 Hello everybody if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer weekly Joining me not as always is Tom. He's gone today, but I've brought in an upgrade It's mr. Rob the honest or Ron if you like Terrorist Rob Tori Rob Ron a man by many names, but one of my favorite people in the entire world What's up, buddy? How you doing? Hi everyone pleasure. Thanks for being on and I can't ever replace Tom Tom's brilliant we all know like like maybe I'll just today at all the all the misdirected hatred towards Tom could be directed towards me and then Take it with me great to be here with you very excited about the chat today. Yeah excited to be here So thanks. It's not even that late really 10 a 10 p.m. It's nice. Thanks for doing it so early Yeah, absolutely. Well, I saw it was sort of a double win one I don't like it with you for UK guess this is kind of the time but to I saw was a chance to get rid of Tom And so, you know, I was like, oh well It's a two for right there At any rate, we got lots of news this week. We got lots of stuff to discuss We're gonna be talking about terrain in AOS and something that I've been trying to help Rob with and something He's been taking the lead on and I'm very excited about And because we are both firm believers in how quality terrain makes for a quality game. Is that a good submission there? Oh Absolutely, I think I think it's I think it's the most exciting con other than obviously age of Sigma what you're painting Sure, and oh, yeah, like and a bunch of other stuff. It's one of the most exciting conversations Also do retreats counters retreats loads of hot topics today. So much hot guys So much good guys, but I think it's a fascinating conversation and Yeah, really excited to have this chat today. So thanks for having me on really appreciate it Absolutely, but of course first We're gonna talk about some news so the rumor engines up on the screen and Here's the question Rob. Do you think this is another storm cast? We haven't seen yet. Is this a beast hunter storm cast is that what we're looking at? Maybe another character looks like he's got some kind of arrows or spikes or something and a dead beast Is that what I've got here? Yeah, I feel like you've nailed that. I don't I don't see anything different in any way shape or form I expect Whatever they're hunting whatever the the mixed box that they're hunting, which we were pretty certain is destruction Maybe maybe it's a grizzly trophy of theirs where they left an effigy around. I think that's what they're doing Right, they leave in effigy is a sure absolutely a boot the place But yeah, it could be something like that. I'm not I don't really I don't really get into the rumor engine hype This is a this is a you love this bit, right? Well, it's a constant news item See the the the nice part about rumor engine is that they drop them on Tuesdays Which means I always have at least one piece of news to talk about. Oh nice See, that's you gotta I don't have anything by Monday a.m. I just fire off some red hot tweets and then I've got loads for the evening It's a good plan Yeah, let me tell you why I think this is a character or something. Yeah, please do So obviously you can see little arrows and the fletching and the dead cloak or whatever But do you notice this very fine brush work? Can you see these very fine brush strokes here? Like these are effectively like little free-handed fur brush strokes in this picture Which means that like an heavy metal team member spent a lot of time on a character And like the way the heavy metal team works is they get X amount of hours assigned to do any one particular project, right? And sometimes they share units and stuff like that and sometimes if it's a single character goes to one person that you get like Okay, you have 26 hours or 30 hours to do it or whatever however many hours they need and This tells me this was a single model because whoever did it put a lot of care into it, right? Like if this was a unit of five dudes, you wouldn't see them going in and being like You should be a detective I hadn't picked up on that at all But you see things I don't see Mainly because I'm a I'm a one-color and done fella sure like it's on and I'm out So yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot there that I'm not picking up on which I can see yeah Because there's lots on the are we thinking that's a shoulder pad or I think it yeah That's like yeah, that's like a shoulder pad right here. Yes with like the thing hanging over it, right? Yeah Yeah, yeah, it looks great. Yeah, I mean it looks cool I'm I really really positive on the new storm cast aesthetic You and me both yeah, which we'll talk about in just a moment Well, we'll get to that because boy oh boy. I am with you I am stoked like a thousand percent to the point where I wish that had been original storm cast So but here we are Okay Next up a minor news item that we have to report but then we can blow by it But it might be interesting to you because I think you asked this question or somebody did so they're launching a new line of synthetic brushes Oh, I did ask this question. Yeah, like my question was do I care? No, please tell me This because this is why I use this for I use this for every single paint job. Well, that is any more any size Okay, but this is this is why I want to shout them out. They're not a sponsor, but this is I think Coily I'm not sure if you've heard of them. I do not know They're the cheapest ones I can buy on Amazon Yeah, I mean I have my my go-to on Amazon of recent has been these yellow ones from Royal and Lang nickel they come in big packs like this You've got Royal and Lang little money That's where I'm at living so Uh, yeah a synthetic brushes just means not natural sable hair So sable hair comes in a couple different varieties and a couple different places. They all it's effectively weasel taint It comes off of their rear. It's not real. Yeah, that's real. That's where it is. Yeah Wow, it's it's for you pull out of their haunches their rear side and It's there's a particular center. Yes. Yeah, and the So then it's most of those most stable brushes some sable brushes are machine assembled summer hand assembled There's lots of different people use there's various different qualities of hair There are other types of natural hair that are also sometimes used in brushes like ox hair and stuff like that care Are there's a lot more rough And things like that so It's fine synthetic brushes are just what they sound like they're synthetic it's it's some kind of like nylon or something like that as a Fiber most brushes you buy cheap and impacts are synthetics because you you generally just you get a real long string of the stuff and then it's You know, it's pretty easy to make uh If you're buying cheap brushes, you're already buying synthetics They announced that they're launching this new synthetic line like it's something special and it's just like no That's all cheap brushes are synthetics and the one of the worst things you can do is spend real money on synthetic brushes because synthetic even like basically all synthetic brushes With a few exceptions are of the same quality. So buying cheaper synthetics is usually the right answer I wonder I don't know if you've been keeping up with the lab grown meat situation. Yeah, sure. Absolutely But I wonder if they can grow some I like a good impossible burger Yeah, exactly. Like I wonder if they could grow some fur on top of the like that they shave off Sure. Yeah, like just make the meat and then grow fur on top. Yeah And then just slice that off and now we've got new paint brushes at like and also humane I'm not sure if the weasels like the removal of The protective fur is my point. I uh, I don't think many of these creatures are treated well No, I believe every it's probably not great. Damn it. Sorry. Now. I'm now. I'm only buying cockley brushes forever With synthetics, you just have to worry about how bad they treat their employees and their factories. So, um All and the fact that they're made of plastics and stuff like that, which are also earth destroying So rob, there is no escape. What do I do? Vince, what do I do? Do I finger paint? Uh, the answer is there is no escape. And did you not watch the good place? Rob, that's the lesson I've not watched it Well, one watch the good place. I was way too happy for me. It's it's fantastic show. Anyways, two there is a whole episode Another great show from the early 2000s. It's called better off Ted T. E. D. Oh, yeah Would highly recommend it if you haven't watched that there's a whole episode about growing a bunch of hair That you could use for these kinds of brushes. So there you go Okay, it is a very funny show that's only two seasons long and I would highly recommend it All right. Anyways Uh Now let's move on to some other stuff. So, yeah, the brushes I'm not interested. I don't understand. They're way overpriced I don't understand why I would buy expensive gw synthetics when I can just go to amazon or any or Any cheap local art store and get a ton of Synthetic brushes cheap. I know you want to move on but can I ask a follow-up question? Yes So I was speaking to Henry from Colt Paint and he said that there's something going on with the the hair The sable had something to do with pollution and or like scarcity. There's some sort of Yeah, the yes because of COVID and everything else is going on. It's actually like it's kind of hard to find sable hair brushes really as much as you Used to So, okay. All right. Yeah, okay. I just wondered because I'd like because the guys out there who do care about paybrush quality I'm sure may want to Yeah, yeah, it can be tough for a lot of uh, see look at the look at the comments sounding off In support of the good place and better off ted and yes better off ted is amazing. So Would recommend they have both an episode about lab grown meat and an episode about growing random hair So i'm just saying Wow, that's right on my street our conversation. So yeah, that's great. Okay. There you go okay, uh So, uh, hey, let's keep going. Uh, I do want to support here real quick. I love being a guest What's that? Have I told you I love being a guest You know that bit where you you've just had to be like I've got to move the conversation on now I'm like, I'm just waiting for you buddy. Yeah I want to uh, I want to shout out to rule of cool war gaming who said I would buy scaven hair brushes That's that is the innovation we need see that's That is ethically sourced fur right there because if you're taking it off a scaven. Who cares? That's nothing bad One of your american states and all cities has just had to release like a thousand cats Although I think it was clickbait title And I think they've released a thousand cats since 2012 because of like a huge rat problem And australia's got a massive rat problem because of the flooding Maybe we could solve two To yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah get some rat hair. Absolutely. I think I like where you're going Mix them together. There you go. All right. Uh, now let's get into some bigger news Next we're we're increasing in the news importance. This is ever increasing news importance Let's not fill kelly it up to 11 straight away. Let's just put it up to a bickham six No room for interpretation. Okay, so The FAQ Mm-hmm for LRL is out. Oh, yeah, because you haven't discussed this yet. Oh, yeah, I have not you discussed. Let me ask you How do you how do you feel? Uh Fine It's what I expected. It's the level of what I expected That doesn't mean it's I think it's the right decisions Okay But it's the level of what I expected like what I'll say is obviously the big stuff that came out of the FAQ Just to go through it real quick for folks Is The yes the fox spirit can float around in the enemy shooting phase Um, they refined the wording on the pile in Thing but they didn't actually functionally change it. They just kind of reworded it So it worked like how we all assumed it worked. So that was fine And yes, the lore seeker is a unique named guy Who can't mr. Lord's law see mr. Lore seeker. Yes, it's like dr. Lore seeker He didn't go law to eight years of Co with college to be called mr. Lore seeker. That's true. I'm so sorry about that Yeah, his dad was mr. Lore seeker. I'm sorry about yeah, that's yeah, that's mr. Lore seeker worked two jobs in the High crystal mines Day in and day out to put his son through hoth seeking school lore seeking school Okay, yeah, right Yeah, so the I mean the the thing that shocked me actually what I thought was the Most interesting things out of the FAQ weren't any of that Was the stripping of the yametrika keyword from the twins and the lord of the seventh So the named fox Which was interesting. Uh, yes severeth. Yes Uh Because they shifted to ileatha or whatever which it's fine that I don't care you like they I didn't like that. Everybody was just randomly from yametrika I kind of understand what they were going for I thought what in the lore what it meant because the major the sort of capital What was going on But like it just felt like some of these people should be from different places I hate when we when we staple these keywords onto scrolls I hate when they're just all the same thing like oh, they're all hammers of sigmar or they're all You know yametrika or they're all whatever. I just like You know, I want to see representations from across these different groups that you've given us, right The shocking part to me was that they made the fox unattached. So now he can just go in helan and and aluminium and uh And just go nuts Uh with their with their abilities which hey good on him I think like there's a lot like you have to remember obviously this was written in england and uk that we're struggling a lot with like Repartisisation anyway, like we're like not quite sure where everyone fits is scotland staying like what's happening in ireland So like, you know, it's a it's a hot topic here. Anyway, uh, I feel like there's some narrative bent to it Like we talked about in the monday show potentially severeth. There's a bit of a tax evader Uh looking to just move states so he doesn't have to pay or now he's located in the cayman islands Uh, I'm not really sure if we were being serious about it for a moment It's weird to give them a keyword and take the keyword away. Right. Like it like it's just a strange unprompted move Yeah, like super unprompted like everyone was cool with it. That's like cool. He's enumerical. Whatever Like I think I think the issue is oh Who knows? I've made a promise to try less to guess at what a company I know will never know the answer to trying to do and I just like it's cool for lumeneth players Because now they've got a fox that they can use in all their different armies and that's brilliant for them Like because he was argued like I don't think the foxes are like, I think I think that there's Definitely a very negative experience in some cases with the foxes that you just can't charge them but Like like but I think that unless you go over like some really grand entrapment strategy where your whole army is trying to entrap this one guy Yeah, in which case you lost the game. So congratulations, but you got the fox Yeah, from the sea free city of tax haven 100% so I I think No, no, it's pronounced tax haven tax haven, yes With three lots of eighth accords. Yeah in tax haven. Yeah, I think What's interesting is the trend because we also saw the battalion change So you were able to pile in and charge in your opponent's movement phase as well Yeah, I mean that was always how it worked, but they just clarified that yet like that was always how I read it That was what the rules always said They just reinforced that that's in fact how it works So now you're moving six inches in the enemy every enemy charge phase every hurricane unit that is a hero or near a hero Is just running around six inches for reasons whichever way they want as well Like and yeah, so that's that's with the battalion and the battalions go away. That's not a big deal Like but like I think what's interesting is with the you know the rumor of the charge reaction and like moving in your Opponent's movement phase it feels like that what they want to do is make the game more interactive and both players turns And I think that there's I think there's some positivity to that I really really do But I also think that they need to like if our first example of it is a fox that moves A billion inches and does mortal wounds as he moves in my phase Then that's a big I guess, you know lead with a punch, you know Everything else after that might be softer But I think it's probably like a trend like we've seen with the activation walls We talked about the pilot walls or you've been talking about yeah, but I think we all have like and I think maybe It's interesting to see how that trend goes. I don't think I'm necessarily super pro it Because it's just a little bit more time consuming in some situations And I don't really know like like an un-catchable model is a weird setup, but Like it makes for some great jokes and that's what I'm here for so sure I mean in the end as has been pointed out Yes, he's likely a source of npe when players don't understand how they can't catch him or whatever But at the same time he's a guy. He's a ten wound dude floating around doing like four damage on average a turn So it's not like he's the the most threatening threat ever right and if they bring him into melee Then oftentimes you'll still be able to you know do some damage to him like he's not that tough He's a five up five up guy, right like let's yeah He is he is an evasion tank Right Yeah, yeah, like and and again like he's quite a lot of points. He's 300 points really for his utility inside the game I think people what's fun and a shout out to my friend Stuart McCarron the one hammer alchemist I saw him say online Yesterday or today he said that he would like to see more war scrolls that do so much like Severus do Because it's more engaging for the player rather than like a slang or model like war scroll that does nothing It has no abilities does nothing, you know He's the difference between wrathmongers of old and wrathmongers of now You know like like there's more interesting interaction utility. Yeah, that's definitely harder to balance But you generally end up with like probably some more fun stories unless it's so unengaging that it's not fun And I guess really the jury's out in that situation where we're at with with the wind spirits Yeah, he's he's a tough one because because he's so on that line right because it's so easy to imagine How he would also cause npe in various ways destroying faction trade and so on and so forth, but you know, whatever um, I mean My general feeling on him is he is not in fact game breaking, but he is in fact frustrating and his frustration level just you know sort of increased Watching that battalion go away I think at this point if if the if the rumor is true that the the war scroll battalions go away in 3.0 right Uh, the reason I'm most excited for that is just because is now out of spite Like I'm willing to lose every battalion. I love Just to see the ones I hate burn Okay, like I I will tear down What did it cost you everything and it was worth it? I will Thanos snap those battalions out of existence even if it means my own are gone too I think it's I think it's