit but glossing over it bc they never returned to it. Instead the focus went elsewhere. Have you read the Yndrasta book? It includes a culture of Ghur people who are descended from non-chaos, non-azyr folk.
Great breakdown, love the lore focus
The Horns are slaves, though the book seems to avoid using the word - in my headcanon the molten helms they use as a status symbol and test of endurance (now THAT's silly) were probably originally used as punishments by dwarf slavedrivers. There are references to their cruel taskmasters and the like in lore tables and artefacts. It seems the Chaos Dwarfs enslave and convert their villages, and those they trust to be zealous enough to be left on a long leash (and given the odd bit of CD technology) they send out ahead of their invasion front as expendable chaff who sow destruction. Hence the majority having crude wargear.
Almost any of the warbands this year could have been anywhere but the Gnarlwood, as only a couple care about Talaxis at all, but if their MO is 'burn stuff' a forest is a fairly obvious place to put them. Lorewise they're in the Gnarlwood because the Legions of Hashut are close by, but granted that could apply anywhere GW decides Chaos Dwarfs are needed - and undoubtedly will (they already have a city in Shyish).
Agreed, I got vibes that they were similar to mamelukes or janissaries - slave soldiers - when I read the lore book.
Gorgers, Wildercorps Hunters and Flamekyn aren't linked to the Gnarlwood (hence no Gnarlwood terrain in the box for the first two). Like the Catacombs box, they were tie-ins to the ongoing Age of Sigmar campaign supplements. In the Dawnbringers lore Hunters trailblazing for the Ghyran crusade encounter Gorgers around a mawpit, while Flamekyn were involved in the Aqshy storyline (and both they and the Mawpit were the focus of rules supplements).
I didn't know that about those 3. I think Gorgers and Wildercorps were meant to have the scales of talaxis terrain in their box, but they noticed players were buying individual warbs more than the boxsets, and shifted their marketing strategy. I did appreciate the story around mawpits destroying Strongpoint Tolemar, tho knowing that about the dawnbringer books makes it really funny that conflicts keep cropping up in the gnarlwood that by random coincidence mirror the dawnbringer crusades.
@@thesaltyseagames I'm pretty sure the Kruleboyz and Fyreslayers were meant to be in the Scales of Talaxis set - the promo shots feature them fighting over it and they seem to have just split out the components into three different boxes. The Gorgers and Hunters may always have been intended to be a Gnarlwood-less box, as they come with their own setting-agnostic faction terrain (unlike the Riverblades and Nighthaunt, who come with a Gnarlwood-themed terrain piece).
My guess is that Chaos Legionnaires probably was planned for 1.0 but was delayed due to Covid. Based on the lore they were most likely intended to be the other new warband in Catacombs or Red Harvest
That would explain a ton. Also would have fit with the Belakor Broken Realms book.
@@thesaltyseagames I remain pretty sure that a fifth Broken Realms book based on Alarielle was planned but dropped due to covid-linked delays. The final book was overstuffed with faction rules and the central element of the Broken Realms lore that gets referenced in AoS a lot is the Rite of Life - yet in the final book that was almost skimmed over. All the new Sylvaneth units released with the 3.0 book have lore linked to the Rite of Life, and Gossamids first appeared in a Warcom Broken Realms story. All of that seems to suggest that there was more unit support planned for Broken Realms that was dropped due to space considerations when they were limited to four books. Maybe that included the Legionaries and the bizarrely out of place Centaurian Marshal - or maybe they would have been in the Be'lakor book but were trimmed to accommodate the change of structure.
Ye as a Brit I agree with the cities of Sigmar criticism, The wildercorps do come across as a bunch of blokes from down the pub but I think that can also be their charm as they are very much the underdogs punching up.
Yeah I could see doing some headcanon like that to make them more palatable, personally. I plan to try out a non-KO shooting faction for my next project, and if the new Nighthaunt aren't any good, I might do Wildercorps.
