Previous: Mortal Empires, Part IV - Consolidation
Creative Assembly just released the Rise of the Tomb Kings DLC, and this has presented me with a unique problem. I love the Tomb Kings. I collected a Tomb Kings army almost two decades ago. In fact, as a student and a young adult I collected five complete Warhammer armies - Empire, Orcs and Goblins, High Elves, Dark Elves and Tomb Kings. I played in tournaments in Australia between 1998-2003 before giving up the hobby when I moved to Japan in 2003. For many years my miniatures languished in a Kennards storage locker in the Central Coast before finally being resurrected and shipped over to Japan. They now adorn a large wooden floor to ceiling display case built solely for the purpose of showcasing of how I misspent my youth painting little toy soldiers. It was either that, or toss them, and I just couldn't.
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| The Tomb Kings. |
My love for Warhammer was a big impetus in starting this playthrough account, but since the Tomb Kings have arrived I feel it very remiss of me not to include them in my playthrough. So, I guess I'm starting again in order to include them in my Mortal Empires campaign. This makes this Legendary playthrough number eight, but to keep with the established fiction of what I've already written I will just replicate the steps I have taken to get to the point I'm currently at in playthrough number seven. So I will start again as Empire, kill the rebels, unite the Reikland, take Marienburg, complete the Bloodpines quest, conclude a bunch of non-aggression pacts, and hope that I don't fall flat on my face along the way.
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| Never had one of these when I was collecting miniatures, but it looks nasty. |
In order to allow my written account to keep up with gameplay I am concurrently playing two campaigns - my Legendary Mortal Empires campaign and an Eye of the Vortex campaign, which is set to an easier difficulty level. This means that my Mortal Empires isn't too far advanced, and I won't lose too much from restarting. The appeal of the Mortal Empires campaign is its ridiculously epic scope - as a Warhammer fan it is a amazing to be able to play a strategic game with over 100 fully realized Warhammer factions. So the obsessive compulsive in me can't allow a campaign of this magnitude to not involve the Tomb Kings. That just wouldn't be right. No, no. So even though I said that my seventh campaign would be the last one I'd record I'm going to have to renege on that, and start over, just so I can include the Tomb Kings. I just hope I can replicate my initial steps. In all my Legendary playthroughs the hard part is when the vampires come swarming from the east and my forces get overwhelmed. The steps leading up to that point, however, should be doable. If not, there will be some back editing done in my earlier posts to fit them to what actually occurs in my eight playthrough. The siege of Marienburg was close run thing so that's a point where my written history could possibly diverge, but I guess we'll see what happens.
I am just shocked there are 100 fully realized Warhammer factions. I never played Warhammer tabletop - but I have had two experiences in the Warhammer universe. The failed MMO (which had an amazing beta, and such an amazing premise behind it..) and The Warhammer Football game =) Which I played a lot (the video version) and it was a ton of fun too.
ReplyDeleteMy interest is very much piqued and I will read along. I haven't played this style of game in some time and wow - this looks pretty crazy (amazing). Looking forward to reading more of your thoughts around it!
To be fair, the 100 factions remark refers to the computer game, and is comprised of variations of the 16 or so Warhammer factions in the tabletop game. Each of those factions also have variations within them - for example, the Emoire could field Middenland armies whose units, rules and selection criteria are slightly different from vanilla. This number also fluctuated from edition to edition - I believe 8th edition Warhammer had 15 factions before the game was finally discontinued in 2016. Some factions, like the Chaos Dwarves and the Fimir, were dropped. Some, like the fictional nations of Ind, Cathay and Nippon, were never fully fleshed out, but were given house rules and army lists by the players themselves.
DeleteThe computer game starts with 100 factions, however, each with their own lords and heroes, which gets winnowed down as the campaign progresses. It's pretty awesome.
"They now adorn a large wooden floor to ceiling display case built solely for the purpose of showcasing of how I misspent my youth painting little toy soldiers. It was either that, or toss them, and I just couldn't."
ReplyDeleteOh man this feels so familiar. All the miniatures we painted between me and my two brothers are on display in our parent's flat in my elder brother's bedroom in a pair of display cases.
Also good luck with this attempt!
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