My Thoughts on the New Chaos Space Marines now that I've actually got the codex...

I've got Dave to thank for this 'cause he bought me the book as a belated birthday present, and now I'm all excited about doing Chaos again. I registered my concerns in the previous blog about the changes to the rules that would no doubt come with the book, and now that I've been reading it a little while here's my opinions on some of them:

1) They've got rid of Summoned Daemons

OK let's get the easy one out of the way first: In the old rules I think going back as far as 3rd edition you used to be able to summon a unit of Daemons from one of your Chaos Space Marine units, or summon a Greater Daemon by having it possess one of your characters. I guess it worked at the time, but it wasn't a popular move to make once Chaos Daemons became an army in their own right, and with the new rules for Allies in 6th Edition meaning you can field both armies at the same time, the ability to summon Daemons is pretty much meaningless anyway. The fact that in 4th edition the summoned Daemons would be significantly weaker than their codex couterparts wouldn't have helped. Overall it's not a rule I'm particularly sorry to lose.

2) Bezerkers et al back to Elite

What's happened here is that the Khorne Bezerkers, Noise Marines, Plague Marines and Thousand Sons are now Elite choices. Now if I remember rightly this was the case in 3rd edition as well, though if your commander had the mark of the relevant God, you would get one of them as troops choices. So, for example, if you had a Chaos Lord with the Mark of Slaanesh, you would be able to take Noise Marines - but not the others - as troops choices. In 4th edition they cut out the middle man and allowed you to take all 4 as Troops Choices, no matter what your commander was doing, and this lead to some pretty nasty tournament combos, so for balancing issues and also to remind us that there are actually Chaos Space Marines in the Chaos Space Marine Army, they've been put back up to Elite. They've also still got the option of taking the leader with the mark of the relevant god to put them back down to Troops Choices, plus the same rule applies if you take the relevant special character. Kharn the Betrayer, for example, would bring Khorne Bezerkers back to Troops choices.

For some reason, you can't do that with the Daemon Prince. Even though you HAVE to take a Daemon Prince of one of the Chaos Gods, which confers its own benefits, you can't take the relevant units as troops choices. I guess that would represent the idea that if a Champion of Chaos has made it as far as being a Daemon Prince, he'd have to be a lot less near-sighted than refusing to take anything but the units of your own Gods. And also, the Daemon Prince is a LOT more powerful in this new edition. Armies would be horribly unbalanced if they were then allowed to take, say, Bezerkers as Troops choices...

3) Wargear

There have been quite a few changes to the equipment that are going to affect my army lists quite a bit. Here's a selection of them:

• Daemon Weapons: Not sure what's happening with these at the moment. They work in pretty much the same way as they did in 4th edition, though there is no option to take it as a Daemon Weapon with the mark of the Chaos Gods in order to increase its potency and inherent risks. My problem is that there seems to be no way to give a Daemon Weapon to anybody other than Abbadon the Despoiler. They don't appear in the Wargear section as an option; am I missing something here? This means I'm going to have to change the weapon I've given one of my Chaos Lords, although a viable alternative is not far away, which brings me on to my next point:
• Chaos Artefacts: Unique magic items for Chaos? Yes please, we'll have some of that! Might seem a bit cheesy to do this in the new edition of 40K but it's not going to be bad. Some of them are actually Daemon Weapons, and all of them confer particularly nasty consequences for those that find themselves on their business end - but most of them are not without their risks, meaning that they're unlikely to find themselves on the tournament circuit that counts on dependability.
• Vehicle Upgrades: I wasn't particularly happy with the fact that they've weakened Daemonic Possession by having to roll a 2+ for its benefit - ignoring Crew Shaken and Crew Stunned results - to take effect, AND given the chance that a dedicated transport might start eating its own crew on a roll of a 1 as they embark or start the game. Granted if this happens it gets a hull point back, but losing a Chaos Space Marine of any kind is going to hurt. The benefit it is supposed to confer doesn't help all that much in 6th edition anyway since there are no Crew Shaken and Crew Stunned results off a glancing hit anymore. Thankfully they have at least had the presence of mind to reduce the points cost, but I can see myself taking Destroyer Blades instead, which for what I intend for Rhinos at any rate look a lot more useful. And Havoc Launchers are now twin-linked, which may help a little.

