Dominion Progress and review

[Pictors Studio]

I got the new AoS starter set.  I have managed to read the rules.  It seems that they have streamlined somethings from 2nd edition, especially command points.  I have to confess that I never really read the 2nd edition rules very thoroughly.  I was still, more or less, playing 1st edition.  I think I will give 3.0 a go though.

The figures are lovely.  The Stormcast are pretty much more of the same.  They are better proportioned and even more dynamic than the ones in the last two boxed sets.  I don't like the human heads in the box as I think they look better, and were better in the fluff, as just suits of armour animated by magical heavenly energy or whatever they could have been when the fluff first came out.  That is what mine are so none of them will ever be unhelmeted.

Here are 6 of them finished. 




The bigger guys are pretty neat.  I'll get pictures of them up sometime tomorrow.

The halberd guys are the coolest looking but also the most difficult to assemble.  The capes have somewhat large gaps in them in the finished product.  Not a serious problem but maybe more difficult for newer modelers. 

But the orcs are where the new stuff really shines (if orcs can shine.)

These are the plastic orcs from GW I've always wanted but didn't know.  I liked the 6th edition WHFB orcs in that they were an improvement over the older ones but they were too big and muscular.  They made sense looking like that in 40K but not in WHFB.  How was I to believe that a man with a spear was going to stand a chance against one of those monsters. 

That didn't matter as much when they put out AoS but still these Orcs are really good looking.  They remind me of the Mithril Black Orcs in a lot of ways.



I've got them all painted now and I'll try to get some pictures of them today.

I'm working on the hobgoblins next.  Not as a big of a fan of the sculpts of those but I'm glad to see we are getting Hobgoblins again.  Hopefully we will see more of them in the future.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Confirms my suspicion that the orcs look 1000% better when you don't paint their shields a garish red.  I'm inclined to agree with you that they have the best design aesthetic for orcs in ages, and maybe even better than some of the oldest Oldhammer sculpts.  Definitely a strong whiff of Middle Earth there without being simple imitation. 

That said, some of them - mostly the giant crossbow guys - are a bit OTT even by GW standards.  Got some lovely large monster riders coming down the road, though.

The rules seem quite a bit deeper in terms of decision making than previous editions, and the unit coherency changes are finally going to force models to stop doing some of the more visually idiotic things that spoiled this game for many WFB fans.  The mechanics do seem to hard-selling hero and monster models in favor of units though, which seems problematic unless you think $25-65 for a single character fig is reasonable.

Interestingly, I was talking to several US retailers about the core box and it appears that GW's sales on it have been far worse than expected.  The company initially slashed store orders to less than half of what they'd wanted, no doubt hoping to repeat past successes and sell out directly through the GW web store.  That didn't happen, and now they're trying to get stores to take the other half of their orders despite most sane owners having cancelled them as soon as the initial limits were announced.  One guy in Texas even had 40 extra copies tacked on to his initial numbers without authorization.  It's got part of the retail community talking seriously about refusing the credit card charges from GW and returning the boxes unopened, since what sales this behemoth was going to get have mostly happened already.  Should be interesting to see how this works out in the long run, especially coming off the utter debacle that Cursed City was. 

[Pictors Studio]

I don't find the orc crossbowmen to be that bad.  I'd have preferred archers but if you are going to give them crossbows they should probably have big stompy ones.  With bayonets, of course.

I'm not actually a fan of the monsters they have coming out, at least not the ones I've seen so far.  I'll be concentrating on filling my force with orcs and more orcs.  Orcs with axes.  Orcs with spears.  Orcs with bows if I can get 'em.

I still think units are going to dominate the game the way they have done in previous editions and in a way they never did in most editions of WHFB.  These Stormcast Annihilators are going to stop most big stompy monsters dead in their tracks and unless you're facing the most powerful of characters they are going to just run them down before attacks are even made in many cases.

Even the Vindicators are going to put the boots to a lot of characters and monsters in units of 10.

Anyway here are the rest of the Bog gobbers.



I managed to get 17 out of 20 of the Hobgoblins done so far.  These were the least interesting of the Orc forces in the box for me.  I like hobgoblins but the way they are dressed is a little odd.  Also their necks seem weird.  Also GW painted them wrong.  I've read enough Spider Man comics to know what colour a hobgoblin is. 



These are the crossbow orcs.  I wish the rules made them move or shoot.  As it is if they move they can't shoot further than 12".



And here is another pictures of the Orc, because they are my favourites.

[Pictors Studio]

Here is the demo game we did at my FLGS using the Dominion boxed set.



The orcs were slaughtered pretty badly in this game.  The stomcast that comes in the box, at least without any additional special rules, seem to overmatch the orcs at the level of the troops and a single character on each side.  Which is what I'd expect looking at the figures. 



The players still had fun.  The objective of the game was for the orcs to get into the town and poison a well and desecrate a cemetery while the Stormcast were trying to get to the swamps and break down some of the orcs bridges so that it was more difficult to loot the town.

In the end neither side accomplished their objective during the game but after the stormcast probably had plenty of time to do whatever they wanted after they killed all the orcs.



The stormcast figures will make their way into my already existing stormcast army.  The orcs I'll probably turn into a new army actually.  I really like these figures.  These are some of the first fantasy Orcs GW has made that I really, really like. 




They definitely have a lot of Lord of the Rings feel to them.  I'll probably even buy the army book when it comes out so that I have rules to play them properly.

I'm looking to run a Warhammer Fantasy Battle 6th edition game with them at the store in August.  Hopefully the rest of the range is released by then so I can get more figures to throw at my growing early Empire army.

[blacksoilbill]

Those orcs look heaps better with their shields painted like that. Nice work!

[Chief Lackey Rich]

The hobgobs would probably look very good as elites in a force of the GW Misty Mountain goblins, the ones that came in the Hobbit boxed set way back when.  They look big enough to be intimidating and stylistically compatible.

[sir_shvantselot]

Interesting observations. And lovely pictures.

[Pictors Studio]

Thank you. I'm glad you liked them.

I see they are putting out three starter sets like they did with 40k last year. I'll probably get at least the smallest one so thsy I can get more of these orks.

The bug one has some nice terrain in it though so that might be the way I go although I don't need the characters or the stormcast.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

The bug one has some nice terrain in it though so that might be the way I go although I don't need the characters or the stormcast.

I'm sure teh terrain will eventually be available separately, but beyond that ebay will be flooded with broken-up boxes so you should be able to just grab what you want, albeit not quite as cheaply as getting a whole boxed set.  Of course, you could join the crowd and flog your own box's unwanted figs instead.