Forging the Blades of The Crimson World

Crimson Knights need to break from Norv and elect a new Crimson King instead of letting Lusscen rule them for bullshit story reasons.

>reincarnating forever

>was it worth it

Yes actually it was also we have ascended above and beyond mere cults.

We are better than them

Hopefully you can run a pure Kanesgrove list in 7.0 instead them being Northern mercs. Didn't someone mention last thread that a pure merc deck at the 95 Grand made the 4.0 team factionalize all the mercs?

We were planning on the rest of the cults going the same route, and were ready to spring it in the 5504 update with new partial shapeshifting rules for them, but the owners wanted a more eldritch evil cult angle. Part of the reason we went on strike and got replaced.

I get that people have different opinions but you literally just mentioned an entire empire of disorganized edgelords, hobby mage social club, flesh-blobs-for-heads, and what amounts to walking mosquito repellents. Honestly, Abstruthians are the real successor to the Crimson Empire

>squeak squeak squeak
shut up birdbrain, meme factions are not allowed in the thread

A half-truth at best. They were already reorganizing the faction system to make it fit better with the updated political landscape after the Artifact Wars.

Edition list for Blades of The Crimson World, the wargame
1st covered 5467, and was released 1977.
1.5/5468/1978
2.0/5469/1979
2.2 started 5470, skipped to 5480 (1st Season), released 1980 Those were the days when we didn't need a war a day.
2.5 started 5480 (2nd Season), skipped to 5485 (3rd Season).
2.7 ended 5485, and updated yearly until 5490.
3.0 saw the Amalgam debacle in 1990, while the devs were working on 5495 and 5497.
3.2 5498/99
3.5 saw the best story update ever, the 5500 Artifact Wars which was the excuse to solve world inconsistencies. I may have three years old in 95, but the grognards are right on this being the best time period to play in, with the 5501 Realignment ending being the second best.
3.7 saw 5502 and 5503.
4.0's 5504 saw a new story team that hated Realignment, and that's when we got the rigged tournaments that saw the multiverse coming into being and Primarius being destroyed to create Secondus.
4.1 marks the downfall of Norv starting in the 5505 story that saw the Man-Eater Diplomat becoming the Crown Princess and starting to lose her characterization.
4.2 gave us 5506/5507
4.3 5508/5509
4.5 gave us the Hooker Queen, who turned into "I'm so sexually empowered because I sleep with anyone for no reason!", as opposed to her diplomat days when her sex drive was a weapon best described as " pussy so good, men sell their nations for a night with it"
4.0 also marked the quickest edition updates we have ever seen, with 4.3, 4.5, 4.7, and 4.9 being released over 17 months and covering a total of 7 years of story with almost no tournaments to decide the story.

We wouldn't see a tournament until early 2005, with the release of 5.0, and the combined tournaments that harkened back to to the glorious 3.5 Grand World Tournament in 1995. It was also in 5.0 that we saw the timeline split again into Tertius for Blades and Chronicles. Banners, however, became Tertius Beta due to incompatible player rewards. 5515 and 5516 were fairly mediocre story years though.
5.2, 5.5, and 5.8 continues the traction of edition updates every two story year updates, except for 5.5 covering spending two updates on just 5519.
5.8's 5520 saw a lot of sudden lore changes thanks to the decision to use hidden conspiracies to retcon in world.
6.0 was released in 2010, and covered only the 1st season of 5522, with the 2nd and 4th seasons going to 6.2 and 6.5.
The current edition, 6.8, skipped the 1st season of 5523 and is focusing on the 2nd Season. We're staring down the barrel of an early 2018 release for 7.0, with indications that we're going to either skip some years, or an apocalypse that wipes us back to start.

Oom: are the Abstruthians the dev's pet faction or are they just pushing them because they're new?

The Crimson King is only sleeping. In time he will awake, and then Hooker Queen will be eternally BTFO from the central continent.

Alas, we can never go back to old Norv. Their entire culture was based around this fatalist, downtrodden nation with the rich ancient history. The Norv renaissance have changed too much.

Niseioi or nothing

Oom: pushing the new, but they have a cool concept. Dev pet is an OP Norv that exists only because of the hooker queen. Also, could've been an in-meta question to spark more arguing, because rage fuels generals.

Glad you didn't. The Thanes have made for some great story lines.