I think it's a much better decision for the game if that's the situation Much better decision for the game, uh, ultimately and like and and last of all at least not of all because of that specific Battalion from the new lumeneth also won't mind or oral and legion going away as well But that's a side note mainly because I just want that I want that cathal never near me if ever possible Sure the whole of my life Shout out to uh, juodas who said uh, not game breaking but frustrating Is that basically lumeneth in a nutshell and yes, I think that is correct Uh, although they pushed even the first part. Yeah, I mean so let's uh Not to anything else on the lrlf aq. I mean it was Strange like there was one thing you said that I want to hit on you mentioned stewart's call for for sort of more unique ability war scrolls I've always thought that they should take a perspective Like sort of like magic the gathering does with this with this concept So, you know magic has rarities right common uncommon rare mythic rares that kind of stuff, right? and In general what they their design language that they use is basically like this Commons the things you're you see the most often in a pack and the things that new players will encounter the most often should be simple Okay, simple effect. That doesn't mean they're bad Right, like you can have great simple scrolls like a 2 2 for one mana would be a great card in a lot of in some metas, right? okay That but it's that's it. No ability just very simple scroll could be could be a great card um So the common cards are simple uncommon little more complexity rares More complexity mythic rares very high complexity Right, and I think we could take the same kind of lesson here where like battle line troops things that are supposed to make up the majority of our army Simple Yeah, right keep them simple. They're a bunch of dudes. They're on you know, they're my elite troops They're meant to sort of be my kind of hitty unit. Okay, great Then they're on a four up save with threes and threes neg one one damage and they have some kind of like Mortal wounds proc on a six or whatever. I don't know. They're simple, right easy. Okay And then I have like my named weird fox spirit. I can't have more than one of in an army Great. Now's the time. We just like Dump rules onto this dude. You get what I'm saying Like yeah, yeah, so they have that so they've got the rule of three and 40k anyone's not aware You can only take three of a single wall scroll unless it's like your troop choice or like a transport Okay, number one like great like better for like avoiding spam And there's a really good conversation and argument that age of sigma especially at the top end competitive is very spammy It's a good argument and I think it would be hard hard for me to push against it in some situations however, like I think one of the greatest things about age of sigma and 40k And one of the greatest strengths which are the poor games workshop for time and again And I always talk about it is that they really always put power Through the portal of strength. Sorry. Sorry. They always put power through the portal of narrative So like narrative is the the tax we actually pay To have our armies be even stronger So like, you know, uh, for example, like I mean old petrofex is a good example Like they're this particular thing and they get that plus one save I think that's maybe a bad example thunder lizards would maybe be a better one your monsters get better And then also you're taking that damage down So, you know, you've encased yourself in a narrative line and then you've ended up with better stuff And I really like that and I think that that's such a clever way of Forcing all gamers to always be really really narrative And I think because I think those two are intrinsically linked. I don't think competitive gamers are not narrative gamers I think they're the same like and I think that's because of the quality of the decision games workshop made to do something When it comes to the complexity of the war scrolls, I think just I think Really it attacks the idea of fun in brackets when you know, someone says I'll just have fun And I'm like, well, what do you mean by that? Like and I think that there's some great war scrolls that you could write which are just more fun and engaging You know, like you do a dice off with your opponent in a duel or something Like it it's it all it does indeed to be more wins It's not it doesn't I feel like you can do some very engaging stuff on war scrolls and we often not oftentimes That's not true. We sometimes see War scrolls that are just a bit plain and I understand what you mean like maybe our skeletal warriors should just be plain But I guess Problematically, like if you play something like what I love about the total war franchise Is that if you play any of the different races The the campaign that you play is always different Like if you dwarf sheet like building strongholds or whatever and then if you orcs Like you just keep fighting then you generate more war stacks and then they run off and I think one of the good things about each sigma as well is that All of the armies are different to each other. That does cause problems and the imbalances significantly in some situations, but Like I think it's a positive generally So I like I hear what you're saying and I think probably there should just be like you basic One wound four up save hits on falls wounds on falls no rend one damage guys like with no ability, right? Like yeah, of course one save like they're your cheap chap like having a very like having the common The simple creature your vanilla your your grizzly bear or whatever, you know, you want to pick, right? It's like it's a useful thing to exist as long as it's pointed correctly, right? And then that gives you the freedom to point things in in in ways that are compelling. I think right And if like when you make Nagash or a laurel or Whatever, you know or eventually Lay out malaria or whatever Then you have room on them to just go nuts And then you should be like though because they're like that's the thing that should be really special, right? I should never need to look at skeleton warriors and go If I if I have to say the following sentence or play against somebody who says the following sentence Then we've done something wrong. You ready? When referring to their most basic troop type If they say oh wait, I forgot But I don't see that's why I don't think because I think one of the beautiful creations on a war scroll and what I love about How the game is structurally built core rules and then I add some rules on with a unit sure sure sure Is that that's how I like is that's how the story is told? Like yeah, it's hyper efficient. Yeah, it works really well, but that's how the story is told Like just go little warriors like have like I mean the demons when you roll the one on the battle shock Like they're your basic troops, aren't they really sure like as much as we hate to admit it Like and it's still like a fun demon like goddamn the magic of the war Bring in a more bag like it's fun So like yeah, like I think there's a there's a balance But the thing about the centerpiece models is I'm not sure I even care about the centerpiece models Like I think like I'm less bothered about gods and monsters rolling around It's probably bad news for me and um, and I'm more And I'm more interested in like, you know your regular shrubs and like your named character who you name I think I like Owen ran a tournament of the week and that that would be the equivalent of like To though to me those guys the big gods and all these kinds of stuff you're talking about those are like the mythic rares Right, but you can have rares that still have good complexity. You're heroes the people that you're investing in yourself Right. That's like that stuff should still be compelling and interesting and have layers to it your your your unnamed vampire lord on zombie dragon or Lord Celestines what I don't need is Gartus Being a be it like I don't need that at all take that you can have that scroll back Okay, I can like you can just straight away Like I would have I would have just put an F on that as the editor and just giving him back and saying no Try again Just try like look at how he's landing and you're not giving him some sort of impact here. It's like what's going on Like give me Anyway, yeah, yeah Let's keep moving AOS 3.0 talking about it. Hey, that's right. Also We did a reaction show on saturday. You've talked about it many times So we're not going to get too deep into it, but it's coming probably in less than eight weeks And Rob, are you excited? Very much so like and but I mean that I mean that awkward phase You know, you need to loo, but there's not one local You're like when I get there the relief will be brilliant like I just think It's really exciting the game's been fairly stagnant competitively For like a year like like it's not been very like it's been fairly stagnant Like there's been some changes the the the first broken realms book So for the competitive scene, I think it's really exciting Also, I'm just excited to see what changes we see how we can build lists What lists are good and that whole general refresh which I think is really exciting and a new edition is like Pretty huge like the a os 1 to 2 was phenomenal. We got free summoning. We got command point stacking We got like a billion damage grow ups. We got like some really fun stuff So I wonder like we had the problem Importantly once we got those let's call them proud nails hammered out in the very quick FAQ that followed along after we realized that we had Missed some things right AOS 2 was unquestionably better than a os 1 32 pages by the way that that that that quick nail FAQ Totally fair. I'm just saying once we got over that It was admittedly a better game, right? I mean, that's what we think. Yeah so like one of the things I think that's most interesting and and and Ben talked about it on the kind of like rules thing And he talked about the priority role, although he unfortunately called it a double turn Which is like someone in marketing just have a word. Please just call it a hurry Why would you not call it the priority role? Like just someone double turn is a colloquialism. I just really want to re-edit it with just like someone voice there We go Anyway It's an intrinsic part of the game And I know some people don't like it and that's okay And I'm not going to say just go find something else to play But it's been a core mechanic of the game since the beginning and me and a huge swath of the community still enjoy the game Because of it in fact not despite of it because of it And agency martu did a really great thing where the priority role became important because of endless spells And then they also introduced the rule where if you drew having gone second Then the your opponent got the choice, which is also another nice change So they kind of readdressed the balance a little bit more So they did something with it and honestly those those first like first year of like throwing endless spells around And then just moving them in the in-between phase, especially, you know, remember just before ghp There was some negative stuff when you had walls of endless spells. That wasn't fun But like that that interactive play of i'm going to move this do I take the turn I think is exciting And I think that that's such an exciting element of the game anyway So I I agree with you. I think that the game is better because the probably the intrinsic Value of the game being the priority role mechanic got better And so if they improve upon that again I think we're in a really great place as well as they kept missions And I love the way that we do missions at the minute. They still haven't sorted out secondaries I'd like to see something about that. I think that that would make the game more interesting um, so yeah overall like I'm very excited and I think Like we just got and the design stuff. I mean again the storm cast. I don't like storm cast Never not one time apart from when you can run six or elders. That was a hilarious time of my life. Very funny, but The new storm cast look very very nice. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah, and I think maybe a homage to like They're they're more acceptable Would you say for your average? Non-fan it's like if you were going hey, I only really have like been involved with traditional fantasy or fantasy tropes for a long time Then you give them a storm cast of turtles the new ones. I think that that's a much easier sell into The weirdness and I want everyone to get weird with us like this or take our tops off and get in the hot tub Like I'm like, let's do it But I think before that you've got to kind of like get their gym membership sorted and that's the new storm cast Yeah, I got it. Yeah, I think they they have a more sort of Svelte human look. They remind me more of greek hoplites. I think that On the whole I very much enjoy the new design. I'm there for it. The new angel lady is everything I ever wanted ever in storm cast. She's like I'm a thousand percent there for her so so like I haven't had anyone else to ask this question of like And you're the only one who I want to ask like I guess there's two ways of looking at it It's like angelic as you've just gone with yeah, and there's also like valkyries as well. Do you find that like a tad problematic? I think it looks beautiful. I just think attaching like the thing about 40k obviously is the monastic like Like culture of it and also the the general like political vibe of it Is I don't say problematic, but it's at least like a conversation point I like where it was originally pitched in the 80s and I think that shouldn't remain however Like I don't know if the the lead characters and units should look quite so Angelic but monastic is fine. I think angelic feels like maybe a problem for me. That's all and I'm not trying to pick fault I'm just wondering because it because because it it's specific, right? Uh, I guess I don't know my answer is no because I love angels to death every wallpaper on every computer I own is set to magic card angels that rotate through a thousand different images of them One of the first decks I built in magic in the mid 90s was angels Like an all angel deck that was impossible to run because there was only like five angels at the time And they were all incredibly expensive and so No I My answer is more I want more I've said forever that the one thing that would make me buy a full elven army is if like tyrian's angelic elves, you know if they rode in with these like uh, these you know angelic wings type of situation and uh, you had just like angel elves coming down and like sleek golden armor and stuff with big massive feathered wings I'd love to see the six wings setup Or have even like go crazier with it Go super into biblical wings like have eyes in the wings and like rings of fire And stuff like that like yeah, man. I want to get weird with it I'm okay. I like I think you can disambiguate it at this point is my like I think they've grown bigger than the the source material. I think would be yeah Source material interesting way to describe it But yeah, uh, yeah, like I would say that if we just refer to the valkyries like and that vibe then i'm super cool Also, I think mainly my main problem is is I grew up watching like a lot of kevin smith and dogma Is my real version of like when I see angels sure Yeah, I think i'm matt daemon and ben afleck and and now I can't get out of my head And I don't you know, I don't know what to do Do I like go and kill all the people who own like a fast food chain? Well, what's the plan? No, you go watch lucifer and that will reset you. That's the key. Okay, flip me back. Yeah, okay, all right But yeah, I like them. I like them. There we go Uh, yeah, so lots of stuff. We still don't know who our adversaries are Uh, you know, we got a little teaser video What do you think of the teaser? Yeah, I thought it was fine. I like it um I I like the I like when they do little narrative videos like that um I want to I want I want a narrative everything they ever do should be introduced through a narrative video first Period uh, they can show us the model right after right if they if they you're fine like totally fine, right? I said this right? I've been on a I've been on a a tirade a rant Uh, that that should be the the way that we introduce it and then maybe one day from some two people with a backdrop That's all I'm asking like because weirdly this This isn't this isn't real. I just created this with the power of green felt um Yeah, like it's it was it was an interesting there's also the countdown timer. What do you think the countdown timer needs to Oh, gosh. Yeah, we've got it. We've got another countdown timer. I don't know rob, but I hope not to disappointment 18 days till I reveal something uh-oh Like I don't want to like hopefully hopefully the countdown timer they learned their lesson from Um, uh, was it malign portence or forbidden power or whatever the thing was I had it before yeah Yeah, that was like a countdown timer to nothing to like a website with nothing on it. It was like, oh, okay It was pretty rough. It was a pretty rough time I don't think this will be the case though Like what I'm hoping for and I wonder about what you think about this Um, like there's uh, there's a very famous the the first kind of cgi intro video for world of warcraft Was brilliant, you know, you kind of saw your dark elf and uh, you're you're like got Whatever they dwarf and all the other ones and they were all kind of fighting and it was this cool kind of like intro video And it it captured my imagination the first time I ever saw it and I'm hoping So when we saw the 40k one with the necrons versus the marines and the sister battle it was it was wicked I'm hoping they've done that same they've spent that same money and we have I would and I don't want it to be just the the storm cast is versus the new the new Army I would like it to be kind of the setting if it's just those two versus each other I'll take that as well Like I like that's that 9.5 for me with the 10 being it being the whole setting as well But there's probably too much probably yeah I mean that 40k ninth edition reveal video that starts with like the the necrons shooting at the At the guard and like, you know, somebody gets melted And then you just see like bolter rounds come in and the the sister comes in and she's like We are the sword of the emperor, right? And then they just start pressing forward and just gunning down necrons And then she's almost she gets herself into trouble And then outcomes like chainsword assault marine who's just like Sawing through the dude like I don't love 40k, but man, that's a pretty cool. That's a pretty cool trailer I'm not gonna watch that thing like five times It's awesome And you just send it to your friends. You're like, how cool is this right? So yeah, just if we could just have that It'd be great because I love the the art piece videos, which One of my good friends pretty much like started doing at the company. So she's wonderful So laura pegasticks on Twitter So she didn't like a lot of those like the early gene see the cult ones and the scraggler one Which like if you guys watch the scraggler video and I think like she took the lead on that in early