The Warhammer World points value

I have found somewhere on the internet a claim that the World Health Organisation estimates that the world rat population is around 4 billion currently. That is, comparable to the human population.

In the old world, I imagine they would live in orc, dwarf settlements as well as humans. So the number will be comparable to the total of all those. So lets say 200 million rats. Of these some will be skaven and some giant rats etc.
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
Yeeeaaah rat-fans! 200 million eh?!?

So shared equally between Cathay/Araby/Dark-Lands/OldWorld - because I'm basing my opinion of Skaven on the spread of the Black Death. And I'm not buying skaven tunnelling under the sea to Lustria or any of that rancid newhammer nonsense. So, basically Warhammerlands version of this:

a83ea44814b747feb959384da3c66c90.jpg


With

*30 million humanoid chaos ratmen @4.5PV = 135000000
*8 million Giant Rats @1.75PV = 14000000
*162 million little furry gnawing feckers @342PV per 1000 = 55404000

For a total of 204404000PV. Although we'd need to know what % of the 30 Million Chaos Ratmen are Heroes, Grey Seers, Assassins, Warpfire cannon weilders, slaves etc, and how many are just ordinary talking, weapon wielding clanrats.
 
I am inclined to think that the points for character models is negligible since there would only be one high level hero for thousands of ordinary level people. Ordinary equipment like armour and halberds etc would be more significant I think.
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
You're probably right in terms of overall points, but I think for wargaming purposes, then having the social / power hierarchy established might yield useful and interesting results - I think if we were looking at Brettonia or Empire as our first example, it would be more immediately obvious. Skaven are a bit of a weird starting place.

According to this completely made up random nonsense I grabbed off the internet just now:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ ... t_field_a/

It takes 300 pesants to support 1 feudal knight. Maybe? who knows? But what if we used the same logic and applied it to Chaos Ratmen? 300 Crummy Skaven Slaves to support 1 Clanrat Warrior?

With our figure of 30000000 Skaven:

* 29900100 slaves @1.5PV = 44850150
* 99667 Clanrats @4.5PV. = 448501
* Total = 44949817

Which is completely different to my initial estimate of 135000000. Then our of the 99667 Clanrats, we could determine heroes etc.

But yes, equipment! If we look at WFB2E Ravening Hordes - 50% of those slaves can have shields, and 50% can have halberds.
Slave halberds = 14950050 @0.25 = 3737512PV
Slave Shields = 14950050 @0.25 = 3737512PV

That's a lot of shields and halberds. How much timber would the Skaven have to fell to make that lot? https://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/TimberV ... ulator.pdf

Ah but this doesn't ring true (for a start, Halberds are too cheap, they should be 0.5, not 0.25, when half price for troops <3pv - is that a typo Mr. Halliwell?) , would all Skaven Slaves be musterable as Skaven Slave Warriors? I guess so.
 

Shaun

Member
More of my ponderations upon the Dwarfs in particular ...

Included within the entire Dwarf population the Points Value of all their War Machines needs to be properly factored ... i estimate that in all the Throngs of the planet there would be some 75,000 War Machines in total ... with an average points cost of (runes included) 110 points each ... 8.25 million points ... then again my figure was 1.5 million dwarves in all the lands and this is more modest than most posters here ... this figure of mine shows that one in twenty would be crewing war machines and if 15 million Dwarfs in the world is the current number then it would be one in two hundred - that figure is still too high ... but i figure there would be places where the number of War Machines is incredibly high such as Zhufbar and on Dwarf Warships (a dozen or a score of Cannons apiece)...

Fifteen million dwarfs isnt beyond my imaginings ... their Strongholds would have been as busy as ants nests ... 15 million dwarfs at an average of 30 points (?) each - 450,000,000 points of Dwarfs worldwide ... (average includes monsters and character and items and war machines in society)... thats nearly half a billion points of dawi alone! But as weismonsers has said perhaps the average shouldnt be so very high ... perhaps just 15 points for the average dwarf ... some 225,000,000 points in total...

