Best/Worst special character (fluff and gaming)

[mostlyharmless]

You want to know who I like? Lokhir Fellheart, not overly powerful, not some big badass wizzid, just a pirate out to make some cash. I can respect an elf who's honest with himself. And his rules do, in fact, make him a horrifying amalgamation of a pirate and a ninja.

[Count Demandred]

Always a fan of Azhag the Slaughterer based solely on a text piece from the old OnG book (no idea what edition) where he shows sadness at the death of a young Empire soldier who stood against his horde. Also portrays him as no longer able to relate to his fellow Orcs because of his increased intellect. Much more thoughtful than the usual "increased power to unimaginable levels/fought for days/unstopabble plans" fare.

Also always loved Marius Leitdorf for similar reasons: he's an interesting multifaceted chararacter.

Personal dislikes include Archaon, Mannfred and their ilk. Super powerful and unstoppable killing machines with erudite minds and extraordinary grasps of battle tactics. Pretty boring, to me.

I second Azhag the Slaughterer. Another favourite of mine is Alith Anar, his back-story (not talking about the ToL book here, even though I enjoyed it) was excellent - danced with Morathi then stole the crown.

As far as characters in-game go, as a Vampire player my vote goes to Zacharias the Everliving. He was an absolute beast if you could afford him. Unlimited dispel scrolls, all spells of his lore including an extra huge summon Zombies spell, 4+ Ward, Dragon, extra spell (D6 strength 4 hits) thanks to his staff. He was unstoppable.

[Craze_b0i]

Killing 10% of the army is never mentioned anywhere, but it is indeed mentioned that if a day without battle goes by, grimgor starts making bloodyminded arguments to lure out a brawl, if two days without battle go by he kills any gobbo within reach, and if three days go by.. well.. noone knows what would happen then (grimgor smash?).

P71. para 2. After 1 single day he starts "camp-decimating arguments". The word decimate means to kill approx 1/10 or 10%.

However Grimgors story used to be a bit expanded upon on the old GW site (that one that wasn't purely a webshop), and was concerned with Grimgors bloody bussiness before they went towards Middenheim. After he had taken up residence in Karak Ungor (where he could go out to campaign in Kislev in the spring, and fight neverending hordes of skaven in the winter), he got bored after clan moulder sent several dozen ratogres against him, and he journeyed north with his army, where he set up camp north of high pass, in the great skull land IIRC, in order to face endless armies of Kurgan northmen and incidentally he also blocked the passage towards Kislev and the Empire, unless the northmen took long diversion routes. At this point he faced plenty of large armies of chaos warriors and champions, as northmen came at him in endless numbers in order to test themselves against "the green daemon".

All that is in the current book. p26. Also the clan moulder thing was at Hell Pit not Karak-Ungor, and it wasn't just mutant rat ogres, it was pretty much every mutant creation they had - Grimgor killed 'em all, which would by definition include abombs, but found none to be a worthy challenge.

[ryng_sting]

Wulfrik. He's basically the same as Crom. What on earth was the point of creating him?

For best, I choose Count Mordrek the Damned. He has what every Chaos Warrior wants - immortality - and now all he wants is oblivion. Whichever god he served has long forgotten him.

[Wesser]

Best in fluff: Gotta love Thanquol
Worst in fluff: Putting my vote behind Grimgor too

Worst in-game. Louen Leoncour...the most overpriced model in the whole game
Best in game: Caradryan...just to pick someone else but teclis

[EddieJA]

Clearly the best character in-game and in the fluff is the Reiksmarshal, Kurt Helborg himself. Not only a really decent combat character (for a human statline) in the game, but a real badass in the fluff.

Not to mention, look at that awesome mustache!!! That mustache alone has destroyed champions of evil. Kurt Helborg! Women want him, and men want to be him.

I humbly suggest you use my homemade rule for Kurt Helborg the next time you play.

MUSTACHE POWER: Once per turn, Kurt Helborg can sacrifice all of his attacks to make one special "mustache power" attack. On a roll of a 6, Kurt Helborg's mustache glows with holy power and destroys the enemy army.

[Fear Ghoul]

Where's all the love for Nagash?

