Fields of Blood

Equinox Comp Released

2012-01-27T15:04:00.001+13:00

The TO for Equinox released the Composition pack yesterday. It is very close to the initial indications though there had recently been talk of limiting armies to only two Rare choices.

I’m glad he’s gone with a more standard pack and think that the set of restrictions allows most players and races to put forward a competitive army.

Equinox 2012 Restrictions: (Final)

What we have tried to do and the purpose of the restrictions is to temper slightly and as little as possible the armies in 8th edition. The Pack will try to impose a lite as possible number of restrictions to give all armies a level as possible playing field. With these restrictions we would expect to see a diverse range of armies in attendance at the tournament.

Note: The TO reserves the right to Veto lists deemed to be too offensive.

General Restrictions:

2400pt: No special or named characters allowed.
Only one double rare choice maybe taken.
Max of 12 power dice or dispel dice may be used, stored or otherwise rolled by each player in each magic phase. The basic premise is that if it looks like a power dice and acts like a power dice it counts as power dice, even if it is called something else. (Once the cap has been reached all dice received from any source will be discarded or disregarded eg: Mushroom dice.)
Max of +2 power dice or dispel dice may be generated, recovered from storage or otherwise created by each player in each magic phase. Dice generated from channel attempts or one use items are exempt from this restriction. The basic premise is that if it looks like a power dice and acts like a power dice it counts as power dice, even if it is called something else.
You may have units/abilities that actually would generate more than 2 extra dice, but any excess dice are lost.
Non-warmachine shooting is limited to 90 shots per turn - count the number of shots, not models. So for example Dark Elf Warriors with repeater crossbows count as 2 shots. Ranked (non-skirmisher) infantry with missile weapons with a range of 12" or less are excluded from this restriction.
An army may not include more than 2 warmachines of the same type.
No single non character unit in the army may be over 450 points
Maximum of three units per army with the “fly” rule.
An army may have up to 4 war machines and template weapons. Warmachines that use a template count as a single choice in this regard. All template weapons (from magic items, abilities, etc.) count towards this limit, except for spells.
Characters affected by the following spells that would instantly remove it from the table only take one wound if it would normally benefit from a look out sir roll from being part of a unit. The Dwellers Below and Final Transmutation spells. This does not apply if you are a lone character outside of a unit.

Army Specific Restrictions:

Lizardmen

Salamanders 0 – 3 models per army.
Higher State of Consciousness and the Crown of Command may not be taken on the same model.

Vampire Counts

A maximum of two non character units may be taken with the “ethereal” rule. A Black Coach counts as “ethereal” for the purposes of this rule.
A maximum of 2 Tomb Banshees and/or Carin Wraith (Character) are allowed in each army (i.e a maximum of one of each or two of one type). If you have taken 2 ethereal non character units as per the restriction above this is limited to 1.
Cairn Wraiths (unit) are 0 – 6 models per army.

Skaven

Hell Pit Abominations & Warp Lighting Cannons are 0-1 unit selection per army.
Warlock Engineers are 0 – 3 models per army.
An army can take either a Brass Orb or a Doom Rocket not both.

Dark Elves

The Pendant of Kaleth and the Crown of Command may not be taken on the same model.
Hydras 0 – 1 unit selections per army.

Empire

Steam Tanks are 0 – 1 models per army

Warriors of Chaos

Hell Cannons are 0 – 1 unit selections per army

Daemons of Chaos

No duplication of Daemonic Gifts or Daemonic Icons.
Icon Bearer may take either Daemonic Gifts or Daemonic Icon

High Elves

No further restrictions
High Elf armies may ignore the “same type” warmachine restriction

Ogres

Hellheart cannot be chosen in an army that includes a Greedy Fist.

No further restrictions for the army books below:

Chaos Dwarfs (Throne of Tamurkhan book)
Tomb Kings
Bretonnians
Wood Elves
Orcs & Goblins
Beastmen
Dwarves

I'm tossing up which army I'll take. I've got four events coming up over the next three months so I'm looking to vary between the armies I'll use. All are running broadly similar hard cap systems each with their own twists. I'm leaning towards using Ogres for this one as they are easier to carry on the plane.

Weather Warning - The Ethereal Cloud

2012-01-27T09:41:00.000+13:00

With the release of the new Vampire Counts book there has been the inevitable discussion of how the meta game will change. Certainly the previous release, Ogres, changed the meta by significantly improving the viability of a Monstrous Infantry build. Up until then infantry had been the dominant troop type and the tools for dealing with infantry, didn’t necessarily work on Monstrous Infantry.

Along lurches the Vampire Counts and suddenly the new hotness is the “Ethereal Cloud”, an army of Core backed up by as many ethereal models you can fit in. Of course you get the “Sky is Falling Crowd” led by the Warhammer Henny Pennys who populate the internet and tell you how overpowered the build is.

And of course like the story of Henny Penny, it isn’t.

The easiest way to deal with Ethereal units is to have a ready supply of magic attacks. Daemons, Wood Elves and parts of the Warriors of Chaos and Skaven army have this in spades. Remember also that Page 7 of the BRB FAQ tells you that all attacks made by magical items are considered to be magical attacks. This includes attacks made by weapons, armour and banners unless it specifically is excluded in its description.

There are five magic weapons in the Common Magic Items that are 10 points or less so there is considerable opportunity to cheaply outfit a character for the role.

Magic missiles are a great way to deal with an ethereal unit and virtually every army has access to one in its arsenal. The most obvious is the signature Fireball spell that gives you the opportunity to generate up to 3D6 hits. For the points conscious the common Ruby Ring with its bound fireball is also an option.

“Aah, but what if they put 5 ethereal characters in a block of zombies so they can’t be targeted”. Well besides it being a pretty expensive way of generating a limited number of attacks, the unit is very susceptible to warmachines/impact hits. It also provides a very large drag on your Hero allowance reducing the number of casters you can include.

Of all the armies out there, Orcs & Goblins are probably the least suited to dealing with ethereal units. However they still have access to the tools. It probably means they just need to spend less on the toys and commit a part of their points allowance to dealing with ethereals. It doesn’t need to be large but it probably needs to be included in the mix.

So is the sky falling? I personally don’t think it’s even cloudy.

New GW Tower Sighted

2012-01-26T10:04:00.000+13:00

Sighted in the upcoming White Dwarf.

Can't say I'm too excited. No idea what the retarded skelly thing on the top is. Or does.

My Weekend's Effort

2012-01-24T09:54:00.000+13:00

Over the weekend I started put together and started to paint my Wolfrats and managed to get a game in against the new Vampire Counts.

The wolfrats are lovely models and I think that they will paint up well. You get three body variations and five different heads so you can create a wide variety of models. I’ll finish them this week and try to get some photos up.

I played Kent’s VC on Sunday morning and got my first taste of the new book. Kent uses a skeleton based list with three big blocks plus a medium GG unit. He had two ethereal units – wraiths with banshee and a unit of 5 Hexwraiths. I was able to get a flank charge on the hexwraiths and my magic weapons saw them off. Didn’t really see what they can do.

Yesterday afternoon – after cleaning up the Dunn-geon which was looking like a tip – I sat down with two new boxes of the Gale Force Nine “Battlefield in a Box” terrain. I had picked these up late last year at the Warlords’ Call to Arms. Fifteen minutes later I had a modular rocky hill and seven rocky outcrops (impassable terrain) to match my Realm of Battle board.

The “Battlefield in a Box” sets come ready painted and just require static grass. I can’t recommend these terrain pieces highly enough. Looking forward to their new Desert Fantasy Terrain series.

International Variations

2012-01-23T09:47:00.001+13:00

With all this discussion recently around composition systems I think that it is quite interesting the move globally to hard cap systems.

The UK and NZ seem to be firmly in that camp - with some NZ events having a TO veto - while Europe has always been that way. From what I understand the US vacillates between no comp and hard comp depending on geography.

The one outlier is Australia. Here they are still largely following the subjective comp route, primarily using panel comp (or in some events peer). I'm not really sure why they are so wedded to the system as I struggle to see any significant benefits over a well thought out hard cap system.

I've just finished marking 60+ lists for Cancon (Australia's biggest event) and certainly it is hard to make a strong case that not using hard caps results in greater list variety. There was only minimal variation between the lists for most of the races.

I expect there will be the usual griping about comp scores post the event. This is just an occupational hazard of a subjective system. The hard cap system mutes this - to an extent - and transfers it to pre the event (with the added advantage of participants having certainty).

SCGT v2.0

2012-01-23T09:34:00.001+13:00

The latest iteration of the SCGT pack was released on the weekend. A group of us are giving it a run at HomeCon II in mid-February to see how we like playing under it.The most interesting things are the inclusion of Special Characters - with a few notable exceptions - and the first restrictions around the new VC book.While I can quibble around individual cases I think it makes an interesting read.

SCGT Composition Pack 2012 v2.0

The aim of this composition system has only ever been to “take the edge” off of armies and stop some
games becoming non-events due to selections by either player. As with all systems it is not perfect
but has the bonus of being play tested at the biggest tournaments on the circuit over the last 10
months and tweaked accordingly.

General Restrictions

*Apart from Winds of Magic dice an army may only add 2 Power Dice or Dispel Dice to its magic dice
pool in each magic phase (apart from the exceptions below). This includes channelling, so for
example if you channel one dice you can only add one more. Any dice added to the pool, regardless
of source (generated, stolen, stored from previous magic phases, generated by magic items/abilities
to boost spellcasting before or after the casting attempt, produced by spells, lore abilities, and so on)
count. Excess dice are simply discarded and cannot be used in any way (i.e. - they can’t be stored). If
a dice is stolen from the opponent’s pool, but your army has already generated two extra dice, the
dice is removed from the opponent’s pool and then discarded. Any additional dice are lost and cannot
be used. The controlling player chooses which dice are discarded if there is a need to distinguish.

*Dice generated from being in proximity to a “Shard of the Herdstone” do not count as a “power dice”
for the purpose of the dice limit.

*Items that add “D3” power dice are allowed to exceed the dice limit and add the additional dice
should the result of the dice roll grant three extra dice.

*Night Goblin Mushroom D6 do not count as "power dice" as per their Army book.

*Dark Elves may only use a max of 6 dice to cast a spell the same as everyone else. This overrides
the rule in their book.

* Non warmachine shooting is limited to 90 shots per army - count the number of shots, not models.
So for example Dark Elf Warriors with repeater crossbows count as 2 shots. Ranked (non-skirmisher)
infantry with missile weapons with a range of 20" or less are excluded from this restriction. (see note
(i) for additional clarification)

* An army may not include more than 2 warmachines of the same type and no more than 5 in an
army.

* No single non character unit in the army may be over 450 points

* The magic item “Fozzrik’s Folding Fortress” may not be taken.

Notes:
(i) Any model with a fixed maximum amount of shots (read: shooting attacks) counts that
maximum towards the shot cap (i.e blowpipes = 2, RXB = 2, lifetaker = 3) but those
with a random/variable number (treeman, razordon, Hail of doom arrow, flamers, etc)
count as 1, excluding any ranked (non-skimirisher) infantry with missile weapons with a
range of 12” or less from this as per this rulespack.
(ii) Units with that utilise a ranged template or attack (such salamanders) count as 1 shot. Units
with the Breath weapon special rule do not count as a “shot”.
(iii) Do not count the possibility of Tomb Kings being able to fire twice against this shot limit.
For example a Skeleton Bowmen counts as 1 shot, despite the possibly that with magic
he could fire twice.