Three villages of lake goblins doesn't make a valid faction, buddy. Also give back the Eel beast, reeeeeeeeeeeee

DEEP ELVES, DAMMIT
THEY'RE CALLED DEEP ELVES

This is buried under so many layers of irony I can't even comprehend it.

Abomiknights have been going for the cradle for how long now? You'd think they'd try a different approach after their first few failures.

Well, if you're Crimson Knights, with the alliance/mercenary rules you can bring along a squad or two of Kythian lancers. Even without Trannyknight, they shred slow fliers before they can even get close.

>three villages of lake goblins
More like the de facto commercial capital of the entire collective deep elf trading fleet. Also we'll make eel soup as soon as we can get our hands on an Unmanifest Shard or something like it. :^)

Here's a formula: Faction X is better than faction Y. Reference incident Z. Now play along.

are you still here Frankie?

watch out guys, gobbo players are getting feisty

Remember that the Counter Emperor did nothing wrong and is the whole reason the linear timeline collapsed and gave us the best faction.

He went to bed, his heart medication causes drowsiness. This is his wife, and I'm going to bed too.

I really should try to make a shitposting mad libs thread, that would be great. Oh, and I'm making the RuneCaster System

Goblins, Deep Elves, same thing really. Both the races are living so integrated they're the same thing by faction and politics.

I may have fucked up the thread. Really fucked it up. Not sure.
So someone asked the last two threads after the AEG RuneCaster edition of Chronicles, specifically if anybody had it. Most copies were destroyed after AEG lost the license, but a friend let me borrow his to rereview since RuneCaster itself is kinda up for grabs now.
So, when released it technically broke canon with the fluff used for the system, but it did expand Almadii culture to North and South, with a later expansion to East and West.
The system was based on the Southern Almadii runes, which used eight sets of ten runes, or up to 8d10, corresponding to the four physical directions and the four elemental directions. This was chosen to keep it in line with AEGs decision to use d10's across their products. Northern Almadii runes have 10 sets of eight, for the four physical directions, the four elemental directions, and the two spiritual directions - most of us recognize this as the standard Almadii runes used throughout the setting.
It had the usual stat plus skills, with a success based resolution, with stats determining the total number of Draws (or rolls), and the skill determining the target number to beat for a success on that draw - meaning skill levels counted down from 10. This confusion was part of why the license was lost after just a year of production.

Nah man, they're literally the same thing.
It's a pretty common misconception - Devs changed the name of the race because they wanted to "distance themselves from classic high fantasy goblin stereotypes" or something. It's the kind of retarded shit they should've clarified somewhere, but never did. They just gradually switched out the words until Blades 5.3, where they used deep elf exclusively. But here we still use goblin, as an ... affectionate term. :^)

As for the two races living together, you're probably thinking of the two deep elf castes.
Niseioi, which were called lake goblins, are now "the deep elves of the lakes".
Bh'nenoi, formerly bone goblins, are now "the deep elves of the caves".
They have some minor stat differences and affinities in Chronicles of Kyran, but otherwise they're considered to be more or less identical. Although, if you delve into the lore, there's actually a sizable amount of information about this.

>tfw the Crimson Knights will never be punished or have the blood magic conspiracy found out

Daily reminder that the Rebellion has been exposed twice to be evil and the Counter-Emperor did nothing wrong.

I told you sick fucks I was making a list of all the factions

And for that authentic touch it's inconsistent with previous lore, introduces a bunch of bullshit concepts, favors a few factions the author thinks are cool, and that sort of thing

I'll make a better one later

The absolute madman.

>the bond
>blessed by Inneros
>performed by the First Order of Norv
>blood magic

Are they pushing a "Inneros gone mad" narrative or am I missing something?
Otherwise why did he basically coerce Victorinius into giving him the Mallet of Absolution while they were supposedly allies for the time being? Also why did he slaughter all the nimphs of Spectrebramble? He's basically a genocidal maniac now.
Fucking bullshit, I liked him in the old edition but now all this blood magic shit is such a turn-off.

Great job user, I love it.

Holy shit dude, that's amazing

I'll try to improve the map later today. I think this gives me enough information to go by to start adding a few locations and borders.

You're getting the bond and Moleman shitblood magic confused for once. It was their weird potato shaped god that taught the world blood magic, while the bond is as old as Almad.

Also the nimphs were corrupted years ago. There was even a module for 5.8 that had all nimphs listed as "Distrustful, Treacherous" so that wasn't really subtle. You also forgot that Vic was really obnoxious with the whole MUH OATH bullshit. Seriously, fuck Vic. Worst Agerian Judge since Altamina Vordi.

