Characters on Demigryphs, why not?

[Khorneguy]

Reading through the new Empire army book, i was really excited about the new Demigryph knights and was planning an army based around them and Knightly Orders. I'd just got paid, so was willing to splash out on a new army from scratch. I went on the GW website and was about to hit pay on about £250 worth of models, when my friend pointed out to me that characters couldn't be mounted on them, not even Grand Masters, and I lost enthusiasm for the idea, as a huge draw for me was some awesome ideas i had for characters.

This raises a questipon for me: why can't they have them? Is it a fluff reason, as there's none that i can find. Is it a balance issue? Again, there's none that I can find, as generals can have Griffons, which are far nastier creatures as mounts. Is it simply that GW didn't want to make a model for it, or even something else that I havn't considered

Can anyone shed any light on this for me? It seems a dumb decision on their part, as i'm sure I'm far from the only person who liked the idea of a Demigryph mounted general

[Urgat]

Who knows. It's the same with pretty much every armybook, there's a new kick-ass mount, and it's not accessible to your combat lords/heroes. I wish my warboss could ride an arachnarok, for instance.

[Duke Ramulots]

Who knows. It's the same with pretty much every armybook, there's a new kick-ass mount, and it's not accessible to your combat lords/heroes. I wish my warboss could ride an arachnarok, for instance.

Had that same idea.

[Darnok]

I wish my warboss could ride an arachnarok, for instance.

If a Slann can ride a Stegadon, why not? Sounds like a nice concept for a special character.

[Urgat]

If a Slann can ride a Stegadon, why not? Sounds like a nice concept for a special character.

Well, because shamans can ride arachnaroks too already. Can saurus ride stegs? though, to be fair, the comparison is difficult. Should be comparing gobs to skinks and orcs to saurus. But it seems to me a goblin warrior would be likely to ride the biggest and meanest mount it can find... you know, the one where when you're on top of it, you're out of reach of everybody
If you ask me, it's got nothing to do with "cruddy writing" (the exact same point of cruddy writing in all the books?) or no room for unscheduled mini ( like it has never happened before that they add an entry in a book that won't have a mini for years). There's a design decision there, it obviously makes no sense to us, but it most likely exists.

[hazmiter]

I don't know either, I was upset, and then went back to stabbing away with the sac dagger.
General on demigrypgh would be awesome though....... Maybe gw should ask next time "hey would you like x mounted on y"
And why no dreadlord on hydra!!!!!! Or necro on terrorgeist...... Theres a lot.....

[Darnok]

Well, with Tamurkhan in my bookshelf I'm contemplating getting a box and using the rules for Theodor Bruckner. I like the GW models, the FW one not so much - and a box of three is still cheaper than the one FW character! One of them converted as Theodor Bruckner, one built as a generic general, one as AST - using some houserules. I do not intend to get a regular unit of Demigryphs, but would love to use the models this way.

[The Low King]

Can any Characters be Monsterous cavalry in 8th edition books?

[Urgat]

Can any Characters be Monsterous cavalry in 8th edition books?

A demigriph mount would be a monstrous beast, like gigantic spiders.

[The Low King]

A demigriph mount would be a monstrous beast, like gigantic spiders.

Yeah, but mounted on them makes you monsterous cavalry right?

So can Anyone have a monsterous beast as a mount?

Tomb kings can be mounted on a sphinx or a chariot (or a skeletal steed)
Empire Characters Horses or Griffons
Ogre characters can be on foot or on Thundertusks (hunters)
VC characters can be on horses or Zombie dragons (Terrorgaists?)
O&G characters can be on Wyverns, boars, spiders, arachnarok (only for shamens right?)

is that correct?

[thesoundofmusica]

It seems a dumb decision on their part, as i'm sure I'm far from the only person who liked the idea of a Demigryph mounted general

By this reasoning, every army should have everything. Personally Im glad GW dont reason like that, I know others might disagree ofc. Perhaps theres at least part of an answer right there.

[snottlebocket]

By this reasoning, every army should have everything. Personally Im glad GW dont reason like that, I know others might disagree ofc. Perhaps theres at least part of an answer right there.

They used to and it was great. There used to be a single long list of ridden monsters that had everything from dragons to giant spiders and any character could pick a mount from that list. It usually meant that almost every fantasy army had a monster of some kind which greatly helped actually making it feel like a fantasy game.

These days it seems monster mounts are only allowed if they're decidedly impractical. Monsters are either prohibitively expensive forcing you to build your entire army around that character, or terribly impractical. There's only a few exceptions like empire captains on pegasi.

[Agoz]

Empire characters can ride pegasus.
So I suppose if you want a character in a unit of demigryph knights, you could model one with it's wings spread and use the rules for a captain/general on pegasus.

[reddevil18]

I was just as dis-heartend to find ogre heros cant ride mournfangs but i still started an ogre army

[danny-d-b]

yep that was something me and my mate saw and was disapointed in- even if it was only the grand master (then you could of fluffed that the entire order is made of demi gryps) but sadly not the case

[DivineVisitor]

House rule it.

Just buy a basic Demigryph Knight/Mournfang Calvary/Necropolis Knight and a characters cost ontop of it.

[Darnok]

As I said: try to houserule it. I don't see why it should be such a big problem to allow a general/grandmaster to ride a Demigriff.

[Damocles8]

I think it's just cruddy book writing

[Tayrod]

I think it's just cruddy book writing

Dont you mean Cruddace?

[Balerion]

I think it's just cruddy book writing

Nah, I think it's more to do with the fact that they didn't have the resources and/or will (and/or profit projections) to produce a General on Demigryph finecast kit for the Empire release schedule, and we're currently in an era where they don't like having rules for models that don't have an official, straight-out-of-the-box kit.