As for Skaven or Knights i think peasant to knight ratio sounds about right ... but i have no knowledge of the rats sorry ... for them to operate as a group and an army it would have to be something similair ... although perhaps even fewer as i doubt Skaven are as picky as Humans about their lodgings and equipment etc ...
 
Not sure that clanrats are analogous to feudal knights. skaven slaves and clanrats are both just lowly minions of the warlords and such.
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
weismonsters":2cix5c30 said:
Not sure that clanrats are analogous to feudal knights. skaven slaves and clanrats are both just lowly minions of the warlords and such.

No I'm not sure either, but Knights are just minions of under Barons and Lords and Princes and Kings tho', so like Skaven Warlords and whatever - these would be Champions and Minor Heroes and Major Heroes and whatnot. I reckon Clanrats are warriors, trained soldiers (as much as a talking bipedal Chaos Ratman can be) rather than a conscript type troop, but maybe Renaissance Militia would be a better analogue? The principle is there, even if the detail is wonky. Got to start somewhere tho' eh?

ramshackle_curtis":2cix5c30 said:
Undead. They get a potential of all of the calculation you have done so far ADDED TOGETHER!

AND THEN SOME! http://www.prb.org/Publications/Article ... Earth.aspx

But In practice it would be severely limited by the number of available Necromancers.

For Dwarves, maybe Renaissance Alps would be as good an analogue as any - population estimated to be 3.1 million inhabitants in 1500. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Alps) Remembering traditionally Dwarves aren't very fecund, maybe a little less.. Norse Dwarves would be counted separately.
 

Shaun

Member
Three million dawi is closer to my mind ... my initial guess was/is 1.5 million on the planet ...

As for Undead - yes they have potentially buttswarms of troops but this is dependant on what they do with their magic. Ive tried to guess how many Vampires and Necromancers are worldwide and i figure no more than 20-30,000 of each are in existence... (50,000 Necromancers and Vampires with average point cost of 230 points - 11,500,000 points ... but i dont know their current number of minions. My Undead lore is not much...
 
Zhu Bajie":3rlyzq24 said:
but maybe Renaissance Militia would be a better analogue?

Sounds reasonable.

I was thinking that skaven slaves are like the lowest rank of peasants or serfs, who were tied to the land and whose labour was basically the property of the local landlord. And clanrats are like higher class of peasants that arose in the late middle ages, who had some rights to move around and work for pay and such.
 
Shaun":3ptn71y2 said:
As for Undead - yes they have potentially buttswarms of troops but this is dependant on what they do with their magic. Ive tried to guess how many Vampires and Necromancers are worldwide and i figure no more than 20-30,000 of each are in existence... (50,000 Necromancers and Vampires with average point cost of 230 points - 11,500,000 points ... but i dont know their current number of minions. My Undead lore is not much...

Not necessarily, as there could be a spell that raises all the dead over the whole globe, all in one go, like a Night of the Living Dead style ultimate spell, wielded by Nagash, or something.
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
ramshackle_curtis":160df0yk said:
Shaun":160df0yk said:
As for Undead - yes they have potentially buttswarms of troops but this is dependant on what they do with their magic. Ive tried to guess how many Vampires and Necromancers are worldwide and i figure no more than 20-30,000 of each are in existence... (50,000 Necromancers and Vampires with average point cost of 230 points - 11,500,000 points ... but i dont know their current number of minions. My Undead lore is not much...

Not necessarily, as there could be a spell that raises all the dead over the whole globe, all in one go, like a Night of the Living Dead style ultimate spell, wielded by Nagash, or something.

Could be a spell that turns everyone into pot smoking Halflings, wielded by Fagash.
 

Shaun

Member
Undead Hypothetical Spell would summon gosh knows how much ... but unless the spell is active then those forces are not truly Undead ... they shouldnt be counted for Undeads total points value i think - rather that value should be the sum total of Undead troops in "existence" at a particular point in time - say 2500 on the Imperial Calender ...