You could have stopped at Wizardtown.

Crimson Knights and Wizardtown swept the last weekend at my local store. How do you even deal with them?

>>How do you even deal with them?
>What is Bastion's Clockwork?
>What is Manifested Abomiknight Elders?

There goes your Razor's Edge advantage. Abomiknights are the most underrated

>implying the Tulip's Shade wasn't instrumental in the victory of the Abstruthian faggots at Garuth Pass
Let's face it, if there is one place that benefits from a Crimson Knight's loss after the Garuth trade route has been blocked for years to them, it's Ageros and that's why it's basically a given that they MUST have sent their top agents there.
>Captain Bloodkeeper found dead with a TULIP DAGGER thrust in his heart
>HURRR anybody can use a tulip dagger
>inb4 prooftards
Use your brain for once.

>Victorinius
>an Agerian Judge
I think you have him mistaken for someone else.

>Agerian Judge
Christ, I derped out hard there. He still a shit and his oath is worse.

Altamina a shit always

The Counter Emperor un-flarked the Bowl of Solace when it came into the Counter Empire despite being told not to do so. This resulted in widespread war and terror across the realms despite it never happening. At least the Rebellion fights against Ytthid and his herds of brainwashed Unflarked as they try to unflark the worldrealm. Sure, they aren't perfect, but neither was revolutionary France.

Do we have a 1d4chan page yet?

We should have.
Game's been out for 50 years.

>He doesn't know about the Spectral Illuminati
Someone didn't read the 10th ed

The unflarked would have been ten thousand times better if Stilton hadn't been trying to make them into his gay magical realm since 3.6.1(.) I loved the idea of scaving their own enemies' weapons and clever use of arcologian curses to resist corruption and mind control BECAUSE they didn't look like edgelord in the process, hell they were even the only reasonable faction about their goals back in the day and were willing to concede if greater disaster struck. But the momment Stilton takes control:

>Nope, it can't be that they are this powerful (when they were already underpowered challenge faction to begin with), they must have the -assistance- of the Karvalax and the Patient Outsider
>Let's make em battle the close Norvs for no good reason.
>And add a footnote that this is canon*.
>IN A BOOK THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE CANON TO BEGIN WITH, THAT WILL MAKE IT SEEM MORE LEGIT AMIRITE?

>Inb4 oldfag complains about old irrelevant version.
The abominiknight wizardcorps were entirely ripped off from the veteran hexers, they didn't even bothered themselves changing the armor bits, and you can still see the hexer symbol in ALL OF THEM.

Stilton a loose anus bitch

Jesus Christ, if anyone in the thread hasn't read these yet, they should.

Oh shit son.

>The Crimson Knights ripped open the Unmanifest, inadvertently causing an eclipse
>on the same day they Atmo-Legion of Boena had chosen to seize the Vagafalcon-controlled Cloudmass deposits

I will never NOT be fucking mad

I'm tempted to make a writeup on the Abomiknights and their evolving look (both in and out of universe), playing off their 'cursed mutant knight' style. Anyone want that or is adding too much to the soup clusteruck at this point?

10th edition? I think you mean 3.7, which was the tenth overall update for blades. That was some good stuff

I'm writing the flopped 1993 edition of the rpg , there is no too far.

Such a glorious clusterfuck

Well, Stilton has gotten better about his writing ever since he divorced the wife that was beating him for being gay, and he has apologized for the Unflarked in general.
>veteren hexers
That's where the Abomiknights wizardcorps came from in the first place, of course the hexer symbols would be there! Read your fucking lore instead old basing it on the first models that someone hacked together for the 83 tournament.

>when you're so starved for artifacts that you try to find the Pyramid of Possibilities with the top men of your battalion just cause you're nearby the Fading Chambers but almost all your dudes get desynched by a Whisper of Infinity moments after entering and the few of you who managed to survive run straight to an Abomiknight Terrorshroud patrol outside and get captured
How does that make you feel, Vagafags?
Ikskir "the Indomitable" my ass

The more the better especially when it's about the Abomiknights.
mfw I basically wrote all their existing lore myself