4) Psychic Powers

The psychic powers in the new codex, and in 40K in general, is a lot more, how can I put this? Comprehensive. There's a lot more going on now with the different disciplines so it was never going to be the same, but most of the old spells are gone. This will upset a lot of the tournament players who liked to bum-rape units by grouping them together with Lash of Submission, then take a massive 5" template-sized shit on the unit. Gift of Chaos is gone as well, though I'm not particularly sorry about this because I never used it. Instead we've got several of the disciplines in the rulebook at our disposal, plus some tasty-looking spells in the Codex. I'm not going to go too deeply into specifics here because I'll be here all day but it looks like they've got an eclectic mix of functional powers and kick-ass lightning-bolt style spells.

One spell that was probably overpowered but I will nonetheless miss is Warptime. My Chaos Sorcerer has only participated in 1 battle so far, but being able to re-roll all my hits and misses pretty much won that battle for me.

Well that's it for me so far, I'll come back maybe later with more changes to the rules, perhapes when I've played a couple of games and had a chance to try them.

I'll see you next time...

My thoughts on the new Chaos Space Marines

So Games Workshop have hit me with another curveball; they're putting out the Chaos Space Marines ahead of everything else for the new edition of 40K. This was a bit of a surprise, I was convinced it was going to be Dark Angels, but there you go. With this and some shiny new models to build, there's no way I'm not going to have an opinion on this, so...

(Apologies once again; it's having a lot of difficulty uploading the photos...)

Chaos Space Marine Codex

My initial thoughts on this are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand it's about time Chaos Space Marines had an update; they haven't had one since 4th edition and were long overdue. On the other hand, as a returning player I'm not sure how I feel about all the new things that will be involved in it. We've got several new units out on release - more on them later - and even more stuff once the Dark Vengeance models go out on general release. I'm hoping they will, rather than being relegated to Deffkopta-style 'you must drop £60 on Dark Vengeance before you can use Cultists' spiel. But there's a lot of new stuff now, some of which I suspect is replacing old stuff. Which is great except that I've actually spent a load of money on old stuff that is potentially no longer relevant. I say potentially...

Here's the thing: Where GW seem to be going with all this is taking Chaos Space Marines in a new direction. It's no longer enough for them to be able to say "Like Space Marines... but bad guys," give them a couple of different units and put a couple of armies on the table that fight in a very similar way for the most part. No, they seem to want to take Chaos in a different direction entirely. Hence the Cultists. Hence the Maulerfiends and Heldrakes. They want Chaos to be their own, very distinctive force.

Now in some cases this is quite welcome. Take the Cultists, for example. One thing that I noticed Chaos Space Marines struggle with was numbers. Particularly armies that were based on a mark of the Chaos Gods, would number at full strength around 30 models. My Khorne army, when it's finished, will have 31 models in it. And what we find is that we just don't have the numbers to cope with things like Tryanids, who attack in hordes, and even things like Necrons, because losing even 1 Chaos Space Marine is going to hurt. It would be good to field an army in numbers.

They also have given them two huge models, the Maulerfiends and the Heldrakes. Having the biggest stuff in the game is not going to last, judging by the precedent of Warhammer, who seem to be trying to put out a bigger and better model every time they release a new army, and with Eldar and Tau surely not far away from an update, the idea that Heldrakes will dominate the skies in 40K due to it's sheer size will last at most a year. So I think this is setting a precendent for what is to come in the new edition of 40K.

Trouble is what about my current armies that have only got Chaos Space Marines in them? What are they going to do? I'm hoping for some updates to the rules that might complement the currently existing rules, but I'll have to read the codex to find that out. I just hope what I don't read is that the armies I have spent the past 4 years collecting have been made redundant.

I think for the first time I'm starting to see what the bitter veterans rant about when their game gets updated, and while I'm not going to take one look at the army book and write it off straight away, I can sort of see why people do. This isn't news to a great many people, but to me it is the first time I sat one iteration of a game out from start to finish so it is a new and not entirely welcome feeling...

