Reply To: WHtOW – fluff and does it make sense ?

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 0]

Why go so far afield when the Old World isn’t even completely fleshed out (anymore) ?

There used to be a Norse army – that wasn’t Chaos and even included Dwarfs, – which makes a great deal of sense because most of our  (OUR) image of Dwarves comes from Nordic mythology, where they are representative of the baser nature, and, to a lesser degree, from Celtic mythology, where they are representative of a prior population, displaced by the Tuatha De Dannan.

Until 5th edition, Imperial armies also had Dwarfs – mine still does – and also Halflings and Ogres, which also makes perfect sense fluff-wise, at least in armies representing the eastern provinces. How about this: Handgunners can fire in 2 ranks if the front rank are Dwarfs. That would be an excellent way to sell some Dwarf models in late medieval/Renaissance clothes, which not only GW but also a bunch of other companies used to make. I think there’s a German outfit that still does.

The only figures I remember representing Albion were a Druid and a pair of Giants – sculpted by the Perry brothers to look like themselves, as I recall – and Albion lies only a tad bit off the coast of Bretonnia and right in the path of Elven trading vessels headed to or from The Old World, so how come they’re completely left out of all this ?

Much the same could be said for Estalia, in fact, I don’t remember any specifically Estalian models, ever. Sure, you could use Empire and Bretonnian figures and rules and just declare them to be Estalians, and that would be ok, but not the same as making them an army in their own right.

In 5th edition, we got some Tileans as Dogs of War, which does make sense, since Italy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance was a motley patchwork of states often at war with one another and full of mercenaries – even from other lands – who would fight for whoever paid and fed them the most.

Then, there are the Border Princes…..

Asian influences began with martial arts flicks in muh1960s/70s – that’s why Peter Jackson’s Elves have a somewhat ‘Asian’ feel to them (he also made Dwarves ‘Scottish’….), which I’m sure was NOT wat professor Tolkien had in mind. His sketches look more like a combination of Celtic and Scandinavian – the word ‘Elf’ (Elb’, ‘Alb’) comes from proto-Norse and means ‘white’ – and the 2 Elven languages he invented were inspired by Welsh and Finnish, respectively. Yes, I know, Finnish is technically an Asian language…

Not sure what the point of having a pink gun would be – other than giving the enemy a nice bright target to aim for – but yeah, I’ve seen girls ride skateboards. Maybe 1 in 1000 and perhaps 1/3 of those were what I would call ‘girly’. Not exactly a large market.