Back to my rereview.
Now, what made characters so interesting was the cross-class system used for all characters. You had your primary class (Your Achetype), and then chose two others to draw on when you leveled up, with the second choice being flexible. What with all the picking and choosing between archetype abilities as you leveled, characters got complex fast, and powerful just as quickly.
The magic system was based on the wargame, requiring you to build and regain mana to spend on spells, with each spell dropping the fatigue counter. There were also drugs in the game that could boost your counter and mana gain, something the devs said was standard for military wizards entering battle.
The rules for combat casting reflected the previous editions, with focus rolls and the Magical Mishap tables, but also gave all casters a major boost outside of combat with no-roll cost free casting - except that every spell took five minutes or more to cast that way and there was no option to hide a combat cast.
Combat was also interesting with the split initiative system - you had a physical initiative, and a mental one. You announced your actions in reverse order of mental (you had more time to think and react to other actions), then resolved in order of physical, allowing you to stop an enemy action before it occurred if your order in both initiatives was right.
The rest of the RPG is fairly standard, with all the lovely quirks we can expect from the 90's.
On one last note: AEG did give us the now-standard array of statistics used from 3.0 onwards.

All right, since a lot of newbies to Blades of The Crimson World ask 'what the fuck is an Abominknight', let's try to get a bit into describing them. While they do see some good and steady support, they've somewhat faded away from promotional materials and videogames this last decade so maybe this should clear the record for people with only a passing familiarity about Blades

Abominknight were engineered, essentiall, as super soldiers by the Chorijingian and this is why some people mockingly call them 'Ugly space marine samurai', which is of course more divisive bullshit on Veeky Forums you see between Blades of the Crimson World and Warhammer 40 000 fans.

Their exact look has varied quite a lot both in and out of universe as their fluff evolved and the game's artstyle evolved and changed. Abominknight were humans, once: some fluff say the original Abominknight were from a warrior-nation conquered by the Chorijin given a 'second chance' at loyalty but current lore doesn't state where the original batch was from and it doesn't really matter. They were altered and transformed, their bodies deformed and mutilated.

All Abominknight are tall, but how tall has varied quite a bit in artwork, which is excusable because they're all mutants and the appearance of individuals does vary. The skin tone of the Abominknight has varied between white (as in chalk-white and pale, not caucasian), a sickly greenish yellow and some tones of yellow and orange. Generally, skin is mottled and hardened as well as covered in scars. Abominknight remain human in the big lines, in that they all got two arms, two legs and a head (except when they don't, but more on that later). That is where their appearance stop resembling humans and earning them their abomination nicknamer. Abominknight have a muscular, gnarled body with females not all that different from males (don't let the fanart tell you otherwise). They tend toward thick brows, thick jaws and lines of sharp jagged teeth. Hardened nodules and outgrowth of skin (sometime erroneously depicted as scales) form ridges all across their bodies with a level which vary between individuals. Skin is oily, slimy and always seem to show them as if they just sweated something foul, even if the Abominknight has cleaned itself. Other minor mutations include actual deformities, like assymetrical skulls, a third eye somewhere, or jagged horns and tusks emerging from their faces. Also quite a few Abominknight display an almost skull-like face with no lips. Sometimes they have ear and sometimes they don't.

Their internal biology is an even bigger mess, however: no two Abominknight is really quite the same nowadays because each generation is more and more degraded (lore is inconsistent if those today are weaker than the first batch or stronger but more insane). Abominknight are called 'edgelords' and this is why: EVERY ABOMINKNIGHT IS IN CONSTANT PAIN! This isn't just due to their mutation or physical deformity but was engineered on purpose. AS MOTIVATION! These guys are so ferocious because they learn to control their pain to hone themselves into peerless warriors (just how 'peerless' depend on the writer and edition). The older the Abominknight the STRONGER THE PAIN!

In addition they're ALL INSANE, assuming the pain aspect alone isn't something that drive them nuts. The Chorijingian made them to be warriors, which in a way sort of shape their personality. There is no Abominknight who lack a desire to fight. It's written into their gene. Of course they don't lack the ability to empathize, which add more edge and angst to them as they are often forced to take honorless actions because the other option mean they have to unleash a bloodbath. It also mean they are capable of mourning their fellow Abominknight, the only people who UNDERSTAND THEIR PAIN. As with pain, they get a bit nuttier with age, not to mention that constant warfare make them even MORE UNHINGED.