Race Specific Restrictions:

Lizardmen
*Salamanders 0 – 3 models per army.
*Higher State of Consciousness and the Crown of Command may not be taken on the same model.
*Scar Veterans are 0 – 2 models per army.
*Skink Cohorts are 0 – 3 units per army. Cohorts containing Kroxigor do not count towards the cap.
*Only two of the following may be taken per army – Beclaming Cogitation, Cube of Darkness, Dispel
Scroll, Cupped Hands.

Vampire Counts
*Max 3 units/characters with the Ethereal special rule
*Max 10 Hexwraiths per army.
*Max 6 cairn wraiths per army.
*Max 4 units with the ‘fly’ special rule. For clarity, this does not include units with the “hover”.

Skaven
*Hell Pit Abominations and Warp Lighting Cannons are 0-1 unit selection per army.
*A Screaming Bell or Plague Furnace may only be placed in a unit containing no more than 50
models.
*Gutter Runners units are 0 – 2 per army.
*Warlock Engineers are 0 – 3 models per army.
*Skaven Slaves units may only be a maximum of 50 models per unit.

Dark Elves
*The Pendant of Kaleth and the Crown of Command may not be taken on the same model.
*Hydras 0 – 1 unit selections per army.
*Max 3 units with the ‘fly’ special rule

Empire
*Steam Tanks are 0 – 1 models per army (and for clarification these do not count as a warmachine for
the composition cap)
*Only two of the following options may be taken per army: Dispel Scroll, Seal of Destruction, Aldreds
Casket of Sorcery and Rod of Power
Warriors of Chaos
*No further restrictions

Daemons of Chaos
*Flamers of Tzeentch 0 – 6 models per army.
*Daemons of Chaos infantry units may only be a maximum of 400 points per unit
*Max 3 units with the ‘fly’ special rule
*The Masque, Skulltaker and the Blue Scribes may not be taken

Tomb Kings
*Only Skeleton Bowmen count towards the shot cap, all other “shots” in the army are excluded when
calculating the army’s total “shots”
*If Queen Khalida is taken the maximum Skeleton Bowmen in any one unit is 50 models

High Elves
*High Elf armies may ignore the “same type” warmachine restriction
*Teclis may not be taken

Ogres
*If the Hellheart is taken then a Dispel Scroll may not be taken in the army.

Bretonnians
*No further restrictions

Wood Elves
*No further restrictions

Orcs & Goblins
*No further restrictions
*Orcs & Goblins ignore all warmachine restrictions imposed by pack (i.e. they can take more than 5
etc)

Beastmen
*If the “Shard of the Herdstone” is taken, you may not take a powerstone.

Chaos Dwarves
*Iron Daemons are 0 - 2 models per army

Dwarves
*No further restrictions
*Thorek may not be taken

Thundertusk

2012-01-22T14:16:00.001+13:00

Here's a couple of pictures of my Thundertusk which is about 90% finished.

Charlie painted the crew and did a beautiful job.

The mount itself was a joy to paint. I found a step by step on the Ogre Stronghold and it worked really well.

Now to get him to the table.

A Plea to GW

2012-01-20T15:54:00.002+13:00

Over the past fortnight a set of files have been floating around the interwebz that many purport to be copies of 6th Edition Warhammer 40k and associated FAQs. These files are very detailed and opinion is divided as to whether they are the real deal. At best I suspect that they are a very early playtest version.

However regardless of whether they are real or not, I’d like to make a plea to Games Workshop.

Please, please, please when to move to release version include pre-measuring in the rules. Yes, 40k is different from Fantasy but I can tell you that 90% of disagreements under 7th Ed Fantasy were over the measurement of distances. With 8th Edition this is gone and generals now concentrate on their battle plan and how that will achieve victory rather than if they have correctly assessed the distance and the micromanagement of wheels etc.

Now before any movement the distance is measured and you have a clear understanding if you are in range or not – shooting, spells, maximum charge distance – and if the move is random what you have to roll before the dice are pitched.

This mechanic has just made the whole came faster, more streamlined and – dare I say it – more enjoyable. It has also evolved the skills needed to be successful away from distance estimator to risk assessor and manager.

So GW, whatever you do – Please allow pre-measuring!

Ogre Character Fitout

2012-01-20T11:41:00.003+13:00

During the past week I have had a couple of games with the Ogres against Lizards. Mike King has used a list built around a Light Slaan in Temple Guard, two blocks of Saurus with Scar-Vets on Cold Ones, Ancient Stegadon, three skink and two chameleon skink units and two Salamanders.

As an aside I think Mike is very brave using Slaan/TG without miscast protection. My view is that if you take that setup it pretty much compels you to take “Life” magic.

I found out over the two games that the Light buffs on the Saurus and TG make them a tough proposition for the Ogres. With Focused Rumination Mike was generally able to get at least one, and sometimes two or three, of the Light “Augment” spells.

Due to the WS3 of the Ogres and the Saurus blocks (sometimes buffed to WS10, sometimes -1 to hit, sometimes ASF so re-rolls vs. Ironguts) the combats became very dicey (pun intended) with small deviation from average rolls having marked effect. This made the games a real rollercoaster ride with momentum passing between the two armies several times.

The list I used was essentially the same in both games. I used the Slaughternaster – Bruiser BSB – Firebelly trio in each but varied the fitout of magic/mundane items.

My first character setup was:

Slaughtermaster – Level 4, Great Weapon, 2+ Armour, 4+ Ward, Ironcurse Icon

BSB Bruiser – BSB, 3+ Armour, 5+ Ward, Sword of Striking

Firebelly – Scroll, Potion of Strength, Dragonhelm

I think this kitout is very good and one that I’ll persevere with. It is a very strong combat build with the SM effectively acting as a mini-Tyrant. However it does lack magic defence, something the Slaan was able to exploit with his focused Rumination.

Also I found that I was forgetting to declare the Potion of Strength at the beginning of the turn and saw that as an ongoing risk.

In the second game I used:

Slaughtermaster – Level 4, Fencer’s Blades, Glittering Scales, Dispel Scroll, Opal Amulet

BSB Bruiser – BSB, 3+ Armour, Dragonhelm, Luckstone, Ironcurse Icon, Sword of Striking

Firebelly – Great Weapon, Hellheart

This has a stronger magic defense – though my first attempt at the Hellheart yielded a D6 roll of 1 and failure – while not taking too much away from its combat defensive qualities. I intend to continue to look at differing setups over the coming weeks until I find one I am fully comfortable with.

Comp System - SCGT

2012-01-19T09:35:00.001+13:00

Continuing our run through various comp system, I have pasted below the South Coast GT comp. This is used at a lot of the bigger UK events - SCGT, Maelstrom's Incursion events - and was put together by Russ Veal, Bryan Carmichael and Dan Heelan.

“SCGT Comp” V1.5

The aim of this composition system has only ever been to “take the edge” off of armies and stop some games becoming non-events due to selections by either player. As with all systems the system is not perfect but has had the bonus of being play tested over the biggest tournaments on the circuit over the last 8 months and tweaked accordingly.

General Restrictions

Apart from Winds of Magic dice and Challenging an army may only add 2 Power Dice or Dispel Dice to its magic dice pool in each magic phase. Any dice added to the pool, regardless of source (generated, stolen, stored from previous magic phases, generated by magic items/abilities to boost spellcasting before or after the casting attempt, produced by spells, lore abilities, and so on) count. Excess dice are simply discarded and cannot be used in any way (i.e. - they can’t be stored). If a dice is stolen from the opponent’s pool, but your army has already generated two extra dice, the dice is removed from the opponent’s pool and then discarded. Any additional dice are lost and cannot be used. The controlling player chooses which dice are discarded if there is a need to distinguish. Night Goblin Mushroom D6 do not count as "power dice" as per their Army book. Dark Elves may only use a max of 6 dice to cast a spell the same as everyone else. This overrides the rule in their book.

Non warmachine shooting is limited to 90 shots per turn - count the number of shots, not models. So for example Dark Elf Warriors with repeater crossbows count as 2 shots. Ranked (non-skirmisher) infantry with missile weapons with a range of 12" or less are excluded from this restriction. (see note (i) for additional clarification)

An army may not include more than 2 warmachines of the same type.

No single non character unit in the army may be over 450 points

Maximum of three units per army with the “fly” rule.

The magic item “Fozzrik’s Folding Fortress” may not be taken.

No special or Named characters may be taken (including unit upgrades)

Characters affected by the following spells that would instantly remove it from the table only take one wound if it would normally benefit from a look out sir roll from being part of a unit. The Dwellers Below and Final Transmutation. This does not apply if you are a lone character outside of a unit.

Notes:

(i) Any model with a fixed maximum amount of shots (read: shooting attacks) counts that maximum towards the shot cap (i.e blowpipes = 2, RXB = 2, lifetaker = 3) but those with a random/variable number (treeman, razordon, Hail of doom arrow, flamers etc) count as 1, excluding any ranked (non-skimirisher) infantry with missile weapons with a range of 12” or less from this as per this rulespack.

(ii) Do not count the possibility of Tomb Kings being able to fire twice against this shot limit. For example a Skeleton Bowmen counts as 1 shot, despite the possibly that with magic he could fire twice.

Race Specific Restrictions:

Lizardmen
* Salamanders 0 – 3 models per army.
* Higher State of Consciousness and the Crown of Command may not be taken on the same model.
* Scar Veterans are 0 – 2 models per army.

Skaven
*Hell Pit Abominations and Warp Lighting Cannons are 0-1 unit selection per army.
* Warlock Engineers are 0 – 3 models per army.

Dark Elves
*The Pendant of Kaleth and the Crown of Command may not be taken on the same model.
* Hydras 0 – 1 unit selections per army.

Empire
*Steam Tanks are 0 – 1 models per army

Warriors of Chaos
* Hell Cannons are 0 – 1 unit selections per army

Daemons of Chaos
* Flamers of Tzeentch 0 – 6 models per army.

High Elves
*High Elf armies make ignore the “same type” warmachine restriction

It is due for an update soon for the new Vampire Counts book and it will be interesting to see what they do around ethereal units and flyers. Given the large number of units with the potential for "Fly" in the VC list I would expect that there would be calls for some relaxation.

I quite like the system overall and would be very happy to play under it.

What do others think?

To enter or not to enter, that is the question...

2012-01-18T18:59:00.003+13:00

I'm in 2 minds, and curious on your opinion. More than anything in this hobby, I have coveted a golden daemon. To me, it would literally mean more than every other achievement combined.

Dirty dirty cheater...

I also am still completely bitter after the last one, that I just feel dirty and annoyed even thinking about it. The fact that GW so blatantly endorse, no... actively REWARD cheating, sullies the whole experience for me.

For those that don't remember, after catching this douchebag: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1143818458 out cheating using a dreadnought he had bought from Bohun over in Poland, GW allowed him to keep the other 2 awards he had purchased, and in the process fucking over a person from each of those categories that rightfully won a bronze but instead are sitting in 4th place.

It's not dissimilar to catching Michael Phelps out drug cheating right after the 100m butterfly, and saying "But you can still keep the other 15 olympic medals, because we don't have piss samples from those races buddy".

It was an analogy folks... not actually a drugcheat!

It's also not like this was on some technicality, GW were covered and entitled within their terms and conditions to disqualify him outright. This meant that they actively decided to reward him with 2 other golden daemons, and unlike other parts of the world where they would issue a lifetime ban, they have said "you're welcome to come back and buy some more next year too son".