Anyway, on to the models:

Maulerfiend/Forgefiend

I quite like these, actually. They look outlandish, as though they just about belong in the Chaos army, but painted up with the rest of the army with a similar colour scheme and it should look really good as a centrepiece for a much larger army.

Heldrake

These look to me like flying stained glass windows. Not that that's a bad thing, but they don't look very... durable. I don't think GW has had a concept of aerodynamics since the Valkyrie, so it looks somewhat unbalanced. It'll be the token flyer of the 40K game for Chaos, a set of rules which I have yet to experience to be honest so I'm not sure how it's all working. I think in terms of colours, the same thing applies as does to the Maulerfiend...

Raptors/Warp Talons

This are quite welcome! I've got some of the old Raptors, and while they don't look bad, the models do look a bit dated these days. I'm hoping these new Raptors will be easier to stand, for a start! Assault troops aren't that easy to come by in Chaos Space Marine armies; Raptors were metal and lacked the flexibility of some of the other models and Bikes aren't actually all that good anyway. I think with the advent of these models we should see some more Fast Attack orientated forces in an army sorely missing some speed...

Warpsmith

Well lookey here, they've gone and put Dr Octopus in 40K. Not sure what I think of this. I like the model and the concept of having someone to repair tanks is useful for Chaos Space Marines but I can't quite see what he's going to do on the battlefield that the Techmarine isn't already doing. That'll be a chapter to look forward to in the book; just what is this guy's deal?

Mutilators

Oh dear, there's always one. Sorry but I don't like these models at all, I think they're absolutely hideous. I think they look overly chunky and barely capable of moving, never mind performing CQC manuevres they're clearly purporting to be able to do. And that 'Flesh Stretched Over The Power Armour' thing they've got going on makes me feel physically ill just thinking about it; why would even a Chaos Space Marine do that to himself? I know these models were probably conceived as a close combat equivalent of the Obliterator design. Funnily enough, I never liked those models either.

All the other models are stuff that was out in Metal before and has now been updated for Finecast, with the exception of the Aspiring Champion who I'm pretty sure was in the Dark Vengeance boxed set.

So all in all, it's not looking too bad at all, and I could definitely come up with some army concepts from what is on display here. I just hope it's not going to be at the expense of the armies I already have...

Edit 24/9/2012

It's just come to my attention that Khorne Bezerkers and Plague Marines, plus the kits to make Thousand Sons and Noise Marines, are now in the Elite section of the Chaos Space Marine bit of the Games Workshop Website. That, to me, is a pretty strong indication that those models are going to be in the Elite section of the army list from now on.

This means 1 of 2 things:

1: We're going back to the old rules where those units were listed as Elites, but if your army was lead by a Chaos Lord with the appropriate mark then they would count as Troops. So if you took a Chaos Lord with the mark of Nurgle, Plague Marines would count as Troops, otherwise they would count as Elites.

2: They're going to be purely Elite choices.

I sincerely hope it's the former. It would fit in more with the background, I guess, and shut down or at least limit some of the more vomit-inducing tournament combos like 2 Daemon Princes with the mark of Slaanesh leading a force of Plagues Marines. Also I've got an army full of Khorne Bezerkers at the moment and I do NOT want to be told that I have to also take 2 units of Chaos Space Marines before the army is going to be legal.

We shal see...

Resident Evil Alliance: 18/9/2012

There's not been much going on with games with Dave for the last couple of weeks because we've been busy building and painting some of our models. It's been a laugh doing that as well but we decided to take a break from that today and go back to playing some games. In this case we went with the expansion to the Resident Evil Deck Building Game: Alliance.

Fundementally the game works the same as the old one so I won't go too much into that. The difference is in the actual cards. The weapons are a lot more powerful, and allow for more risky manuevres into the mansion. This version also encourages a degree of teamwork; I guess that's why they call it Alliance but with only me and Dave playing, we were never going to use that particular aspect of it.

Everything about this guy suggests badass...

One thing I really like about the Resident Evil games is the random character selection. Rather than picking your favourite and spamming their tactics, the game forces you to decide how you can best use your character for any given situation. Dave drew Carlos Olivera, and I drew Jack Krauser. I didn't pay too much attention to Carlos' special rules, but Krauser...