Abominknight are fertile with each others and humans, but obviously there is no 'half Abominknight'. If one of your parent is an Abominknight you are born an Abominknight. Their fertility is also increased to make up for losses: nearly every Abominknight is a twin or triplet, which only add to the angst when invariably their twin doesn't survive. One side effect of all the PAIN is that female Abominknight generally don't care if they need to spend a few years popping out babies to replenish the ranks. Interestingly, its somewhat intend that young female Abominknight will spend their formative years half-doing 'breeding' before eventually moving to more military roles. There is generally no distinction based on gender beyond that, as there are female leaders (partially to appease 'modern sensibilities', some argue). It's just the females generally spend more time in training to make up for lost time, which is also why a lot of the Abominknight 'special units', like their battle-mages and whatnot, are depicted as female: the males are more likely to end up being grunt while females have other roles, like strategist, casters, assassins or some form of commanding officer who isn't some infantry leader, as those rise from the grunt ranks.

Abominknight armor has varied a lot in appearance and purpose, but originally it was grafted on to them by the Chorijin. Now they just do it to themselves, partially out of tradition partially because sometimes it's hinted it hold them together or something. The old Abominknight mini and illustration depicted them as sort of Japanese-influenced european full plate, with a lot of stud and spikes and fearsome mask.

The 'classic' look is one which, as of more recent fluff, is their historical look, is one described as "elegant in design, blending elements of baroque machinery needed to constrain their mutations and flowing organic shapes revealing their mastery of improving life. " Over the years this has changed back and forth with various level of EDGE, like added spike, chains, skulls and grimacing demonic faces. They also sported very '80 hair at the worst, with some goddamn Motley Crue hairdo. It was a bit goofy.

Their mask is something they wear a lot these days, either as a full mask to hide their ugly faces or as something akin to a 'menpo', harkening to their vaguely samurai-esque look. The mask usualy depict some screaming or angry face. Usually, higher-ranked Abominknight have fancier masks. Sometimes, it's depicted looking more like some sort of animal or monster face with the Abominknight looking through the mouth. Maybe both look coexist lore-wise? Who knows.

Timeline Primaris Abominknight generally try to stick to the classic and baroque look, while
Timeline Secundus are more barbaric and edgy and keep to the more spiky, 'evil' look. They are more physically degraded and often sport replacement limbs ending in claws or blades. They also sport a lot more piercings and warpaint. Obviously this doesn't even cover all their possible look, as each special and unique unit in the miniature wargame usually has it's own dedicated parts and wargear. For example, goggles integrated to the masks are common on several units.

On the subject of female units (across almost every faction) and why they're more powerful:
In the early days, Franks's wife Beth wrote the early Wakoku fluff, and she wanted female units. She also wanted an in-universe reason for them, so she wrote the first story piece: Lady Duel, a Wakoku historical tale. In it, a woman is trying to join the military despite society saying that her place to serve the Emperor was off the battlefield. To show them that her place to best serve Him was in war, she dueled 20 men for the right to be trained and see war. Since then, that has been the Wakoku standard, and it spread. Ted, the guy who wrote most of the rules, made them more powerful in response to that for a slight increase in point cost.
That's why all the female units are more powerful - because any man can join the military, but women get in by beating the crap out of enough people.

I don't really count Lady War as the first, even though Frank tells me that's why the official histories say. I consider the the first to be That is Why We War, the one Frank and Brian wrote when creating that diorama.
They say it was horribly written. I point them to what Bryan Thomas and his team have done, but they still don't see my point! I love my husband and our friends, but I think he's a bit too proud of me sometimes.
Franks first post in this thread was right though, and that intern showed me pictures to prove it.

Wizard corps came from hexers
>Because of a small note from Brian in a small corner of the book of nonsung songs two editions later, which provided no fucking explanation as to why the corps were there supposedly before the hexers (and not being able to hex for shit), already using the obsidian eye coffin glyph -every artwork and ninety percent of the corp minis (except the misers, those niggas cool), contrary to the abomiknights and still elemental creed -which is still a thing in current ed, chapter 2 page 43- which is still not explained in the novels.

How about no. There is no way this is just because of the 83 models, this has been going on for years. Not to mention that the whole conspiration to infiltrate the abomiknights was disproven by JewDev (as much as I dislike him he seems to be the only one in R&D who knows his shit).

>Apologize noted, unflarked lore still fucked up, strats still depend on the outcome of pure dice, models too expensive to field, still described as the tactical faction. Hexers nowhere to be seen in the last edition, which according to Brian AND Witherspoon (or at least their more coherent selves) shouldn't be happening because the hexers just had a small schism and never really ran away to the cursed knights side.