This isn't sour grapes, I didn't enter last year due to working ridiculously high hours around that time, and I don't think I would win anything this year if I did enter... but the intention to enter has always historically been my motivation to improve myself. Without it, I find myself caring significantly less - perhaps its letting the cheaters win when they actively kill part of your hobby?

So I'm curious on peoples opinions... Should I enter? Should I not? Why? Why not? Am I justified to still be reasonably outraged and annoyed at this, or should I sack up shut up and get on with it?

- Charlie

Brushes - Part 2

2012-01-18T11:32:00.001+13:00

A while ago, I blogged about high-quality brushes. Using a top of the line brush makes a huge difference to your painting quality, and the brushes last longer and keep their point for years, meaning you actually save money in the long run by buying the more expensive brushes.

I'm always on the lookout for cheap prices on these brushes (Raphael 8404s and Winsor & Newton Series 7s). This morning, I came across artsupplies.co.uk, who stock the Winsor & Newton brushes with incredibly cheap prices, and best of all, it's only 5 quid to have them shipped down to us in NZ. It works out at roughly $15 apiece for a couple of brushes, and less if you buy more.

The direct link is here. I would not recommend going any smaller than a Size 0, and a Size 1 is the perfect size for almost all painting except very fine detail. Whatever you do, stay away from the Series 7 Miniature (not on this page, but they sell them as well). They have a smaller well, and therefore don't hold as much paint.

The Raphael 8404s are still available at secretweaponminiatures.com, and will likely run you about $20 each after shipping. Look back to the previous post for a comparison of the two brands, but the basic recommendation is just to pick whichever is cheaper at the time.

For prices this low, nobody really has an excuse not to pick up at least a brush or two to try out. You will definitely not regret it!

The Sabretusk Saga

2012-01-18T11:26:00.000+13:00

As regular readers know, I am tidying up my Ogres for tournament play in 2012. The intention is to alternate between Skaven and Ogre Kingdoms from event to event to give me some flexibility in relation to composition systems and to maintain the interest that using two armies gives me.

To this end I needed to get some Sabretusks painted up given that I never really used a Hunter in the last edition. I had two metal models from the Hunter kit but decided that I wanted at least a couple more for bigger games. I had a GW voucher and used it to purchase the new Finecast pack of Sabretusks (NZ$ 33 for two).

When these arrived from Mail Order the sculpts did not fit together properly (not sure whether miscast or warped), had pieces missing (half a tail) and the underside had numerous air bubbles. I took them back to my local GW store and the Manager was more than happy to return them for replacement.

I went in this week to pick up the new Vampire Counts book and cards and my replacement Sabretusk pack was there. However, the Store Manager took me aside and said that when he had checked them that they had the same problems. As a result he suggested that I was welcome to take a refund.

Having done so I was now looking for new Sabretusks. Painting up the metal ones I wasn’t particularly enamoured with the models so I cast my eye around for alternatives. In a nice coincidence an email from Forgeworld hit my Inbox on Sunday.

I am now the proud owner of five Warhammer Forge Skaven Wolfrats. I much prefer the scupt to the GW Sabretusk and think they look sufficient feral to fit the role. Importantly, I have enough confidence in Forgeworld’s product to know that product will meet my quality standards.

As an aside I now own two metal Sabretusks, surplus to requirements. If anyone wants the “superior” metal castings – devoid of Finecast failings – then let me know and we can do a deal.

Pete Comp Flyweight Edition

2012-01-17T15:36:00.000+13:00

Over the past couple of weeks there has been increasing discussion about composition systems here in New Zealand. I believe that a hard cap system is the way to go rather than subjective comp. Part of the reason for this is that I believe that GW has done a good job in 8th Edition of levelling the playing field.

So I wondered exactly how light I could get a hard cap system while still maintaining a pretty level field.

Here for your comment (and please I’d love your feedback) is Pete Comp Flyweight Edition:

General Restrictions

• No Special Characters

• Max Power Dice usage of 12 in Magic Phase (as distinct from max of 12 dice in pool at any time)

• Army to have a maximum of four (4) warmachines

• No unit to have more than 50 models or be greater than 450 points

Army Specific Restrictions

~~• Daemons of Chaos: Only one unit of Flamers~~

• Empire: Steam Tank is classed as Warmachine in terms of General Restrictions

• Skaven: Maximum of three Engineers

So how does that look? Appreciate all comment and feedback. Let’s try and make it a constructive discussion!

Dates and Venue for 5th Annual New Zealand Masters Confirmed

2012-01-17T11:27:00.000+13:00

The date and venue for the 5th Annual New Zealand Masters has been confirmed.

They will be held in Khandallah, Wellington on weekend of 1st/2nd December 2012.

The event will bring together the top ranked players in Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40k and Flames of War. Qualification criteria for the 12 participants in each competition are given here

Sportsmanship, Competitiveness and Gamesmanship

2012-01-17T10:12:00.001+13:00

One of the topics I indicated that I was going to post on was Gamesmanship.

Tournaments in the Asia-Pacific region, both Fantasy and 40k, generally include some form of Sportsmanship scoring. Over the past ten years this has evolved from the “Popularity Contest” where you score a mark out of 5 depending on how well you entertained your opponent to the current iteration which is more a checklist of behaviours. The key thing with this is that in this latest system the default score is full marks and a TO will generally check up any dropped points to confirm validity.

The first system was fraught with difficulties and it was obvious some people used it as a method of punishing opponents who beat them. I remember being marked down by one opponent, who was known as the Twin Torpedo (regularly gave out scores of 0/5) because he felt it was ludicrous that Noise Marines could take “Infiltrate” – because they are noisy. Well, that was the excuse he gave anyway!

Anyway with the evolution of Sports scoring to the checklist system, pretty much all the shenanigans of the early system are history. As a TO and a player, you find that when people have to justify giving a negative mark they are pretty careful in giving them out.

In the past three years I believe I have only given out one negative mark for sports – and that was for slow play. The player involved was in a poor position and therefore actively limited the number of turns we got through. I deduct a sports point for slow play – and indicated to the player that I had done it.

So we have moved to a situation where expectations of sports have moved from entertainment to where they now are set up to only punish negative behaviour. It is now possible to be competitive (strive to win) without being unsporting (negative behaviour).

Which brings me on to Gamesmanship.

To me Gamesmanship is that area where you stray from “Competitive” to where you are threatening to become “Unsporting”.

I have dropped Sports points at one tournament in the past three years. At this event I had two opponents feel that my actions were evidence of gamesmanship.

The first instance involved a game (2nd Round) against a GW store employee. During the game he charged his Chaos Dragon into a unit of Wraiths. Without a magic weapon neither the rider nor the dragon could damage the Wraiths, who inflicted wounds and eventually ran him down. Nothing was said during the game, which I felt was really enjoyable. Over the rest of the weekend we ran into each other a few times and it was always cordial. After the event I found I had dropped three sports points and spoke to the TO to ascertain whether I was losing points from single or multiple opponents and - given the checklist system - in which areas [As an aside I would encourage anybody who loses sports to follow up with the TO, not as a witch-hunt but to see if there is a common theme. Obviously the TO can’t betray confidences/anonymity but he can provide feedback].

I found out that I had lost the points because an opponent had made a charge during one of my games and he felt I should have told him he couldn’t wound the models. In short he felt I was game-y and should have been more forthcoming. He was disappointed and felt my attitude was poor.

Now this situation is one where I feel in a tournament, I am being “competitive”. In this instance I don’t think it is up to me to point out the flaw in his plan. My opponent had a different view and so I took the Sports hit.

The second instance occurred in the last round of the same tournament. Here rather than a Sports hit, my opponent alerted me to my behaviour and spoke to me about how he felt it was gamesmanship.

So what was I doing? During my opponent’s turn I would ask him a question. It sounds innocuous enough however it occurred frequently enough that he felt I was deliberately trying to break his concentration. After a minute’s silence, I would ask him about one of his units or seek clarification on a special rule. My opponent felt that I was sufficiently seasoned not to have to ask these questions and that I was trying to distract him.

In my defence I will say that I didn’t realise the frequency with which I was doing it, the effect that it was having or that I was creating a situation which could be perceived as gamesmanship. Once alerted to it, I immediately understood that it could be a problem and have amended my behaviour accordingly. I am now extremely cognisant of not distracting opponents when deep in thought and will only direct questions where I want clarification during my own turn.

What is interesting here is the different issues and the approach my opponents took. In the first my opponent said nothing and then punished me – I would say unfairly. I will contend the problem was my opponent not my behaviour. In the second situation, my behaviour – although inadvertent – was the problem and it is easy to see how my opponent could see it as straying into the game-y or unsporting. Instead of sports hitting me, he spoke to me and I was made aware of the issue. As a result we had a discussion and learned a valuable lesson.

I know which one I think was the best approach.

So to wrap this up, I think we should always be vigilant as to whether our behaviour strays from sporting/competitive into the game-y/unsporting camp. I learned from the situation where an opponent alerted me to a perception he was forming and amended behaviour accordingly. Where I now see behaviour I perceive as game-y I will endeavour to discuss with my opponent. It is only when behaviour strays into the unsporting or cheating that I would reach for the Sports nerf bat.

So what are your thoughts on Competiveness vs. Gamesmanship? And the best way to deal with it when your opponent transgresses?

New 40k FAQs

2012-01-17T08:37:00.001+13:00

There are a bunch of new 40k FAQs here

Charlie will be happy that he can have two Crypteks in his units.

As a "hater" of Gav Thorpe's Turd (sorry, Codex: Chaos Space Marines), I'm happy to see that two of the only viable "tactics", Lash and Warptime have been nerfed. Hopefully, it will hasten the clamour for a replacement from the hoi polloi.

UK Masters 2011!

2012-01-16T12:47:00.002+13:00

Hi ho,

just a quick update, the UK Masters were held over the weekend for the year of 2011.

The field had a few interesting inclusions... and some more unoriginal and expected additions, namely almost a third of the field had grey knights! It was however good to see a couple of ork lists kicking along, but ultimately the win went to the player who best adjusted his list to the meta scene, and produced something that could best out manourvre the more foot based armies, produce no expensive point sinks to be eaten by the paladin deathstars, and could chop down the heavily mech forces all while pouring s8 ap2 shots into the paladin wall.

Lists and a break down of player details can be found here: http://skcuzzlebumm.blogspot.com/2012/01/uk-40k-masters-2012-army-lists-and-draw.html#more

The final results were as follows:
1st - James Taylor (Necrons)
2nd - Josh Roberts (Grey Knights)
3rd - Dave Symcox (Imperial Guard)
4th - Courtney Rhodes (Orks)
5th - Alex Harrison (Blood Angels)
6th - Sharan Reddy (Grey Knights)
7th - Garath Donnelly (Grey Knights)
8th - Tim Smith (Grey Knights)
9th - Andy Oakham (Orks)
10th - Nathan Roberts (Dark Eldar)
11th - Paul Burke (Templars)
12th - Neil Kerr (Grey Knights)
13th - Kiran Reddy (Blood Angels)
14th - Rob Sims (Blood Angels)
15th - Gaz Jones (Eldar)
16th - Richard Grint (Guard)

- Charlie

Registrations Open For Fields of Blood 2012 - NZGT Warhammer 40k

2012-01-15T10:06:00.000+13:00

After itshiatus for the Rugby World Cup, Fields of Blood – The New Zealand Warhammer 40kGrand Tournament is back in 2012.

This yearthe event will be held at a new venue and an earlier time in the year. ThePlayers’ Pack is being prepared for distribution in February but tickets ARENOW ON SALE.

