Sunday 7 August 2016

Cult of Ulric update out now!

Updated 4/9

This update changes the following:

  • Children of Ulric are now WB, same as Ulfwerenar.
  • White Cloak of Ulric replaces Cloak of Anraheir.
  • Teutogen Guard and Seneschals have white wolf cloaks.
  • Wolf-kin moved to special, have Hatred.
  • Winter Wolves moved to rare, added more background.

46 comments:

  1. -I'm not sure Crush the Weak entirely makes sense because under the current rules they will hate things creatures like mighty wyverns, trolls, grave guard and other creatures that are stronger than a single Knight of Ulric. Perhaps have it that they hate those of WS2 or lower which will mean that units from a Cult of Ulric army will only hate things that are weaker than them.
    -Commanding Presence should just be replaced with Immunity (Panic).
    -Brothers of the Axe should be Strength 4 instead because that's how highly elite humans are usually represented.
    -The Hunt Master special rule is unnecessary because the rules make that a given.
    -I really likeed Monstrous Beast werewolves, I wish you would bring them back with both the Norse and Cult of Ulric.
    -Heinrich Von Torlichhelm should get the benefit of using Arabyan steeds due to being the Grand Master of the Knights Panther.
    -There really is no point in taking a Cult of Ulric Battle Wizard or Wizard Lord since the Empire version has a lot more options. Perhaps they could be combat wizards with weapon options in the same vein as Albion shamans and Amazon Priestesses to differentiate them.
    -Knights Panther should be core units and the Inner Circle Knights of both the White Wolf and Panther should be special choices just like with the Empire.
    -Since Children of Ulric took a major nerf, you should swap the places of Winter Wolfs and Children of Ulric.
    -Wolf-Kin are not as good as Teutogen Guard due to lacking armor. In order to justify them being in rare, I would make them WS5 A2 I4.

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    1. -I'm not sure Crush the Weak entirely makes sense because under the current rules they will hate things creatures like mighty wyverns, trolls, grave guard and other creatures that are stronger than a single Knight of Ulric. Perhaps have it that they hate those of WS2 or lower which will mean that units from a Cult of Ulric army will only hate things that are weaker than them.
      yes maybe crush th weak V.S. infantry with leadership 6 and bellow rather then all units

      -Commanding Presence should just be replaced with Immunity (Panic).
      yep that special rule is already in the rulebook so removing it's discription and changing the name is a good way of nocking a KB of data of your storage consumption

      -Brothers of the Axe should be Strength 4 instead because that's how highly elite humans are usually represented.
      i think strength of ulric is good.

      -The Hunt Master special rule is unnecessary because the rules make that a given.
      again this is a good way of nocking a KB of data of your storage consumption

      -I really likeed Monstrous Beast werewolves, I wish you would bring them back with both the Norse and Cult of Ulric.
      werewolves are to small to be Monstrous beasts. war beasts suit them well.

      -Heinrich Von Torlichhelm should get the benefit of using Arabyan steeds due to being the Grand Master of the Knights Panther.
      yep.

      -There really is no point in taking a Cult of Ulric Battle Wizard or Wizard Lord since the Empire version has a lot more options. Perhaps they could be combat wizards with weapon options in the same vein as Albion shamans and Amazon Priestesses to differentiate them.
      -Knights Panther should be core units and the Inner Circle Knights of both the White Wolf and Panther should be special choices just like with the Empire.
      sounds good.

      -Since Children of Ulric took a major nerf, you should swap the places of Winter Wolfs and Children of Ulric.
      yes exactly what have you done to counter the fact you have just divided werewolves unit strength by 3?

      -Wolf-Kin are not as good as Teutogen Guard due to lacking armor. In order to justify them being in rare, I would make them WS5 A2 I4.
      or simply move them to special?

