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Post by Rowdy Dragon on Aug 16, 2017 17:24:11 GMT
Making up your own fluff is not really fluffy in the traditional sense. But sure, lets assume it is. Why then can you only do that with Mercs? If making up fluff for Horgenhold, Eyriss, Ragman and some Pirates working together is okay, why is making up fluff about Venators and Cataphracts working together wrong? I guess you didn't read my part about looking at previous lore of said characters? You can do it with anyone. However, with Mercs, it makes sense to be a disjointed group working together under an employer for various reasons. Choosing one of the most strict factions in terms of military and discipline like Skorne to be mixed makes literally zero sense any way you spin it. What about manowars and Winter gaurd? They are often described working together. Different divisions of milititaries are designed to work together. Its what they do. I can understand like an Elite Divison of Iron Fangs that works alone (Which is what their theme is) but none of them are described as loners that don't even ever talk to one another.
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wishing
Junior Strategist
Posts: 353
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Post by wishing on Aug 16, 2017 17:48:40 GMT
So the faction that, historically, was most restricted into playing only specific subsets of models (contracts) now is the one that get's the most generic and widely permissive theme, that allows all of everything to be played toghether AND get tons of bonuses on the top of it... Yeah, but 4-Star was always the most permissive theme of any historically. I think the only reason it ever had any restrictions to begin with was so that there was some reason for Ashlynn to have her own Highborn contract. So 4-Star was just the merc version of "play of out of theme", I figure. So it seems historically consistent that now again, the merc way of playing out of theme is to play a theme.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Aug 16, 2017 18:12:24 GMT
So the faction that, historically, was most restricted into playing only specific subsets of models (contracts) now is the one that get's the most generic and widely permissive theme, that allows all of everything to be played toghether AND get tons of bonuses on the top of it... Yeah, but 4-Star was always the most permissive theme of any historically. I think the only reason it ever had any restrictions to begin with was so that there was some reason for Ashlynn to have her own Highborn contract. So 4-Star was just the merc version of "play of out of theme", I figure. So it seems historically consistent that now again, the merc way of playing out of theme is to play a theme. As I recall, the 4-star contract didn't actually give any bonuses beyond access to a much wider variety of models. It wasn't just 'the mercs' way of playing out of theme,' it literally was 'the mercs are playing out of theme.' This ain't that. The bonuses on this theme at the very least rival those of other themes (jack marshal benefit is meh, but up to 25 points of free stuff makes up for it) and potentially exceed them, with hardly any sacrifice of flexibility at all. Compare what you lose in, say, winds of death or Wild hunt for access to free stuff/benefits to this theme and there's just no comparison. Nothing against generic themes, but at the very least they should be less overtly powerful than playing in other themes.
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Post by Blargaliscious on Aug 16, 2017 19:32:18 GMT
I just posted a question in the PP rules forums asking for clarification about what Mercenary units and solos are allowed in this theme army. Should the solos who have "Mercenary" anywhere in their title (1st or 2nd line) but are on Minion cards be allowed in this theme army?
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Post by Azuresun on Aug 16, 2017 20:16:19 GMT
It doesn't really make the faction competitive, since they still can't answer skews like Fyanna2 Oracles, Vlad1 Team Rocket or Deneghra1 Ghost Fleet.
But I'm just happy they remembered the faction EXISTED, considering the last news we got was "Here are these awesome Llaelese and Ordic guys....which you can't have." Fluffwise, I'd have preferred something similar to Macbain's old "Soldiers of Fortune" theme, where it was designed around character units, but this is an okay compromise, even if it's an obvious bodge job.
And come on, it's not like the themes of "List I Was Going To Take Anyway +1" didn't already exist.
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wishing
Junior Strategist
Posts: 353
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Post by wishing on Aug 16, 2017 22:00:27 GMT
As I recall, the 4-star contract didn't actually give any bonuses beyond access to a much wider variety of models. It wasn't just 'the mercs' way of playing out of theme,' it literally was 'the mercs are playing out of theme.' The bonuses here is indeed the big difference. I was just answering the protest against the concept of mercs having a generic theme at all.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Aug 16, 2017 22:18:01 GMT
As I recall, the 4-star contract didn't actually give any bonuses beyond access to a much wider variety of models. It wasn't just 'the mercs' way of playing out of theme,' it literally was 'the mercs are playing out of theme.' The bonuses here is indeed the big difference. I was just answering the protest against the concept of mercs having a generic theme at all. I mean, isn't the equivalent to four star right now just 'playing out of theme' in that case? Alternatively, this could have been a generic unit theme (20 points of units = one free thing) not this mess of 'everything gets you free stuff.'