Here arethe details to whet your appetite:

When: 7/8 July 2012

Where: Johnsonville, Wellington, New Zealand

Points: 1500

Rounds: Six Rounds – 3 rounds on each day

Umpire: Pete Dunn

Scoring: 60% Battle, 20% Painting, 20% Sports

Armies: Armies must be painted to at least a tabletop standard. That means threeplus colours, highlight or wash and fully based.

Painting: Checklist scoresheet where all armies painted to at least a tabletop standardwill score 15/20. The extra 5/20 will be awarded for presentation standard thatexceeds tabletop standard.

Sports: Checklist. Defaultscore is full points.

Composition: No restrictions.You may bring any legal army up to 1500 points. There are no restrictions onSpecial Characters. “Imperial Armour” units will be at Umpire’s discretion.

Trophies: 1^stOverall

2^nd Overall

3^rd Overall

Bloodthirster – Highest Gameplay

Harlequin – Best Painted (Players’ Choice)

Living Saint – Best Sport

Best in Race Trophies for Highest Finisher in each race with four or morecompetitors

Prizes: Spot prizes each round

Cost: $50 (AUD 40) up to 29 February 2012

$60 (AUD 50) from 1 March 2012

Tickets: Limited to 70 participants

Registration: Email to fieldsofblood@paradise.net.nz(I’ll provide you with payment details)

Happy totake registrations and answer any questions.

Lookforward to seeing you there.

Initial Thoughts on Playing With Ogres

2012-01-13T13:02:00.003+13:00

Over the holiday break I picked up my Ogres and have started to play some games with them. I have been using a list that fits Pete-Lite, Runefang V and Equinox Hard Cap comp.

The lists I've used have three characters - Slaughtermaster, Firebelly (or Butcher) and BSB, blocks of Bulls and Ironguts, Mournfang(s), Maneaters, Sabretusks and Ironblaster. I've also tried Leadbelcher unit(s).

During the period I have played nine games - three against Dwarfs and one against each of Daemons, Woodies, High Elves, Empire, Brets and WoC. From this I've managed to settle on a few observations.

MAGIC

A lot of people have gone down the Greedy Fist/Lore of Death route which according to internet wisdom is the way to go. Personally I'm really enjoying the Lore of the Great Maw and think that the buffs it provide really complement the build I'm using. The two standout spells for me are Toothcracker and Trollguts.

RESILIENCE

Ogres really suffer from their lack of armour. Yes, they have three wounds but it doesn't take much to put a unit of three Leadbelchers under pressure. Coupled with low leadership that can be .....problematic. Wherever I can I try to get as much armour as possible. It is surprising how vulnerable your average Irongut is in combat. The key is to ensure that you limit the number of attacks hitting your 5+ save ogres.

WS3

WS3 is a bitch. A real bitch. You get your 19 attacks and think great. And then WS3 kicks in. It generally means only 50% of your attacks are hitting. Suddenly things aren't so great after all.

You still do damage but it always feels better on paper than reality.

However overall the Ogres are a fun army to play.....and I suspect play against. This is because they are a combat army so hopefully you'll be throwing some dice. Or you'll sit their having your eyes picked out by an opponent that doesn't want to engage.

Will they replace my rats? No way....no way at all.

Runefang V - Warhammer Tournament

2012-01-13T08:26:00.000+13:00

On the 3rd/4th march, Fields of Blood is hosting it first tournament of the year - Runefang V.

This will be held here in Wellington and is the first Fantasy event for 2012 in the region. The Umpire for this event is Peter Williamsom and while the rest of you have been enjoying your holidays, he has been slaving away on a Players Pack for the event. That can be found here.

All the required information you need to compete at the event can be found in the pack. Headline details are 2400 points, five rounds (three Saturday/two Sunday).

Hope to see you along.

My 2012 Resolutions/Aspirations

2012-01-12T12:35:00.001+13:00

Okay I said I was going to look at my aspirations and resolutions for the year.

Gamer

Finish in Top 5 of New Zealand Fantasy Rankings as at 31 October 2012. I played no tournaments last year – HomeCon I and NZ Masters excluded – and as a result my ranking fell from #1 to Unranked. I’m looking to play at least three events in March/April period (Runefang V, Equinox and NatCon) and that will give me a ranking again.

Play in at least one Campaign Weekend over the course of the year. I’ll likely organise a Fantasy one mid-year but may get inspired to do a 40k one as well.

40k-wise, everything hinges on Chaos Legions for me.

Tournament Organiser

The big one for me is Fields of Blood –The New Zealand Grand Tournament for Warhammer 40k in July. I want to achieve 80 participants so the work needs to start in the next few weeks.

I acting as TO for Runefang V in early March with Peter Williamson running and umpiring the event. also have the second HomeCon in February where fourteen gamers will get together for a five round event.

I’m also looking to run at least one Campaign Weekend for each system over the course of the year.

And in 2012, the New Zealand Masters return to Wellington. I’ll be looking to build on the success of the event over the past four years.

Hobby

Fantasy-wise, I am looking to add units to existing armies as new books are released rather than look to start new armies. The Ogres are finished sans an Ironblaster and the Tomb Kings but for a Herald and Hierotitan. I’ve ordered a Terrorgeist and plastic characters for my VC and will add an Engine, Vargheists, new cavalry and plastic characters when they are released.

This will likely be my pattern going forward. Two of the rumoured upcoming books are armies I don’t own – Dwarfs and Brets – and I’ll resist the urge to build them. Okay, not so hard. This will give me an opportunity to paint the mountain of scenery I have to paint.

40k-wise, I have terrain to do but for me it all hinges as I said on Chaos Legions providing inspiration.

Blog

Continue building the readership base. I’d love to get to 1000 hits per day but that depends not only on me but also on both the subject matter and my fellow contributors. One of the greatest motivating factors is the interaction with other gamers so always keen for people to post comments giving their thoughts on matters raised. I don’t expect people to agree with me and its important that it is a two way street where the outcome is thought-provoking discussion.

Clearly I don’t drink the GW kool-aid but the goal is to be positive where I believe good things are being done and offer alternatives when I think they are on the wrong track.

Hope you’ll continue to follow the blog in 2012.

Pete Lite Comp 2012 v1.0

2012-01-10T15:59:00.001+13:00

With the advent of 2012 it is timely to update Pete-Lite Comp for recent books.

The changes are very minor - more permissive for Wood Elves and the removal of all specific restrictions on Vampire Counts until we see how the book settles.

I thought about restrictions around Hellheart/Greedy Fist/Lore of Death in Ogre Kingdoms but I am not convinced that that particular combo is all conquering. It is being use at this weekend's UK Masters so it will be interesting to see the upshot. I think it comes with downsides but I'll see if I'm proved wrong. Should it cut a swathe through the UK's top players then it may need to be revisited.

Here are the current restrictions:

General Restrictions

• No Special Characters

• Max Power Dice usage of 12 in Magic Phase (as distinct from max of 12 dice in pool at any time)

• Army to have no more than four (4) potential template weapons

• Army to have a maximum of four (4) warmachines

• No more than two (2) of any Special choice

• No double Rare choice worth more than 70 points

• Only one item that automatically dispels a spell or potential takes/destroys a spell

Army Specific Restrictions

• Daemons of Chaos: No duplication of Daemonic Gifts

• Empire: Steam Tank is classed as Warmachine in terms of General Restrictions

• Lizardmen: Slaan may have maximum two of Focus of Mystery, Becalming Cogitation, Cupped Hands or Focused Rumination

• Skaven: Maximum of three Engineers

• Orcs & Goblins: Maximum of three Mangler Squigs and/or Pump Wagons total

• Wood Elves: May have two units of Waywatchers, ignoring General Restriction

Vampire Counts - 2012 Vintage

2012-01-10T10:35:00.001+13:00

My White Dwarf arrived yesterday and I managed to have my first good look at the new Vampire Counts. The following comments are based on this cursory investigation but you know what they say about first impressions.

THE MODELS

I'm a great believer in the "blink test" - that is you pretty much make up your mind on something in the first five seconds you see it. That doesn't mean you won't change it but it is generally pretty rare for you to do so.

So what do I think about the new VCs? Well generally I think that they split fairly evenly into the good and the not-so-good.

I really like the Vargheist models but dislike the Crypt Horrors from the same sprue. Again I think this is a case where they have attached an add-on to a primary model. The Crypt Horrors look like 3-ups of the Ghouls and both model (and as you'll see gamewise) I think they add little.

Next cab off the rank is the Black Knight/Hexwraith box set. This set is by far the best value kit in the release - 5 Cavalry models for $60. Again however one part of the kit is far superior to the other. In this case I think that the Hexwraiths are truly f-ugly models that were the after-thought. Can I see myself using them....well the rules will have to be pretty good.

Then we have the Coven Throne and Mortis Engine. Of the two I prefer the Engine as it looks more cohesive as a model. That is not to say I think it is a great model but the Throne really suffers from a lack of cohesiveness. Parts of the Coven are beautiful but overall the model looks like a bad mash-up.

The best model by far is the plastic Wight King. GW have made an instant classic here with a characterful and much needed addition to the range.

THE RULES

Dangerous to comment too much without reading the book fully, but I have a couple of initial comments.

I think we'll see a lot more Mortis Engines than Coven Thrones. The rules for both are in the White Dwarf and for me the Engine scores as it is a force multiplier for the VC army. The Blasphemous Tome (+2 for Lore of Vampires, Miscast manipulation), Reliquary (EotG Burning Alignment-type attack, Regen Enhancer) and Banshee Scream mean that this will be a compulsory item - at least initially.

The Throne's rules are far more situational and nowhere near as "useful".

However for me the big thing with the book is that they haven't really answered the question "Why wouldn't you take Ghouls as your Core Points allocation?" Yes the points have increased but even the reduction in skellies points or increase in Str and To of Zombies means that you are unlikely to see them replace Ghouls. I believe Ghouls can't be increased to more than starting size (yes?) but I think the block of 40 will remain standard in most armies.

Can't wait until Saturday when I get to fully digest book.

Make no mistake, this is a critical book and important for long term Warhammer health. The new VC represents the first opportunity to dial back the power creep that created 7th Ed's "Big Three". I hope GW have used this opportunity wisely.

Happy 2012

2012-01-09T09:39:00.001+13:00

The blog has been quiet over the past week as the holiday break continued. However the time has not been wasted!Over the break I have played seven games with the Ogres and a few things are coming clear. I'll be posting my thoughts on the army and where I'm going with it over the next couple of days.

Hobby wise I painted a Thundertusk and an Ironblaster and finished bases and movement trays for the Ogres. I'm now working on a Stonehorn and hopefully that will be finished over the next week. Jack painted five Venoms and a Razorwing and they are looking great. Hopefully we'll see some pictures up soon. And Charlie painted his necron army over the break - the wonders of the airbrush - and that is looking fantastic. Pictures!

So some of the topics I'll be canvassing over the next week:

1. The new Vampires

2. Thoughts on Ogre list development

3. Gamesmanship

4. My 2012 Hobby and Gaming Resolutions

I'm really excited about the new VC and was really disappointed last Thursday when I realized they weren't out until the 14th (for some reason I thought it was the 7th). I have ordered a terrorgheist, cairn wraith and necromancer and once the new models are out I can see some Black Knights, Mortis Engine and Varghiest coming my way.

