The arrival of the new Cities of Sigmar army set brought with it a big overhaul of the faction’s theme and tone. Previously, the faction was a blend of the Empire, Elves, and Dwarves from the old world.
With this newest version, Cities of Sigmar has become it’s own distinct thing, focused around its human elements along with a unique style that sets it apart from the Empire. In this Apocrypha, we delve into the contents of the Army box and put together Warcry profiles and abilities that better suit this new style.
The Steelhelms are the backbone of this warband. They use the same profile as the
Freeguild guard while the Sergeant uses the same profile as the Freeguild Sergeant but with the Bulwark runemark for the shield.
I’ve cherry picked some abilities from the Cities of Sigmar list and in the case of Form Shieldwall have removed the hero runemark to give the Steelhelms a slight boost. Double time is Swift as the Wind but with Bulwark added to limit it to the Sergeant.
The Battle Priest and Alchemist Warforger are both support pieces for the warband.
The Battle-Priest has the same stats as the Flagellant but with the Priest runemark added. The Warforger has a Battlemage profile.
They differ with the abilities. The Battle Priest has the amazing Fight for Profit
ability but he’s easier to kill than most Kharadron Overlord heroes. Forgefire is from the Runelord while Ignite Weapons is from the Hallowheart Battlemage. These al
support the other fighters so the warband acts as a unit.
The Marshall is the General profile directly. The Relic Envoy is brand new. His profile is from a Pot Grot to give the idea of a kid.
The Marshall’s abilities are directly from the General. The Lookout Sir! is new with the idea of having the Relic Envoy be a sacrificial pawn. Alternatively, you could give him an ability to reflect the creepy head he has in the box.
For the Freeguild Cavalier I took the Demigryph Knight as a base, dropped the range to 1and increased the strength to .4 For the champion I added 5 wounds and 1 attack and gave a discount to what ti would have cost in blessings.
Those are pretty good profiles so we’re just going to give them the typical Cavalry Charge ability.
The Warcry Compendium has a pretty unique setup for the Cities of Sigmar. The fighters and heroes are all one big single section, but you can choose between a variety of different abilities lists depending on the City of Sigmar you prefer. The recent Age of Sigmar Cities of Sigmar book is similar, although we’ve lost some cities and gained a few more.
In practise however, there only was one city that mattered, The Tempest’s Eye. The ability Swift as the Wind was just too good to pass up on. In this version, I’m going to try a slightly different approach. We’ll leave all the Cities with a matching list rather than doing them al from scratch. With one exception. For each city we’ll add a [Quad] ability that can be used by any fighter. No doubt there will be one version that’s going to just be better than any the rest, but as a quad hopefully it will be low enough priority that you can happily play whatever City you decide to paint your models as.
These 12 new abilities are all a mix of existing ones often slightly tweaked and adjusted. For the majority, I looked at the Age of Sigmar army book to see what the core faction ability for each city was and tried to find something that would work. There are some spicy abilities in there, including the Sylvaneth’s teleport, Nighthaunts Frightful Touch, and the Soulblight Gravelords resurrect among others.
Warcry is a relatively hard game to break. There are only 4 turns and each fighter gets only 2 activations, so typically a fighter only gets 8 activations in a game. Similarly, abilities are capped. You only get to roll 6 dice each turn to power your abilities, so there is only so much you can do in a game. This makes it an excellent game to make your own custom material as it’s very forgiving. As long as you stay roughly within the range of reasonable, you should be able to have a fun game.
If you’re still unsure exactly what you can get away with, use existing fighters and modify them slightly. Sometimes this will be upping one stat and reducing another stat because ti seems to balance out. At other times you might adjust the points using the blessings as a guide. For abilities, see what’s already out there and make some minor adjustments to them. As long as you keep it flavourful it’s going to be fun.
Everything in this is untested and definitely could do with some playtesting to get it right. Always remember, that the goal is for both players to have a good time, so if you’re trying out some like this err on the side of letting your opponent have fun!
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