40K - GW Pushes The FAQ Button

Over the weekend GW pushed the FAQ Button for the second time since the release of "New" Warhammer 40k.

You can see the FAQs here

The key things that GW addressed were:

• Flyer Spam
• Understrength units
• Certain units that there was "discussion" of spam e.g. Razorwing in DrewCarey

I like this responsiveness from GW. Some have complained that it is heavy-handed but I think it is good to nip things in the bud rather than let them develop into real "issues".

The other potential "benefit" is that it may slow down some Tournament Organisers from  instituting 'Fixes" to the game so early in the cycle. I prefer the softly softly approach where there is actual data to support changes.

Too many people forget that "Anecdote =/= Data".

My only concern is that this proactive approach from GW doesn't last. I've seen GW start out with a hiss and a roar before and then fizz out. Maybe "this time, it's different"

KOW - WSS: Winter - Results and Photos

On Saturday we had the third in the Warlords Super Series, Winter. It was a four round 2000 point tournament.

The four missions played were randomly generated and were Ransack, Loot, Secure and Control. The results were as follows:

Best Sport was Eugene Geilen and Neil Williamson's new Trident Realms won Best Army.

This was Rob Higgins' first KOW tournament win and Ian Dixon's first podium.

A mix up with dates meant the event was played at Chez Dunn with the four tables set up in my lounge.

Rob's Orcs fight Peter's Varangur in Round One. It ended 8-8

Ogres vs. Undead. Ryan won this but Ian came back strong in the next three rounds.

Neil's Trident Realmw with Kraken and Tidal Surges

Adepticon 2018 Hotel Booked

Yesterday I managed to book a room for the five nights of Adepticon 2018 at the convention hotel.

Checking back today I see that the weekend nights are now booked out 😱

Adepticon 2018 starts on the 22nd March and runs through to the 25th. The tickets don't go on sale until later in the year but it is great to have accommodation sorted.

From here it is just a case of working out what courses I want to take and keeping an eye on the airfares.

Excited....I missed out on accommodation at the venue this year which meant I gave it a miss.

Lack of Commitment

So when I packed my suitcase for my holiday, I threw in the new 40k hardback rulebook and the two most recent White Dwarfs. However over the seven days they never made it out of the suitcase.

Must have got distracted 😀

Perhaps the five hour flight home will let me catch up with some podcasts!

KOW - WSS "Winter" Lists

This Saturday is the "Winter" outing for the Warlords Super Series.

You can find the lists here

Again the Forces of Good are conspicuous by their absence. We have:

• Orcs x2
• Varangur x2
• Forces of the Abyss
• Undead
• Orges
• Trident Realms

I'll post some pics come the weekend.

40K - GW's Scenario Toolkit

Checking out the Warhammer Community site the other day I saw a video clip promoting the new “Open War” cards.

These cards are a way to create your own scenario. In the pack you get 48 cards split as follows:

• Deployment – 12 cards showing different deployment setups
• Objective – 12 cards allowing you to generate a game objective
• Twists – 12 special rules cards, choose one to impact your scenario
• Ruse – 6 cards giving a lesser point force an advantage
• Sudden Death – 6 cards giving a heavily outpointed force a sudden death victory condition

Now putting aside that you can easily recreate this product with dice and a couple of written tables, IMO the $28 cost is okay if you want a polished and easy to use card-based version. 

I think this this product is great for creating an infinitely (ok, 62,208) variable backdrop for your games especially if you want to vary up point levels. The potential to create some great narrative battles is huge.

Looking forward to getting my hands on some.

40K - Getting The Basics Right

It’s interesting how quickly things get distilled in the world of wargaming. The new rules for Warhammer 40k have been out less than a month and already you are starting to see new “realities” emerge.

I read blogs, belong to Facebook groups, visit forums, watch live streams and listen to podcasts. This level of information input is light years away from even ten years ago. Then you had forums and even then they were a quantum step up from yahoo discussion groups.

As I walked up to the bus this morning I was told that if I’m playing Space Marines then I should forget about Tactical Marines because they are a sub-optimal choice and there is no benefit in them since the new world is one of “character” rather than Troop “tax”.

I thought if this is truly the case – and I have no basis to doubt it – then that is really sad.

The first reason that it is sad is because, from the fluff point of view, Tactical Marine Squads should form the backbone of every Space Marine army. They just should.