So 2012 will be a big year for Fields of Blood. There are two events already planned - Runefang V in March and the New Zealand Grand Tournament (40k) in July. Also I'll be running the NZ Masters in December.Thanks for your support and look forward to providing you with continuing hobby comment.

Some Vampire Counts Info

2011-12-28T09:07:00.001+13:00

Taken from Hero's Gaming Blog, here is some info from latest White Dwarf:

Lore of the Vampires

Signature Spell is definitely Invocation of Nehek - on the most fundamental level it can restore "D6 + caster's Wizard level" of Wounds to friendly Undead unit within 6". Boosted version has 12" range, as well as 18" ones.

Other spells includes Raise Dead, Vanhel's Danse Macabre, Curse of Years, Gaze of Nagash, and Wind of Death

Lore attribute: When the spell from the Lore of the Vampires is succefully casted, the wizard or any undead models within 12" restores 1 wound.

Rules tidbits:

All Vampire has rule called "Hunger" - You get to roll a D6 when the vampire kills one or more models in combat, on a 6 you recovers one wound. (Vlad with Blood Drinker pass the roll on 4+)

Also Vampire, including vampiric creatures "such as" Varghulf and Vargheist, can march. So Vargheist will be able to move 20" per turn almost all the time. (not sure if Varghulf can also fly)

Vampiric Powers: (not all of them, just those mentioned in WD)

Flying Horror - give the vampire ability to fly (unsure)
Dread Knight - ability to boost WS (don't know how - but a Vampire Llord with Dread Knight has WS of 9)
Quickblood - gains ASF
Master of the Black Arts - get to re-roll one D6 for the Winds of Magic.
Dark Acolyte - add D3 to the total number of models raised by Nehek.
Red Fury - should be about the same. (unsure)

New units:

Coven Throne

Basically a chariot mount for your Lord.
Is a Large target with S5 T5 5W and 5+ save.
has Spectral Steed rules (can move 8"), Undead, Vampiric, ASF (only for Handmaiden who has 2 S5 Attacks)
has Random Attacks (2D6) at S3 from the spirit horde.
Has Ward Save of 4+
Battle of Wills (before the first enemy rolls to hit against the character or the Throne, both player roll a D6 and add their LD value. Has effects based on the difference of the score)* no effect (0 or less)
* suffer -1WS/BS
* the enemy must re-roll successful To Hits
* each model in the enemy unit strike each other (only 1 attack per model)
Has Bound Spell (lvl3) allowing the Throne (and all of its crew) to re-roll either To Hit or To Wound rolls.

Mortis Engine

Is a Rare Choice
Same stats as for the Throne (S5 T5 W5 Sv5+)
has 2D6 attacks at S3 from the spirit horde
Undead, Terror, Spectral Steed, and Regeneration
can make Ghostly Howl attack.
can take upgrade, allowing any wizards casting spell from the Lore of the Vampires to get +2 to their casting attempt. (ANY) miscast wizards rolls twice on the table and have the opponent choose the result)
The Reliquary (at the start of your turn, roll 2D6 and add the current turn number - until the start of its next turn, all friendly Undead units within this number of range gains +1 bonus to their Regeneration, 6+ if they don't have any, to a maximum of 4+. Also, all enemy units within this range suffers D6 hits at the strength equal to the turn number.
Also has some penalties if removed from play - by damaging every units within a random range at the strength equal to the current turn number)

Master Necromancer - New Lord choice (ie. better Necromancer)

Banshees and Cairn Wraith are now Hero

Hexwraiths (Special) - Fast Cavalry with Ethereal (yes!) that can inflict automatic S5 hits on unit that it moved through.

Vargheist (Special) - Flying Monstrous Infantry that has Fly, Frenzy, and 3A.

Crypt Horrors (Special) - Monstrous Infantry unit with M6 S4 T5 I2 W3 A3, has Poisoned Attacks, Regeneration 5+, and Undead.

New Vampire Counts Sighted

2011-12-26T11:48:00.001+13:00

So Vampires confirmed for January 2012. Here are the White Dwarf picture:

COVEN THRONE

MORTIS ENGINE

VARGHEISTS

CRYPT HORRORS

Plastic WIGHT KING

BLACK KNIGHTS

HEXWRAITHS

Finecast KRELL and ISABELLA

BOOK and MAGIC CARDS

There's some interesting stuff here. Not sure on some of it but likely the fact there is variety.

Brickbats & Bouquets

2011-12-24T10:06:00.001+13:00

The other day I gave a runthrough of Games Workshop's individual products this year focusing on models and the like. Today I want to focus on three specific releases and give my opinion of whether they worked or didn't work (for me).

So I have two brickbats and one bouquet to give out. I'll start with the negatives and finish with the positive.

Miss #1 - Dreadfleet

This was 2011's mystery box - though to be fair everything is a mystery these days. The models included in the game were lovely although I wonder how many sets will actually get painted. However I believe that this missed on two fronts.

Firstly, it was a different scale game so that there was little chance for cross over into the wider Warhammer world. But more importantly it was a closed-in system with set scenarios and GW clearly stating that they planned no expansions. This really limited its appeal for the wider Warhammer audience. If it had been designed for expansions for race-specific fleets like Man O'War then I'm sure it would have had wider appeal.

As it is I walked into my local GW the other day and was not surprised to see at least a dozen copies still on the shelves. I'm sure there are plenty more in the warehouses. The price point didn't help but the release was a clear miss on a number of levels.

Miss #2 - Storm of Magic

Well I called this early and I was so right. The whole concept was a marketing ploy from the outset. Purely designed to sell some random monster kits the expansion for Warhammer crashed and burned on release. I am actually yet to met a single person who I am aware of having played the game.

The game reeked of "Apocalypse - for - Warhammer" and was aimed squarely at the GW Shop market. Big spells, big monsters, little thought.

For all that I don't think GW actually dedicated a lot of resources at the game so not much wasted. If I'm wrong and they did then it certainly doesn't show. If it isn't already it will be a distant memory in six months a bit like Planetary Strike for 40k.

Hit #1 - 8th Edition Warhammer Army Books

It is almost scary how successfully GW have hit the nail on the head with their three army books released in 2011. There was a seven month wait from the release of the new edition until Orcs & Goblins was released but it was well worth the wait.

Followed up by Tomb Kings and Ogre Kingdoms the new books have leveled the playing field in the Warhammer World, building on the work done by the base rules. The power level of the various armies has flattened considerably. I'm desperately keen for this to continue with the upcoming VC book. The other thing is the increased number of viable options in each list means that there is greater variety in the lists we are seeing on the table.More than anything this has continued to enhance the game.

I have regularly espoused my few that the new balance is a factor of the move to an extensive list of Common Magic Items backed up by a small list of race-specific items. This has introduced increased balance into the game.So for me this HIT more than offsets any negatives. It is a significant enhancement to a CORE game so is more far-reaching in its influence than the other two which are frankly, sideshows.

Whatever you do GW, don't blow this new balance in 2012.

Last Day of "Work"

2011-12-23T09:42:00.002+13:00

Today is my last day of work for the year. I’m hoping to get some significant hobby done over the sixteen days I have off.

So what are the priorities?
1. Finish basing for Tomb Kings

2. Tidy up rest of TK army

3. Paint Tomb Herald

4. Paint Ironblasters, Thundertusk and Stonehorn

5. More movement trays for the Ogres

6. Turn Conflix buildings into terrain

Now if I get those done I’ll be very happy.

I’m also hoping to get a few games in. Jack is back from Auckland tomorrow and Tom is showing renewed interest in his Wood Elves. Hopefully we can disappear downstairs for a few hours every now and then for a game.

Tane is bringing his Dwarfs around earlier next week so my Ogres can have some fun stomping them. If any other gamers are around over the period drop me a line and we can organise some games.

My take on GW's 2011

2011-12-22T14:22:00.000+13:00

Here's my review of the GW year, in exactly the same format: 40k model, Fantasy Model, Scenery and Product

40k Model

Well, not too hard to pick here, given my bias. The new range of Dark Eldar we saw earlier this year was fantastic, and by far the standout piece was the Dark Eldar Razorwing Jetfighter. In my opinion one of the best vehicle kits GW have ever produced. It's beautiful, sleek look really captures the feel of the army, and actually makes taking three Ravagers a hard choice, as good as they are! I'm absolutely itching to paint mine.

Runner up here is the Venom (sense the theme?), which is just as beautiful as the Razorwing

In terms of the worst model, I have to give it to the dreadknight as well. Just ridiculous. Nothing more needs to be said. Closely behind are the Stormraven, which looks just as silly (although the Chapterhouse kit makes it look much better than a flying brick), and the Grotesques, only because there is a single pose, and it's a bad one.

Fantasy Model

I too found this one hard to pick. There were a lot of solid models put out this year, but nothing too draw-doppingly amazing. In the end, I went for the plastic Vampire Counts Necromancer released as part of the Storm of Magic. Partly because I love the model, in no small part due to the slayer sword-winning entry at GDUK this year (shown below), and also because I think the plastic character releases are a fantastic idea, and I hope they continue.

Not far behind is the Arachnarok, which I loved painting, and it looks really good on the table. The Firebelly might also have been up there, but Charlie's now ruined that model for me forever ;)

I have three picks for the bottom. The first is the finecast Cold One, released for SOM. Seriously GW, $33 for something we already have in plastic? Next up is the Necropolis Knights, just because I find the snake-surfing concept ridiculous. It's a real shame the Stalkers are no good, because they look far, far better. And my actual pick for the worst model is the SOM Manticore, which is just poor all around.

Scenery

Having not seen any of the kits released this year, I'm just going to have to go on pictures and hearsay, in which case the Skullvane Mansk is by far the most impressive. It also looks like it will do a fair bit of LoS blocking too, which is awesome.

The Garden of Moor is the other headline piece, but not having seen it yet in person, it doesn't have the same wow factor as the Mansk.

Not any really poor pieces, bu the Fulcrums copped a bit of flak for big skulls everywhere, which I can understand.

Product

I'm going to go with Liquid Green Stuff here. It really reduces the hassle of gap filling and allows the salvaging of awful finecast models with a bit of effort. Also, when you're filing it back, it seems to stick to the model more than regular Green Stuff, which again saves hassle.

I also love the hardback books, but I want to see them for 40k too. Also, I'm one of the monkeys that skips straight to the rules, so some of the beauty is lost on me.

Worst product of the year is Finecast, hands down. I only needed a couple of hours to decide that it's far worse than metal or plastic. The detail may be slightly crisper, but that comes at the expense of overall quality and structural strength. I hope they get their act together and start producing some models without flaws, because otherwise you're paying more for a lesser product made of cheaper material.

Reading the Tea Leaves

2011-12-22T10:22:00.001+13:00

I received an email yesterday from Maelstrom Games announcing that they were once again stocking Battlefront’s Flames of War range.

If you remember there was a rather public bust-up earlier in the year where a series of communications showed up on the net that demonstrated the acrimony between the parties.

Now a number of Battlefront’s senior managers are friends of mine so I’m not exactly an impartial observer. To be clear I haven’t communicated with them at all on this matter. However I thought the email from Maelstrom was magnanimous in that they indicated they had apologised and hoped that the whole incident could be put behind the parties.

This is great news for the hobby. Maelstrom are/were one of the biggest internet retailers in the world while Battlefront produce the premier WW2 game and models.

It did get me thinking though. I started wondering whether the change in attitude by Maelstrom was a consequence of the move by Games Workshop to prohibit export of their product by them (and others) outside the EU. They would have now had six months of the new regime and you can’t help but feel that their business has been significantly impacted by the change in their supply arrangements. Speak to any tournament gamer in the Southern Hemisphere and all were sourcing their GW minis from Maelstrom (or equivalent).

