Saturday 17 January 2009

Savage Justice



While doing the rounds of the new blogs posted on Wizards & Wenches i came across this post on the possibility of Slayer coming to WaR. With this package arriving at keen and graev that possibility seems to have become a certainty.

What hasn't been given much attention is the fate of the orcs counterpart to the old hammerer class. The same exact same problems face the Choppa's that faced the hammerers. When you compare a choppa to a Black Orc basically the only real difference is weapons. Every class needs something to distinguish itself from it brethren & choppas have nothing which marks them out as cool. They are basically the more weedy less heavily armed brethren of black orcs. I honestly can't imagine anyone wanting to play them.
Click to read more

Now i know Mythic are trying to give order more appeal but i honestly feel giving one faction a class with a huge amount of interesting and evocative lore and the other is a pale imitation of existing class both lore visual style & play mechanics.

My personal opinion, hope, & hunch is that mythic wouldn't short change destruction like that.
What im hoping is that we get a class who are a true match for slayers.
What im hoping for is Savage Orcs

Mad, Covered head to toe in warpaint, with no fear. They are the perfect mirror to the Slayer.

The advantages of Savage orcs are:
-A more interesting visual style and distinct silhouette
-They originate in the area in which WaR takes place (Badlands and the southlands of the Marshes of Madness)
-There is a large amount of lore behind them.
and most importantly
-The mechanics used for slayers could be easily transferred (with a few modifications) helping maintain the balance of RvR

Also if implemented Choppas would be the only class in game based on a standard grunt infantryman. No one want to play a grunt can you imagine if Orders new class was a Empire Halberder's, High Elf Citizen Militia, (or Dwarf Hammerers for that matter >_<). The closest thing we have in the game currently is the Chaos Marauder but his mutations give him the distinctiveness needed to set him apart from a Chosen.

the only major downside is that ofc more work has to go into creating two classes than one, but due to savage orcs minimal clothing this isn't as much of a disadvantage as it could be otherwise.

I honestly think if they introduce a class like Choppas which would be a lame duck from day one it would have bad implications for the game in the long term.
anyhow ill keep my fingers crossed that come Jan the 29th mythic will do the game justice. And if i receive a can of blue paint & some bones in the mail ill let you know >_<

3 comments:

  1. Barnett here, always gud to know who the Orc heads are :)

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  2. Just getting caught up on your blogs - I have agreed from the beginning that the Choppa is an average unit. However the groundswell of Greenskins that want this class seem to outnumber those of us who would like something different.

    The Choppa is a plain unit. It is what I expect to see when I enter a Greenskin chapter sitting outside the gate, or along the walls, or standing to the sides of the big orcish boss. Do they look cool? Absolutely, but they are still a generic infrantry type. Of course the boards will insist that the Orcs are all about generic infantry, that the Greenskins need just another one of the boyz as a playable class.

    But the Savage Orc has flavor, character, and there's an interesting synergy between introducing two tattooed berserking nigh-suicidal nutcases at the same time. I'm not marketing guru but the event to unlock them could even bear some kitschy name similar to the Heavy Metal event for the KotBS and BG.

    I fear that we will not have our way, unfortunately. As you mentioned this would require coming up with different looks per each tier for this class. While the staff could have pooled its resources to scratch the Hammerer and start the Slayer from scratch would they have had the time to do that for the Choppa as well?

    I suppose the 29th will be the big day to find out but no prominent blogger has been sent a package of a pear covered in tribal paints or something like that so I believe we will see the Choppa on the 29th and not the Savage Orc.

    (I apologize if this shows up twice, I tried submitting once and it didn't seem to go through...)

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  3. Back in my tabletop days one of the armies i played orcs and goblins.

    What was always enjoyable was the way that they followed their own strange internal logic.
    It was the doom divers who launched themselves flying across that battlefield , the fanatics swinging a huge iron ball which weighed more than they did out of their minds on mushrooms, or the shamans whos heads exploded just as often as they successfully cast a spell.

    Orcs were never a 'hoard' army, yes they could field large numbers but so could many armies, undead and skaven armies for instance often were far larger.

    Black orcs were always the exception rather than the norm, no other orc would consider himself a soilder. They were just there for a good fight, the victory or loss of their side mattered little.

    Orcs were the grab bag army, you never knew how your army was going to behave. Their anarchic nature was what made them so loved.
    To me choppas completely lack any of this greenskin magic.

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