You see it's a bit funny, because I don't actually know enough about the Resident Evil mythos to know who Krauser is. However, most of the characters who I recognised from the video game have special rules in their card counterparts that fit the theme for their character. The one that immediately springs to mind is Barry from the original Resident Evil game who is quite tough and an ace with magnum weapons. The rules for Krauser suggest that he is a complete and utter madman. In the old game his rules related to adding extra power when you use kives. However in Alliance he is absolutely deadly. He doesn't start off that way, as his rules prohibit him from using more than one weapon. I'm not sure whether it means per turn or per explore, hopefully that's been FAQ'd, but the fact is you cannot safely go into the mansion unless you buy another couple of weapons first. But when you manage this and get 6 commendations, his other rule kicks in, where you get +10 attack for each card in your hand. Combine that with what I think is the Fierce Battle card that allows you to draw another 4, and this makes Krauser unstoppable...

I bought a load of assault rifles as well. These work slightly differently in Alliance; the amount of damage you do is dependent on the amount of ammo you have, up to a maximum of 20. It doesn't make much tactical sense given Krauser's rules, but I was looking for the Signature Special that brings that limit up to 60. This took up lot of ammo cards and we really did need to flush out some of our other cards to speed up the deck, but this combined with Krauser's rules meant that I was often going into the mansion with 130, 140 attack power, which is more than anything could stand up to in there. I found Wesker quite quickly, dispatched him, and won the game easily, we didn't even count the score.

So, I really do like Alliance. If you're getting into it for the first time it's probably better to go for the core game first, but I do like the extra depth the rules give the game. I also like the more kick-ass versions of the weapons, and I'd love to be able to try the partner rules as well, although as it's still only me and Dave after more than a year I'm not holding my breath for this. All in all, Resident Evil is a really good card game, and there's enough depth and tactical variety in there - thanks largely to the characters - to keep me coming back for more for a long time yet.

Lord of the Rings, 10/9/2012

This was another match in Simon's campaign, this time playing Simon himself. The latter fact alone kind of makes this whole post a bit redundant; you always lose against Simon, right?

Actually, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be...

OK for those of you who are interested, a bit of background - I've known Simon for a while, since I've worked at Games Workshop and I saw him around afterwards as well. He's one of these power gamers that I don't have a lot of patience with, so I rarely play him by choice. Other than that he's a really nice kid, and we get on well. He's put a lot of effort into organising this campaign, and while I still think he's got a lot to learn in terms of what does and doesn't work in a shop environment, I felt obliged to play him as a reward, with me using my Harad, and Simon using his Dwarves.

By nature of being Dwarves Simon's army had high levels of defence, and Simon had used the rules imposed on the campaign to make them even harder to hurt. They'd take a while to get to me, but they more than made up for it by having a Balista there as well. With Gimli and Durin as his special characters, I was in for a rough ride, especially since I had to kill 75% of his models in order to win and that would have to have included at least one of the characters...

It was never going to end well for me, was it?

Daunting task though that was, I was as surprised as anyone when my archers, in an uncharacteristic display of professionalism, managed to take out four dwarves in the first couple of turns. Simon chose that point to move the dwarves behind the ruins, forcing me to take the fight to them. Unfortunately it wasn't going to happen, as I had Gimli and Durin to deal with...

Far more typically of me I failed to wound either of them. I did try Sap Will on Durin, which I couldn't even get off, and then I tried to Black Dart him, which was a waste of time because I'd forgotten that he was defence 10 and therefore needed a lot higher than the usual 3+ to score the wound. Having shot half of my army to pieces with his Balista, and munched most of the rest with the Dwarves, Simon called the game to a halt at the point my army broke. Strictly speaking it should have gone on longer, but it was over by then and we both knew it.

Simon's asked me for a rematch and I don't know if I want to oblige; the fact is my army's not powerful enough to deal with him and I don't think it'll be much fun if I get involved with another game that I obviously haven't got a hope of winning.

Still, I'm going back to Workshop on Monday Night so we'll find out what happens then...

Painting: Chaos Defiler, Chaos Rhino

I bring to you for the first time in a while a long overdue painting blog. These are additions to the Khornate Chaos Space Marine army I started last year. And a bit of a rant as well, but more on that later...