Having invested in a new venue, warehouse etc you can’t help but draw the conclusion that not stocking Battlefront followed by the introduction of GW’s “Prohibition Era” may have been a bridge too far for the company.

All supposition but I can’t help thinking that 2011 wasn’t as stellar on the sales front for Maelstrom as they had initially planned.

My First Finecast Experience

2011-12-21T17:59:00.001+13:00

Over the Masters weekend, Dad brought me up the Finecast Haemonculus that I ordered it 6 months ago, and which had only just shown up (thanks Maelstrom...). Looking over the clampack, I was very impressed. The model itself is fantastic, and there appeared to be a very high level of detail in the cast with no visible faults.

I cracked it open the day after the weekend, and found I was sorely mistaken. There were air bubbles all over the model, some of them quite large. Luckily, none of the front of the model (what I had been seeing through the clear plastic) was damaged. Having already used some of Dad's about a month ago, I quickly rushed to the FLGS and picked up some Liquid Green Stuff to help me fix up the model.

Here's some pictures of the faults. It's mostly just air bubbles, which required multiple layers of Liquid Green Stuff to fill up, but using this was much easier than regular Green Stuff. Big thumbs up to GW for an amazing product!

A couple of big bubbles here

Plenty of bubbles on this bit too

By far the worst bit was how the model sat on its base. It had been cast badly, and was on a massive lean. I had to cut and re-pin the bottom part back on, and sculpt to fill the resulting gap. The model stands straight up now though!

The gap after reattaching

A bad photo of the resculpting needed

And here's a blurry pic of some of the filling I had to do on the back half of the model.

Luckily, the finished model had little to no flaws on the front half

One labour of love later: the assembled Haemonculus

Here's the sad bit. As good as the Liquid Green Stuff was at filling the bubbles and other faults, it still took me three nights to clean and assemble this one figure. I'm not looking forward to repeating this when my Wracks eventually arrive (7 months and counting, thanks again Maelstrom!). Despite this, I'm very happy with the how the model has turned out, and can't wait to paint him. I'm just disappointed it was so much extra effort over a plastic or metal model, and costs a lot more too.

Of course, maybe if I'd used the Flash Brush and Mouldline Scraping Tool from the Citadel Clean-up Kit I wouldn't have had so much trouble... ;)

2012 - The Year of Ratties, Fatties and Boners

2011-12-21T09:40:00.001+13:00

With 2011 coming to a close I’m about to end my self-imposed hiatus from the tournament game. Moving into 2012 I’m looking to start playing events again having already signed up for Equinox and intending to play both Runefang and NatCon.

With this in mind I’ve been (slowly) painting up the various pieces I have outstanding for a number of armies.

First love, Skaven have seen some new Clanrats added and also two new Abominations purchased (Bane Legion’s Flint-Fang and Forgeworld’s Brood Horror). I’ve also purchased a swathe of Rat Ogres and I have some Weapons Teams. Over the next few months I hope to finish them giving me 6000+ points of tournament ready rats.

Second off the rank are my Ogres. I’ve added all the new characters, the new Monsters, new artillery and have just purchased three new Forgeworld Rhinox Riders. Once finished this again will give me about 6000 points of Ogres.

Finally, the Tomb Kings. As regular readers will be aware I have finished two Sphinxes, heaps of Archers and the Necropolis Knights over the last few months. I’m looking to tidy up the rest of the existing army and finish the Herald I need.

So the upshot of this is that I intend having three ready to use armies for next year which I can tailor to particular situations. Hard to see the skaven being replaced as main army but sure it will help to mix it up. On top of this I have a long term project to add more units to my Empire and add the new Vampire Count units as they are released in support of the book.

Venom-Spam at the Masters - Day 2

2011-12-20T14:48:00.001+13:00

Game 4: Hagen Kerr. SeizeGround (5), Pitched Battle.

I was not at allconfident going into this game, seeing as Hagen had one of the two armies atthe event that was the rock to my scissors. I should mention that at this point the TO’s decided everyone should infact be playing the same mission (although they were still being decidedrandomly), and fortunately they didn’t roll up Kill Points, which would haveleft me to sink without a trace.

Also luckily for me isthat Hagen’s list was far from an optimal carpark guard list, with a lack ofHydras and Vendettas when compared to the normal stuff that you only seeoverseas (and in Charlie’s house too I might add!).

Hagen had:

Company Command, Lascannon,Kitchen Sink in Chimera

Company Command, 3xMeltaguns

10x Psykers in Chimera

Platoon Command, 4xFlamer in Chimera

Infantry Squad, Flamer,Autocannon in Chimera

Infantry Squad,Flamer, Autocannon, Commissar

Heavy Weapons Squad, Autocannons

Penal Legion Squad

Veteran Squad, 3xMeltaguns, Demolitions

Valkyrie, Rocket Pods

Vendetta, Heavy Boltersponsons

Hydra

Manticore

With the mission beingobjectives, I decided right from the get go that my only goal would be to killhis scoring units, since if I could get all of them, my worst result would be adraw. Again, I won the roll for first turn,and set up for a very focussed round of shooting, getting a lot of the unitsout of Venoms for some blaster action. Ineeded to get rid of the psykers, as they could deal with the beasts, but couldonly immobilise their ride. I was alsoable to shake both flyers and the Venoms wiped out the HWS.

In return, Hagen madesome serious mistakes. He got theinfantry squad out of the Vendetta so they could kill 3 Trueborn, but lost themto Venom fire the next round. He turboboosted the Valkyrie behind my lines, right next to a Trueborn Venom and 3other warrior squads in Venoms, also in view of the Ravagers. This might have been a good idea, had he alsogot out the Psykers (more on that in a sec), but as it was, he just gifted methe Valkyrie and the scoring unit inside. I also think he should have gotten the Psykers out of their immobilisedChimera so they could see the Beasts. One shooting phase later, and if he kills 5 or 6 models (not hard, evenwith 3+ cover), the Beasts and Baron are falling back. If that Valkyrie is inthe right place, they are then off the table at the start of my turn, puttingme well behind, and giving Hagen two bonus points. The shooting he did have did some damage tome, in largely the right places (killing Trueborn and targeting Ravagers), buton the whole, I think Hagen really made a hash of this turn in terms ofactually winning the game.

In my next turn, Ikept up the same strategy. The Beastsleft the Baron and charged his Chimera park which had the PCS and two infantrysquads inside. Normally, this would be aterrible move, with 3 heavy flamers and 6 regular flamers against the bunchedup beasts, but assuming I could at least shake the vehicles in combat, he’dneed to get out to fire the flamers, leaving the squads vulnerable to Venoms.As mentioned before, my shooting cleaned up the Valkyrie, the unit inside, andthe unit from the Vendetta, and kept the Vendetta shaken. Hagen again made a mistake in responding tothe beasts, whereby he got all his units out to kill them, rather than justkilling a few (this time out of cover) and using the Psykers to see the restoff. I did lose the Beasts, but was ableto kill off those 3 scoring units over the next two turns with shooting and theBaron.

That left just onescoring unit on Hagen’s side, the Penal Legion, and while my army was taking ahammering all round, I still had 3 scoring units of my own. Because of time pressure, we both knew wewould have to call the game at turn 5 (despite the hour-long lunch break thatwe weren’t allowed to play into). I wasn’tquite able to get the Penal Legion (the Baron failed his shadowfield save onthe way in), but I was able to set up one objective that I would hold forcertain, and another with 2 units of Warriors controlling it. At the end of Hagen’s Turn 5 shooting, I hada single model from each unit still alive, and Hagen failed his psychic testfor their shooting attack, giving me the win by the skin of my teeth. If they had passed the test, it would havehit and wounded both of the models claiming that objective, but I maintain thatI would have passed one of my 6+ go-to-ground saves, so it didn’t actually makea difference :P

Win 17-5

I really think Hagenmessed up this game, and he should have been able to take a win easily. That the game was so close, and yet he stillmade multiple mistakes, just shows how much the game was in his favour. I was lucky to get out of that one alive,that’s for sure!

Game 5: Haydn Korach. Killpoints, Dawn of War.

Next up was the Haydn,the man who the night before at dinner had snorted a line of table salt! This would also be a tough matchup. The mission was bad for me, and I lost thefirst turn which was even worse! Haydn alsohad a lot of long range shooting which would give him the edge, as he would beable to pick up killpoints from across the table.

Haydn’s list was:

Eldrad

5x Fire Dragons in WaveSerpent, T/l Shuriken cannons.

5x Dire Avengers in WaveSerpent, T/l Missile Launcher.

5x Dire Avengers

3x Warwalkers, scatterlasers

Falcon

Haydn brought all ofhis stuff on turn 1 spread out across the board, but both warwalker units wereto one side. I took advantage of thisand pulled a fantasy-style “put-it-in-the-other-corner-behind-a-hill”, which wouldbasically take the walkers out of the game for a couple of turns. I flew on, and tried to use my night visionto get early shots off with the Ravagers, but the one that rolled high enoughto see anything promptly missed with all three shots. I braced myself for some pain, and in hisshooting phase, Haydn did ... nothing. Not anything at all. Never tofear though, I replied in my turn with the same nothing. Evidently the armies had shown up just towatch each other across the battlefield.

In turn 3, it gotnasty. Haydn’s shooting killed two ofthe Ravagers and immobilised the third. SinceI was 2 KP down, I decided I had to kick it into gear and just go for it. I flew all the Venoms 12” forward and got theguys out. My blaster shooting killed 3 WaveSerpents, and the Venoms cleaned up the units that fell out, instantly puttingme up 6 KP to 2. I got another Serpentin the next turn, putting me up to 8 total, and Haydn just couldn't kill me fastenough with what he had left. Since theother tanks were shaken most of the time, the only comeback he had was to pickup 2 KP per turn with the Warwalkers. The game ended on turn 5 at 8-7 with me still having a turn to play (werolled to see whether it went on to see if we needed to bother with my turn).

Win 18-3

Game 6: Doug Sainsbury. Capture and Control, Pitched Battle.

Right, I’d been ableto dodge Doug all tourney, and I’d had had my luck against Charlie and Hagen,and now I was truly up against it. Doughad the best list at the event to deal with mine, and was ready to tear me anew one in the last round. I knew I onlyneeded a draw to win the tourney, and that’s what I set out to get, withDrawhammer as the mission funnily enough.

Doug’s “list of doom”was:

Coteaz

Ordo Xenos Inquisitor,toys

3 x 5 Purifiers, 2Psycannons in Razorbacks

5 Assassins, 3Warriors, 2 Meltaguns in Rhino.

Strike Squad, Psycannonin Razorback

4x 3 Warriors in Razorbacks

3 Riflemen Dreads

For those keepingtrack at home, that’s 8 Razorbacks, a Rhino, and three Dreads. Eeeek!

Doug's stack is on the right

The game was basicallyme keeping Doug at bay for 5 turns, while being destroyed by his shooting back,so I’ll just give a rundown of the key decisions. I think Doug handicapped himself unnecessarilyby putting his objective in the opposite corner to mine, which only increasedthe distance he needed to travel to contest my objective.

At all times, Iprioritised killing the vehicles closest to my objective, and left the Dreadsalone, since they were never going to get to my objective to contest. My biggest mistake was underestimating thekilliness of the assassins. I chose toforgo shooting them with 3-4 venoms before charging with the beasts since Ifigure the beasts could take them anyway. Well, how wrong was I!? TheBeasts got wiped out, and that really opened the game up for Doug, since theywere one of the biggest roadblocks on the way to my objective.