And then that's very early into the games workshop marketing department So it was pretty much like those first pitches ultimately to an audience that really hadn't had that from games workshop in forever And you know, and I think that that was Wonderful work that she did and we're now experiencing that more and more and more And I think that's great because like I think I saw someone say in the chat Just getting that narrative because if I just see a model without context, it just doesn't make any sense to me Right, right. I want to build up, right Yeah, yeah, I need I need the context and the story like and like the cragnos video was wonderful Right before the release of cragnos. It was like, yeah, let's go. Also, you're a beast chaos model. That's weird like That's weird beast cast don't own centaurs. I'm just putting that flag down Centaurs can be in any can be in lots of different places Yeah, okay Right, yeah, sure. There we go. All right, uh, sammy says, what do you think of prince dubal's worst role? I saw that it was like in the little image. I'm gonna be honest with you Sammy I didn't look and bother to read it because I saw them breaking it down in the grave lords chat And I was like, I'm not going to the effort to read a card at this angle I'll wait like three days and then we'll see the whole book. So like Uh, man who reads book will we'll read book this weekend and he did a he did a he did a great Um, oh my god was so good video about being the man who reads book Uh, I love how he changed the the letters As well like brilliant. Yes. Ash is obviously an amazing Dude and that he does a great service night and like when he went into his reasons why he does it how he does it I was like, yeah, that's Like that's a man with integrity. So I have zero problems. You keep being you nothing but all the best We all want man who reads book to continue to only be man who reads book. Yes, like that's it Like continue on with your life. Yeah, we all love the Absolutely. You are a hero. That is exactly right. Where's the award? Uh, all right Okay, so that was 3.0 Next thing so much news this week So blights wave one going on pre-order this weekend and then the initial rules snippets We've got and we're not going to go into detail and all that stuff because we got other things to talk about And we'll be here all day talking about how right now blood knights actually retreat using their special rule And yes, they do it is a retreat right now Uh, it is It is it is it is I know you think this is me talking to the audience It is right now They cannot charge again after they do it but It would be very easy to imagine a world where an aos 3.0 Retreat is no longer just a subset of normal move and is instead like a different thing you do like in the move phase You can choose to like normal move or run or retreat and these are just like three separate concepts, right? And then each one has different things so then they can separate them and if that's the case Then it would become a pretty cool rule. So there you go. Yeah, I think I think it's cool Anyway, like I think I think one of the interesting elements about this book so far based on the previews because once you get I mean you and me both have been doing this since the launch of the game So like when we when we see this stuff like we start to get an idea about who we think may have written it or what style it might be written in Um, and so far it seems fairly it seemed fairly solid But it doesn't seem jazzy like and the lumeneth were jazzy. Let's put it that way Like but it seems solid. So for anyone, you know, you've got yourself like a you know a rock You've got yourself like an angel vampire from buffet the vampire, but you don't have yourself a spike You know like and some people like The spike is obviously the best one. You and me both agree on obviously Obviously, we're both how he didn't get a spin off. We're both repping spuffy. We both are standing that. Yes. I agree. Okay, go forever Forever, but I just don't know like how he didn't get a spin off. That's important, but the uh Well, his comic is great. By the way, if you ever want to read that it's good. I did not know there's a comic That's fun. It's really good. It's really okay James martin james marshes actually wrote a couple of the issues. Go ahead. Sorry Really? Yeah, okay. That's cool. I've learned you so much today. This is great. The um, so yeah, I would say that the It looks solid so far, but nothing stands out as being Huge and I think also one of the things is that as you've obviously talked about a lot I've been standing the idea for a long time It it just does seem to be legion and gash too And there's nothing wrong with that like but it does seem like some of the the strength of the legion and the gash Which was only based on one commandability and only based on that Right and like and I like suffer no falls on that conversation But that was the only thing that made like made it work Has gone and has been put into the allegiance ability So I would hope that we get more narrative stuff because one of the I'd love the rule today We saw where they if you kill a certain thing you get like a certain The drinking a lot of certain enemies empowers them in different ways Yeah, like what did you think about the fact that There's no musician in the unit and we might be seeing music ripped from the mortal realms How do you feel? Well, we've added a bunch of musicians recently like specifically musically based people We got a new scroll for our salavati bio piper Like we already have the model like what if we're not putting me? What if music is fading out of the air just sigma three Sorry for is the rise of the musicians the bar Sure I'm not worried about it. I think they just don't like I think they're just not going to be as as sort of slavish to the concept that every unit has to have like a standard bear and a champion and a musician Right, I think like I think they will basically always give out champions exempting unusual circumstances where it just doesn't make sense to have one I think they will use standard bears where they think it would be neat to for them to model a standard And I think they'll put musicians whatever whenever somebody like actually puts a musician into the unit Yeah, and also what do vampire I tried to work this out today, but I couldn't come up with that Maybe you what would vampires play as a musical instrument like what's there like I thought piano, but that's hard to mount smooth jazz You played the wrong notes It's not it's just yeah, let's the vampire's are really all about the notes. You don't you don't play, you know They're absolutely hipsters Yeah, I mean, you know Like you can you can make up a musician to fit into anything like just because something doesn't have breath Or whatever doesn't mean that like you can have, you know drummers and little tambourine man's and whatever, but sure Do you want to have a quick bet on the legions of the gas? Sorry grave lords apologies Um, you and me talked about this off air real quick because we've got no clue and we don't have like We're both in the opinion that maybe there's some sort of paradigm Where there's a release like we see now like we've saw with senesh like we saw lumeneth And maybe there's a wave too when vince said wave one today He meant of a two week release of a two week release schedule Yeah, yeah, because this isn't all of the models coming out this week. There's still more to come assuming yeah next week Yeah, but but we were we were talking off air that potentially there's maybe or maybe not I think that there might be like i'm actually on the side of games workshop might have got a structure in place Vince I think seems on the the phase that they're like Like this is the wrong way to describe it but anarchic in some ways but more reactive It's maybe a better way of describing it. So like the bet is i'm going for a year. We see more grave lords Yeah, like you taking my bet or not. I'm not taking that bet What what are we betting here? What are we betting here? Five english puns? Or i don't want to bet money. That's boring. We need to bet one part of jam Also boring. This needs to be something we're actually putting on the line. How is it boring? Um, uh, I will change my name on twitter to vince ventrilo for one week And you have to change yours to my name I'll be like i'll go for the honest vince ventrilo or something like that. Yeah, okay. There we go Yeah, so the bet here is do we get a true quote wave two of soul blight within What time am I giving you a year? Yeah, okay, we should with no addition out of the way like it's probably not gonna happen It's probably more like let's just be generous and say by june 2022 I'll give you till that time frame lock it in lock it in twitch chat or not twitch chat. Sorry youtube thugs and lock it in Um, uh, yeah, okay. There you go Uh, yes, because i'm saying no, I think they'll use that and just to clarify that point Right, uh, and no curse city expansion models. Do not count. Thank you it. We need to clarify that Curse city expansion. Oh I want to win it you ruined it for me Because that would not be I need a second soul blight grave lords release here, right? Like that's what we're talking about not curse city expansions Like fine, that's it has to be funny. We know we're talking about like ll rel Like slanesh, right? That's what we're talking about. So Yeah, um Yeah, I mean my general feeling on what they're doing is They are going to take the sort of obvious route where where if there's a chance To split an army up into interesting ways to do a wave two Right, they're going to because they have to do more wave tubes period Like yeah, there is they can't introduce two three new armies a year in perpetuity Right, the game will just explode like we can handle a lot of armies probably more than we have now But not there is some kind of cap on that, right? But but also games which I've been listening you don't have to stop. Please continue. No, I want them to keep making new armies I really do. Okay. I'm just saying you can't do like two or three new armies a year They could probably do one a year for quite a while Or two a year maybe even like they could push into it or so in some years you get two some years you get one, right? But like ultimately they can't shove three four new armies into the into the Game every year. They just can't support that it becomes impossible So they'll have to eventually say like, okay, let's do iron jaw as part two Right or whatever and it might be three years might be four years It might be five years might be two years after it's a question of whether they were designed at once and then split Or whether they were truly just like we came back to it like if There's a there's a rumor which we'll talk about in just a moment that like that oryx are going to get something Mm-hmm. Yeah That was sort of pushed back or delayed or moved around because of cobin If that's the case if that rumor turns out true and like I get something new for auric war clans I'm not in my head thinking. Oh when they originally did Ironjaws, they did this other stuff and then split it up. No, no, no Clearly they just returned to the mine right and kept and followed that vein deeper deeper down into the tunnels, right? So there can be a difference between this Yeah, yeah agreed agreed. I think it potentially is a new system But like someone was saying in the chat like attributing any sort of like does like any sort of forward thinking to them is it seems wild But listen, I've been promised the most unambiguous edition of my life So I'm excited bold claims abound So it's it's looking really fun and the rumors of the oryx are very fun I think that keys in really nicely with the because you've got gawk and morgue, right? We already have ironjaws We have the aggressive oryx We have fighting, but we don't have cunning And um, and I think that that that would that would make a lot of sense if we saw cunning oryx Sure. Yeah, I mean so tristan gray shout out pick hero. Yes, you know, it's funny I was talking to somebody the other day and I said I don't want ironjaws wave to the ironjaws. It's like a near perfect army It's like seven units. Everything's battle line. It's so easy to build And I said I bet if I put up the following survey to ironjaws players Like if I could just mentally survey every ironjaws player in the world and I gave them these three options option one zero new models Okay, we get nothing option two Double the current model range Okay, like we get seven or eight new units. Okay. Yep option three Just uh, uh, uh a war boss on gorgoranta. That's it Okay I have the feeling option three would win so massively Because when you like it's just there's nothing you're lacking for in that army. I don't want anything else I don't want eight more units. I have to think about No, you're right I mean I You're right that it would be cool, but you could just have him and then seven other cool units Right, that exactly that's my point. I would rather have just him Than him and seven other units. That's literally what I'm saying There's a jibber read the paradox of choice Rob No, sir It's a great book about behavioral economics and sort of choice and in there There's a central story where he goes to the to the store and he tries to buy jeans And there's all these different genes all these different kinds of genes And the person's like, well, what kind of genes do you want? And he says I want the kind of genes that were available when there was only one kind of genes Right, okay Like not sometimes more doesn't equal better So I'm willing to give up any additional iron draws releases. Give them to other people that need it That's how I feel about pain brushes. You take those has to take us back right three many options. Just this one fine This works for me. Yes Uh, it's exactly sometimes when you got a thing that works. You don't need more options. There you go It's exactly the point. You don't need 50 more brushes, Rob You don't need a bunch of options. You need the one that works and iron draws work So iron draws iron draws do work Although I do feel like having read a lot of iron draws tournament lists now over the past Of whatever of my life. I do feel that they could do with some diversity And I think that's just more for the players I think that there's some roles that they're lacking and I think that they're like you could add three or four units In that army and just give it a little bit more versatility So that the players have more fun with their army because you're right it plays really fun But it's a bit monosyllabic like it just does a thing well And that's and it does it really well and it does it actually really well with some flair as well Like, you know, it's like with smashing and bashing a bunch of other stuff or even if you put it into big war It's exciting. I just think that there's a there's a little bit you could add to it. Just I just want some salt and pepper That's all I want. I'm not asking for all the I'm not five spice Just salt and pepper. That's what I'm saying. I I understand a bit of flavor I mean, I will say that I think that It's funny. I was having an argument with with Tyler Emerson with scrubby and wells And or not an argument. I was having a discussion with him And I've told him for years that iron jaws are like one of the most fun armies to play Period in the game of anything you can ever do and so he started playing some iron jaws on tts And he came back to me and he was like, I apologize. You were right. This is the most fun I've ever had playing warhammer Just saying sometimes more sometimes they just nail fun But that is an xilvaneth player. So like That does raise They're all just really hurting this point. They'll play anything. They're like these dwarfs that move up for us so much fun And I'm like, you got it, buddy Totally fair. All right, so let's uh, let's talk about a little rumors Let me roll my sleeves up and get really ready into this rumors rumors. Yeah Rumors these are unsubstantiated rumors So get ready everybody for unsubstantiated rumor time Okay Unsubstantiated rumor number one The starter edition army adversaries are hob goblins mostly wolf riders and bigger goblin So something in between goblin and orc, which most fantasy games have What what do we do? Can I reply false or true? Like what? Let's say let's give it like this way instead of just false or true Give me odds like one in two one in ten one in a thousand that kind of thing, right? One in three billion. Okay. You don't think that's true. Okay. Got it All right, fair enough me To me that feels very real, especially given some of the rumor engines. I'm going like one in three chance. That's right Oh, okay Uh stormcast eternals will be getting a new bow battle line sleeker dragon cavalry flying cavalry and at least two new hero models One in one. Yeah Yeah, one in one. Yeah one to one one to one means it's like, you know, you you think it's true. It's dead on Nailed it one in one. Okay. I I agree with you completely that seems spot-on to me. Also Yes, please fly in cavalry. I have a dozen Bretonian pegasus knights if I can get them out like still on sprue Uh, and it doesn't more actually assembled but and paint and stuff if I can get those guys back out And model them into this new thing in some way Sounds awesome That's a win for me. Also dragon cavalry. Yes. Yes. I'm in for that Won't make sense, right? Like dracothean like it makes sense that they like really lean on the dragon side And they push that with with sigmar as well. Like yeah, like yeah, I'm I'm feeling that loads. Yep. Yep. Okay Uh, next rumor next unsubstantiated rumor There will be a bigger focus on cities of sigmar many of the empire kits will be updated and give an age of sigmar flair Only empire humans are mentioned mostly like imperial guard of age of sigmar So I assume what we're talking about here is an upgrade sprue type of situation like we saw for the cadians in the uh In that release Rob, what's your feelings on this one? Zero out of zero. Don't ever want to talk about that again So you're waiting at like one in a million you're not liking that one or you just don't like Yeah, like if you like I was all with you until you were like an upgrade spoon I was like uh like come on like no it's gonna be like all new it's gonna be all new all new uh like People of the realms people of the realms. I wish to see your flouncy trusers And varied hats an upgrade grace. Yeah, okay I mean those cadian models aren't exactly new and they decided to throw a new sprue in that box I'm just saying you know, I know you're 100 right, but no like everyone like I think we all try to collectively like ignore it I think they're like What that means no new imperial guard like what? Okay, okay, uh, yeah, I'll give it to me. It's like one in five for the new sprue one in 10 for a new kit It just feels like the kind of world they would do that One of the one of the things that people won't see when they interact with me only on twitter And so listen to my show is I'm generally quite a hopeful chap. You are generally quite a hopeful chap So like I think that they could do from like I like the the cursed city stuff with the the humans in the curse It was like So good and I think that they could go weird and wacky getting the hot tub. Let's get weird. Let's mix it up a little bit