Warhammer Fantasy Battle Reporter Forum

Hi Orcy, I hadn't considered changing the coral hunters, although there is a new Sprat hero being added that will allow a single unit of coral hunters to be taken as skirmishers.

The Wavebreaks will definitely be getting a tweak. +1 strength at no additional points cost. I'm hoping to make a load of updates this coming weekend. I have a battle 2 weeks form now and want the new list to be ready in time.

A new Rare Unit has just been added; Fortunis the Great Sea Turtle.

http://naut2.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-rare-unit-choice-for-nauticans.html

Fortunis - The Infinity Turtle
------------------------------------


A timeless ever presence in the seas of the Warhammer World. This giant ethereal beast endlessly swims the deep oceans occupying a space between reality and the netherworlds.

The great turtle has survived for countless millenia, first in it's living form, now in it's translucent ghost like presence. Many of the greatest Nautican minds have spent a lifetime pondering the creature's existence and it's purpose. The fact remains that no one can answer any of the many questions.

At times, the Turtle has appeared in the Nauticans darkest hours and in their direst of needs. Whether this be a time or war, famine or disease the appearance of the turtle seems to preceed a change for the better in Nautican fortunes.

Let me know what you think.

PS. When I say it's been added, it's only on the Nautican Design Notes site at the moment but it'll be up on the Army List site soon along with the other zillion changes I need to make !

Hmmm, I think this army has enough Special Characters (4 so far?) and a fifth would be a bit too much... Unless my calculations are wrong, and this is a 3rd Special Char, then that would be fine. But try not to have more than three Special Characters in my opinion. It seems cool, I am guessing it would cast supportive magic rather than fight? Because turtles are quite docile.

I agree with power about the number of special characters. But dont agree about the magic, make him an attacker, or if you will make him magician then give him some healing spells

Please indulge my seeming tangent, as it has a point regarding the special characters.

I am working on a Spartan/Pelopponesian army list and as part of my research, I went through every single army book except the daemons of Chaos and counted up the Lord-level options, Hero-level options, Core, Special and Rare Troop options, and the Special Character options.

What I found was quite revealing as their is quite a wide variety in every category.

Parsing the research further, I discovered a notable trend; the more recent the army book, in general the more special, named characters.

Case in point; Warriors of Chaos have 6 (six) Lord-Level special characters.

They also have 3 hero level special characters.

That is a whopping 9 special choices. Why so many?

Archaon serves as second BSB in an army with low LD that will take lots of them due to its nature.
Galrauch allows a Dragon while still providing magic.

Sigvald allows a key portion of the army to avoid shooting on many battlefields and create easy flanking movements.

Valkia again serves as second BSB.
Wulfrik serves the role of flying unit/march blocker/war machine killer.

Throgg serves as a mini-BSB.

In other words, the Special Characters allow the army to fill holes that make it more competitive. Why did they not do this with core/special/rare troops? Don't know, don't care. Point is, they used Special Characters to "balance" the army and give you options as to how to flavor your power-up.



The point of all this non-sensical rambling?

5 Special Characters is quite reasonable and possibly even not enough. What holes do the Nauticans have that need filling? That is the over-all need, far more than fluff which can take some time to develop.

Just my two cents, which after taxes means you owe me a quarter

5 special characters is a small amount at the moment

Darth, you;re spot on about the number of special characters increasing over the past few army books.

All, I presume you're not talking specifically about Fortunis which is actually a Rare Unit as opposed to a special character.

With regards to the special characters, there will be:-

At Lord Level:-
The King of the Seas
The Guardian of Time

At Hero Level:-
Zharc
Zheala
Vortex
K' Li Mare
Zhu Zhi

Specialized BSB
Chanty Singer

The Coastal Hermit (might be removed - undecided)
Zhurf (definitely being removed)

There will probably be 5 or maybe 6 special characters (if the Coastal Hermit makes it into the final list) plus a character which is, in effect, just a BSB (with weak profile stats)

I'm fairly happy with the combination at the moment.

In total, I expect 9 special characters (or 8 if I get rid of the Coastal Hermit). Personally, I don't really see a problem with that.

thats a good number

ive always like 3 and its multiples

Also, I just realised that...

Zharc
K' Li Mare
Zhu Xhi

...are all fairly weak and expensive as individual characters (although I guess Zharc might work on his own). They really need to be used with a unit and they're all locked into certain units which restricts their use somewhat.

Fortunis the giant ethereal sea turtle went live (or should I say "un-live") on the Nautican army list today.

Rare Unit section.

It brings something very different into the equation for the Nautican Army and it's enemies. Get your trigonometry heads on !

It will hopefully make a Nautican commander think twice before sitting back with Tripoons and march blocking with Manta Rays against slower moving armies or those with big beasts and little artillery. Now there's a great reason to go in for the kill. Just make sure you get your timing right

I have decided to remove Tide Watchers, I simply cannot find appropriate models.

In addition, this weekend I will be moving Aqualops (a totally new unit) to the Special Units section and swapping it with the Mantarays which are being moved to Core and getting a name change to Stingrays.

There are some blogged thoughts and ideas on the new Aqualops unit here:-

http://naut2.blogspot.com/2009/12/i-have-taken-plunge-and-am-diving-in.html

The Aqualops was originally going to be a core unit but I feel it's rules are too "specialised" and it's too "rare" to be core. It's not powerful enough to be a rare unit so I'm reducing the power of the Stingrays and limiting their use according to the number of magic users in the army.

If the army includes Weresharks (which dine on Stingrays !) then the 1st Stingray unit taken counts as a Special choice.

I think will give a bit more balance to the army and prevent the use of Stingrays from being exploited, I don't want too many flyer units in the Nautican army, it's not that kind of force.

The Aqulops miniature was just too good ot miss, that's been the main motivation around these changes. I've worked out the rules which I've deliberately made quite quirky and entertaining and I'll be posting an update to the army list at the weekend.

Thanks for reading guys,
Sigmar

I like the Aqualops mate just finished reading his bio looks good

Thanks very much Kiwi, I also like the Aqualops, he's a bit different to the other Nautican units and I love the miniatures (which is why I was keen to fit them in):-

For anyone who hasn't seen them yet...



and the Seaweedlings...



I made quite a few changes on the site yesterday so check out the change list there.

I tweaked the magic lore and magic items today (on my paper copy) and I'm typing them in over the next few days. The goal is to get the pdf online before year end. I don't plan to be making any more changes past draft 4.0 until I've got a lot more play testing feedback.

I also have Office 2007 now which means I can convert a Word Doc into a pdf which makes things easier.