[hellharlequin]

Where's all the love for Nagash?

my thought too wonderfull fluff and very represanting rules

[TheDungen]

Oh i forgot and i change my vote: Aekold Hellbrass! is the best character in the fluff

[Bingo the Fun Monkey]

I won't comment on in-game characters except for the one I use: Gitilla's unit can be made to be useful- the magic number is between 12-21.

Fluff wise I was a huge fan of Eltharion the White Sword. Eltharion the Grim was one of the first models I got when I started the game. When the 6th ed book rolled around, the story in the back had my two favorite characters: Belannar and Eltharion were totally doing Jedi training. Before being Eltharion the Blind, Eltharion the Grim was what is referred to in my friend circle as "typical Skywalker". Talented, but utterly impetuous, self-absorbed and prone to whiny tantrums. It was a story of hubris and humble redemption, a parallel to the High Elven image of the Phoenix rising from the ashes.

I'm quite fond of Grimgor, but I'll accept a Morglum reinstatement and replacement with joy. I especially liked Grimgor's relation to Boargut Facebeater. Did anybody here watch Rome on HBO? They were like Vorenus and Pollo (except utterly lacking in intellect in Vorenus' case).

Despite that, my favorite special character, both in-game and in the fluff is Wurrzag the Green Prophet. He's not the biggest, baddest wizzad in the world, let alone his own race...he's just a traveling witch doctor fostering up and coming warbosses and warlords. I wish his fluff from the 6th edition Army Book had been preserved. The "trip" he had was such an evocative story. I actually have a tobacco pipe named after this guy.

Worst character? I'd say most of the Dwarf characters are pretty stupid. Keeping grudges and tracking down descendants of debtors hundreds of years after the offense to collect in blood is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. What an economic fiasco. Surely generating all this undue stress is bad for the zeitgeist of the dwarf race. Taking elite warriors to collect on grudges must be taxing on national security. Anyone who develops a reputation for chasing down grudges (looking at every Dwarf King here) is not a hero, he's an idiot. And the dwarf race will go extinct because of this idiocy. I'm just kidding, you can't hate a species for its genetic prerogatives.

[m1acca1551]

My vote for favourite goes to helborg tied with thanqoul
i dont really have one for worst... i think every character has its ups and downs.

One character i love from the vampire trilogy was john skellan i would have loved to have seen him in the latest book over manfred the acolyte

[grumbaki]

Worst character? I'd say most of the Dwarf characters are pretty stupid. Keeping grudges and tracking down descendants of debtors hundreds of years after the offense to collect in blood is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. What an economic fiasco. Surely generating all this undue stress is bad for the zeitgeist of the dwarf race. Taking elite warriors to collect on grudges must be taxing on national security. Anyone who develops a reputation for chasing down grudges (looking at every Dwarf King here) is not a hero, he's an idiot. And the dwarf race will go extinct because of this idiocy. I'm just kidding, you can't hate a species for its genetic prerogatives.

I know it's a joke, but I have to do this. Because it is for this reason that I find the dwarf characters to be the most interesting. Imagine this. Think about the most embarrising moment of your life. Think about the time that you were the most angry. Think about how it felt at that exact time. Now think about what it felt like a week later.

For a dwarf, there is no week later. Your emotions, and your memories, would not fade. When someone angers you, you stay angry. When you humiliate yourself, you never get to the point where you can laugh it off. If someone betrays you, the hurt never goes away. That is why dwarfs have slayers. To live for the rest of your life with such unfading memories, it would drive anyone insane. And for them, the only outlet they have is to go out and seek a worthy death. Their entire culture is based around this, because it is what makes them dawi. They may look like short humans, but they are not. They are an alien race, and they act like it.

Remember, for dwarfs there is no word for forgiveness. There are only variations on recompense. Even if you pay a dwarf back, his memories still won't fade. And to me, that is what makes them the most interesting race in warhammer.

[warboss6820]

Teclis the Stage Magician, Michael Jackson voice:

"Oh, hey hey ladies and gentlemen, look, it's a Daemon army over there! Can you see it? It is an actual Daemon army! Now we need someone from the audience to step forth and confirm this is all real! No fake! Actual Daemons! How about you good sir?"