Let's throw some keys in the pot. No one knows what's happening. I'm with you. I'm in for it I would do you know how much do you remember in the in the core book? I don't know when the last time you looked at the core book for a OS 2 was But you know, they have those different images of like the people from different realms and what they look like Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay Some of my favorite art they've done in this whole edition is are those pieces There's a lot of that in soulbound as well in the role-playing game They they did commission a lot of nice art that gets it gives that kind of feel where you get like senses of people's lives in the realms, right? And I would love to see kits that look like that. I don't want to just see What humans look like from classic. I want to see like the humans of gur or Ulgu or guy ran or whatever, right? I think that would be amazing I and I want to hear about the politic in like I love the map that they showed us They were like here's a map like I was like I'm in like this is cool And I like that exploring and I know it's been a bit of a meme for however long like where are the Farmers, but like where are the farmers like it's so important all the time to talk about how that all works together and I think like the machinations of the not front-line battle units is a bit like It would be better. I think someone I saw do so I did I saw someone do a review of some of the Brooklyn realms narrative and they were like it feels like it's just a series of battle reports As opposed to like a cohesive narrative is how they described it And I was like that's pretty much like our battle tone fiction anyway a lot of the time and back libraries kind of the other side of that But I think that there's so much world building that they can do And it's really thrilling for us as people who've been in this since there was literally no world Like there was like they were like there's some corn dudes and there's this storm cast guy Like we've been since then so like to be now like what is that going to look like? How are they going to say I'm just hopeful that they realize those models because it's going to be Crazy cool, right? Yeah, sure if we actually yeah, if we get that kind of like people of the realms it would be amazing Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I want that. I want that next unsubstantiated rumor Dwarves will be reunited under one faction can still play Slayer or Coradron armies, but will be rolled into a new generic duritan faction So this would be like a war clan style roll together right where you have the individual armies, but also a combined force What do you give that? One out of three. Okay. I'm feeling I'm gonna go a little I'm gonna go a little more rosy even One out of two they've been using grungy so much in the stories and they talking about how he's back and forging new storm cast like It just feels like the kind of thing they really want to do and those those feel like the perfect Race to get the the war clan's treatment Right. Yeah, 100% we're like, hey, do you have a Coradron army? Great. Here's your new book and here's the Coradron stuff Or whatever right? Do you have firesiders? Great. Here's that Do you want to use this all together and and have an excuse to buy more toys? Here's the third thing right like it's such an easy win for them But what if he turns up with a bunch of emo dwarfs who are like sad Angry boys and they're a bit chaosy, but they're like grungy brings them over and then they all become not friends But like Accepting flatmates, you know, like I don't really like you but I can't afford rent anywhere else Like you talk about that one guy that's in the uh, that's in the war cry war band Yeah, you know that's because that's the only uh dwarf who's submitted to chaos I can never think of that's existed Actually, Vince if you go back to your core book, there is one paragraph Yeah, and I'll hold on to that Tighter than a beast of chaos players gonna hope up for an update because you're getting nothing Yeah, one paragraph for the chaos dwarfs and they are gunning for grungy Uh, which by the way is the I think the leaked rumour Mill on there that that's the narrative from black library. That's what the book's called gunning for grungy a chaos dwarf battle Very nice. And then finally our last unsubstantiated rumour Uh, malaria's new dark elves will be introduced later into this edition as well Okay, I'm gonna give that a huge pile of don't care Okay There's a lot of people who do care and I like and I have to listen to that a lot so But Like Oh, yeah, I got I got a fin on it. It's cool. Whatever like make a bunch of shadow demons and I'll be cool But I think the reason everybody's excited for it is because it's it's anything it can be anything in your head Right like you wrote you spun the wheel of fish and got the red snapper You can either take the red snapper. What's in the box? Well, what's in the box could be anything but sometimes what's in the box is just nothing Well, you know, you know when you've been at a campfire and you've just thrown a load of logs on the fire People like that'll be cool. Yeah, and then you do it and you're like Huh, just more fire Like that's what I think the reaction will be you're like shadow elves and they're doing they're like, huh shadow elves. All right Fine Now if they're just shadow elves, if that's all it is if it's just like elves with their shadowy I'm I'm going to be like, okay. Yeah, great me Like give me some sweet shadow demonic infused like weird shadow demons leather bat wings creeping long claws and just like Skulking over things and just stuff like that like get that. I don't want that. I want them weirder I want them all to be ogres But shadow ogres but elves And then like they're like, what are you and like because that's They're not gonna the elf players won't be happy the ogre players won't be happy It's a perfect so like half ogre half elf pointy ears. No gut thin and like lies No foga the only thing different just an ogre. Imagine not even changing the ogre glutton sculpt just adding pointy ears Literally just that do we get a pointy hat? We can have a pointy hat. Yeah, you can have a hat. Yeah, that works for me. Okay. That's good. Yeah We don't have a weird hat. It's not elfish. I mean, what are you even doing with your life? So, yeah, it's true Okay Uh, so That's everything. That's all the news Long section day like an hour into just news. Wow to be fair though. We're both chatty We are both chatty. This is it's good. Tom wasn't here today because this was not even longer All right, uh, let's go on to some pick Of the week a thing a video a blog a Anything that we would like to share with the audience or boost the signal on Okay. Uh, yeah. Yeah. So Rob, what would you like to share with everybody? I got mine. Um, so I've been Like at the end of every stream because when we're on twitch and we stream on twitch the end of every stream We go and raid a channel. It's quite fun. Sometimes it's weird Sometimes it's very weird And like we've been raiding a lot of the painters who haven't like all the people on twitch They don't tend to generally be a lot of talk show people on the warhammer section and generally it's people painting And that's been a really fun experience and we've got to meet loads of amazing people But just who I'd like to shout out is uh, forks art. Who's a lovely lady from scotland Who's just a sweetheart. She's painting like a a space marine army and she's streamed like f a w triple x art or something and then um, and then just a true legend A true legend in duck guts Uh, who I think might be mental but but like Like he's brilliant Like and it's really fun watching these people who just really paint and chat to the The stream and sometimes they're brilliant painters and sometimes they're not and it's just really fun Like having all the people are watching me and we go jump in there and it's nice So that's what we've been doing and those two people because they don't have loads of people right now And it'd be nice because they both seem like wonderful people. So that's cool. Uh, awesome I will uh, I will get those exact names from you after the show so that way I can link their twitch channels uh For mine i'm going to shout out uh Everybody I hope who's watching this knows who richard gray is richard gray is one of the Uh, best painters in the world truly one of my painting idols amazing human being as well very nice And he's been posting some videos on uh, youtube He's so he has a very successful patreon and he started doing some painting videos on youtube So I would shout out everybody and recommend you to go check out his channel He just put up a a fun video about painting the varg skier From curse city. He did one on an ultra marine recently, which was very nice Uh, oh, thank you. Uh, there's somebody somebody pushes in there. Okay, great I will grab that I will grab those names because they dropped him in the chat for me. Thank you very much Uh, so check out rich, uh, obviously if you want to learn from truly one of the best in the world Uh, he's tristan. He's tristan's cousin, right? I I don't think that's true It's not true. That's not true, but we don't have to I don't tell the truth of this show everyone watch out Yeah, um, yeah, the twitch is a really nice platform for um, uh, like looking for new people because it's just like it's via category Which is which has been quite nice that raiding experience as I vamp for time Why you write stuff down is fun like it's it's it's nice little journey that we've all been on And I've and the people we've connected with have been very happy that we've connected with them. So that's really cute. Yep Yep, awesome. Uh, at have you read the latest broken realms fiction? Yes. I did. Uh, malaria is a big part of that he and marathi are All up in each other's business and it we'll probably talk about it next week Just because it's not out for everybody yet. They'll publish it in a few days So I'll give everybody a chance to read it and then in talking about it They won't give spoilers that like half the audience who isn't subscribed to the newsletter will We'll not get a chance to read it. So but yes, I will talk about it Okay, but why aren't you subscribed like if you like it just subscribe like it's just an email you can ignore This is true. If you want just delete the email. Yes It's pretty it's pretty easy All right, let's talk about some hobby time my friend Uh, I know what your hobby time consists of which is terrain terrain terrain So what do you've been painting there, buddy? Uh, I've been working on uh, some some not giant. Well, they're giant ask But um, I've uh, I've been I've printed 3d printed a coliseum these these people. Well, this man and they are whatever They're going inside the coliseum and they're fighting it out. It's a piece of impassable terrain. You can't go in there Why would you go in there? There's two giants. This guy's got a cow who is uh, throwing You need to hold him more in front of your face Because he gets green now. There you go. There you go. There we go. There you go. So yeah, you can see Um, they're pretty cool So I've been painting them up and they've just been doing like loads of terrain like you said I've been doing 16 boards worth of turret. Oh, there we go. There's one of the right to hand It's a walk cottage. I don't know if you guys can see that. Yeah, um, I still need to do a load load to that There's a little bakery going in here Um, uh, 3d print the little baker and he's going to have a little cart with the bread stand Useless for anything other than to make me chuckle when we watch games on stream and they're like, she's near the baker Dude, I say, yeah, there's just a swath. I'm covered in terrain covered in terrain. Everyone loves this one for some reason You can have a little special mystical rule. Oh very nice Just for your uh, just for your board that'll be uh, that'll be like the mystical rule will be fresh bread You know, if you wander near that and you're not within three inches of an enemy You can go ahead and grab some fresh bread heal d3 wounds right there. Just boom. Perfect. That's what we want That's exactly what we want. Yeah, just just carb loading before the battle It's just getting ready. Yeah Uh, well, but what have you been doing? So for myself, I finished up my bellicor Uh conversion. She's over beside me. She's not at hand, but that's okay. I'll share pictures of her Uh, this this weekend for my slanesh themed bellicor Uh, and now I'm working on this little guy right here. Mr. Jensen Darden lock Darnock whatever his name is I don't know this little witch hunter fellow from cursed city. Um, he is going to be an example of Uh, he's going to be for a video completely focused on leather Uh, that I am in the middle of recording. So he will be, um Leather leather leather all about how to make leather interesting and different types of leather and different colors of leather And how you how leather does not just need to be some boring brown thing Okay, yeah, these my question is that they're quite, um, there's a lot going on on the model Like he's very easy like that. Do you like that? He's a little too busy. He's he's like There's a lot of places on him that are really Scrunched up together like his arms are fairly close He's got like the rifle slug over and then the strap going over his shoulder And there's just like his collar there his face is like this much viewed and there's like extra detail inside it's Not the most pleasurable paint. I'll say that much for sure I painted his ogre first because the ogre was an absolute joy. He was great. Oh, okay Yeah, because one of the things I when I look at a model when there's like a lot of different bits Like I'm like that's leather and then that's kind of leather as well But am I doing it a different leather or do people think I'm lazy if it's one leather like that's exactly why I'm doing this video Rob exactly for that challenge So to show people how you can distinguish like you can just say everything's leather But I'm going to show you how we can use different colors and use different textures Very simple techniques to make the model visually interesting even when he's just a big ball of leather As as a lot of models are especially if we get more bitch hunters, right Yeah 100% yes, uh, like I think I think the models are really really nice And yeah, I think it would be nice to see that video because I don't know how to paint anything so that'll be good I will I will do the best that I can Uh, all right, which is not great, but it'll be the best I can so that's what you that's what I promise every time Okay, I promise He's got an eye patch. He's got an eye patch. He does have an eye patch under there too. Yes It's so like to see it to realize he had an eye patch I had to hold him under my painting light and then like get out my magnifiers and like Oh, yeah, there is an eye patch under there. I mean it is That's a bit ridiculous and the way he's assembled. There's no way to just have his head separate Like if I could have his head separate like a traditional think of like I see people paint space brains a lot Where you they just keep the head like separate that they pop it in Fine like it'd be way easier, but he's not because he's assembled in like Vertical quadrants. Oh really slice really badly. He's like, well, it's not that he's badly sliced He went together easy enough, but he has to be assembled. You cannot sub-assembly him Okay, that's really interesting like okay. Yeah, I don't know I think that they could the only thing I could think like which I felt was inappropriate was me telling you I once went on a date with one of the ladies who slices the models up and I was like You know and then I was like well, you know I could make a joke that I intentionally made a slice the files up for everyone worse Like that's the gag. Uh, but I didn't it was a nice day. It just didn't go anywhere So I was really vamping try not make it an appropriate joke because I'm on the Wednesday show where we're polite and lovely. So That's right. Yes Yeah, no, it was yeah, it's just it's one of those models You can't sub-assemble because the nature of the easy to build that's basically what it boils down to Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but nowhere near as bad as Phoenix God ever Yeah, it's not like it's not like I put it together and it was like, oh, this is a really hard assembly we've all had those models right where you're like Like the like the um slick blade seekers are our living nightmares that I I never want to relive again Oh, really? And they're not easy to put together the the the seeker model that the thing that the mount Whatever you want to say joy simple five seconds so so easy easy to paint great The little dude who sits on top this tiny little fellow who sits on top. They are crazy Awful to it to assemble Okay, yeah, I haven't put them together. I want to think you know, I've been you know I've been doing a lot of 3d printing. Yeah, and what's great is it just pretty much comes out like Bill and I'm like, this is cool. Like I had to just stick her arm on like that was exactly I'm tired. I needed a rest at the cup of tea after I have the the bird the chicken from archvillain over here. He's on he's on like this. You can't see it. He's off camera But there's a yeah, my my like primed things waiting to be dealt with at some point or sitting over here in this area And you know I'm talking about the one that's like, yeah, yeah the lord of change Yeah, yeah Yeah, there's a there's a little side note for crab fans out there. Um, uh, there's a so 3d art gill 3d art prince. Oh 3d art. I can't remember now. Damn There's a there's a there's a patron guy called 3d art something. No idea What the last bit is because I'm terrible, but his monthly release this month is all um crab based Like age of sigmar esk stuff. Oh my gosh. It's all crap crab nose The age of crab nose. They're all crabs. It's so exciting Uh, I went on picture to to I was like, I'm gonna subscribe to that day and I was already subscribed So it was the best day ever. Um, so yeah, there's a I wish I knew who it was Actually, I can find out in but moments. Let me go find it for you. Yeah, sounds good What it is called Oh no, I didn't I just wrote 3d art on the file name as well Oh Wait, that's it the kingdom of the kingdom of coral and the kingdom of coral and so I'll write that in the chat So you guys can go in very nice Coral and there you go Okay There you go, you guys can uh tristan gray ask me is the uh, are the slick blade seekers necromunda levels? Yes Yes, they are. I've built plenty of necromunda models. And yes, they are Uh, okay individual faces Uh, yeah exactly like oh, I love a two-part face with a hair is a separate thing. That's great. Let's do more of that. Okay Rob, shall we talk about terrain? I think it's time to talk Terrain so I'm here for all right. Well, let me bring up the presentation. That's right. You thought there wasn't going to be a presentation Uh, oh, oh, there most certainly is I didn't size it correctly though. Whoops So just wait a moment everyone Well, I bring it in here and size it correctly. There we go. All right I thought I had it all set up beforehand. I was wrong I was wrong Now it's scooty scooty scooty scooty. There we go