Nooo, thats unfair to the Horns! :-) They are the proletariat of AoS. Shatterers are not farmers but hardened if untrained industrial workers. I kinda think of them as the red army, great chaff, so-so elites but rugged and really good tech!
I think they are more defectors working for the chaos dwarfs while enslaving their own people.
As a British person with a Fyreslayer warband, I have never been more called out.
Serious comment: totally agreed that 'here is a new unit for Sigmar on to which we've slapped a Warcry warband identity' is kinda rubbish, but it's better than creating a bespoke warband that just looks like a basic infantry unit of the main army except they have individuated weapon load-outs. There have been a slew of those in Kill Team and it has put me right off.
I think something I could live with long-term is what we got with Sundered Fates, where one is an AOS unit, and the other is a more warcry-specific concept. I agree though, I don't want re-releases of basic infantry.
The chameleon skinks weren't redone for nostalgia - they were redone because they were in the process of updating the Seraphon range and the Warcry box was a convenient place to put the Chameleon Skinks, which had to go because if nothing else they were resin and GW trimmed resin out of the Seraphon range (and add a new unit in Terrawings, which you don't mention). It would have been welcome thematically as well as modelwise to get Temple Guard, but Chameleon Skinks work if you imagine they're more formidable in lore than in game.
We're seeing quite a lot of kits that are just Warcry-stamped releases of AoS units from factions that needed a refresh: Gorgers,, Wildercorp Hunters (which are configured as a Warcry unit but linked to the main Cities of Sigmar refresh) or that are simply intended to be a core part of the main AoS range (such as Riverblades, which fit the existing pattern of Lumineth aelimentiri). They did the same as far back as Khainite Shadowstalkers, a refresh of the old Shades kit.
I fully expect Skaven to get a Night Runner and/or Gutter Runner update as their Warcry set (or maybe a Packmaster with ogres and rats). A while ago I'd have banked on Dryads getting a refresh through Warcry, but now I hold out hope for Kurnothi although two of the three apparently Sylvaneth rumour engines we've seen recently are clearly for an Outcast model or unit.
They're doing the same for Kill Team - all of the kits so far this year are updates of 40k kits that needed an update, or 40k faction-linked upgrade sprues.
As long as they keep mixing in warbs that feel like on-purpose warbands, I'm ok. Like I know Monstakillaz are a rather vanilla extension of KBZ, but there's so much variety in sculpts that they feel like a fully realized warband. The new Nighthaunt team likewise has enough sculpt-variety that it feels like a warband.
@@thesaltyseagames The Monsta-Killaz bother me because, although there is some setup for them in the Warclans book, this looks and is basically flavoured as a Bonesplitterz warband. I don't really expect them to retire Bonesplitterz as a subfaction, so I'm not sure why they made them a Kruleboyz band.
I've been listening through some 2+ tough AoS campaign books and I think those are great sources of inspiration for possible Warcry narrative campaigns.
Skirmishes around the Varanspire during "Wrath of the Everchosen"? Wildercorps scouting party during Reign of the Brute? Vulkyn Flameseekers in Ghyran during the twin tailed crusade?
I do love this video. It shed a lot of light on warband lore I wasn't aware of.
Also, vampire monks for the win. And how have I never heard "Wu-Fang Clan" before? I feel so out of the loop
2+ does a great job finding little things that sound fun.
Please do this for the 1e warbands too
Also, if you're gonna lorecry, you're gonna have to do a video where you explain each faction, but only give yourself 60 seconds per faction
I consider GW lore more like medieval European than English:
Empire - Holy Roman Empire (German). The freeguild looks like German or Swiss troops, you could replace them with any historical mini.
Brettonia - Frankish empire with british Arturian legends
Cities of Sigmar humans are the descendant of these factions.
Jade Obelysk elevator pitch: Tzeentch Iconoclasts, and now it's a 4/5 :P
Yeah that's a little better for sure.