Daemonic posession might just give it the edge...

OK to start us of we've got a Chaos Space Marine Rhino. This wasn't actually planned; how it came about was that just after Games Workshop released 6th Edition 40K, I turned up at GW to participate in a 400pt tournament. I took my Chaos and my new Space Marine army as well which I have yet to show you guys so get ready. Now the Space Marine stuff I had, but for the Chaos Space Marine stuff I needed a Rhino to make a 400pt list so I got to the shop early and bought this, and painted near enough all of it in the morning apart from the heads and that on the spikes running across the top of it. I painted it pretty much the same way as I painted the Bezerkers; copious amounts of Mechrite Red and Gold painted from Brown. I was pleased with the muck and dust coming up the sides, done with Khemri Brown and Denheb Stone, but I was less pleased when I noticed that I hadn't done it on the back. Ah well, there's always the next one. The detail on the heads were probably my favourite bits to paint, to be honest; I'm getting better at doing that! You can't see it on the photos but I've painted the Space Marine head as though he was from the Black Consuls chapter that I'm painting up as well; the last time I painted a Space Marine head it was Dark Angels and I didn't want to do that again what with Dark Vengeance out now, so I chose a colour to offset the Red: Black. On the whole I think it came out pretty well.

Where were the lascannons?

And then there was this hulking monstrosity. I painted the Defiler in the same way although I found I did have to go over it in Mechrite Red again after I'd painted all the metal. It made a more solid coat of paint which was great. I didn't go into a lot of detail with this one; the metal bits were metal, the brass bits were brass and everything else was either red or my attempt at obsidian; black highlighted with grey. I avoided weathering effects because I honestly couldn't see how to apply them to this. Neither of these models are my best painting job ever, but I never said they were. To be honest, painting tanks is not my favourite part of collecting an army; I think I find infantry models more fun now that I'm actually getting quite good at it. I just haven't got the experience in painting larger models like this. Still, I have to start somewhere, and for what I'm going to be using them for (gaming, largely,) they work as well as they needed. They'd certainly get me into the Throne of Skulls tournament, though I doubt I'd win any awards for best looking army!

Which brings me on to something that's been annoying me about a lot of the models I've been buying, particularly for 40K. You plan an army list, you look at your codex, you equip your squads and vehicles in the optimum configuration... only to find that THE WEAPONS DON'T APPEAR IN THE BOX!!!

This has happened a few times over the models I've been building. The original plan for the Scout army, for example, was to give one of the sergeants a Power Fist. It's allowed in the rules, but the Scout models don't come with power fists. The Khorne Bezerkers that I painted last year, I wanted to give them Power Axes (now that 6th edition makes a distinction between Power Axes and other weapons, I'm very glad I made this decision,) and Plasma Pistols, but you can do neither out of the box, even with the Skull Champion. And then there was the Defiler, for which the original plan was to have a Twin-Linked Lascannon for the right arm. Except when I opened the box THERE WAS NO BLOODY LASCANNON! So instead I'm stuck with the Reaper Autocannon instead, which thinking about it would probably be more useful for supporting infantry charges, but it's still not what I wanted!

Now I know what you're thinking: "Well, why don't you convert it?" Yes, except that what with the Defiler being the only substantial vehicle in my army at this point, there's nothing to convert it from. The only thing I can think to do is if I were to drop another £35 on a Predator, and stick the turret with the Twin-Linked Lascannon on it onto the arm. Which would render the Predator completely redundant since the turret would then be on the Defiler. No chance in Hell, would be my answer to that. Same with the Space Marine Scouts; I'd have to spend more money on a box of Space Marines just to get the Power Fist out of it - assuming it comes with one - and to be honest it would probably have been better employed on the Space Marines anyway. The Bezerkers I actually did convert from Ork parts, and that worked reasonably well, but I'll need to find a way to get hold of a plasma pistol before I paint the next lot or I won't be able to equip them properly.