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Post by Aegis on Aug 16, 2017 22:56:15 GMT
Making up your own fluff is not really fluffy in the traditional sense. But sure, lets assume it is. Why then can you only do that with Mercs? If making up fluff for Horgenhold, Eyriss, Ragman and some Pirates working together is okay, why is making up fluff about Venators and Cataphracts working together wrong? I guess you didn't read my part about looking at previous lore of said characters? You can do it with anyone. However, with Mercs, it makes sense to be a disjointed group working together under an employer for various reasons. Choosing one of the most strict factions in terms of military and discipline like Skorne to be mixed makes literally zero sense any way you spin it. Actually no, it doesn't. In all the fluff we have seen up to now, armies depicted were always mixed. Stryker usually brings a lot of Storm Knights (Storm Division), but always had some trenchers to build camps and rangers to scout with him. The same applies to all other armies. Bring me a single piece of fluff where the armies depicted stay inside a theme force. They are all mixed armies. On countrary, despite mercs being variegated, I doubt you will find me a piece of fluff where alexia works with pirates, dwarfs and elfs. So your logic is wrong. Mixed armies make a lot of sense in traditional militaries (why should an army of the storm division, or a caster with a big battlegroup, or an army of gun mages go around without rangers to scout? Are those cygnar generals incompetents? Why should a khador army not have some winter guard inside?), but mercenaries are sometimes so diverse that different subfactions that would hardly ever work toghether will almost never join. Also, the theme if I read it well allows you to get bonuses to bring things like kayazy, precursors, mage hunters (Eyriss) and idrians all in the same armies (so partesans of different factions in war that work toghether and get "themed bonus" for it?). That is also why in MK2 most factions were free to bring what they wanted while mercs had contracts, because for fluff some mercs don't make sense to work with other mercs (Croes and Precursors?), while mixed armies are the norm of national militaries. Giving merc a free for all theme and not to others is against the fluff, but it's evident that PP doesn't care about fluff at all anymore.
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Post by gobber on Aug 16, 2017 23:44:56 GMT
On countrary, despite mercs being variegated, I doubt you will find me a piece of fluff where alexia works with pirates, dwarfs and elfs. Alexia frequently works with the human pirates, as they're in contention with Scharde pirates for the same territory. Doing some NQ digging for fluff examples. Once we establish she works with pirates, dwarves (Rockbottom) and elves (Aiyana) are easy.
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Post by W0lfBane on Aug 17, 2017 0:14:15 GMT
On countrary, despite mercs being variegated, I doubt you will find me a piece of fluff where alexia works with pirates, dwarfs and elfs. Alexia frequently works with the human pirates, as they're in contention with Scharde pirates for the same territory. Doing some NQ digging for fluff examples. Once we establish she works with pirates, dwarves (Rockbottom) and elves (Aiyana) are easy. Aiyana is a privateer model first and extremist elf second. She makes her alliengences to pirates very well known.
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Post by Aegis on Aug 17, 2017 0:35:02 GMT
Alexia frequently works with the human pirates, as they're in contention with Scharde pirates for the same territory. Doing some NQ digging for fluff examples. Once we establish she works with pirates, dwarves (Rockbottom) and elves (Aiyana) are easy. Aiyana is a privateer model first and extremist elf second. She makes her alliengences to pirates very well known. Actually, Aiyana isn't an extremist at all. She is a seeker, not part of Retribuition. That said, don't purposely circumvent my words. What I'm talking about aren't the various pirates, but elfs like Eyriss and dwarves like Thor or Durgen. The theme lets you mix the most distant and unlikely to work toghether mercs. If PP has chosen to go so far away to practically forbid to play rangers and stormknight toghether (without being far disadvantaged), I don't see why they should give bonuses to play precursors and pirates together.
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Post by elladan52 on Aug 17, 2017 0:55:54 GMT
Your unwillingness to create even the simplest scenario in your head is astounding, Aegis.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Aug 17, 2017 1:06:14 GMT
Your unwillingness to create even the simplest scenario in your head is astounding, Aegis. The Firetruck does that even mean? 'come up with a pretend backstory to explain an improbable army composition' is all fine and dandy...if we weren't seeing some armies have asinine theme restrictions because of 'fluff' and 'theme' and others apparently getting themes that let them put just about anything into the same list. Great. you can think up a rationale for pirates to play with Croe's. or Pirates with Dwarves (you know what trade-focused nations just love? Pirates.) I can think up a rationale for my druids to play with my wolds, or my Tharn with my wolf-sworn, or my Firetrucking dawnguard with my houseguard far more easily that you can contrive any such explanation, yet mercs get to play with an unrestricted theme when no one else can? No. Firetruck no.
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Post by Aegis on Aug 17, 2017 1:27:23 GMT
Your unwillingness to create even the simplest scenario in your head is astounding, Aegis. Your unwillingness to understand what I'm saying and ability to misunderstand is even more astounding, elladan. I can easily think about as many crappy scenarios to make unlikely allies work toghether as you want... But, as oncomingstorm already pointed out, the problem isn't finding unlikely reasons to make holy knights and cutthroats work toghether, but why those crappy reasons should be more valid than good, logic, and even more simple reasons that would want units of the same military army work toghether. Again, the problem isn't merc getting to play out of theme, but the fact that they are the only ones able to that when they are the less legitimate by fluff to do so (as Mk2 contracts prove). Whatever "simplest scenario" you can point out for free for all mercs, I can find 20 better scenarios for free for all other factions, and still other factions aren't allowed to get bonuses to play whatever they want.
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Post by W0lfBane on Aug 17, 2017 2:33:30 GMT
Also for you gentleman pointing out that this is supposed to be the jack theme for mercenaries i feel line they really cocked it up if that was their plan. Everyone else's jack themes are super restrictive by comparison. (I wish my jack themes had the option of good screening units.) And it actively encourages you to take units to get the last benefit. Like they could have done a much better job encouraging a jack centric theme. This theme has the opposite problem of f some of the infantry themes. There will be lists that use this "jack" theme that won't be jacks at all but mostly infantry.
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