How about they make the unflarked what they were supposed to be instead of berserker underpowered faction?

Most of the corps don't fit the lore, mechanics or rules of engagement of the knights.

Yes, I know Stilton had it rough, but he had the time, the chance and the power to rectify his mistakes tenfold. Hell, don't change the knights, don't even make big changes to the unflarked now, just give back the units they had and change the knights' markings.
The only reason not to do it would be because they want to use the abomiknights as forced rock to milk money from newcomers.

OOC: How much until this becomes a real setting?

Pls no SJW shit, at least in my pretend game

It would still probably work if female models were much less cost effective than the other models (such as x2 times better but x6 cost, like some mage knight early minis), and also incredibly rare. You can also make a rule that there have only been a handful of legend and myth level models (and you can only field x female models per regiment or brigade), whereas there have been many male ones. By implementing these rules you can still have enough space for a few tactically sound women (or waifus or whatever) of varying levels of powers and very important for fine tune and niche strategy while keeping a reasonably gap to reflect the very nature of war and biological morphology related issues.

SJW shit would have the female units for cheaper and more powerful. There are plenty of female units that are exactly equal to the male units, but that was the early fluff
Don't forget the limits on female units in your army. They flatout said there were a limited number of women who could beat a veteran soldier untrained, let alone beat twenty of them in a row.

I want to say they were 1.5x as powerful for 2x cost, with limits on field able numbers. And yeah, definitely a limited number of legendary women, most of them casters

>Rules for the invisible batallion when?
>Why everytime that the Outsider appears all the lore is fucked up in some way?
>Who even is that faggot and what's its relationship with the bowl of solace?
>Why is everyone so obssessed with the hooker when there are much better waifus in the setting?
>Objectively not realizing how Bear thane is the most chill thane there is
>Devs can't into meta and release world shatterers for everyone
>P&Pn RPG still cropped up with rules that were rendered obsolete 15 years ago
>Videogame in developing hell
>Blood magic magically not shiggidy in the niggidy
>Inneros out of the visible spectrum
>The fucking memes

Rules for the invisible batallion when?

>Daily reminder that the counter empire is just old empire with different color scheme and less amphibious units.

-Please no, make a clear lore first, then introduce them to the battlefield. One spoiler for a transparent model does not an army make.
-Stilton.
-I think this is Frank's way of saying a wizard did it, or something. It's like missing no meta for the whole story. He was just delivering it for this very same reason.
-Read the lore, pussy so good that men would sell their nations for. Yes, I prefer myself Amaia the drifter since she's not a slut, even if some people say she's plain.
-The fact that nobody has said anything about bear thane means that nobody is bitching about the bear thane. Three threads. Let that sink in.
-I didn't know that, is that legal for tournament?
-DGAF
-Angry because a good friend gave a lot of money for the kickstarter. I told him not to.
-Crimson knights will continue to be logic immune until they stop generating revenue, which is, next edition probably.
-I thought he was still roaming around wizardtown hidden in the shape of an object.
-Welcome to /tactical grognards/

-Last but not least, fuck off. Counter empire is a decent faction once you get over the fanwankery.

Yeah, most of the female units are the spy and sabotage cards in Banners, even if most of them got heavily nerfed.
Gossiping Maid is still too powerful for my tastes, despite how I get to choose which half of my hand gets shown.

>>Strats still depend on the outcome of pure dice
Fucker you what. Unflarked unit customisation is second only to the Abomiknight's mutations, and that's randomly rolled for. The only weapons the Unflarked don't have access to are the Rebellion and the Counter Empire, everything else is free game. Tactics? They have tactics, just not what everybody else uses. The Unflarked need to be aligned so that their spellcasters are unflarked, it's in the name. Any other army tries that, they automatically summon Silent Ones until they flark themselves. As a result, their game is one of cat and mouse where the positions could reverse at any time with careful management of spellcasters and units. That, and the mechanics of their meta heroes, with Sir Bighorn and his souped-up Gossiping Maid ability that causes a commander he's engaged with to suffer penalties when commanding units to not attack Sir Bighorn, or The Silent Knight with his ability to negate any spell he sees cast, with an additional chance of unflarking that particular caster.

No strategy? Git gud.

Anyone remember the ill-fated GURPS; Chronicles of Kyran?

I think we agreed to not speak about anything that involves the words "hermaphrodite" and "lizardfolk" ever again.