The second follows on from this. If they don’t then Games Workshop has got it wrong – at least in terms of Matched Play. And if this was “the most play tested” version of the rules ever then it should have been picked up.

Now I’m sure some cynics out there will say that this is all part of a marketing Master Plan to transition Space Mariners to Primaris Marines but by all accounts these aren’t much better.

When after a month, the go-to army for Space Marines is either spammed shooty flyers or Roboute Giuilliman with his Techmarine mate standing in a circle of twin linked lascannon Razorbacks, bought as dedicated Transports for four Devastator Squads then something was missed in the brief.

Now this may all change in the next two weeks when we get Codex: Space Marines….I hope so. But if 1-2 months after that release if the most ‘efficient” Space Marine armies don’t have at least 2-3 full strength Tactical Marine Squads or Primaris Marine equivalents then GW has got its fulcrum wrong. Sure, you will get variant armies - for instance you might see SM Bikers etc - but they should be the exception rather than the rule if GW have the Tactical Space Marine building block right.

40K - New Death Guard

Apart for the Dark Imperium and EtB model, it appears that the Death Guard are getting three new kits to accompany their Codex.

Mortarion and the Terminators were flagged at Adepticon but the latest White Dwarf has a picture of the third kit, a new vehicle.

People have been speculating that it is the 40K version of the Epic Plaguecaster, however it varies dramatically from that vehicle. The Plaguecaster was more trebuchet than bombard.

Regardless, new models are great for us Veterans of the Long War though I suspect we'll have to fight for our models with the hoi polloi who have all jumped off the Eldar/Imperium bandwagon and are now painting up Death Guard.

Those from Barbarous know who they are! We've been here from the beginning.

Mathammer Calculator v1.1

Jack updated the calculator with the following suggestions:

• add "best of 2d6" damage for melta
• add autohit option
• add random number of attacks (d3, d6)
• shows the cumulative probability when you hover over each bar in the chart

Enjoy

40k - Chaos Release Schedule

The news this week that GW has an accelerated release schedule for 8^th Edition codices is both welcome and frightening.

Welcome, in that we’ll see new opportunities for flavour development in both background and rules. But frightening in that I don’t trust them to do the job properly [Read: The Way I Want It].

Just over six months ago, GW released Traitor Legions for 7^th Edition. This was the long awaited “fix” for Gav Thorpe’s 4^th Ed Codex: Chaos Space Marines. Thorpe’s codex was in fact Chaos Renegade Space Marines, a focus never addressed over the subsequent years.

Traitor Legions brought the Veterans of the Long War back front and centre. However , for every hit, there was a miss. In retrospect we now know GW’s eye was firmly on the 8^th Edition ball and Traitor’s Legion was a stopgap measure – probably to stop whiners like me. The great success of this codex was the uptake by the community and I expect GW clearly saw that there is a ready market for releases around the nine enlighted Legions.

Where it missed was that it did not capture the entirety of the 2002-04 Index Astartes articles from White Dwarf and their subsequent development in the 3^rd Ed Chaos Space Marine Codex (probably the single biggest selling non-Space Marine codex in their history – four separate printings).

So Traitor Legions lacked essential elements like Cult Terminators and their ilk, permissions and restrictions. I expect that a key reason was that GW does not produce a lot of these models – and that being the key determinant for inclusion in the rules. However as we move to standalone codices for individual Traitor Legions, the expectation is that these will be accompanied by new releases. 

I am therefore very optimistic that we will see Death Guard Terminators and vehicle conversion sprues. However I hope that they also look at some of the restrictions that they could include e.g. reduced Fast Attack, exclusion of Flyers and especially Death Guard bikers, restriction on number of Dedicated Transports, increased capacity for Walkers over Tracked Vehicles, etc.

What I’m not optimistic for is the treatment of the other Traitor Legions in the foreshadowed Codex: Chaos Space Marines. My thinking is that this will be another “get you by” effort that perpetuates the Chaos Allsorts legacy. A response to a question on the Warhammer 40000 Community Facebook page said that the CSM codex will include the Emperor’s Children. I asked a follow-up question as to whether this means Noise Weapons on Terminators, Bikers, Havocs and Dreads and to date the crickets have chirped merrily in isolation. My expectation that they will be included is very low at this point.