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    2. - That's not a bad idea per say, I'll think on it.
      - Fixed.
      - That would give the the same stats as Wolf-kind, I'd like to aovid that.
      - Fixed.
      - Most werewolves are not that big though, warbeasts fits better. I might include Skin Wolves in WoC though.
      - Fixed.
      - Removed them from the CoU list since you are already allowed to take them from the normal empire book.
      - Knights Panther are pretty common in other armies, but they are not Ulricans, that's why they are rare. They are still in the list due to being stationed in Middenheim however.
      - Children of Ulric are still pretty rare in the fluff, that's why they are rare choices.
      - Moved them to special, moved Winter Wolves to rare.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. A little bit off topic but here we go.
    Found this question in the latest bretonnia update section.
    As im wondering about the same thing here's the question again

    Mastro Di Forgia3 August 2016 at 15:00
    I've a question for Mathias:
    As the Basic Rules for the 9th now said that you cannot have more rank than files, that means Bretonnian Lances could be just six or nine in numbers?
    In a 12 knights Lance I will have three knights in the front rank and three more ranks with a total of four. Actually it seems an option not available following the main rules. Please let me know

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    1. adding it as a special formation like the other formation the bretonians have available to them would be good.

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    2. You are right about that according to RAW, I will add a paragraph to give lance formation an exception to that rule.

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  4. can you tell me what an example is for the empire?
    and yes this would be a problem.

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  5. Children of Ulric are now WB, same as Ulfwerenar.
    good

    White Cloak of Ulric replaces Cloak of Anraheir.
    good

    Teutogen Guard and Seneschals have white wolf cloaks.
    ok

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  6. Yeah the wide amount of common magic items makes the balancing of magic items hard because everyone can use it. There's just so much wrong with those stuff. One minor example is that Tomb King/Prince that's flammable can just spent 5p. to get 2+ ward against flaming attacks. Like what kind of weakness is that?

    Also it's bit pain in the ass to check the items from the big rulebook when you could just use the army book for it. Before 8th edition you didn't need to check the rulebook at all when building an army, just the armybook was enough.

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  7. the dawn-stone defiantly needs limiting and besides by my calculation that would make him T5 W5 Armour save 1 rerollable.
    maybe make the dawnstone 4+ wardsave instead or 50+ points or even 4+ additional Armour save or some combination of the above.
    their are probably other things that need nerfing as well.
    Armour saves are however a lot easier to lower in fantasy battle then in 40k and therefor the current Armour save mechanics are reasonable it's just that the assortment of magical items need reforming.

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  8. You can't take a 4++, a magic helmet, and a dawnstone on the same character, as 4++ only comes from magic armour and talismans. But otherwise I agree, near invincible monster/characters are too powerful and can be made by almost all armies. I personally don't have a good solution but it does need to be addressed.

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  9. this seems (to me) to be a problem with magical Armour and talimans.
    am i right or is their something more to it?

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  10. The previous 8th edition rules for monsters would be best especially since those made more sense than the current 9th edition rules.

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  11. can i ask which in particular?

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  12. An empire general with the armour of destiny and dawnstone and shield would actually just have a re-rollable 3+ save (heavy armour + shield) and a 4+ ward save, so it's not quite that easy to abuse it. You could at best, get a 1+ re-rollable save, but then you would not have any ward save, and there's quite a lot of magic items and spells that ignore armour altogether.

    In regards to the Skink, I will remove their LA option (since the models are not wearing any armour to begin with) which would keep their armour save at a 2+ at best (shield + magic helmet).

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  13. And a High Elf Prince or Vampire Lord riding a dragon could get a re-rollable 1+ save WITH a 4+ ward save and 25 or 125 points left for other upgrades respectively so the system can still be abused and significantly so. I still think making both rider and mount combine armor saves was a bad idea because you can make monsters that are all but invincible for certain factions and I bet there are other broken combinations that munchkins can come up with.

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  14. True, Dragons do come with a pretty hefty scaly skin to start. One way to get around it I suppose would be to make it like ward saves, i.e. use the highest value, which would limit their save to a 2+/3+ (armoured of silvered steel, which I could also make "on foot only"). Though it would be a little strange that you get the armour save of a rhinox for your rider, but not that of a dragon...

    Another alternative could be that you may choose to attack either rider or mount, and resolve the attack against their respective toughness and save, but that the wounds are combined. So if the rider has a low T but good ward, it could be more beneficial to attack the mount, and vice versa. It does put it at odds with using the mount's T for Ca and MC though...