I've remarked a couple times how I do not envy the people that have to write the first half of the Battletomes. Everything is by design vague in a more or less limitless setting, so descriptions of factions, armies, and units amount to permutations of "They're really good at X, and they feel Y!" over and over again for 50 pages. Every writer must thumb a thesaurus into oblivion with each release. A few of the Order Battletomes at least can make references to imply the civilizations and people that your brand of militant loonies are defending, but for rest of the factions, being such one-note symphonies of murderous psychopaths, the background section is pretty ridiculous and ultimately unreadable. One gets the sense most Warhammer material was meant to be skimmed.
I would disagree that the Vulkyn Flameseekers were designed as an AoS unit first. The mixed models and base sizes, the Mordheim-style Heroes & Henchmen setup, the weapon options mattering only in Warcry -- plus the fact that they are a fairly lackluster unit in AoS, with no particular role, that serve mostly as a backup battleline option for a fringe list -- all suggest to me that they were put together with Warcry at the fore. I'd think they had them ready to go with AoS rules and a forgettable Army of Renown simply for efficiency, and because they wouldn't expect to sell many units otherwise. They look like everything else in Fyreslayers because everything looks alike in Fyreslayers, because in their desire at the outset of AoS to reimagine Warhammer Fantasy around concepts that were unique to GW, they wrote themselves into a design corner on dwarfs, because Slayers are all alike and only do one thing (die fighting). I play Fyreslayers in AoS because I like tough, fighty dwarfs (I have the remains of a Cities army with some classic Gromril & hammers dwarfs, but I'm not going to reinvest any further just to try to stay ahead of that particular Gravetide), but I am mostly resigned to the idea that they will never be more than an increasing number of minor variations on the same theme.
I'd love if they gave Fyreslayers more variations on Magmadroths
I'd like a t-shirt that says "Unforgivably British". I've heard the Gargans described as too British as well, which I'd never really considered. I guess I'm just used to seeing British things.
Lol I do find it endearing that GW is this massive global creative company that just kinda sticks to their guns on their own sensibilities.
Get Off/Orf My Land is stereotypically a phrase used by British farmers (generally in a caricatured East Anglian or West Country accent), so there's that at the very least.
Beyond that giants are strongly associated with medieval British folklore, playing a role in mythic origin stories of the island's inhabitants, and there remain quite a number of parts of the British landscape that have giant stories attached to them. Though more modern, it's also a motif in a number of chalk figures such as theCerne Abbas Giant and Long Man of Wilmington, both dating to the 16th or 17th Centuries.
@@thesaltyseagames I think they regard it as an appeal of the brand. Look how much they like putting out Witch Hunter sculpts that look like East Anglian Puritans, and how people globally seem to enjoy Orks despite the very British style of humour.
They actually base surprisingly few factions on British tropes, myths or history. Wood Elves/Sylvaneth (which are based on British and wider northern European fairylore with a hefty helping of Wicca, an English neopagan religion from the mid-20th Century) and Bretonnians are the most obvious, but now we have Sons of Behemat and Britain is so rich in ghost lore that they could definitely add characters or units inspired by specific British tales to Nighthaunt.
@philipbowles5397 I have been told to get off of someone's land before, so that does track. I just don't think I noticed how British things were because it's imagery I've grown up with.
@@cml4914 It definitely wasn't until I was exposed to fans from elsewhere in the world, especially the US, that I realised just how British-accented Warhammer is (notwithstanding the literal British accents such as Yorkshire dwarfs and Londoner orcs).
Can you do a lore video for the first edition warcry bands?
I think so. Might take a little bit but I'll get to it for sure.
@@thesaltyseagames that will be a great video
You were so close...
It's Blut not blud 😂
Chaos won (again) in AoS. So how come you think that chaos warriors are weaker than anyone else?
And how does: "they don't fit the area at all" translate into a 2/5?
I'm British and I'm definitely not offended by calling out the amount of "Yikes!" in new Cities of Sigmar lore. It definitely feels unnecessary and weirdly un-self-aware.
Yeah I have a tough time figuring out if I should actually jump in and explain why it's so unfortunate in a video, or just mention it and let people google it on their own.
I haven't even started watching but if Royal Beastflayers aren't S-tier we're rioting.