Of course, I know why it's happened - the rules that allow those weapon options were written after the box was designed. I don't know what you were allowed to do with a Defiler before the current edition of the codex came out but if the designers had no reason to put a lascannon in there, they wouldn't have put one in, and they're not going to redesign the whole box just because of a change in the rules. With the Scouts I'd suggest it's pretty much the same story. The Bezerkers are a bit of a funny one; those models were designed for 2nd edition (the frame of the Sprue says 1994, which even by GW standards is an old model) and while aesthetically at least they work as well as they need to, the fact that they've not had an update for nearly 20 years means that they're currently lacking in a lot of the equipment that is allowed in the rules.

Nonetheless, I'm going to be urinated if the Chaos Vindicator I've ordered doesn't have the Havoc Launchers in there, since every vehicle in my army has them. Not quite as urinated as I would have been if I hadn't got a couple of Havoc launchers left over from the Rhinos I made for my previous Chaos army, but urinated nonetheless. Apart from that, there's not really a lot more to this army as I'll be painting it in pretty much the same way so unless something really amazing happens with the Vindicators, this will be the last you'll hear from them until they're ready for the table...

See you then.

Dark Vengeance: Wow, I didn't see that coming!

So, Games Workshop have come up with their new boxed set for 40K...

I had hoped to bring a picture to you at this point but all I'm getting from Blogger is Invalid Server Response so google it if you're interested.

Hmm, pulled out a lot of stops with this one, I see! OK first point straight off the bat: I think the models look fantastic. I really do. There's been several releases over the last four years where Games Workshop have made their one-off models to go in boxed sets like these something quite spectacular; the detail on the Space Hulk models was awesome, and the ships in Dreadfleet looked very good, conceptually at least, even if the game turned out to be a huge let-down. But putting them in the boxed set for 40K was actually a really good idea. Compare it to Black Reach, which had some exclusive models in there, but with the exception of the Deffkoptas there was nothing in that box that you couldn't get in one of the currently exisiting boxes, except for the Dreadnought and that only needed converting, and you see what I mean - THESE are the models you're going to get in THIS box.

I was also surprised, as regular readers of my blog (both of you) will know, to see Chaos Space Marines in the boxed set. As Chaos are fundementally similar to Space Marines in many ways, it wouldn't exactly make for an interesting battle if both armies appeared in the boxed set, having to do the same things to shoot, wound, assault etc... but they've made a good job of getting around that, as I'll discuss in a minute. I was convinced it was going to be one of the Xenos armies, but while we're here, you might as well enjoy it. Dark Angels, of course, appeared on the cover of the new Paint Sets and the Rulebook, so it shouldn't be news to anyone that they appeared in Dark Vengeance.

So what models are they? Take a look at the video...

http://youtu.be/hG70lTjCZZA

Rather than go through each unit one by one, which would be little more than a running commentary on the video and would bore myself and all my readers who'd probably only get as far as the second paragraph, I'm just going to give you a run through my first impressions.

What I like about Dark Vengeance

• Thematically, I'm expecting a lot of depth to this. All the boxed sets up until now have been Space Marines vs Xenos army, straightforward good guys vs bad guys, all well and good. But simply by changing the Space Marine chapter to Dark Angels, and throwing Chaos Space Marines in there, we've got an army that's essentially good but will act ruthlessly to persue their goals, and a villianous army based on betrayal, so there's a lot more going on here than simply Alien vs Man.
• The models are gorgeous. I doubt there'll be much flexibility in their assembly - that's never the point of boxed sets - but the fact that they've put a lot of character into even the Tactical Marines means that they'll be a joy to paint and will look great on the gaming table. They really do capture the essence of what it means to be a Space Marine, or a follower of Chaos.
• The Chaos models were a bit of a curveball for reasons I mentioned above. However, watch the video again and see what they've got in there. Chosen! As far as I know there have never been specific models for Chosen Chaos Space Marines before, then they go and put this lot out. I am a fan of what's happening right now. Chaos Cultists, there's a distinct feeling of "about fucking time!" Cultists have long been under the radar in 40K. They appear in the Imperial Armour books, and are used quite heavily in some of the novels, but there's never been specific models for them before now so they've had to be converted from Imperial Guard if you wanted to use them; they've certainly not appeared in the Chaos Codex before now. This will be a welcome addition to the armies of Chaos, though I am a little concerned with how, if at all, they will interfere with my army lists when they release the new Chaos Codex. Which they'll have to do because even without the cultists you've got the Helbrute. This I think is going to replace the Chaos Dreadnought, and not a moment too soon. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it all works; it's kind of ironic that the Chaos Lord in there is just about the least interesting model for me, though his epic design more than makes up for it.
• Where Chaos have their new models, there is a lot of variety in the Dark Angels side of things. Tactical Marines, Deathwing Terminators, Ravenwing Bikes, a Commander and a Librarian, it surpasses (just) Black Reach in the variety of models on offer here.

