Take a look at how GW can reign in the most OP unit in Warhammer: The Old World – the Cathay Sky Lantern.
If you’ve paid any attention to the Old World in the past couple of months, you’ve no doubt seen that the Grand Cathay Sky Lantern is broken. Like mega broken. In fact it likely the best/most powerful single unit in the game. Its got a combination of rules, damage output, tankyness and character platforming that make it unrivaled. A few of these in a list is oppressive, as seen at NOVA. Something needs to be done about them, so today take a look at a few option we might have to nerf them, and if they would even work.
1. Balloon Bans
One option we do have is just to ban them. Indeed some events have toyed with this, though I’m not sure any have gone through with it. While this option does work, insomuch as it makes Sky Lanterns no longer an issue, it’s far from ideal. First off, banning a legal unit is not great, and its pretty feel bad for people who bought them and just want to play with a unit. It’s also not great for Grand Cathay as a whole to ban a significant portion of their army.
2. Heavily Limit Them
Another option is to heavily limit the number you can take. In theory the Matched Play guide does this. However since they can be taken as mounts, they can sidestep most of those limitations. So players/events have talked about going even further with hard caps of 2-3 being put into place. From what I know some events have announced they are doing this, though we’ve yet to see a lot of results from them. This approach does work to limit how oppressive they can be, but doesn’t actually do anything to fix the unit or the core issues with it. One could argue that as they stand even 2-3 of the Lanterns are still broken and won’t be fun. Moreover limiting or banning them only really works at events, and doesn’t really fix them for more casual play.
3. Increase The Points
So let’s move on to some actual change we can make to the unit. The easiest change is to just bump up the point cost. These things are stupidly undercosted for what they do right now. Points adjustments are a pretty common way of trying to fix broken units. Now I do think that Lanterns need go up in points. However I don’t think this really the overall answer. Lanterns are so good right now that even with a pretty big point cost people will still run them, and they will still be an issue. You’d have to really jump them up so high that they become unplayable to have a real effect, and that’s not great either. So what are some rules we could change to fix them?
4. Take Away The Mount Option
A pretty simple fix you could have for them would be to take away the option for them to be a mount. Now this doesn’t necessarily fix the unit as a whole. However it does really limit the worst of its abusability. This would have the effect of putting a much harder cap on the amount of them you could take then is currently the case. You’d be limited to at most 3 when using the more restrictive matched play comp, but even without any comp at 2000 pts you’d have a cap of 4, and three of those would be very limited in upgrades.
It also means you wouldn’t have any option to put extra wounds, attacks and magic items onto a Lantern. It would make the Magistrates a lot worse, but I’m kind of OK with that since right now their only role to make the Lanterns more broken. This could be a way to tone them down.
5. Movement Changes
One of the things that makes the Lanterns so deadly is just how maneuverable they are. Scout (and an option to Ambush in Jade Fleet) and Fire & Flee/Feigned Flight are great multiples, but just its base movement is crazy. This thing is a fly 8 chariot, that can also make a reserve move. As a mount it can also get up to Fly 9 just for extra fun. That makes it one of the more nimble and fast units around. And like… it really shouldn’t be? It’s a big balloon that doesn’t really have any visible propulsion. This thing should be a bit ungainly and at the whims of the wind.
Now I’d love to see it get some kind of special rule to show case this. Like you roll a scatter dice in the movement phase and all your Lanterns have to move in that direction or something. That would be super cool. But it might be a bit fiddly. Instead you could just give it random movement. That would be a nice nerf to its mobility, limiting its hit and run moves, and be thematic.
6. Make It Easier To Kill
You’d think a giant paper Lantern would be kind of vulnerable to attacks. But not so! This thing is super tank-y, especially for its points. Another fix you could do would be to make it a bit easier to kill. You could drop some wounds, or lower the toughness. You could also take away its champion, which is a strong defensive buff. It also proeblly shouldn’t be unbreakable, that’s always felt like a little much. At the very least you’d think it should have something like “Dry As Dust” right?
7. Tone Down The Bombs
Lastly, I really think the Lantern Bombs need to be toned down. Why are these things S5 AP -2? For 15 pts they are one of the best templates in the game, and more accurate then most. Either jack the points up a ton or make them something like S4 AP -1, which would still be really good! I don’t this change alone would fix things, but combined with some of the others it might put them in a much better place.
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Let us know how you’d fix Sky Lanterns, down in the comments!
Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers Warhammer: The Old World, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe mourned over loss of WFB for its entire hiatus, but has been reborn like a gaming phoenix with Warhammer: The Old World.