    I could also nerf the dawnstone to allow re-rolls, but the re-roll will only pass on a 4+, making it more useful for less heavily armored builds. Does that sound good?

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  15. Mounts with natural armor will usually only give a +1 bonus so perhaps make it that monster mounts with scaly skin will also grant just a +1 bonus to the rider. Or not, with the changes to armor, infantry being less resilient than cavalry has been fixed. I always figured that the armor save bonus due to barding or a naturally tough/protected mount is because the armor or toughness prevents your mount from being shot out from under you, though this itself isn't perfect since a horse covered in cloth is just as protected as a horse wearing chainmail and metal plates. If you're dead set on making characters use the toughness and wounds of their mount then perhaps make it that ridden dragons and similar only have enough of an armor save that a fully armored character can't reach 1+ without magic items, though that opens another can of worms of some characters in the same army book having less access to armor than others.

    If you do bring back the old rules for ridden monsters, I hope that you don't make it a choose which one to attack kind of thing. In the chaos of battle, it can be very difficult to specifically target the little guy on top of the mammoth so being able to do that should remain limited to snipers. Also, I've suggested that monster reactions are only done by mounts of Ld6 or lower.

    The reason that Monstrous Cavalry use the toughness and wounds of the mount rather than that of the rider is gameplay reasons so that the models match things of similar base size, that monstrous beasts tend to be more vicious stuff than war beasts and will keep fighting after the death of the rider and because it would be a pain to individually separate the hits that strike the rider and the hits that strike the mount and replacing every killed mount or killed rider with a riderless model or infantry model. With characters, the inconsistency is usually solved by making the mount just as tough as the rider. I think it's also assumed that with monstrous cavalry, the mount is more likely to be hit than the rider due to the relative size between rider and mount. Monsters can't work that way since they, by concept have to have more wounds and be tougher than the riders so the monster and the rider remain separate. The point is that 1+ re-rollable armor saves with a ward save on a monstrous cavalry model isn't as much as a problem as with on a monster since the monstrous cavalry won't also combine it with a lot of wounds and a toughness of 6 or higher.

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  16. Mathias Eliasson22 August 2016 at 20:32
    -An empire general with the armour of destiny and dawnstone and shield would actually just have a re-rollable 3+ save (heavy armour + shield) and a 4+ ward save, so it's not quite that easy to abuse it. You could at best, get a 1+ re-rollable save, but then you would not have any ward save, and there's quite a lot of magic items and spells that ignore armour altogether.
    -In regards to the Skink, I will remove their LA option (since the models are not wearing any armour to begin with) which would keep their armour save at a 2+ at best (shield + magic helmet).
    El komodos drago
    -what about plate, shield, dawnstone, talasman of preservation? rerollable 2+ (a 1+ is normally the same as a 2+ as all 1's fail automatically) and 4++
    -in regards to skink see my above point about 2+ being the similar to 1+.


    Roland Strom22 August 2016 at 23:57
    -And a High Elf Prince or Vampire Lord riding a dragon could get a re-rollable 1+ save WITH a 4+ ward save and 25 or 125 points left for other upgrades respectively so the system can still be abused and significantly so. I still think making both rider and mount combine armor saves was a bad idea because you can make monsters that are all but invincible for certain factions and I bet there are other broken combinations that munchkins can come up with.
    El komodos drago
    -what about making barding the only part of the monster's Armour save that can be combined or at the very least making scaly-skin, natural Armour and the likes only apply to the mount.
    -well we'd probably best keep on finding and fixing those combinations