And bring that over there All right age of sigmar terrain. There we go So rob before we get into the actual presentation, let's talk about yeah, what why are we here man? Like just at a very high level what inch not not what are we doing with this project? What interested you about terrain? Why are you doing this? Why why do you have this love of terrain? What sparked this off in your mind of that kind of thing? so More that it was problematic initially like let's go let's go for that that Having traveled the world to do live coverage at different places Several different things are a problem inside of Wargaming Um, or as I see them or maybe like stumbling blocks Maybe a nicer way to describe them and they go from Listing putters to tournament software never like if you would like an entire hour long rant right now about tournament software Buckle up like we won't but we can share Horrific you can't even do it on desktop doesn't matter the point is the like The point is that I I when I went to different events. It was always the same sort of problems Be it 40k be age of sigmar and train was always one of those consistent problems. It really um Hit home to me Um, how unfunctual it was with things like the lgt which were like where the lgt was pretty much lambasted for its terrain being Horrific, but at the same time a lot of like the 40k players being like I would rather play on boards with mdf than with Warhammer world terrain and I would also warhammer world is also my local We would go to warhammer world and the train was practically unusable for both game systems definitely rubbish for 40k Um, but also very unusable generally for age of sigmar like if you are a local to warhammer world It's a bit of a gag that like you get to the table and then you take all the wild woods off the table And then you move into someone else's table and then you know like you've got to play on a normal battle board anyway And then the the positives the kind of solution I think to some degree was kind of twofold ultimately it was um, I went to two events back to back because I was in canada at capital city blood bath and then I went came over to um, nash con uh where and uh and looked at the train there and at both events So one was a 40k event in canada and then the other one was an age sigmar event And the 40k terrain was done by all the guys over there like the kanhammer team And then antony had painted at least the stuff we used on stream Not painted sorry printed That so 3d printed the stuff that we had on stream and it was just brilliant like it was just really good Also, this is where you and me can kind of diverge here. So for everyone not in the uk We have to bring our own terrain to events. Yeah, this is this is an unknown concept to me I'd never heard of this until I until I went over for for kancon Last year and people were like bringing terrain. I was like, what are you doing? Why are you bringing terrain? They're like, oh, we have to bring terrain to the event. I was like, what? Why what kind of weird thing is going on here? Just the no the to provides terrain. That's what happens Yeah, but yeah, like and so like and the terrain at both of those two events was beautiful However, like the terrain was functional at the 40k event because they'd had a conversation about 40k terrain and how it really interacted with the game The terrain it's not that it was unfunctional by design because antia done a really good job of printing it all up The situation was that it was unfunctional Uh, it just wasn't functional because no one had ever tried to make it functional It just wasn't and there are some very major problems, especially at Let's call it top end competitive play But generally in competitive play and even match play Where there are some problematic issues with how the terrain rules work almost importantly just the lack of terrain rules so That kind of was the impetus Of that whole conversation and then we had a wonderful Gary from dark fantastic mills He started providing us some terrain to stream on because we couldn't replicate the same quality here And so we used those some of the coverage that we did and then we were like Then it was kind of a rolling conversation like we'll get our own boards of terrain So when we go to events we'll take a minute work And then we'd be at an event and someone would end up putting Their their lumeneth boat on it's not lumeneth. Sorry that ioneth boat on its side And then they would deep strike a unit above so it's three inches above a model And then would bunny hop over and i'm like, what world are we living in? Right So form and function is really why we're here to have this conversation But that's that's the kind of that's the initial impetus. I think but it's been an ongoing conversation for me for a long time Yes, so I do want to give a special mention to anthony pulcaster. He's crazy. Horse. He's in the chat right now Uh, he does have an etsy store. I will link it in the description where you can hit him up for some terrain Uh anthony is a hero amongst heroes in this community Um, and he has Not only did he provide terrain for nashkon and then david painted up. He's also provided terrain for uh Uh, the next time we get back to nova whenever that happens Uh, so very excited for that. He's And he just he takes terrain making very seriously. He has Just does a great job With getting these files curating these files finding the really good ones getting them printed and getting them out in people's hands often For this a lot of these to is often at his own cost, which is crazy um, so he is an absolute one of my heroes and It's funny because this is where you and I like when we initially started talking about this Part of what you were saying didn't resonate with me Right Because I never had this challenge. I did not realize how spoiled I was basically Because most of the events I go to and play in four or five events a year Have incredible terrain So like I go to both holy events which is run by steve herner and Uh, he has entire custom boards like not just the train. He's custom built every board with bespoke terrain rules Like incredible setups Okay, where where you play the uh, where you play the you're playing the board as much as you're playing your opponent Nash con incredible terrain right so on and so forth like that Having these wonderful themed boards and so Just I didn't realize the situation in other places in the world I guess the people were rocking up tables that were having like four Pieces of nothing terrain and like three of them were wild woods, which would even know what to do with that Well, so there were there was like standard like ever since mo comp There's been pretty much a standard amount of terrain Like that's been used like 10 to 12 pieces depending problem is is like in the uk when you're bringing it yourself That's an issue But it would also still be an issue when we went to warhammer world And they would use their terrain because like as much as I mean, they weren't even themed like they weren't themed, right? Like like um, there's a couple completely themed boards, but most of them aren't Yeah, like well when you go when you go and play yeah when you go play a tournament It's just uh brown and flocked like Realm of battle boards with some stuff on top and some of it sometimes looks really nice but often times not and like We can get into like mats and all this other conversation like another time But like you can create some really beautiful spaces And I think one of the things about going to capital city blood bath and then going to nash con and seeing this as I was like You know what? This could be something extra But but this is important as much as the the steve's board sound incredible They also sound like a nightmare to play on like in any sort of functional way Like not in any sort of functional way I don't want to be really clear because they sound brilliant But like for a standardized sort of terrain type for people to use and replicate at home I feel like it's a maybe a tall order to ask for people to achieve So really you want something that's like and also for to's you want something that's replicatable A lot you need something that like I get what I'm doing. I'm doing 20 of these 30 of these off I go So it's Yeah, yeah, like so it's it's uh So it's uh Yeah, it's it's a fascinating conversation and like and I've been on this journey with it and it involves 40k And there's there's loads for us to cover right the loads for us to cover. Yeah, so let's let's walk through this journey Okay, so we're gonna we're gonna I've tried to prepare this presentation as a little narrative journey We're gonna go on that each each slide will really just prompt discussion Okay So slide one terrain basics. How is terrain and I actually pulled an image of a board from uh, Warhammer world Okay, nice. Yeah, good. Uh, so how is terrain treated in age of sigmar? And My answer to this right now is it's Not or it's confused or it's Not as functional as it should be. It's not as impactful in the game as it could be It feels very scattered. It feels kind of like different slip shot rules kind of layered on top of each other Right The like I happen to like A lot of the sort of mystical terrain rules But a lot of them are completely worthless And the problem is they're sitting on top of what's effectively nothing Right, there's not a strong foundation Of like wait, what is this thing? How should it be working and then and it has it sort of meets its expected core function And then I can choose to layer some neat thing on top of it. Does that make sense? So like sure. I love the idea of Uh, I don't know. Let's just pick one like sure. I love the idea of arcane terrain Who doesn't love plus one to cast on mine and dispel right? It's great. We all we all love finding arcane terrain on our board, right? Yay fun But that's not what the terrain is Right, that's a neat rule benny. It still has to have a function of form in the game that does something Right. Yeah Like otherwise, it's just A weird model that's sitting around for plus one, but it's not actually impacting the game in any In any way. Well, one of the things one of the things that you like So and again to touch on if you guys have just joined us to touch on one of the things I think is really beautiful about our game is that it isn't a game Like isn't the game removed from the narrative It's a game that is part of the narrative and the dice and how we play even at a comparative level Is story based it's it's an orc fighting an elf Or whatever the situation there is inherently story The setting in which that happens is arguably just as important, right? Like it's just it's just as important that that occurs. However The the theming of a board no matter how well you do it Still has no real impact on how you play it in any way you see a building But there is I mean there is a garrison rule, but like they're like you don't really like honestly How often have I said how often have you ever seen garrison buildings on a on a tournament game board? Yeah, never like you never and that's the point right like oh you see a wall and you like Like you see a forest and it doesn't do anything You just have to have a very awkward conversation with your opponent like my model's kind of half here Right, and it's so it's treated as basically not being there until it's treated as being there And that's hugely problematic because for every like don't worry about it doesn't even matter You can definitely abuse how there is no terrain rules And that doesn't mean like it's broken or like what I mean is is that you create unintuitive games With your opponent or just even your opponent Like I don't know if we're getting to like what's the intent like any point in these slides because I just wanted to say Like the intent of the oh are we getting to that? Yeah, go ahead. This is where I want to set that up. Yes the intent Yeah, the intent is is to make everyone have more enjoyable games Yes, like that's Like that's the chris like that's what I've been working on the most because obviously Events here at the ts and rena or the super series or whatever I'm doing in the future I want people to enjoy their experiences. I don't want people's coming up to me and saying rob this weird thing happened and I'm like, okay Right, right, right Like why did a weird thing happen? We should have been able to solve that and terrain is the weirdest one at the moment It's like very odd Like we can get to the product I don't know if we can get to problems, but it's treated as not being there is I completely agree and I think that that intent is really important to hone in on like I think one of the things that you're your reason for going down this road as we discuss this and then ultimately the solution That's being proposed Is to create a common language of how this works to then functionally enhance People's experience of the game to feel like you are playing in a place Where the things you see on the table reflect rules you would expect And that you can interact with and that will shape the game in a positive way That is that is transparent to both you and your opponent Right, so that you do not have those conversations later Right. Yeah. Yeah, like and also so that you like can do cool stuff because when a fence does nothing in the game It changes when it does something and then it's part of the story that you're telling on the tabletop Why you're playing your game it helps narrative games and it helps competitive games I think those two are inherently linked anyway, but it just helps games be more fun And who doesn't want to have more fun like this is just like we've done some work to make it so that there's more fun for people Like so if we just simplify and and stratify these things into a codified language where we can all be talking and understanding it Then it does get more fun Right. Yeah, there you go. That's the idea. Okay so Let's the next slide rob here is called the shooting question And the and my question is so how do we fix all this shooting anyways? And I've got two images on this slide, which if you're watching you'll see in a minute when it comes up But I'm going to vamp for a minute until the image comes up for you So the left image is something you shared with me that I think is like a 40k setup basically some tables and The right image, which I don't think people will be able to see too clearly But this is actually me playing Anthony Pocastro at a tournament. Okay, and My dock army is in the back. There's a single building In the back right corner of this board and I and he was playing shoot cast Okay, now i'm calaveron So i'm already neg one to be hit and nonetheless. I put my entire army everything of import is in this building Okay, like we are all it is the huddle around this building Of just like everybody who has anything to do with my force is in this building to get cover Or it's a block line of sight or whatever right and uh So that was a that was a uh A fun little just a fun game that I thought was that's actually a lot of terrain Oh, yeah, and this is actually the lightest board in herner's day in volume Like at least in volume that you're looking at in that image like one of the things I wanted to do But then also I was like this is bad I've been since this conversation because me and vince been talking this for quite a few months now Like this conversation came out I've just been screen capping every event that I've seen on twitter or someone playing a game And I'm like, you know, someone's like I got shot off today and I'm like Circle I was like when there's not even a wall Whereas the map that you guys can see there is a wtc board. So that's the war team championships. Okay, they have like Yeah, yeah, um, and they have uh, they have for each mission. They have three different Terrain layouts and they're like medium and heavy boards. So we also do this for the super series So like like medium and heavy boards that we we play with But if you look at that the density is phenomenal Like it's normally 12 plus pieces But there's at least 12 and of those there's always eight Eight that align the side blocking and don't forget this is on a board that's 25 smaller Than the current age of sigma board. So it would be the same amount if we were going to go play Like in the next edition if the the board is 44 by 60 So like the the point is is that those 12 pieces like you can't unless you see it You can't really understand how how much it impacts it But it makes it a better game a 40k was like A couple of things happened to make 40k a really fascinating game in my opinion They made it so objectives you had to go capture which previously wasn't really an issue Um, and they also did this with terrain. So like you've got different types of terrain Um, and then what they do so they pretty much Line the site block and you can either move through them or you can't move through them Uh, so that's one version There's minus one to hit if you shoot through it or near it and it's also minus two to move through Which is quite a fun little one. Um, or it's just cover terrain in this difficult ground and you can't move through out of that Either that's basically it. So it just blocks line of sight is really what it does and they're weird shapes We can have a conversation about the elves all day because I think they're weird Like yeah, no one here. I am certainly not going to advocate to bring the random l shapes into Age of sigmar, but it's it's a telling story of what but is here like it's it's functional We can talk about how that gets translated, but the important part here is I think the reference of it is Let's let's just connect these very simple dots rob Point the first Okay one Shooting seems to be something that is driving people crazy right now in aos Mm-hmm sound fair also also magic, which also requires like a side. Yeah. Yeah that ranged power projection Let me broaden it out to that right? Okay. Yep one in the npe survey I did shooting was like It was it was number one or two depending on how you parse the data Okay for what people found the most negative play experience It's it's it's powerful. It wins games and people hate it Yeah, okay one Two some position the second Uh 40k has more shooting Than age of sigmar so much more and it is a combat game now Like yeah, like they have shooting of course But you like if you look at that board if you look at that map they just can't shoot You can have all the shooting in the world and they're like and someone was like i'm just behind this building now so No, like it's that easy and yeah, you're right They have so much more shooting and they had to deal with this problem By introducing these things and they did a great job props the games workshop They didn't then release a pack for people to follow so Like half a job, but like I mean half a good job is way better than sometimes So like that's it's pretty brilliant and yeah, you're right like how do we fix shooting in? Do you know what's funny is because I told you this story already vince It was only a couple of weeks ago that depending for you. Yeah the penny dropped And I was already into writing this pack Actually a lot of what we get on to because we're going to talk about Terrain keywords in a bit and we've written them out and a bunch of other stuff But it it was only when someone was complaining