However, there's always stuff to pick holes in...

What I don't like about Dark Vengeance

• I don't want to turn this into a rant about the crass marketing tactics that Games Workshop often employ, but you are going to need A LOT of paints to paint this set properly. Unless you really know what you're doing with mixing colours, a Hobby Starter Set won't be enough any more. The Dark Angels alone have 4 different colours of armour, and that's before you start painting weapons and faces. The amount of detail on the Chaos models won't be easy to paint properly either. Now I'm not going to have too much of a problem with this, because I've got most of the paints and I'm confident enough in my painting now to be able to do a barely passable job on most of these models. But for a box that purports to be the entry into the hobby, there's a lot of complexity in the painting going on that might be just a little too much for a 10 year old kid getting into the hobby for the first time. Apart from anything else, you're going to have to drop a lot of money on paints...
• Still no terrain! What's the matter with you? Wargames need terrain and that isn't being provided in the boxed set! The opportunities for a new piece of terrain to go with this lot were there and they haven't taken it. Again for a full hobbyist, this won't be a problem as most will either have their own terrain already or will play in a place that has, but for someone looking for a game to play at home...
• The price, that was always going to come up in the end. When Black Reach first came out I remember selling it for £40. Games Workshop are asking for £65 for the limited edition with a couple of other models in there, which they may drop down to £60 when they're all gone, I don't know. But the fact remains that they're expecting me to pay £25 more for this game than I did for the last one. I do consider this quite harsh!

But of course the main issue here is, am I going to buy it?

Probably.

But not yet. There's not a lot of money around at the moment. Basically because I work for DPA and I'm paid on supply, I only get paid at the end of the month for the work I did in the previous one. Which in August is nothing. Which is what they'll pay me. So I'm expected to survive from now until the end of October on whatever they're paying me for July, which won't be a lot because I didn't work the whole month. I will therefore almost certainly miss the limited edition, not that I'm particularly fussed about that. I'm a gamer first and painter second, though you wouldn't know it for how much of both of those things I do in proportion to the other, so extra HQ choices and more stuff for me to paint is not going to sell it for me.

On the other hand those Chaos models are great and there will be a guide in the book that tells me how to use them; I'd love to get my hands on that, even if it will all be in the new Chaos Codex, who knows when that's going to be? Sooner than I thought, most likely, because of the new models, but we will see. I've got a birthday coming up, so...

So, overall pleased with my first impressions for the boxed set. Probably not going to go for the rest of the stuff that goes with it though. Dice and Tape Measures I have, a figure case would be a complete waste of money as they will all happily fit in a regular one after a bit of work with scissors, and the game tie-in novels invariably turn out to be rubbish.

Let me know what you think....

Lord of the Rings: 20/8/2012

This was part of Simon's campaign where I found my forces of Harad - now with the same number of bows as spears - taking on my old friend Jaques' Spirit force, lead by the Witch King of Angmar. I'd elected to attack Jaques because he was getting a little too close to my territory for comfort...

Now that I'd added the extra models to my army I had some 21 models to bring to the fight. Jaques had 9. We both rolled the same mission, which was to kill 75% of one another's forces. As I only had to kill 7 models in order to do this, I definitely had the advantage of numbers. However, armies with small numbers tend to have high defence, and this army was no exception; I think the lowest defence was 6. I deployed my army in a bow line that would have allowed me to volley fire should I wish, made sure I was within 24" of Jaques' line, and began...

There was a ruined building in the middle of the board which I fully expected Jaques to take. I also knew that his army was far better in combat than mine so I elected to take a 'Stand and Shoot' approach. My rolling was, as ever, abysmal, and after 2 turns of concentrated fire I only managed to take down 1 of the spirits. I was not tempted to try a volley fire; maybe if Jaques had more numbers I might have tried that but as his high defence meant that I was going to have to be very lucky to score a wound, I saw no sense in making it even harder for me to hit than it already was. Still, one was down. There was just the rather pressing matter of the Witch King approaching me...

