Warcry. What's the crack?

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ashdevon
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Warcry. What's the crack?

Post by ashdevon » Wed Aug 28, 2019 1:45 pm

Warcry. Just been having a look at the starter set. As I haven't been following any of the AOS fluff I'm not really sure what I'm looking at. What's going on here, can someone explain the setting to me? :ugeek: :lol:
I'm seeing Mad Max burly men in bondage masks with mouths that look like, well, say no more. Lots of creepy crawly things, Beastmen. Where are we and what is the game we are looking at here? Chaos wasteland?
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Re: Warcry. What's the crack?

Post by me_in_japan » Wed Aug 28, 2019 4:15 pm

I'm not too up on the AoS background, but basically there is no "planet" per se, as there used to be in the Old Warhammer (with the Empire, Lustria, Bretonnia etc.) It all got blown up. Now there are "realms", which are basically...kinda...planet-y things? I guess? Could be planes of existence. Doesn't really matter. What does matter is that each one is themed after one of the old schools of magic. e.g. the realm of beasts, the realm of metal, the realm of light, the realm of death, etc. These don't actually reflect the goodness or badness of the realm, as you get both good and bad peeps in all 8 realms. They're all linked by a number of basically magical tunnels called Realm gates. These could be actual gates, or something like a creepy old house in the woods, or a crack in a tree, or whatever. Humans exist in all 8 realms, and have differing ways of life depending on where they live. The realm of Light (Azyr) is inhibited by Sigmar (the god) and his Stormcast (=Sigmarines=reincarnated mighty warrior types from various realms.) The other realms have different rulers (eg I'm pretty sure Nagash is in the realm of Death.) Yes, some of the Big Names of the old warhammer survived the place being blown to bits by walking through a magical portal, so GW can trot them out again as needed. Interestingly, Slaanesh got captured by Tyrion and Teclis, and has been largely out of the picture, being supplanted in the Chaos Pantheon by the skaven god The Horned Rat. But Slaanesh is back again now, with lots of nice minis, so not to worry :) Chaos has pretty much taken over all the realms except Azyr, to varying degrees, and now Sigmar is launching his great crusade from Azyr to restore peace and order to the realms. If this all sounds a bit 40kish, thats because it is.


Sooooo, onto Warcry.

Warcry is a skirmish game set in one of the realms I cant remember the name of where chaos warbands are gathering to fight for Archaon, bigbad chaos boss dude. Each warband in the game reflects its realm of origin - the beasty ones are from the realm of beasts, the kinda egyptian-ish looking ones are from the realm of light, the big meaty chaps are from the realm of metal, etc. There are also (helpfully) rules for several other non-chaos factions, because, hey, the good guys gotta go spy on the bad guys, and orcs just like a punch up. And GW would like people to buy more minis and not everyone likes Chaos cults :lol:

Rules-wise is where the game gets interesting. It's quite different to typical GW games, and does away completely with the usual M, WS, BS, S, T etc stats. I'm planning on a more complete write up of the game rules and general attractive points in the near future. Watch this space :) For now, it looks pretty streamlined compared to typical GW games, with baked in stuff for scenario generation, warband improvement/campaigns, and so on. I'm keen to play, and have bought the rulebook and some cards (it uses cards for warband organisation, which really, really helps. They're not too pricey, either, which is a nice bonus.)
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Re: Warcry. What's the crack?

Post by The Other Dave » Thu Aug 29, 2019 6:29 am

To fill in / follow up on on mij's infodump:

WarCry is set in the Eightpoints, which is a sort of nexus between realms connecting all eight (except for Azyr, which Sigmar sealed off when he abandoned the other seven to chaos long in the past) - there are actually quite a few of these "in-between" places in the lore. The Eightpoints is special because it's got a massive fortress at the middle of it, where all roads from all realms converge, where Archaeon the Everchosen (remember him?) lives, and which he uses as a base of operations for his wars of conquest on all the realms he can get to. That's why the various chaos warbands are there - to try to get into Archaeon's armies and kick butt for the power of Chaos. Basically it's like how in Lord of the Rings all beings of darkness felt a call to action as Sauron gained power, and made their ways to Mordor whether actually summoned there or not - they just knew they had to go. That's what the warbands in WarCry are up to, and once they get to the Eightpoints, their goal is to distinguish themselves enough so that Arhcaeon's armies actually take notice of them and open the gates of the fortress to let them join the forces always amassing there. Basically rabble fighting amongst themselves in the chaos-tainted wastes and shantytowns surrounding Archaeon's fortress.