about shooting. I really realized that this also dealt with that When we get to it in the future when we get to in a bit. I actually was more interested in how Blocking movement made the game more interesting right hadn't really even like clocked on to those things But yeah, the penny dropped and I was like, oh, yeah, of course 40k had done it And I was like giggling to myself because it's really funny watching people complain about shooting and then not doing Anything about it like and I keep obviously referring. I mean, I'm English right? So I'm just like send a couple of the poor lads over the top make them run at the machine guns. Let's go Yeah, but like that's what the player base seemed to want to do They're just like I'll just run at the guns, which isn't a solid tactic generally Right, I it didn't work overly well shout out to the Americans you guys Like when you came over for world war one you moved as little squads and you took cover And then you moved on the enemy and guess what your casualty rates way lower than the Europeans who were just running each other Like line infantry in the 1800s So well done Well, thank you. I I'll take credit for that. Uh, so the um the The um The thing to me that it says here is if those two suppositions are true and 40k does not have a shooting problem Then the answer is we can also fix the aos shooting problem with terrain Right, it's just a very simple and and also again, it would match better form to function We just need to re we need to change the way we think about terrain and it's what its role is in the game Right, it's not just there is window dressing to kind of exist And occasionally give somebody like plus one to cast Or you know a neg one to bravery that you forget about right? Okay, that's That's not what we're doing right uh we are uh Instead we're going to we're gonna like actually try to make this work to where Shooting can still exist it can be there and it can be powerful if somebody like Steps out in the open right or or it moves poorly or does whatever Right, like it's not that it's it's not present in the game or it doesn't have a role. Of course it does right uh, it's just that like By using terrain in this well in this way It makes it so there's You can actually still not just die to shooting Right, that's the goal That that's what we want. Yeah, and like there's a game happening Yeah, like the weirdest situation ever is that standing Like on top of a hill completely in the open somehow makes you safer against shooting with plus one safe like insane Like we have insane rules like in that situation. Uh, I think um, but Uh, apparently I've got the my history lesson may have been wrong by the way Just a little side note. So maybe don't take that one to heart but look look. I'm pretty sure world war one It was like the thing that I learned is uh That the relevant part of that was when the the Uh amazon lady came up out of the trench and charged That was the most important bit, uh, actually, uh, but yeah, so Like you can solve loads of problems that we have By just making it so you can't shoot through stuff really simply like Like and and then and I think also and this is really important for shooting units There's a there's a cost-benefit analysis then so they want to poke their head out to shoot And then that seems to be a charging lane or whatever the situation is, right? You could just like and what's fun about it is you can really Uh, you can really move stuff around Like and you can have like it doesn't have to be standard It doesn't have to be like we're playing scorched earth because I know we can look at that later And this is how we play you could be like you can mix it up You could be like we're going to do this and that and it can be based on how your terrain looks Because when you have a keyword you like which is what they have here like in 40k Your forest can be a forest because the forest in 40k is minus one to shoot through minus two to move through But their forest can just be like a bit of wood with two trees in or it could be two necron towers Or it could be it could be anything like it could be like Forest but like it means you get to make more thematic boards Amazing big thumbs. We like that for story But you also make something more functional, which is just 11 out of 10 as well Because I think so. Yeah, like it will fix the shooting problems that mpe issue. Oh, baby It gets minimized and it feels more like shootings there to be expressed and can sometimes do work But it's not just winning the game on its own. Okay So I just I did copy these two in this is the 40k experience like just to really hammer home at the point You went out and got some quotes from neil from the wtc and pete from the 40k stats center I thought these were both really good because they're both both these quotes talk about Why terrain is so important in 40k, right? Because again, there's much more shooting in 40k, right? And yet games in 40k just aren't decided on who can be the on who guns who down first That's just not actually how it works out, right? Partially because it's an objective base game now, which is good. That's what we already had in aos So we've got that part down. We've got the objective base game down, right? So part one done But part two is they have this functional terrain That's adding this layer of strategy. Where do I move? How do I move? Where are my troops standing, right? Who can adapt to that and and I think both of them made really excellent points here Um, because it it it's so impactful On how the game is experienced in 40k, right huge hugely like and and there's an interesting conversation about The matter in that situation as well So like both just to give some clarity for everyone Pete like it like Pete is an obsessive compulsive Who runs the 40k stat center who probably has watched and or interacted with more people who play 40k than anyone else in the world Like I would say that that's like pretty much factual and like in his observation of how those trends operate by taking in the tournament results from every tournament For the past four years right and when so when he says that the terrain in ninth edition has changed the shape of the game It affects it and it affects it for the positive That's really something like we should all listen to and then neil who organizes the wtc Which is the 40k world team championships same thing. They've always been really obsessive about how their terrain is There's a really great argument that their terrain boards are actually over the top It's a really fair argument I think but they do a great job of making it so that like they don't really pick the boards They're team captains who so they have a team from a country that country selects a team The team captain then goes and votes on stuff and they're the ones who really choose how those pieces of terrain are put together so they want complicated intricate boards that That require player skill to problem solve how you play with your army and against it It also pairs really well into team formats as well when you're pairing into it But that's really not anything that we need to really talk about here It's just important to know that they think that it's a vital element for the shooty game And we have a kind of shooty game and we don't do anything about it And it would be like it would be very easy to solve right? Yep. That's exactly right Okay So let's take the current maps right so here I just have scorched earth and battle for the past as as I mentioned apparently to you because I use the Same images you had because it made me laugh. I didn't want to change them Um all battle for the past games happen in France as we can clearly tell from this from this map right here Yeah But when you when you consider these boards, this is how we tend to think of them, right? As just these open spaces and there's all these objectives and the important part to understand here is that When it is when your boards look very similar to the sort of default setup Right when there's not much difference between reality right And this Then what that does is de facto Gives all the power to people who have ranged power projection be it spells or magic, right? It's just you're you are you have made a choice By not setting up that to rate and the answer that you've given is The anybody who can project power in any way always gets to use that to maximum efficacy Yeah 100% and also like if we move away from the shooting conversation like And we move into this like you're right So wherever you park your units you could just shoot with the other units, right? Because there's really nothing in your way like or you could pick your targets Where it becomes fascinating and why these two are very interesting these two battle plans if you look at them Is how you deploy anyway? A lot of people are just like practice their deployment at home because the terrain will never matter Like they're like I can move up and down it I'll do what I like with it But these two battle plans play quite interestingly because if you're playing scorcher It's one of the left you need to control those four objectives at the bottom If you're at the bottom and then you need to go and take those four at the top Now people sometimes play it where they put all their stuff in the middle and they somehow try and spread across the whole board Which is a terrible way to play like like a more solid plan I think generally is you you push hard on a flank So you take sure the the left and right two objectives Maybe yeah, yeah, and then you kind of roll round because if they're in the middle Then you can kind of box them in Now where's interesting is that never changes if the terrain like it doesn't matter the terrain like and sometimes it will But what's cool for you as a to or for you at home is you can play scorcher through your friend And then you can mix how the terrain is going to make it so that you play differently And if you like so you can have it so that I can't move between the far left hand objective at the bottom And the far left objective at the top You can just have something in the way and that changes so much stuff On bow for the pass you always either go straight or you go into the flanks That's how you're doing and you're holding that center Now what's interesting is is you can make it so that you block something so that going from one side to the other side in a straight line you can't do or That you can have it so that getting to the flank units to the flank objectives is hard and you're really boxed in the center and what's fun is When we get to the maps you can do loads with that, but when you look at the maps as they are like this Nothing matters like and that's what's important like and in You end up with again the intent you end up with a more interesting game If you have to kind of problem solve yourself around the terrain. Yeah. Yeah other than Yeah, it's not just yes. The shooting answer is great. That's a good reason But that's not the only reason creating these lanes of movement Giving real benefit to say a unit that has a long move speed and can fly or something So they can jump something that's that's there, right or You know, whatever, right? Or making them separate the units that can't like sure the unit that can fly real far in their army Can jump over and go engage you But help from the rest of that army that can't fly even if they're fast can be a long way off Right. Yeah, and so then it like it makes There there's a much higher level of tactical play because yeah, you can take your vampire lord on zombie dragon Throw him over this these lanes that have been set up with the train, right? He can just jump over the building and go fight something but he better win Because his regular skeletons have got to go all the way around or whatever right before they come reinforce him Okay, yeah Yeah, and yeah, yeah, right and when we talk about also one of the things I forgot Because what if we ignore shooting for a moment, but like so we've we've talked about that and it's done when we talk about movement Yeah, um when we talk about movement like that's really key like I can deploy on the line Knowing I can just go in a straight bomb line and you have to put up a screen there to make it So you don't take my objective But you just like I have to do that because you can go archae on host our car And plus six inch straight away a 12 inch charge I can just woof across the board and no one's gonna stop me However, if you make it so that that's not the case People can't use their inherent movement strengths to do good stuff with that like or they you know Like then you you're creating more dynamic play for a player And I think you're also making something more exciting Like you're more dynamic play for a player who wants that and you're also making something more interesting for players Who don't really even know that that's what they want. They're just they're just having some more fun And I think and specifically because the terrain would also tell a story It would be like I couldn't get past this swamp because it was full of poison clouds Like so like I wasn't allowed to go past it so I had to go around it Like and that's a cool story for like why you ended up fighting that unit and not that unit So you can have fun with it for the storytelling aspect. And I think we don't really Try to make that happen. Yeah, sure. No, absolutely I want to answer athercast because you made a good point You said question though. Have we reached a point in aos where there's so much teleporting the movement lanes don't actually matter that much I I would say no, okay, so that I break that answer into two though. Let me give you a little more Is there too much teleporting? Yes Okay, and but but a lot of the teleporting that's there that I don't have a problem with is stuff that's like You've got one teleport option on a spell that you have to cast in your army And it can pick up one unit in some kind of range and drop them somewhere else In general, I don't have much of a problem with that because it's a spell spells are always dodgy Right, you put it on like a seven or something. That's a relatively rough cast Not even mentioning the fact that it can get unbound Right, so like if that's if that's like if that was all the teleportation that was in the game, I'd be like, yeah, that's fine Right, okay me some like one unit a turn from your one teleport spell might teleport great Who cares right the teleports I have a problem with are Any army that can facilitate multiple teleports a turn without failure because they're on just like A command point or not even that just you do it. You just do it Right, it's just like this is a thing my army does or this is a thing the unit does You know stupid shadow stonkers. Um, you know that kind of nonsense, right? um Like that's the the kind of teleportation that I think needs to be like minimized jettisoned not there Well, so so again currently like that allows me to bring up Maybe probably one of the worst examples of where the terrain rules lack in any definition And that being that you can currently teleport anywhere and that means halfway up a building Like literally on the side of it like and let's not get into Pythagoras at any point But you don't you can teleport and not make a nine inch charge Like but we won't talk about that like there's no need The point is is those teleports can go anywhere and they can be abusive on top of a loon shrine That's three inches above a model or a base if you measure base to base That's awkward if you want to do that teleport like there's a bunch of stuff You can do on top of a lion's room or if it's not garrisoned. Yes Like there's a there's a bunch of really Like mixed up interactions and I think that's probably one of the abusive ones I see people talking about night horn and flying chat and teleports We will get to that it's really important because that is maybe the quintessential problem That really kicked off most of this for me Like we talked about the theme and how I'd like it to look brilliant and it would be really cool But also there's a problem in agency while you can do very abusive stuff Or you can do it by accident. You're like, I really want to charge that unit And it's like, well, there's a fence in the way or like a building It's like well, I'm kind of going to run halfway up and down it and it's like that's weird And then of course we could talk about the idonethic in boats Because there is people who will just put two boats in front of your army and you have to move up and down them That's how the core rules currently are written and that's weird that like terrain isn't really a thing until someone starts to abuse it Sure, they either they either abuse it for their advantage or they abuse it to make it disadvantageous to you And I think that both of those two experiences are very negative for players like and they don't like and it doesn't happen until it happens And I think teleports are a key element of that But you can make it so you could just reduce how many places they can teleport It's really easy to do. Yeah. So let's take the current maps to now look at them in a different view Let's talk about creating lanes, right? This is one of the things we talked about So now I switched it over Rob to your maps that have like some sample terrain placements, right on these maps Um, so the scorched earth now with eight pieces of terrain And again, these are set up to be very regular to like prove a point Which you're just using little boxes and squares It's not like the actual terrain would necessarily they would all be exactly equidistantly spaced on exactly this same type of thing Like that's not the important part of this, right? This is just a an abstracted visualization people. So Right, I don't want anybody to get caught up because they're like Why would there be four exact buildings that are exactly the same size square every, you know, x-enters on the table No, no, no, no, no, no, no Those are just the placeholder general areas, right? Where it would make where you can start using this kind of concept to create a more interactive You know fun functional table and we'll talk about what we would slot into these Spaces these little abstracted squares in just a moment. Okay, so like don't don't get hung up on the the nature of the boxes And actually Rob your battle for the past map The the thumbnail for this episode is a picture of my table Set up with my terrain in this battle for the past formation. Oh, nice I set up my bar by I went out to clean off my table Like made sure that everything was there and then set up exactly in the way you have it arranged here Right with like a bit like the central piece of terrain And so I like I and I thought about how I would want those terrain pieces to work because they don't need to be equal As we're just as we'll discuss, right? So like on the battle for the past setup that I put out there My central piece of terrain like literally in the dead center of the table is a huge Impassable building Right that like you can't go you can't go from your home to their home objective. Can't just you can't gun it Yeah, exactly. So you can't just barrel through right the back two pieces like behind The the two on the ends right the ones behind your home objectives Those were both just like some cover ruins that you could set some people up into