I really don't know as much as I should about what the Ringwraiths are capable of, but I knew that the Witch King could do me some serious harm if I allowed him to get close enough. I therefore turned my attentions, and my bows, over to him; moving back 3 inches per turn and pouring shot after shot into hi,. Whether it was tactically a mistake to do this I don't know, but even without my archers missing almost every shot they made, his defence of 8 made him almost impossible to hurt once I hit. I did manage it a couple of times, but Jaques made use of his Might and Fate points to keep the Ringwraith alive long enough to get close enough to start using his spells.



The Witch King: he will MAUL your shit...

And this is where it really started to get nasty. Ringwraiths have a spell called Sap Will. If they cast it on a character with Will points, the effect of the spell is that it reduces that character's will points down to 0. It doesn't usually do any direct damage to the character, but it does leave them unable to resist more damaging magic attacks later on. If Ringwraiths start casting it on each other, the effect can be devastating. Remember that Ringwraiths need at least 1 point of Will to remain in the game; if they're ever reduced to 0 they're removed as a casualty. If the spell is cast on a Ringwraith - which Jaques did to me, twice - and you don't manage to resist it, then all you can do is use however many Will points you failed the roll by to bring the resist roll up to where you need it. As you can imagine, it did not go particularly well for me. I responded with Black Dart - I only needed to wound him once now to finish him off - but I'd forgotten that as Black Dart is a magical attack, he can resist it with Will points, of which the Witch King has a lot. He succesfully cast Sap Will on me one more time and as I was down to 1 will point by then, I lost the Betrayer and the special rule he confered on my bows.

While all this was going on Jaques had been slowly moving his Spirits out of the cover of the ruins towards me. They have a special rule which allows them to command my models if they fail a Courage check, and with the Witch King so near, this was an almost certainty. He seperated the components of my army apart, and destroyed them piecemeal with the Ringwraith and the Spirits. I called time on the game a couple of turns after my force broke and handed the game to Jaques.

So, what went wrong?

Well, I can blame it all on bad luck but the fact of the matter is I was in way over my head taking on Jaques. My army just wasn't strong enough to match his power. Strategically, the lessons I had learned last week did the job, but with such a high defence and my army having to take courage checks if they wanted to charge anything at all in the army, it was always going to be an uphill struggle for me.

Nonetheless, there are a couple of things I might need to think about should such a situation arise again:

1. I set a lot of store by destroying the Ringwraith, and that wasn't necessarily the best thing to do. Even with their high defence, the Spirits would have been easier to destroy than the Ringwraith and as I needed to take out 7 of them to win the game, my efforts might have been better directed there. Granted, they were in cover, and the Witch King would have blocked my line of sight to at least some of them, but it might have tipped the battle in my favour, or at least made that last combat less painful.
2. Regardless of whether I attacked the Ringwraith or the Spirits, two turns in was not the time to change tac. I needed to commit to one or the other right from the start in order to get the job done. If I'd attacked the Witch King straight away I'd have had another two turns of shooting at him before he got close enough to use his powers; I don't know if it would have made much difference but all the Will points in the world won't help you if I've shot you to pieces before you get a chance to use them. (Unless you're running The Undying.)
3. I also need to be far more aware of what it means to cast the different spells in the game. I really needed to know what Sap Will did, and got in with that first. Then again, would that really have helped? A wizard's duel between Ringwraiths is basically going to be a battle of attrition, with the prize going to the Ringwraith with the highest Will Points, in this case the Witch King. Probably would have been better to take on the Witch King purely with conventional weapons

Basically, I think that battle was going to come down to whosever Ringwraith was still alive by the the end of the game. Jaques needed his to keep my Courage down to allow his Spirits to use their command rules, I needed mine because that was basically the only thing in my army that had a hope of hurting the Spirits.

Lessons learned, and there are battles still to be had. Not next week though. As it's Bank Holiday Monday, the shop will close at 6 so there'll be no campaign that night. Maybe the week after...