In the end, I was ableto keep him off my objective until the game ended (fortunately!) on turn 5. Had there been another turn I’m pretty sureDoug would have had it, since I was down to a handful of models at that stage.

Draw 10-11 (so allbragging rights go to Doug)

Since I figured out adraw was all I needed, I was pretty happy at this point. Luckily I hadn’t lost the last game, sinceCharlie spanked Hagen in the last game to wind up 5 points behind me (thedifference between a draw and a loss was 7 points). This was enough to scrape me into first place,with Charlie second, and David Dawn in a distant third, 22 points behindCharlie.

Needless to say, I wasabsolutely stoked to win, and also to beat Charlie who’d won the event two yearsrunning. A big thanks to Phil and the TOteam for the invite and for running the event, and despite the issues I hadwith some elements of how it was run, they did a fantastic job of putting thetourney together. Also, thanks to all myopponents for 6 really enjoyable games, and most of them challenging (sorryDave!).

GW 2012 - The Anticipation Builds

2011-12-20T13:24:00.003+13:00

Having reviewed the Best and Worst of Games Workshop in 2011, I thought I’d give you my take on what I view are the most anticipated releases of 2012.

Codex: Chaos Legions

Now it may come as a surprise but I’m not the biggest fan of the piece of crap that Gav Thorpe wrote and called the “Codex: Chaos Space Marines - 4th Edition”. This “codex” was singularly the main reason I stepped back from playing 40k. it is a classic case of letting loose a giant vampire squid to wrap itself around a large part of the hobby and then allow it to relentlessly jam its blood funnel into anything that smells like fun or depth. “Hey, let’s take your nine Legions and make them Chaos Liquorice Allsorts Renegades! These nine separate armies, each with their own unique characteristics are soooooo confusing!”

So for me the news that May/June sees the release of a rumoured Chaos Legions book is the most exciting news since the Codex:CSM Third Printing (the one that let Power Fists strike at Initiative if you had a Doom Siren). I personally couldn’t give a rat’s arse if the army is roadkill as long as they give the nine Legions back their unique characteristics. Hell, I’d even be “the” Baby Seal.

However I don’t think the book will be roadkill. There was a time that CSM were GW’s biggest seller after Space Marines – and almost as big as the entirety of Warhammer Fantasy. The market is there to be tapped and hopefully the current restraining order on Thorpe continues. Let Phil Kelly write it. Hell, let Jeremy Vetock! But whatever you do make sure it has character.

Given its release date it will give an early loom at 6th Edition thinking as well.

Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts

The first of the Big Three (Daemons, Dark Elves and VC) to get the 8th Edition treatment. These three books were the pinnacle of power creep in 7th Edition and nothing afterwards had anything like the power AND consistency to dominate podiums.

The first three 8th Edition books have seen a new balance return to the game – though Ogres have changed the meta. They appear more internally balanced as well as balanced against each other. I previously said that I believe that the major reason for this is the reduction in the number of unique Magic Items. To date the three books have gone 8-8-10. I hope the VC stay in single figures even if they are the more powerful items. My view it has been far easier to balance the books without having to factor in a multitude of specific items. It also reduces the need for multipage FAQs.

I’d like to see both zombies and skeletons get a role in the new book. Ghouls are default Core and you rarely see anything else. Other than that anything that makes the choice of optimal army a crapshoot i.e. there is no one or two netlists.

This is the first release of 2012, out in January. Rumours are that Empire and Dwarfs (Yawn) are to follow.

Warhammer 40k 6th Edition

To me there is a massive gap back to here. Most people who play 5th Edition like it. I’m sure I’d be happy to play it if my Legions were back. However the rumours are that July/August sees the new edition. So what would I like to see – other than the banning of Imperial Guard?

The first thing would be pre-measuring of everything. It has been a huge success in 8th Edition Fantasy removing 90% of all conflict. I’d hate to go back to a game where the ability to tell the difference between 11.9” and 12.1” was a defining skill.

Secondly, do something with the victory conditions so that the premise is not that “elite” troops fight to defend “core” troops. It is just wrong. Yes, make Troops important but not to the point whereby in some armies they are issued with deckchairs.

Sort out the missions and if possible give a mechanism in the book to define degree of victory. It might not be Victory Points but for those who like to keep score there should be some mechanism.

For me the first two releases are head and shoulders more important to my gaming than the third. Other people’s mileage may vary.

The Best and Worst of Games Workshop

2011-12-20T10:20:00.002+13:00

With 2011 rapidly coming to an end I thought I’d give out my awards for the best Games Workshop models/products this year. I’m going to put Finecast models to one side as the jury is still out on whether the venture has been a success….for hobbyists.

I will split into four categories – 40k Model, Fantasy Model, Scenery and Product.

Fantasy Model

This was quite a tough choice as the general standard has been both high and even. In the end I have plumbed for the Tomb King Warsphinx. This is a beautiful model, easy to put together and a real pleasure to paint. I made one standard and another as a Warsphinx/Necrosphinx hybrid. The crew and howdah are wonderfully sculpted and the monster while static completely achieves the premise of a living statue.

Runners-up for me would be the Tomb Guard and the Ogre Kingdoms Thundertusk.

Worst model of the year from my point of view is a tie between the Hell Pit Abomination and the TK Liche Priest who looks like he has just wet himself.

40K Model

A hands-down winner for me here. I love the new Necron Ghost Ark. To me this is a fantastic looking model which when it was released I thought looked very Cyberman-y. It really captures the Necron fluff as it portrays the relentless trudge of a Necron army, once awakened.

The runner up is the Dark Eldar Venom (a beautiful and elegant model) followed by the Necron Catacomb Barge.

The worst model was an easy pick as well. The Grey Knight Dreadknight reminds me of Hagen Kerr when he strode around the streets of Ngaio with his infant son in a frontpack. When I see that fugly figure that image comes to mind. Seriously what were GW thinking? Runner up would be the GK Jokaero….awful, just awful.

Scenery

Landslide winner here – Skullvane Manse. Mine arrived last week and it is a beautiful kit. There has been some moaning regarding the skulls but seriously what did people expect? It’s called SKULLvane Manse and it is set in the Warhammer World.

In terms of runners up, one other piece stands head and shoulders above the rest – Garden of Morr. I can see these flying out the door once the new VC book is released in January. For the worst scenery models, nothing was truly bad. However the Storm of Magic fulcrums were definitely a couple of notches below the Manse and Garden.

Product

I was going to give this to Liquid Green Stuff but it will have to be satisfied with Runner Up. For me the best new product was the Hardback Warhammer Army Books that started with the first new edition book, Orcs & Goblins. This solved one of the main gripes people had with GW, pages falling out.

Worst product, again easy. The Finecast brush and mould line scraper. Really GW, really?

Now I'm sure that Jack and Charlie will have different opinions so I look forward to their blog posts on the subject (HINT)

"We'll be in Moscow by Xmas" (and Other Bold Claims)

2011-12-19T15:28:00.001+13:00

The Games Workshop embargo of the southern hemisphere has been in place now for almost seven months and as I previously noted this has really changed my GW buying habits.

I reckon I’d be lucky to buy 40% of what I previously used to buy from the company and of that only 25% (10% of previous spend) comes from the local shop. So from what they were getting from me it looks like GW is a loser – and Maelstrom Games and Wayland Games are the big losers. I’m struggling to see it as anything but a “lose-lose” situation – manufacturer/retailer/customer.

What I was thinking about was Wayland’s boast at or about the time of the boycott that they had a workaround that would take a matter of weeks to implement. I think that we can confidently say that that was at best false hope on their part. Seven months on I think if they had a solution it would have been in place by now.

So, in effect, this is our reality - along with Australia the most expensive GW prices in the world. I am waiting with baited breath to see GW financials for the region when they come out in a couple of months – as it feels that Australia especially has taken a body blow.

Here in New Zealand we are maintaining tourney numbers but there is the constant trickle of the “disaffected” away from GW’s product to that of other companies.

I wander into GW only rarely these days, normally to pick up a new army book and magic cards. Today I ventured in and picked up the latest Horus Heresy novel and the Fantasy novel “Age of Legend”. What really struck me was the lack of blisters on the shelves (in part a function of FineCast) and the number of “Dreadfleet” boxes on show.

The next set of financials are going to be a very interesting read.

The Weekend's Hobby

2011-12-19T09:03:00.003+13:00

Over the weekend I based all my new Tomb King models and now all I have to do is add static grass and the army is largely finished.

I do have a Hierotitan and Herald to paint but then that’s it for the Tomb Kings. I’ll try and get them done over the holiday break.

The other thing I did over the weekend was to sort out what I want in my Ogres. I managed to sell off two boxes of Mournfang Cavalry and replaced them with an order for three Forgeworld Rhinox Riders. I already have three painted so this will give me more options.

I have made up one Ironblaster and have undercoated it ready to paint. I have a second Ironblaster but this is pretty much surplus to requirements as I can’t see too many events let you run two. So if you want a cheap Ironblaster still on the sprue let me know and I’ll work out a cheap price.

A quick reckoning shows that I now have about 5000 points of Ogres so some time in 2012 I’m looking to get them all on the table in some form of mega battle.

Mournfang Cavalry Looking For Friendly Home

2011-12-17T16:00:00.001+13:00

One for the NZ locals:

I have two brand new sealed boxes of Ogre Kingdoms Mournfang Cavalry

$120 including postage NZ Retail $146

If interested drop me a line on peter.dunnnz@gmail.com

EDIT: Sold to a man from Tauranga

Venom-Spam at the Masters - Day 1

2011-12-17T13:45:00.000+13:00

Game 1: Charlie St Clair. Capture and Control, Quarters

In what I’m sure was an un-tampered and in no way altereddraw by Phil, I wound up playing against Charlie in the first round. Nothing like the guy going for the Mastershat trick for a challenging start! Luckily, both of the games I’d played in the past year had been thisexact match-up, my Dark Eldar against his Wolves. Not so good was that both of them had beenlosses.

Charlie’s list was:

Nigel Stormcaller (not nyal!)

5 Scouts, Melta, Wolf Guard, Combi-Melta

2 x 9 Grey Hunters, Wolf Standard, Melta, Wolf Guard,Combi-Melta in Rhino

2 x 8 Grey Hunters, Wolf Standard, Melta, Wolf Guard,Combi-Melta in Rhino

5 Grey Hunters, Flamer in Las/Plas Razorback

2 x 5 Long Fangs, 4 Missiles

5 Long Fangs, 4 Missiles, HB Razorback

Obviously, I’m a much better player than Charlie, sonaturally I put my superior ability to use and outplayed him to win the rollfor first turn :D

I was able to force him into a quarter with a buildingroughly in the middle. This meant thathe could either put the Long Fangs into the building, losing most or all in thefirst turn, or as he did, keep them safe behind the building, but limit theirline of sight and give cover to most of their shooting, both situations I washappy with.

In my first turn I was able to take out three of his tanks,and take the weapon off of a razorback, meaning the only shooting coming backat me would be the Long Fangs and a Living Lightning. I also cleaned up the squad of Grey Huntersthat had their rhino destroyed. Charliereturned the favour by promptly rolling a perils with Nigel, and didn’t achievemuch with the Long Fangs.