    Mathias Eliasson23 August 2016 at 02:26
    True, Dragons do come with a pretty hefty scaly skin to start. One way to get around it I suppose would be to make it like ward saves, i.e. use the highest value, which would limit their save to a 2+/3+ (armoured of silvered steel, which I could also make "on foot only"). Though it would be a little strange that you get the armour save of a rhinox for your rider, but not that of a dragon...
    -Another alternative could be that you may choose to attack either rider or mount, and resolve the attack against their respective toughness and save, but that the wounds are combined. So if the rider has a low T but good ward, it could be more beneficial to attack the mount, and vice versa. It does put it at odds with using the mount's T for Ca and MC though...
    -I could also nerf the dawnstone to allow re-rolls, but the re-roll will only pass on a 4+, making it more useful for less heavily armored builds. Does that sound good?
    El komodos drago
    -Armour of silverd steel isn't really a problem as plate Armour shield gets you down to 2+ as well and knights easily get a 1+ save.
    -so why should the rider of a rinox gain the rinox's armour save?
    -the wounds should be combined (at least in the case of cavalry) to make them worth their points but being able to chose over the knights 1+ (or in this case 2+) armour save to the mounts much weaker 6+ armour save would make heavy cavalry meaningless particularly considering that with steadfast a cavalry charge is now more likely to break the cavalry.
    -dawnstone re-roll nerfing sounds good. i would phrase it like "dawnstone re-rolls pass on a 4+ unless the required number would otherwise be higher." that way it would no be infringed by weapons that are not super Armour piecing.

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  17. Roland Strom23 August 2016 at 05:48
    -Mounts with natural armor will usually only give a +1 bonus so perhaps make it that monster mounts with scaly skin will also grant just a +1 bonus to the rider. Or not, with the changes to armor, infantry being less resilient than cavalry has been fixed. I always figured that the armor save bonus due to barding or a naturally tough/protected mount is because the armor or toughness prevents your mount from being shot out from under you, though this itself isn't perfect since a horse covered in cloth is just as protected as a horse wearing chainmail and metal plates. If you're dead set on making characters use the toughness and wounds of their mount then perhaps make it that ridden dragons and similar only have enough of an armor save that a fully armored character can't reach 1+ without magic items, though that opens another can of worms of some characters in the same army book having less access to armor than others.
    -If you do bring back the old rules for ridden monsters, I hope that you don't make it a choose which one to attack kind of thing. In the chaos of battle, it can be very difficult to specifically target the little guy on top of the mammoth so being able to do that should remain limited to snipers. Also, I've suggested that monster reactions are only done by mounts of Ld6 or lower.
    -The reason that Monstrous Cavalry use the toughness and wounds of the mount rather than that of the rider is gameplay reasons so that the models match things of similar base size, that monstrous beasts tend to be more vicious stuff than war beasts and will keep fighting after the death of the rider and because it would be a pain to individually separate the hits that strike the rider and the hits that strike the mount and replacing every killed mount or killed rider with a riderless model or infantry model. With characters, the inconsistency is usually solved by making the mount just as tough as the rider. I think it's also assumed that with monstrous cavalry, the mount is more likely to be hit than the rider due to the relative size between rider and mount. Monsters can't work that way since they, by concept have to have more wounds and be tougher than the riders so the monster and the rider remain separate. The point is that 1+ re-rollable armor saves with a ward save on a monstrous cavalry model isn't as much as a problem as with on a monster since the monstrous cavalry won't also combine it with a lot of wounds and a toughness of 6 or higher.
    El komodos drago
    -only granting a +1 to the models save sounds good and i have always wondered about a system where characters could lose their mounts yet live (that would add a lot of flavour to the game) so an option to chose whether or not to shoot at a character's mount makes sense (if you give horses a little extra protection).
    -ok so maybe use a random system where you roll and compare it to their unit strength or something.
    -yes wise mounts (like high elf dragons) aren’t likely to become overwhelmed by rage in the middle of the battle.

    El komodos drago
    -i think this conversation should be moved to the google group to stop taking up so much space (mainly thanks to me) on the comments page of an unrelated topic.
    -i have also discovered that as i was composing my answer in docs it overran the character limit (and that was 4000 odd characters).

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  18. on an unrelated point, why are the ogre kingdoms and tomb-kings have been placed in-front of the empire, elves and dwarves (who i think are more played armies).
    am i wrong and that is their order of popularity or is something else at work in the orderings.

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    1. This is because these are the books that should be quickest to finish, due to them only having 6th and 8th ed versions, whereas some of the other books have 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th ed versions, as well as WFRP books that I would need to go through.