for sort of initial game cover Right, that's what kind of made sense to me there, right? That was kind of the thing Like just kind of open more flat easy to put a whole unit into something like that, right? That's in your deployment area. That's how you can set up And then the other two I kind of mixed and matched right with like Something that's garrisonable and something that you know, like kind of two bigger ones here and two smaller ones here This kind of situation does that make sense, right? Yeah So that it's and as I set up I was like that's a really dynamic board Right Now you've got like you could see the lanes that you can move through. I set it up with the objectives by the way So you could actually see where the objectives lied and stuff like that And you can you can really see how it more defines the board. So yeah, I mean I'll shut up now and let you go on about this No, no, like you're right like and that's what's fun is yeah, of course the squares don't have to be squares They could be round although although the more edges straight edges you get the harder it is to produce angles for line of sight So something to be conscious of like and someone also talking about mirroring in there as well Like the competitive play mirroring is super fine Like, you know, like you can move stuff around and there is there's a conversation later on about faction train and other stuff So, you know for for match play you could do some really fun stuff But let's talk if we talk about scorched earth and about what you could do there So if you if you were to make the let's take the far the squares the four squares in the middle If you were to take the far right hand Central square and the left hand central square and if you to make those two squares you make them impassable So no units can move through them Right, like because it's a spooky forest or it's a death crystal or pick a like whatever you've printed That's why yeah, or whatever you've bought or built or whatever the situation Yeah, and that's part of the key like they don't need when we think of mirroring It doesn't have to be mirroring like oh you have exact building here and exact building there That's not the point. You could use two different things with roughly the same footprint But they have the same the mirrored part is the rules. That's what I was talking about, right? Like I had opposite garrisonable buildings Right. They were completely different buildings But they're both on roughly the same footprint and both garrisonable. So great easy Yeah, yeah, and then so then what you could do So if you're playing scorched earth now if those two are impassable like I cannot move through them I've got this very small lane around the flanks for me to push through and what that creates is a nice fun Someone said that they don't want to say hopper lights in the chat or something at one point But um, you could create like a hot gate situation where you've just got these two units like bashing against each other Which is quite cool Um, like on the kind of those immediate flanks, but it also means you push into the center Then you can flip that whole thing around don't move any terrain Change the keywords and the two central ones are impassable and the two ones They're kind of extremities in the center. They could just be cover or they could block line of sight Or they could be cover and block line of sight And then all of a sudden you've got these two kind of like safe camped objectives That you can move through and you can't get shot at as you move through and you kind of emerge from the forests Or you emerge from whatever the spooky shadow thing is and then you're attacking your opponent And just that that small change changes how you could play It also means that you could do some really fun stuff in tournaments where you could just replicate That map three times change all the keywords around And people are having a really great time means if you're trying to produce a lot of terrain Then that's really easy for you to do you like look this is how they're all set up on this particular thing But all the keywords have changed you can make a little map And you create all of these different avenues and lanes and then when we get into garrison ball So just for everyone garrison ball stuff garrison ball keyword means that you can't land on it Or touch it so it's effectively impassable, but if you start with unless you decide to go into the building and occupy Yes, yeah, which we'll get to in just a minute. We're gonna get to sort of all the keywords and break that apart in just a minute But if you have if you have one of those like so on battle for the past or even on scorched earth So those smaller pieces be garrisons. They're not they're next to objectives, but they're not helping you capture the objective But they are projecting power to stop teleports Which is interesting like where like if let's say everything was impassable on scorched earth or even battle for the past in that situation Teleports now Are in a much weirder place Right, they can't they because in current age of sigmar they if the on battle for the past if that's central building is just a tower A million miles high covered in spikes and created by a demon Five skinks will be like landing on here Like there's no story to it. Whereas if you if you um Yeah, I just think it it stops abuses and it creates fun Right, and that's what's and it also for for players of a certain level It also creates a nice additional tactical challenge So it does all of the things I want it to do right So this is this is an important point to it because this has come up from a couple people in the chat I think it's it's interesting to talk about so but we'll use anthony anthony's questions since he's the one who asked it I love preset for different battle plans idea Great But how practical is it in a in a big tournament right hundred player tournament 200 player tournament Or some kind of major event right where time between rounds is always an issue How how do you tackle that in that kind of a situation right you just you just print out a map And you stick it on the table Like like this scenario is going to change round to round Right, yeah, the players can just like just just knock it together There's a little map there player can just be like cool. We'll just do that They've got to put the objectives out Anyway, you like already the to's don't help and put the objectives out right right Like it's not hard to move eight pieces of terrain around Yeah, especially there's a map with all of the like dimensions on it That's exactly my answer like what ideally one of the things that that I think You would like to have come out of this project rob because I think you want to make something here that ultimately people can Utilize for their not only their own home games, but you know the to's can utilize and stuff like that right Is you'd have I imagine you're gonna you're gonna do this once we get whatever the 3.0 battle plans are because of course We know that they're all changing right to fit the new board size And once we we have those you can kind of set those and then to's can just grab it and literally just Put it in the pack right in round one. It's scorched earth This is where the terrain pieces go set up the terrain pieces here And you just label them like this one is this this one's impossible This one's covered whatever whatever blah blah blah right set up the train on your board and then put down the objectives great Yeah, and you know, um one of the things you've talked about which I didn't have in this in this presentation But it's one of the things I think I don't know where I don't know where it came from So I credit to whoever originally had the idea. Maybe you'll know is like um If you have faction terrain, you just replace one of the existing pieces of terrain that would fit the criteria with That with your faction terrain, right? So like if you have the stupid boats You can't just block people in and add like two more pieces of giant terrain It just replaces two on their side like instead of setting up this thing you do it here Now there's talks about then where do you put the where do you put the terrain? You took off the table and blah blah blah tournament and all that and yada yada That's a separate discussion, but things like that just make it a lot better So so, you know, it can it can be mitigated in a tournament, right? It's the whole point is because I'm I'm And I go to events in our live stream events like like I'm an event gamer first not anything else So my entire thoughts are like what plays best and some of the stuff is just abusive and for some reason We've let it go like the iron net boats blocking in a whole army is wild Like when you like step back from the game a moment Yeah, when you step back from the game you just be a person and you go So what do you do you pay money? You turn up and you put two boats in front of an opponent's army and they can't play They're like, yeah, do that and it's like cool I'm gonna because again, let's go back to the intent I want everyone to have fun and I get that that's what you want to do So I so that was in my tournament pack So what I would have is I would have the shine luminal the ziggurat the iron net boats and of course the obnoxious OCR bone reaper's tower They just replace the pieces obviously follow their other rules like has to be in your territory or whatever But they just replace a piece of terrain on the board. There's some advantage there. That's pretty good You know, like I get to replace this piece. I'm going to make it so that isn't line start blocking or whatever the situation Right, right. Sure. That's fine. Yeah, but like That's that's useful and I think that's cool. Like if I was going further My further addendum pack would be that a wild woods would replace one and you could summon wild woods in place of pieces of terrain But that's maybe too far, but I think that that would be yes We can we can talk about the problem of wild woods the so somebody said how is the border size going to change? Have they confirmed that all indications all rumors all everything we've heard says that the board size is going to change War cry boards are the same sizes kill team boards and 40k games are meant to be four kill team boards put together It is literally the most obvious thing you can think of will they change the recommended board size one to one, okay, like just Think about what they what their incentives are and then just then then decide from there. Okay. Yeah Yeah, so like that's so that'd be 44 by so I think I think eight because currently it's 10 to 12 I think eight sounds about right for 44 by 60 boomer um, ultimately but the Yeah, like I would make it so that the boats just play like you just replace the faction to it Like you replace the terrain on the board and that's again fine because it's weird that we let people Just with like you turn up with one army and you're gonna then make other people have less fun with something weird Like it's it's it's very odd vince like actually when you when you when you cycle back From what actually no when you take the core tenon of what everyone lords the hobby to be In the youtube comments on the facebook page is on the twitter everyone's like, why aren't you just having fun man? And i'm like cool. Well as a competitive gamer, let me tell you i'm gonna block you in with these boats And you're gonna have a terrible time and they'll be like that's not cool. I'm like it's not so as a competitive gamer Why don't I say let's make them just replace terrain on the board? They're like you're taking away my fun I'm like it's not fun. It's not fun right anyone right in any way Like their intention with making those boats is clearly to give them the minor benefits that are written on the scroll Not to literally stop your entire enemy army from moving like I just I don't believe they ever thought of it that way Because when they were play testing it or whatever when they originally conceived that boat They just literally would put out the boats in friendly places because they're nice people But it doesn't but they shouldn't be you shouldn't be you play like it's weird Like so anyway, I think you can solve a lot of those with some adult Like con just some adults in the room just be like hey, he's done this like well, let's not let that happen There we go. You fine with that. It's like yeah, I am fine with that. It's probably shouldn't have done that anyway Like this is a really easy combo. Anyway, yeah Yeah, so uh, yeah, so I but the important bit is the lanes for movement You can block line of sight which is cool and you can create lanes for movement and you can do that However, you want as a tier. That's what's exciting. You can move those around just anyway I think it's the keywords that are really important, right? Yep Okay, uh So now let's talk about what does terrain do we've danced around this Rob, let's actually talk about it in in uh in your current, uh, conception of this. There's basically four Types of terrain that could be by the way, like sometimes these can overlap. It's not like everything has to be only one right And so we've got obscuring impassable Garrisonable and cover right? Those are sort of our four Types of terrain here as we said sometimes they can they can they can get together and get up in each other's business right so Obscuring What's the intent of this thing reduce the effectiveness of spells and shooting create a more dynamic gaming experience That forces movement basically what we talked about in the early part with the 40k experience, right? So obscuring blocks line of sight if you draw one millimeter line over it between the attacking unit and its target You know for various for these ranged attacks or spells And wouldn't affect models with a 10 plus wounds characteristics. So just you know big models don't Can't benefit from obscuring you can kind of see them whereas towering above Yeah, whereas under the current rules if you have the fly key word you ignore it Which is just weird because like like I get it you're flying above it But like can you fly above this wall of black magic shadow? No Like I'll like I'll tell any story to make it so that it works better Basically, but then also that means you can't just hide your archaeop Like he's just gonna get like he's gonna get beat up. So I think you and me talked about that 10 wound bracket a little bit Yeah, it just seems like a nice place to cut it, right? So, you know, yeah, that just feels like about the right number It could like I could see it moving around, but it feels like to me it just feels like about the right number Yeah um Okay impassable Intent create channels and fighting lanes that add some potential realism to scenarios As well as as you mentioned like it's not here in the intent, but it's important as well as blocking off landing areas Teleport zones things like that right creating areas of the board that are sort of no-go zones, right? Oh, somebody told me the text is too small Okay, sure Nope, that's too big. There you go. That's as big as it's gonna get folks. Hopefully that that's more legible. I'm sorry Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna put this out as a thing anyway. So yeah, exactly this will get shared out. So um Okay, so vince is just helping me with vince is just helping with the words because i'm not great at the words Out of my mouth. Yes, but with the writing. No, so uh, we're gonna make sure it makes more sense Because you want everything to be unambiguous. Yes unambiguous This is really everything is no room for ambiguity or interpretation. Okay So, uh Yeah, well, this none of this is in like finished rules language or anything yet. It's just conceptual Uh impassable cannot land on or move over it unless flying flying units can fly over it But must finish the movement completely over the piece, right? In other words, you cannot be on So you just can't you just can't be on it Yeah, the floor is lava You can't be on it and that's huge because that stops people running halfway up a building It stops you teleporting skinks up there moving eels up there What a picker thing like that's abusive and bad It just stops that it's impassable. It's an it's a null void in the board But if but the thing is is it's an advantage of flying units because they then get to fly over, right? But no more like halfway up nonsense. Yes. Yeah, right because it's nonsense. Yep. Yeah, exactly Garrisonable uh intent create interesting terrain options that make sense Buildings and forests which are hard to to paste uh models and providing cover and port for forces So yeah, there you go. Yeah, like that building is a great example of something that would be garrisonable, right? Yeah, so You you put you know, you can put up 20 models in it Only models with one or two wounds per model can garrison So you can't stick big big like you can't stick giant eight wound bestillodons in there Whatever however many wounds bestillodons have I don't remember now some number of wounds But you get the point creatures like that, right? Yeah, or big heavy cav or whatever You can deploy into a garrison if it's legal to do so i.e. It's completely within the available deployment area Or or move into one if you start the move wholly within six inches You cannot enter and leave it in the same turn. You cannot teleport into garrisonable terrain So again, it's more blocking off stuff for um For you know teleporters and things like that Although although if you made a great argument to me like I love the idea that there's a tavern Then poof 20 more orders are just in there, which is hilarious I guess But like yeah, I think probably not because every building has some sort of anti-teleport warding stones No, it's because you can't teleport where you can't see rob dnd solved this problem years ago because you end up in a wall Did you ever see that it's a snap fake video? I don't know who's real or fake for the australian college or whatever where they're teleporting around Okay, anyways, yeah, you don't want that to happen Okay Yeah, um, yeah, so like when you leave the garrisonville terrain You have to be wholly within six the train feature and more than three inches away from enemy models You cannot move over garrisonable terrain unless you have the ability to fly models treat garrisonable terrain as impassable Unless they are garrisoning that terrain right in which case they're just they're not moving over it. They've just they're in it They've deployed into it effectively, right? Yeah, uh, if any garrison your neg want to be hit and plus one to save So there's a huge bonus But like if like if you guys remember back to the maps none of them are on objectives, right, right? So like they're in null space. So like Yeah, like I'm in a garrison plus one save my son to hit but you're doing nothing to affect the outcome of the game Uh, and maybe like you maybe you're shooting out of it. And that's a huge bonus to you That makes sense But it's also in no man's land in some situations or in some maps and you can make it so that like I mean, but then you have a much bigger base to be charged Which is pretty fun Right Like if you're inside that because the the base of the building becomes Your models base basically so that unit so you can charge it with like a billion monsters and just surround it and just