My attempt = 50,000 Vampires and Necromancers at 1.15 million points, 25 million or so active Zombies and Skeleton Warriors at 225 million points (average including armoured Skeletons), 2 million Bat Swarms at 100 million points ... the Ghosts and Wraiths and the like - i do not think there would be more than half a million of these and at a guestimated average of 35 points each that adds 17.5 million points ... perhaps half a million Wolves/Hounds also - totalling some 4 million points ... the giant mummies of Khemri and the Undeads Dragon types are rare yet expensive - perhaps there are only several thousand of each yet at a few hundred points each theyd total another million points or so ... all the Chariots and War Machines (some 25,000 and 20,000 respectively) - 3 million and 2 million or so extra points ...

362.65 million points so far...

It seems, according to our thoughts, each of the Armies has several hundred million points worth of forces.
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
I think in my version of Warhammerland there would be about 50 Vampires at most, centred on eastern Known World. Probably no more than 100 necromancers across the Old World, Cathay and Arabay, if that. Even at the height of the Renaissance there weren't many practicing occultists, and the cultural institutions needed to support that kind of dedicated knowledge work were immense.
 

Shaun

Member
Fifty Vampires and a hundred Necromancers? I can understand this thinking but it drops their PV dramatically ...

All in all the fathomations put the Warhammer World Points Total at 3 billion (ish)...
 

Fimm McCool

Member
How many water elementals are there in the seas, air elementals in the skies and earth elementals in the, um, earth? The amount of fire elementals is probably in constant flux depending on whose barn is alight at any given time. I guess you could probably argue there's only one death and life elemental... ;)
 

Shaun

Member
How many points is an Elemental worth?

If you suppose there are 100 of each or a 1,000 or 10,000 i/we can come to a group consented guesstimate ...

Fathoming tabletop armies and lore and what has been seen ... surely some guess of a number can come to your mind ... what number would you yourself give? If say, a blunderbuss were put to your head and an answer was demanded?

I dont have much knowledge on them myself ... i play Dwarfs...
 

Fimm McCool

Member
It was more to point out the unfathomable nature of areas of the warhammer world, it being fantasy and all. We don't know what constitutes an elemental because nothing comparable actually exists, so even if you guestimate race populations based on the national stereotypes they were created from, monsters based on nearest applicable animal, undead based on possible quantities of the deceased etc. you will still have only a fraction of the "warhammer world points value" because we couldn't possibly determine how many elemental/spirit beings there are or how many daemons currently have a hoofed foot on the material side of the warp. :)
 

Shaun

Member
True, but we can come to a guesstimate consensus for our own amusement though ... ive found it enjoyable as this question is something that i ponder from time to time...
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
Not sure I get the "it's just magic" point of view, it just depends on finding the right analogue and being creative with it.

Let us consider the entire planet as an elemental in posse. After all even the ancient greeks knew the whole world was constructed of Air, Water, Fire and Earth, and the idea was really popular with Renaissance Alchemists and Far Eastern Mystics, so it completely suits the Warhammer setting.

We know, roughly:

The whole planet weights 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
The Sky weighs 5,972,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
The Sea weighs 1,379,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
The Biomass weighs 560,000,000,000 tons
So the Rocks must weight 4,587,027,999,440,000,000,000

But how much does an elemental weigh? Well...

Largest earth animal - the Elephant is 7 tonnes,
Largest flying animal - some kind of giant bat is 1 kg,
Largest sea animal the whale is 200 tonnes.

Then we just divide the total of each element by the (currently) largest supported animal, multiply by 1133 - the PV for an Elemental, add them all up and ta-da. 757,021,557,195,074,000,000,000 pv.

I’d like to see Fagash and his apocalyptic legion of pipe-smoking hobbits take that lot on. :)
 
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