>Gossiping Maid
See, this is how I know you're getting your rulesets mixed. The problem with every rulebook that comes out is that line that makes almost invalid all the propositions from core and then the ones from earlier supplements in that edition, but that's Hellwing Beast Studios for you.

Gossiping Maid stopped being an option since Bighorn passed over to the Norvs, official tournament teams are required to remove both models from their formations in any official scenario, this also applies to ranked and legacy casual teams* (straight from the online tournament ruleset three months ago, last update, and frankly, gossiping maid didn't fit the lore of the unflarked in the first place).

Also the customizations mostly apply to small arms and light vehicle armor (still no hexers allowed, or any caster unit beyond unflarked sparks, masters and unflarked clerics), and don't do shit in large scale simulations (and the options that do like blindman's eye, unweaver bowgun and glowing worm are heavily restricted). You know the minute that you outfit a landshark with sparks it's going to get nuked before it gets to activate, not to mention that now psychic vehicles are more an acid trip and an asset to the enemy than anything with net benefit for your own forces. Scav has also been removed.

Spellcasters still have it on the die against other factions because the flarking gives them massive SR boosts, and now silent ones can be enslaved by the faction that calls them. This is no accident or oversight of the rules, they are doing this in order to justify the shift of the lore in favor of the abomiknights, the crimson knights and the groove sorcerers. Nowadays it's better to have your units almost flarked at mid engagement and that is only to resist mind control attempts from bloodmages and tulipmasters.

There are reasons why the Unflarked are hated with so much passion these days, and will probably get removed at the next retcon kind of thing.

I'm almost afraid to ask but... how bad was it?

Welp! Said hermaphrodite lizards were trying to crossbreed with Lusscen (of course) but through some fuckery the lizard got pregnant and then birthed the actual goddamn half-scale heir to Norv. Thankfully not canon since the last two editions.
Keep that in mind next time anyone bitches about the retcon of the week.

Oh lawd. I almost puked.
Still a better love story than malletlight though.

They removed scav? Goddamnit, that was practically the only reason to play Unflarked. The ability to change weapons after a hectic battle was fucking awesome. And they removed Sir Bighorn? It is truly a dark day. This is why I stopped playing after 6.5. Groove Sorcerors were shit back then and we liked it that way. Anybody who tried to call on the Groove of the Universe in our LGS was asking for a sore arse after their armies were so thoroughly buggered.

And enslaving Silent Ones? The whole point of Silent Ones is that they hate the unflarked. And yeah, sure the flarking gives SR, but being unflarked should still be giving the casters massive bonuses to hit as well as more opportunities for spells. That was the only other thing unflarking did for them, apart from not summoning Silent Ones.

Please tell me they didn't get rid of their Philosiknights and their Denial of Reality. Or the Rabble-Rouser with his Torches and Pitchforks ability. At least they could never claim that the Unflarked Prophet and his pall bearers belong to another faction.

Philosoknights are still thankfully open as an option but since previous edition their price just rose and the denial of reality got their radius reduced. Denial of self got cheaper but honestly is not worth your time. Rabble rouser got changed, the model is now female (without stat increase but subjected to normal rules for female models), and torches and pitchforks got renamed to civil unrest for some reason. The phopet now needs at least five masters to field (!) which limits the capacity for units in the heroic and legendary tier, but not the myth tier.

About the unflarked, I believe that it was Stilton who did this on a whim back from the days when he posted as Vicelord on the redforums. Or at least I think it was him because he (vice) used to play abomiknights' red squad back in 2.3 (to access the tidemaster and field it with voidknights), and got defeated by Jester who was playing precisely unflarked -Jihad-, bunch of rabble-rousers that had tactical ambush, blank mind (this was the only way to stealth back in the day, although expensive) holyfire and (just for giggles as he posted) apple farmer. Not only Vice got utterly defeated for not understanding ambush but the cobblers took the tidemaster's censer and the knights hell meissers, which he used to win future matches with considerable advantage, as future troops would just scaved the weapons of their fallen companions. It was certainly the reason why he attained second place in the nationals with a cheap as fuck army, and he only lost against the most decked wizard town army I've ever seen.

Vice started to get more and more agitated, then came the fanfics reveal, then the supposedly illegal betting ring he had (in which he would only bet against norvs and unflarked) before his account was closed by the admins.

Curiously, one month later a new addition to R&D appears, the unflarked get bent, the kanesgrove get lorecucked and the rest is history.