kick the building down Which is super fun. Right. So I think that I think that's really cool. Yeah Yep And then finally cover terrain intent allows for cover bonuses and models to move forward in the board with some protection If a unit and all its bases are fully within the terrain feature You gain cover basically exactly like it is now And if you charge you don't gain the benefit of cover on the turn you're charged And obviously lots of scrolls have individual interactions with cover, right? Like chameleon skanks and things like that or or um What are they what's uh Why can't the other name uh shadow warriors? There we go. Yeah, you know people Like there's lots of units that interact with sort of cover and you know ways to to Mess with cover destroy cover Screw with that kind of thing. So it just feels like and that's simple A lot of people have like just simple ruins or stuff cover terrain can be a lot of very simple things where you just have like some simple Wide base scatter and things like that. Maybe some wrecked over walls or pieces or Bushes or fallen crystals or you know, whatever right stuff That's not going to generally like cause any problems with the models We don't have anybody like moving halfway up of the thing or whatever, right? It just creates an area where you move your dudes in and it's obvious what they're doing They're taking cover, right? They get behind something. We've all played Well, I haven't but you know like gears of war and cover shooters exist, right? So it's like just this is just chest eye walls Yeah To move off the battlefield and crouch down until you can move forward again. Yes Yeah, like I've got um, I'm trying to find one of the pieces that I've done So like I'm still not 100% certain on this so I've based a lot of my terrain So give you guys an example. I don't know if you can see Shrek's house right now Um, but the Shrek's house itself It will just be a garrison And then the the the board around it which ties in with the mat So like it it fits in but I would just make that cover which I think is quite nice So people can kind of move through it and elect to have that quite quite a bit of cover You could put quite a few models on there or they could then get into the garrison and it makes a nice little bit of um Shape and and what's fun about having the keywords is I don't think I've even necessarily cracked how to build the correct Shapes and boards yet like that's not even the thing But once we have this as a common language between all of ourselves together We can just be like cool. We kind of know what's going on now and I can start designing the board That's really the benefit going back to the wtc maps that ishik did is he gave everyone like like games Which I did the keywords. Thank you for that But then it was ishik who ran off and did all these map designs and made this stuff So it worked for an umpteen amount of maps Which is cool and really this is hopefully if we get this common language For like what we think the terrain should do then we can just go make our own maps all day long That's fine. Like it just it just needs to have that Um, so yeah, that's where that's that yeah that cover cover was one you were quite excited by and I like the story You told where you were like you just imagined running to hide under a little foxhole. I thought that was quite good Yeah, exactly like to me. It's it's one of those things that just makes sense You're like it's what you talked about before. Let's not run straight at the guns There's a pile of something over there, you know, let's let's go run over to that and wait Or I'd like to get down behind it, you know um So at any rate yes I and and yeah, the point is these can kind of get together they can you know, you could have something you can easily imagine um, something be both like Obscuring and cover or something like that, right or whatever like you can you can see how these would maybe fit together Maybe two different elements on the same thing. So, um, yeah, there's definitely lots of options there As to how this can all work. So yeah I like I like it when you double up on them as well Like so you could have you could have a garrison or terrain But for some reason it's obscuring like it gives out I don't know like you've got the you've got your war cottage and it's kicking out so much smoke from the The baker that it just blocks all People who are on the other side of the cottage, right? Yeah, absolutely Yeah, and you can just have some real fun with it and and what's nice is is once you have the story We have the keyword for what it does you can tell the story with the piece of terrain So your your terrain is more story orientated Like you're like, I get this now. This is cool Like it's a tower that's garrisonable because they've left the front door open or it's a tower that's impossible because they've locked it When they left either of those two cool things are cool and and you get to tell some story around it And I think I think that's one of the things that like I'd really like to express is that I think Yes, this will be much better for competitive games But also generally for gaming But I think it'll help tell better stories for people playing their games and people will have more fun And that's what I really hope is the key takeaway Yeah, like people could have fun because I think people play in this even at home in their garage They'll be like, this is a great laugh. This is like this is I'm in the building. It's like, well, you're doing nothing in there It's like, no, but I'm in here Yeah, and the nice part is when you when you have this simple language is over here and these four rules Right, then what then you get to ask yourself, what is this thing that I've gotten my hand? So, you know, you're building you pick up that building, right? Well, it's obvious how I can connect these rules to that building to make it feel like it's a functional thing that I'm holding Like, yeah, that big building it's garrisonable and it's obscuring because it is a giant building Right and so like yep that all checks out and now all of a sudden when you put that thing on the board You don't need to have like you don't need to be rolling mystical rules if you don't want to Whatever whatever the terrain is still playing with you in the game and it's functioning like it's a building Of course, I can't just like, you know, it's going to do the things I expect a building to do Right. Yeah And you can easily see how using these Now form and function can meet Whereas like when you just use when terrain is in the current world We're trained is kind of like basically nothing unless you roll something cool Or it's nothing until it's everything because of standing up halfway on the building or whatever But how many times have you seen like roles for mystical rules? Yeah, whatever right and you'll get like You know, you'll get like a little You'll get a silver enough wildwood or whatever like just, you know, some woods or something completely unsensical and it's volcanic and I'm like Oh, that's weird Doesn't make like the the mystical terrain chart is an interesting element But it like while it's fun for telling some stories a bit like, you know Nathan's always talking about shiny rocks. He's like, I'm not reluctant charged. He was looking at shiny rock Makes me laugh Like it doesn't really do anything in game and like and these keywords at least help create like an environment for people Which I think is fun and also it means you can look at your Bit of terrain because I know someone people are talking about in the chat We need to have a like an honest and frank conversation A lot of the the games workshop terrain that they sell just isn't really fit for purpose Their game. I know that sounds weird, but it's also true for 40k if that helps that none of it is it's all kind of Weirdly designed to maybe look nice, but there's no real interaction Um, and if it helps while I was at games workshop I actually had a uh a meeting with rey and a bunch of other guys and about some of the problem About this exact conversation in some ways and about some of those problems that they face as designers In creating something like that and and really the answer that I got given was They just wanted to make stuff that looks nice and that's super. Okay. That is super good Like they make stuff that looks nice. That's great But we if we're going to play games with it need to Do stuff and 3d printing is obviously huge and if not 3d printing there's loads of great companies There's mdf like terrain companies. There's yet etsy accounts with 3d printed stuff There's there's a bunch of different places, right? There's like tabletop worlds If you've got like big tough money like loads of cash Like so there's really cool stuff you can already go out and buy that's far more functional than spending that right at games workshop And you could probably tell like I like I don't really understand what the the storm vault things are like are they like Are they temples that are ruined but like specifically very neatly and in that shape like Like Like what's the scale? What's the scale? Like anyway, it's it's a weird piece So I think that's one of the adult conversations. We all probably should have that's not me trying to write on games workshop That's me saying that you could spend your money better and more productively to give yourself a better environment to play on Or you can kick bash events because I know you're a big fan of that as well, right? Yep Yeah, so yeah, I mean to me exactly this is like that's no like I use the mystical stuff on my table all time I think it's fun Okay, but and if you do too use it too like whatever the version of what we get is in the new in the new edition, right or now but to me the That's always like flavor on top of the thing and I don't roll them for everything. I never have right Yeah, I've always used them for like a couple pieces of terrain that I thought were an interesting places That would be need to run to and and and have that have some kind of special rule, right? Ultimately, what we want is this is the base, right? This is what everything is everything is this stuff, right? Everything on the board is something of this stuff Because that's this is Function derivative of form Yep, right. Yeah. Yeah, whereas the mystical things are like, hey, we want to make we want to represent that these things also exist in a crazy realm Right, that's full of magic and weirdness. Okay, neat Then you can layer those on top of this for a couple pieces to make the game Like if that's the kind of thing you want, right? If that's the experience you want great, but then you still have the function And the function I think tells the story too Like why why does it provide cover or why is it blocked line of sight allows you to tell a story like I've got like Uh, like it's just a rock pool. It's just a set of rocks and the top's like Like it's meant to be a lake or something. I don't know Like but like one of them are painted like with a very like purplish sheen It's a magical it's a magical pool that gives off magical energy. You can't see through it like Allow like as soon as you you try and create something out of it You're telling a story and I think that's one of the things that I find most exciting about Aging mar and 40k and wargaming in general is that as much as you can take it to the most competitive end and you can it's still a story that you're playing with and Those things aren't unlinked. They're really linked and actually if you can build a space that they're playing in even better You're having a more fun time like because it is more fun. They keep like Categorically, that's where I'll put my flag like I'll die on that hill. It's more fun Like and then it's also better like if you're a better gamer If you're a tactical solid gamer, you'll have better battle plans because you're having to think around it That's why these guys at the wtc for 40k kick the snot out of everyone when they play Like people like like come over from other countries. They're like, yeah, we're the good in this game system And then the wtc guys like this is all we do. You're about to get wrecked and they do like Because they they they challenge themselves on a consistent basis and I think that's that's really exciting as well For those sorts of gamers. So it really covers the gamut of people that you're looking to Hope to really affect. Yeah. So there you go. That's terrain. That's our that's the breakdown I I know Rob you plan to share this at some point get it sort of cleaned up into into formal rules language And then share it out and make sure that everything is absolutely watertight Uh, so no issues there Uh, no, I agree. No room for interpretation. So, uh, we will uh, Complete and by the way completely free like and and to be like hacked up and used as people want really like The whole idea is and I can't thank you enough Vince for a talking to me behind the scenes about it Like on more than one occasion and also for having me on the show to talk about it because it means a lot to me Because I know for a fact I'll reach more people through you which is good Because really the hope is is that people just have more fun And like and if we can have that and if we can have tournaments set up like even in australia recently They just had an event where they made all of their terrain obscuring Like that's just all they did every keyword was obscuring like and like and that's cool So like if you can just kick off those conversations for different tiers around the world I think you're going to have people have more fun on the tabletop and that's all I really want Like that's that's my key because if I see eos halfway up a building again, I'll probably kick off Yeah, that's fair and I I I became A real big proponent of this when I realized that everybody wasn't playing like I was playing right like Steve herner at the holy events rob so you understand He you know the chaos dread hold that massive dread hold. He has a whole dread hold table Okay, wow And it also has lava pools Okay Like poured lava pools into the table and then in the center is the dread hold the whole I mean the dread hold full circle all four towers the gates the whole deal. Okay Yeah, and that table is amazing to play on because the Uh at the start of the game The dread hold itself is impassable because duh Right, it's that's the whole point of a castle. There's gates on this. That's how they traditionally work. Yeah. Yes You can go inside them. That's the part that you can enter through right through the through the gates if you go through the gates but every round a random section collapses and becomes Cover instead of impassable like, you know, you know, it's in those like little pie slices the dread hold Yeah, yeah, the little tower slices every round one of them Collapses and you literally pick it off the table set to the side and then you replace it with the appropriate rubble square. Okay And then you can move through it Right and start having fights the middle of dread hold But it's so crazy how different the game plays based on what collapses Yes, you understand what I'm saying because that thing is huge Right, it's I don't if you haven't seen it It's outrageous and the the um the amount that it changes the way the game plays by having this huge impassable piece right is Is nuts in the effect it has on the game right because it also blocks limesight obviously duh and so, uh, it's just it's just I don't know how the hell fought past health and safety regulations, but yeah Yeah, oh, I would point out by the way rob that as well in this He has like his lava fields outside If you wander across the lava they effectively kill you So don't go in the lava. It's not like deadly terrain See, but I would I would happily come and play steve's event because because what because it what it sounds like It steves just created an environment like because battles are weird Like if we're all honest with ourselves Most of our battles should just be a grassy field like maybe someone's got the hill Maybe someone's not but generally a field like not in a city because they don't really I mean after a seed Yes, but like rarely most of them just outside with a lot of space because you got a lot of dudes running at each other like that's like pretty boring truth be told like um whereas uh like yeah like that stuff a setting is amazing and like the fact that he creates those settings is Wonderful, I'd love to go there one time But you can make those at home. I think that that's key. You just like you just you need those You can replicate that same experience when you've got these sort of fundamental rules and whatever terrain you've got. Yes Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah 100% all right, sir. Well, I think we've pretty much kicked off everything So there you go. Oh, sorry Yeah, one more question So one of the things uh that's been brian's brought up in the chat big shout brian for being a thug is um He says how do you deal with obviously, uh, we do the agency my stats the agency my stat center Like how do you and this is a good conversation that's also happening with 40k? Which is why I quoted p and neil earlier p who does the 40k stats? How do you deal with taking in data from disparate sources? So like if I have a tournament in australia where they're not using the terrain pack Let's say and one in the uk and then k are doing super well over there and they're not here How do you how do you really correlate those together and the answer is already that's the situation Some places there's loads of terrain some places there's none like some people like there's soft scores There's already like a lot of interpretation that has to generally go into wargaming stats anyway And I wouldn't push for there just being one terrain map for each scenario that would be boring But I do think that having a few keywords knocking around would make it so that there would be An effect on the matter of course And I think that that's an advantage for all of us because that means like you get to play around it Like I think that's also as someone who buys tickets You like you go to an event like steve's where the terrain is huge and and a part of your experience Or you go to an event where it just has some keywords and it just makes the game level Or you want to buy tickets to planet bowling ball like sure The grassy field games. Yes, absolutely Yeah, anyway, that's what I'm all done. Thanks so much for having me on it. It's massively appreciated. Absolute pleasure, buddy. Absolutely For all of you out there watching, thank you so much for doing so I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into crunchy terrain. Like I said, all the links will be down in the description Please do hit like If you enjoyed this discussion around terrain if you love terrain If you love megan terrain if you like playing on boards that are in a cool setting Like we do hit that like button hitting like helps other people find the show and I deeply appreciate it YouTube is a fickle master of hitting that like button is how we can Stick it back stick it to the man and take back the power. So just click that. It's so easy subscribe If you haven't already really appreciate it rob. Thank you again, brother My pleasure And for all of you out there watching as always We'll see you next wednesday