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.