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  19. I actually have a question, not sure if it's been answered before. But what would you say is the biggest difference between your version of 9th Edition and the other persons '9th Age'?

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    1. Biggest difference would be that 9th Ed is Warhammer and 9th Age is not. As for the rules themselves, 9th Ed is more similar in structure to 7th and 8th ed whereas 9th has changed a lot in army list structure, but I have not gone through their main rules in that much detail yet.

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  20. New update soon?

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    1. For Cult of Ulric or in general? I've been doing some work on the Dogs of War book which will be released rather soon, but I have also been doing a lot of work with the official books, compiling background from all the different editions to get a good base for them. This is one of the reasons updates have been a bit slow lately.

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  21. Not entirely sure, but did you update Cult of Ulric today?

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  22. Are you planning on making the army books contain all of the upgrades for creatures that were described in Storm of Magic, Monstrous Arcanum and the vanilla army books? Though tail and chomp attacks would probably no longer have the increased accuracy depending on what side the attack is coming from and would take a 5pt cost reduction in a few cases to go with it.

    The Arabyan elephant should be S6 W6 to differentiate it from the Indan elephant. This is because in real life, there are two genuses to the Elephantidae family, the Elephas genus and the Loxodonta genus. The Elephas genus is in Asia and the Loxodonta genus is in Africa. There are a number of differences between these two genuses but the one most related to the war game is size, with the African averaging at 10.6 feet tall and the Indian averaging at 8.5 feet tall. Another interesting thing is that the five species of mammoth that are bigger than modern african elephants average at 13 feet tall.

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    1. Oh, and consider giving mammoths the stampede special rule that Arabyan and Indan elephants have to deal with. I see no reason why a Mammoth would be less belligerent than an elephant, especially if its chaos tainted.

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    2. Maybe 5 attacks for the Arabyan elephant as well since monsters tend to have the same number of attacks as their number of wounds, give or take one.

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  23. Hey hey man, your editions are really good :)

    I sent you a message via the thing to the right a week or so ago, did you get it, it was about how in the Bretonnian book you sometimes have the word "ore" isntead of "orc and how in the Cathy book you in the description of the "mages" do not have light magic as an option but later in the army roster do.

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    1. Hi, I must have lost that mail somewhere, I do remember reading it. Thanks for letting me know, I'll get on fixing it for their next updates!

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  24. Hi mates, a question: What do you think about the bases for Children of Ulric? They just have 1 wound, but Movement 9. I'm planning to use Confrontation/Rackam Wolfen models, but they are not fit for 2,5 X 2,5 bases.
    What about a Cavalry Base? They're warbeast, so the rules admit that kind of bases (instead of their own that is a 40x40 base).

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    1. The intended base size would be 25x25mm, but a cavalry base or even a 40x40mm base is just fine - I did include a paragraph in 9th ed about being allowed to use larger bases than what is normal, but not smaller. After all, using a larger base is hardly an advantage ;)

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  25. The Final Overview Table needs updating, It still shows the Wolf Kin and Winter Wolves in their old places

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  26. Question, in regards to the Warrior Priests of Ulric and their "Strength in Faith, Faith in Strength" special rule, as well as other items in the book that increase the power level of prayers, how is this meant to work?

    At the moment it simply makes it harder to actually cast the prayers.

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    2. And, as a quick addition, similar to how the Storm Hammer is a magic White Wolf Hammer would it not make sense to make the White Cloak of Ulric and Pelt of Horros magical White Wolf Cloaks?

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    3. It's like +1 to cast, though the wording is probably based on 7th ed. I can clarify that.

      Well, they are not exactly white wolf cloaks in that regard, but I will look into changing it.

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    4. Always appreciate the quick responses mate. I figured in regards to the Pelt/Cloak of Ulric they weren't exactly "White Wolf Cloaks" but it's a relatively small buff that ties together the items into the Ulrican lore while fitting the lore of the item.

      Just an aside, is there a particular reason that so many units have Hatred listed alongside "Crush the Weak"?
      May save a bit of room if you ever have need of it.

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    5. Not really, I will remove it where it's not needed (or make it re-rolls in every round instead).

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