AoS lorechat follows, so brace yourself: :D

The thing mij mentions about Sigmar's crusade is actually worth talking about, and something I kind of like about the setting in opposition to 40K. The current age, the Age of Sigmar, has just started, and is coming off of a many-thousand-year-long Age of Chaos, when Chaos basically ruled all seven of the realms besides Azyr (which Sigmar kept sealed off very tightly). Sigmar and the Stormcast (and their allies of convenience in Chaos-hating like the Witch Elves and soulless sea elves and dwarves and such) have been on their crusade to free the realms from Chaos for only a relatively short period of time, so the vast bulk of the mortal realms are, as they have been for centuries, populated largely by people who really only know Chaos as a way of life - these are our "protagonists" in WarCry.

There are hitches (like Sigmar discovering that his Stormcast are fundamentally flawed and slowly losing their humanity, or Nagash turning the whole realm of Death into a magic battery for himself) but on the whole there is at least hope that the "good guys" might win, someday, unlike 40K where the status quo is officially "the best we can do is slow down the inevitable slide into entropy". It's not a given, as the forces of Chaos, Death and Destruction are all real threats (even the goblins!) but it's at least hopeful. Of course, it's equally "hopeful" for all the factions - Sigmar's chances of bringing in a new age of order and freedom to all eight realms are about as good as Nagash's of turning all of reality into a cemetery, or the Goblins' of turning it all into a dank fungus-covered swamp, and each faction has victories and defeats.

If that sounds like it was intentionally created to give players of any one faction the feeling that they have some stake in what happens to the setting going forward, it very much was. Same with the realms being populated more or less evenly by beings of all factions - an Order-aligned city might be populated by humans, elves, dwarves, and even lizardmen, and have undead of all stripes, orcs, goblins, and chaos hordes poised to threaten it, so you don't have to worry about justifying why your Bretonnian army is fighting Lizardmen even though they live halfway across the world from each other.

There is, to be fair, a lot of high-fantasy silliness in the background, but in the past year or so they've been working hard to make it more "grounded," or at least as grounded as a high-fantasy setting can be, and filling in what was painted with only very very broad strokes at release.
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ashdevon
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Re: Warcry. What's the crack?

Post by ashdevon » Thu Aug 29, 2019 6:26 pm

Thanks guys. Good to know. It's intensive that's for sure. I have some unopened Slaneesh that could work for this. New project ahoy.
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Re: Warcry. What's the crack?

Post by me_in_japan » Fri Aug 30, 2019 5:24 am

take a look at the available factions and what minis they can use before you jump in. Obviously you can apply a certain amount of flexible thinking, but it'll make things easier for you if you have a clear idea of what each mini is supposed to be (eg "this Mantic elf lady is a Witch Aelf, and that snakeman with a bow from Reaper is a melusai" and suchlike.)

also, I just found this site. Might be handy?

https://ageofminiatures.com/warcry-warbands/
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Re: Warcry. What's the crack?

Post by The Other Dave » Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:26 am

Yeah - there's a lot of reskinning you can do (I saw someone on Twitter planning on using the sea elf rules for Skaven) but looking at the unit archetypes each faction has, and the special moves they have available to them (at the link mij gave) is a good place to start.

Just for a quick decyphering of a typical card at ageofminiatures:

Image

In the circle in the upper left you've got, clockwise, move, toughness and wounds, pretty self-explanatory.

To the upper right is the points value.

Directly to the left of the miniature picture (under that model's lovely hook) you have runemarks - models can use special abilities they share a runemark with.

At the bottom you have their attack - range in inches, number of dice, strength, and damage (normal / crit).

That's probably enough to start comparing things and getting an idea of strengths and weaknesses.
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
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Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
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Re: Warcry. What's the crack?

Post by Jye Nicolson » Sat Aug 31, 2019 12:59 am

I've been playing a lot of Warcry here in Melbourne since its release, hoping to play a lot more in Nagoya, it's a lot of fun!

It leans heavier into speed and variety of play than Kill Team; while there's a matched play option that's more balanced, by default you draw terrain layout, deployments, objectives and a twist rule from decks of cards after you've chosen your teams. That means it's much less about knowing the faction matchups than Kill Team, and more dealing with the crazy set of circumstances served up and accept that you're not going to win them all. You just play more games faster, and some will definitely go your way.

The campaign system is interesting too - your warband has their own quest that they progress through in games versus anyone else on a quest. So theoretically I could play a bunch of campaign games here in Melbourne this week, and then take my progression to play in Nagoya next week; I wouldn't need formally organised campaigns in both places, just people who are also playing in campaign mode. I'm not sure how balanced it is - looks like there's a touch of rich-get-richer there, but a) even losing a campaign game is progress, b) finishing a quest and starting a new one is a bit of a reset, so while you'll have some nice loot it's not an infinite upwards power curve, c) the random mission draw probably still matters more.

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