Only Frankie can confirm if vicelord was really Stilton, or as if some say it was Brian just shitposting in order to make the unflarked popular (to me this was clearly not the case).

> gossiping maid didn't fit the lore of the unflarked
Not surprised you think that, but they never had Gossiping Maid as an Unflarked card, and she was never actually Unflarked in Blades or Chronicles - But since Sir Bighorn had a free token summon for Demolition Maid, and the syncro power with Gossiping Maid, everybody thinks all maids are Unflarked, despite it saying, in the rules for both, and right on the card and the statsheet with the Maid tag, that all Maids are unfactionalized mercenaries available to any model or card with the "Noble" tag.
There's a reason I didn't list it in the timeline. And yes, I read it, and then went to an AA meeting to figure out what booze would be the best brain bleach.

Frankie and I don't really talk about Stilton, he was... Kind of a mistake and also hiring him was out of our hands. He was the only hold over to the 4.0 team, and I'm pretty sure he picked all of them.

When I said Wizardtown I meant Ageros but I see it snowballed and even ended up in the PDF so yeah, I guess we have a wizardtown now

>Card
Exactly, people confuse Banner cards with Forging models, forging rules are bizantine with so many errata, new suplements and patches. At least their online ruleset is free to browse For now.

Honestly I don't even hate the guy, his range tables fixed Abs soldiers completely, he can be competent when he wants to be, but that doesn't change the fact that he needs help. Thanks for keeping us posted, just don't forget to take a rest every now and then man. We don't want you dying on us.

>Amaia
Patrician taste my hombre. There is nothing wrong with her, she's a very interesting character. I still prefer Lady Lavinia of the Inconnu but that's mostly because I looove legs.

In battle though... Pic related.

>the Mallet of Absolution
>not what is needed to cleanse from the scarlet eye
>implying based Inneros could let Vic meathead get the mallet from the Colossus' neck so that he'd just put it on his shelf with the other shiny-shiny
>implying Vic wasn't out-fucking-smarted when Inneros told him to hand over the mallet and leave or two legions would attack his hometown at his psychic signal (later said he didn't even know where the guy was born lmao)
>implying conflict wasn't bound to happen either way since they just needed to beat the Omaggori Colossus to enter the Sinistrum Citadel and why the fuck would you let one of you main enemies ever get in there
>implying Inneros wants more Scarlet Knights incidents and isn't just acting for the greater good of his people
>implying he didn't capture the citadel and isn't still laughing to this day at the thought of all the men he outfitted with Sinistrum armor since
Victards BTFO forever and ever

Yeah, I find Forging weird. I mean, it's just them not throwing the Myriad Flashpoint game-model out.
And since I know Myriad Flashpoint was dropped with 4.0, lemme explain it to the kids.
So, Crimson World play can be divided into three general eras: Flashpoint, Campaign, and Constant War.
Flashpoint focused on single battles with large potential implications - most of the action was in the stories written by Beth and Brian, and the rest of the story team. During this time, even the tournaments were part of the universe, with players being Fate Guardians who played out multiple variations of potential tears in the Fate Web. until the outcomes of all the playthroughs pointed towards a particular outcome, they were fused together into a template that was then applied to reality to prevent the tear. This also tied into the background fluff of Artifact Wars and Realignment - reality was being inconsistent and they needed to fix that.
Campaign started with 4.0, and threw the previous fluff out by having the Guardians commit in-universe suicide. This model focused on large groups of battles, with the overall military campaign effecting the stories, and the official campaigns being directed via playerbase "Which faction will yours attack next?" polls.
In 6.0 (Blades, not the upcoming edition of Chronicles), we entered the Constant War era: we need no reason to attack each other, but we cannot ally even with good reason. Player reports of homebattles and their RPG groups killing each other have the greatest effect on the storyline, provided it fits the current storyline.
Where was I again? Right, Myriad Flashpoint and how it relates to the Forging rules.
But first, store run.

So. Forging brings back the old player fluff, and the Myriad Flashpoint model of Realignment. It's basically Realignment continued, because you have all the possible pasts of the world fighting each other to become the hidden history of the world. That's why you can refluff any unit statblock to a new unit for your guys, because they are almost 100% your guys, even if you follow one of the Recursive Factions, which use the modern units in the Forging Story.
Based on some of the story updates from Forging, and some of the Blades dev team hints for 7.0 (especially the leaks yesterday), we can assume that Forging has been used to create a new history for the unified timeline.