*splat EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG GGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!*

"See? Those are real! Now ladies and gentlemen, watch in awe as I wave my staff and hop around in a weird manner and do my voodoo chicken dance! Ahoooo! Wacka Wacka! And now I snap my fingers and - ALACAZAM! - they're gone! Thank you, thank you, you're too kind!"

"Uhm, excuse me Mr. Teclis, there's a Dark Elf there who hasn't paid his entrance fee and has killed the bouncers; maybe you could give us a hand?"

*Teclis guzzles magic potion, burps and puts on karate headband*

Teclis the Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger voice:

"Time to kick some serious ass! I'll be back!"

YES! Games workshop should do 1 of 3 things here; 1 underpower teclis in the next update,2 delete him and make him a fluff only character,
3 GIVE US NAGASH AND GIVE TECLIS A CHALLENGE

[Athelassan]

Madness

Support for Grimgor and Blind Eltharion in the same post? You must be trolling, good sir!

Also, no slagging off Vorenus on my watch!

[BigbyWolf]

3 GIVE US NAGASH AND GIVE TECLIS A CHALLENGE

This could be possibly the worst idea. Instead of having one OP character, we would have two.

Best to reduce his skills both in-game and in-background, and make him a lot better character.

[SimaoSegunda]

Best Fluff : Vlad von Carstein
Worst Fluff : Skrag the Slaughterer

Best In-Game : Karadryan
Worst In-Game : Isabella von Carstein

[snottlebocket]

One of my personal favorite special characters is one that hasn't shown up in the books for a while.

Burlok Damnison was a young dwarf engineer. The fluff explained how young engineers were often too radical for the guilds. Coming up with strange new inventions and the like. It wasn't unheard of for young engineers to come up with such outlandish ideas that they got banned from the guilds. Only to be readmitted later when they invented some thing with proven benefit to dwarf kind. Burlok was one such inventor who went a few steps too far. Getting kicked out of the guild after a disastrous accident that cost him an arm. He didn't give up though and engineered himself a steam powered powerfist to replace his lost arm.

In the past the engineering side of dwarfs and the empire has had a lot of overlap. Now that the empire has a much tighter visual direction I'm really hoping that next army book the dwarves will get a much tighter direction as well. And I'm really hoping they'll take dwarfs into a very distinct steam punk direction (since they did not with the empire). That would be a perfect opportunity for the return of Burlok.

I'd be quite interested to read that. Its similar to how I more enjoy how Gorbad's story was told in the previous O&G book than in the current one. Any chance you could post or pm that story to me?

I don't have the story for you but I can recommend buying the old 4th edition army books on ebay. They tend to be cheap and contain a lot of fluff.

The story itself is just an account of a battle. The difference is that the crown makes Azhag intelligent enough to grow melancholic. He flies over the greenskin army on his wyvern and realizes how disorganized it is. He's not feeling typical orcish battle cheer. Instead he's annoyed at the mobs that halt due to animosity, breaking up the battle line. He's looking at how ragtag the army is. Orcs, goblins, spiders, trolls. Shaman's riding oddball mounts into battle. Gibbering squigs and randomly spinning fanatics. It's a mess.

During the post battle bbq he tries to understand the human army. He's looking at the squishy corpse of the boy soldier and he tries to understand. They're so organized and professional. But unlike orcs they take no joy in it. They're afraid of battle. Afraid of the orcs. Afraid of dying and they're so fragile. So why do they do it? He doesn't seem able to imagine having an organized society, something they'd want to protect, families, love. He sees the ways in which the human army was superior to his and he sees their failings, so he can't grasp why they go to war.

[Sheena Easton]

Best Fluff - Gorfang Rotgut or Eltharion The Grim

Worst Fluff - its a tie between GrimBORE and superninjaextremesamuraijedi Eltharion The Blind (thankfully this abomination has been expunged)

[hellharlequin]

YES! Games workshop should do 1 of 3 things here; 1 underpower teclis in the next update,2 delete him and make him a fluff only character,
3 GIVE US NAGASH AND GIVE TECLIS A CHALLENGE

if we get nagash back ne needs his own army list (the lackeys of nagash)

[Craze_b0i]

Yeh that would be nice. In my view a Nagash army would be a vampire army-list without the vampires (they all hate him except Manfred who is a total idiot). Instead of vamps you would just have lots of liches and necromancers.