After the release of the new Orcs and Goblins book, and from the rumors/previews of the new Tomb Kings book, one thing is really obvious, GW HAS DECIDED TO MASSIVELY CUT BACK ON THE NUMBER OF MAGIC ITEMS AVAILABLE IN THE NEW ARMY BOOKS. How do you feel about this? Is it for the better or worse?
So long as they cut back on all armies equally, I'm cool with it. By which I mean everyone has x magic weapons, y banners, z arcane items, etc.
It's nice to see that a few people feel the same way as I do about this. I think it is terrible that GW are pretty much doing away with the majority of army specific magic items. Kind of makes me hope that Lizards and WoC don't get remade for a long time. (not that we have a great list to begin with!) The magic item section was always amongst my favorite to read through when getting a new army book.
I noticed from a spoiler of thr tombkings, the army items may be less numerous, but the quailty definately went up.
see, this is where i'm going to disagree with apparent popular oppinion. I prefer to have fewer general magic items and more army specific one, it's more flavourful and give armies different heroes. I kinda llike when that skaven warlord and ogre tyrant don't have the same armour on, or how everybody has int 10 or whatever. and in our new book they best not be taking my blade of realities away. Even f i don't use it it's such a "my weapon is better than your weapon" item.
I kinda agree with ryan88, themed items is better IMHO. the number of generic items in the BRB is quite big. Its then coupled with Army specific items to give you the upper hand in certain areas. I like it. of course how much i like it depends on what goes and what stays. Yours Aye Mixer
How is that going against the popular opinion? Most people seem to be disappointed that the army specific magic items are being cut back. I much prefer when each army brings unique items to the table!
fair enough. most people i've talked to like the generic stuff because there is more. i like the idea of different items the give new edges to different armies. plus characters are my favorite part of warhammer since your opponent dosen't get to know what they have. thankfully here most people seem to want to keep army specific gear, that said lizardmen should want to! they get some cool stuff!
There is actualy more in the O&G book than it apears.... they moved a lot of equipment into unit and character upgrades. or had something eals do what that equipment used to do.
I say we can stand to lose a few of our army list magic items sence the same one can be found in the genaral magic item list, for example, sword of the hornet= Sword of swift slaying, ASF. And some are actually "better" than ours, such as Glittering scales, -1 hit +Lm (25p) compared to our Aura of Quetzl, -1 hit (40p) Btw, I would hardly shed a tear if we finaly scrap our Dragonfly of Quicksilver. But yeh, I'm actually fine with this aslong as we, as previously stated, keep some special item for ourself that can battle the more common ones in terms of quality. It would suck if everyone ended up all using the same shared items becuse they are simply "the best" compared to what is offered in their own army book.
I do not mind the fact they are moving most of the items to a "common" list. many of the items were fairly common anyway. Everyone had a sword of the hornet, everyone basically had a + str weapon etc. move all the magic items that every army basically had into a common list and provide a few of the key items from the army as specific magic items. This will also help to balance the magic items. Some armies had horrendous magic items, very few or basically useless ones while some (like WOC) have really powerful items at stupidly low points costs. (Infernal puppet comes to mind) balance is key as long as they keep the unique flavor of each army with the specific magic items. Personally, I like it.
I'm thinking maybe there should only be race-specific items, but some like the armour of silvered steel (sucks for lizzies, rocks for all others), the dispel scroll, the heavy+ward armours, and the attack and strength booster blades should appear in most books with different names. Everybody needs the essentials.
Oh, and every army should have an apocalypse weapon for around 75 pts, something like our blade of realities, or the TK's destroyer of eternities.