A nice picture just before the fun started

In the second turn, I finished off the rest of the tanks,and most of the grey hunters in this turn and the next. Nigel rolled a 1 for the first save he wasgiven, and died in turn 2, after adding nothing to the game. From here it was clean-up, and getting toCharlie’s objective to kill the 5 Grey Hunters holding it. There was a dicey moment at the end of turn 5where the scouts were left with one model after a torrent of shooting, and hewas contesting the objective which would have made it a draw if the gameended. Luckily it didn’t, and I was ableto kill all bar one Long Fang by the end of the game.

Win 20-1

Game 2: Matt Robinson. Capture and Control, Quarters.

So I was off to a flying start, and now figured I’d beplaying something awful, like Doug’s Razorspam, or Hagen’s carpark, but insteadgot to play Matt Robinson and his Eldar. Matt had been fortunate enough to draw the Daemon player in the firstround (funny how in 40k getting to play Daemons is a good thing!), and done badthings to him. Looking at his list, Ifigured he was going to be more than a little out of his depth in this game,since it was arguably one of the weakest at the event.

I should add at this point that each table was rolling uptheir own missions individually at the start of each game. We’d gone from being promised differentmissions in the player’s pack then being told it was rulebook missions, andthen finally to having each table playing a different rulebook mission. No disrespect to Phil and the other TO’s,but it felt like there was just a lack of interest and effort on theirpart. Every table should at least beplaying the same mission, which they at least fixed on the second day.

Matt had:

Farseer

3 x 10 Guardians in Wave Serpents

5 Jetbikes

3 Vypers, Scatter Lasers, Shuriken Cannons

3 D-Cannons

3 Warwalkers, Shuriken Cannons

Falcon

Matt won the roll for first turn, and amazed me by giving itto me. Not complaining, I set up in thecorner that would give him the least amount of cover. The game started as expected, with me pickingoff his jetbikes and farseer in the first turn with Venoms, and over the firstfew turns I killed the Vypers, 2 Wave Serpents, the D-Cannons, and 2 of theWalkers. The venoms were able to mop upall bar one of the guardians when Matt hopped the third squad out to shoot thebeast unit. The Guardians were about tocharge (?), which would give me the game, but the beasts were nice enough torun away from the shooting.

Towards the end of the game, there was just the Falcon and aWave Serpent left. The Wave Serpent wason Matt’s objective surrounded by blasters, and the Falcon desperately tryingto contest mine. I was able to stunlockthe Falcon for a couple of turns before destroying it, and also killed the WaveSerpent and guardian inside. Even if Ihadn’t been stunning the Falcon, it would have had to ram its way through 2Venoms to get to my objective, so I was fairly safe.

Win 20-1

Game 3: David Dawn. Seize Ground (3), Pitched Battle.

Okay, now on two max wins, and I figure I’m definitelyplaying a big fish on the top table right? Well, the only other person on 2 wins is Dave Dawn, and fate would haveit that he’s playing Nids. Pretty muchan auto-win for me, but I didn’t quite thank him for the free win before thegame started.

Dave had:

Flyrant

Tyranid Prime

2 x 5 Ymgarls

Doom of Malan’tai in Pod

20 Hormagaunts, Toxin Sacs

15 Termagants, Devourers

2 x 6 Genestealers

2 Trygons

Dave put all of his stuff in reserve, and I deployedcentrally (having the first turn). Thegame was basically a turkey shoot. Ikilled stuff as it came on, for not much loss in return. The only thing that didn’t work for me wasthe beasts, which couldn’t fight off 5 Ymgarls, and ended up getting charged byhalf of the Nid army after being reduced to WS1. Not pretty!

I ended up tabling Dave on Turn 6, basically due to himtrickling in piecemeal and not being able to kill him any faster…

Win 19-2

So I finished the day on 59/60, and was destined for a toptable clash with Hagen’s guard in the morning, which I wasn’t exactly feelingconfident about and would be a very tough game.

Review - Battlefoam P.A.C.K. 720

2011-12-17T10:30:00.001+13:00

For a couple of years I've been thinking about getting a Battlefoam bag for traveling with my Fantasy armies. I have the Sabol Motor Pool and Division but the first is limited in size and the second of these is always a lottery re air luggage regs. At various times I've checked out the range but haven't bit the bullet because I couldn't settle on size or new products were on the horizon.

A couple of months ago my Skaven buddy Locky picked up one of the new AIR pack bags and had it delivered to my place. When he picked it up I had a good look at it and was extremely impressed with the quality. However I decided it wasn't for me based on a few requirements I have.

With my Skaven I already have my troops on movement trays - who wants to rank up 250 models every time you take them out of the case. This means that I would like the trays to sit upright in the case even though I use rare earth magnets. Unfortunately the AIR would have them sitting at 90 degrees

The second requirement is easy and full access. My preference is for a case that zips right down so you can slide trays out rather than have to lift them out.

The final requirement was that I have no problem getting the case on planes. The general aviation rules are that you can have a combined 46" in Width + Height + Depth. The AIR is right up at that limit.

So based on seeing Locky's case and my own requirements I ordered a P.A.C.K. 720.

I ordered the case with Pluck Foam Load Out with four trays. The load out comes with a series of 1" and 2" trays but these weren't really what I wanted. Battlefoam were really open to swapping out the trays for ones I wanted. In the end this meant I had four trays - 1x 2.5", 2x 3" and 1x 3.5" - making up my 12" capacity.

Hopefully from the bottom picture you can see that the zip is in the bottom left. You can unzip up and right around to the bottom right which allows the access you can see in the second picture.

From my point of view this is excellent access. I can get in easily and slide the trays out without having to reach down the side and lift them. For Fantasy armies that are ranked up in movement trays this is a godsend.

The quality of the product is excellent as can be seen in the final picture.

The handle is a very heavy duty rubber while the material is a thick synthetic that looks like it will be resistant to wear and tear. The other big advantage is that the sides are fitted with a hard plastic shell that provides further protection and ensures the case keeps its shape.

I am very impressed with the case and believe that it is the best on the market for transporting Fantasy army. It's not cheap ($290 NZD) but that is partly due to the high postage charges from the US. That said, Battlefoam do use a reputable carrier, the delivery service is quick (7 business days in busiest time of year) and is tracked so you can check its progress.

Jack took advantage of their Black Friday sale and ordered the same pack with custom cut foam package for his Dark Eldar. And I was so impressed with the quality that I ordered the Ogre Kingdom trays for my case.

So a big 5/5 to Battlefoam for the 720. It is the dog's bollocks for transporting Fantasy armies by air.

From Ratties to Fatties.......

2011-12-16T13:46:00.001+13:00

On Wednesday night I had my first game with the new Ogre Book. I had to proxy my Ironblaster and sabretusks – mine are unpainted – but pretty much had the rest of the army.

The list I used was as approximately:

Slaughtermaster – Death, Greedy Fist, Armour of Destiny (Yes Jervois I am that evil)

BSB – Heavy Armour, Talisman of Preservation, Potion of Speed
Butcher – Level 2, Maw, Fencer’s Blades

9 Bulls – FC

8 Iroguts – FC, Std of Discipline
2x 3 Leadbelchers – Muso
3x 1 Sabretusks
3 Mournfang Cavalry – FC, Heavy Armour, IF
3 Maneaters – Stubborn, Scout, XHW
Ironblaster

Played against Locky with his BT-led Daemons. The game ended with me up about 150 points. Locky picked up the Maneaters and the Ironblaster in the last turn to pull it back – I actually thought he was ahead.

However I thought I’d give some of my initial impressions:

Ironblaster looks an interesting variant on the war machine/monster hybrid
The internet rage is Death and Greedy Fist. I didn’t have Caress but after one game I can see myself swapping my Slaughtermaster to Great Maw.
Toothcracker is a killer spell. The ability to boost it is game-breaking especially when it can be stacked with other spells.
My Butcher will probably become a Firebelly. More versatile.
List needs Earthing Rod and scroll.
Potential swap of unit of Leadbelchers for more Maneaters

Really enjoyed playing them as they are very different to the rats. How different? Well I had less models in my army than I had in a unit of Slaves last weekend.

Review of the Year in Fantasy Podcasting

2011-12-16T11:14:00.000+13:00

Almost at the end of the year so I thought I'd give a review of the various Warhammer Fantasy Podcasts I've listened to over the course of the year.

Upfront it is important to acknowledge that these guys do this out of love rather than for financial gain. That said, most offer a "premium" service that you can sign-up for getting extra content but in reality it is really just a donation to their costs. I will generally always sign up if I regularly listen as I appreciate their efforts.

So let's see how they've gone:

Podhammer

The grand-daddy of the warhammer podcasts. These guys pretty much gave it away in mid-2010 (around the time 8th Edition came out). They continue spasmodically into this year with Jeff Carroll and a new co-host completing their trip to Adepticon.

The level of fantasy dwindled to pretty much non-existent and the show appears to be in hibernation. That's probably the best place for it as the hosts lost their enthusiasm for the game and the last few episodes appeared a chore.

Jeff deserves enormous credit for launching Fantasy podcasting to the masses back in 2007.

World's End Radio

Another podcast that has been going for a number of years. This year the release schedule slowed to a trickle and the focus changed more to alternative games.

I still listen but it is another one that is showing its age. I don't expect we'll see a much greater output in 2012.
Heelanhammer

Still a very prolific podcast that has its moments. This year I think that its output has suffered in comparison to previous years. The best episodes are where they go outside the three regular hosts for view on the game. In particular, I've found Bryan Carmichael brings a fresh perspective to armies and play that's not always evident from Wayne, Dan or Al.

Given that we had three new Army Books this year I probably expected more from the show than it delivered. While it's always a comfortable listen I believe it does need a refresh and I'd certainly like to hear more from Bryan and believe it would benefit from the return of Russ Veal.

Bad Dice

Still by far the most insightful of all the podcasts though it did suffer a body blow with the loss of one of the co-hosts, Ben Johnson mid-year. Ben Curry is clearly one of the top 2 or 3 players in the UK and has fresh and insightful comments on not only the game but also the tournament scene.

As noted the output is not as strong since Ben Johnson left but the show has added new regulars, Mark Wildman and Gareth Dicks. I think that it works best when Mark is there without Gareth (his partner) as there is more focus on Warhammer and less bickering between the two of them. At times it can sound like a cross between "Are You Being Served?" or "Carry On Camping".

However if you want strong wargaming analysis this is the best podcast to listen to. I hope Mr. Johnson returns soon.
The Black Sun

A new kid on the block, now up to its 15th episode. Irreverent, and at times pretty suspect, where it works is the breadth of its cast and the armies that they use. This means that there is less repetition and it is possible to get a broader perspective. Obviously the delivery might not be to everybody's taste, however I think that lurking beneath the "Jackass" showfront is some pretty good analysis of the game from a group that is progressing on the UK scene……e.g. Dom Hook's recent podium.

I'm Back! Masters Intro

2011-12-15T14:34:00.000+13:00

I think it's about time I started posting again. It's been an eternity since my last post, and with the Masters last weekend, what better time to start back up?

I was surprised to get a wildcard invite to the 40k competition, since I've pretty much been playing fantasy exclusively for the last year, but given the choice I think I would have picked 40k anyway. It was a good motivator for me to get the Dark Eldar that I've been painting over the last year up to tabletop standard and out onto the table. I figured out before the weekend that I'd played 2 games of 40k in the last 14 months, so I was going in well prepared ;)

With the event being no-comp, I decided to embrace it fully and came up with a list (during an exam no less!) that was simple, hard and in my mind good against Charlie. It always surprises me when people wanting to be competitive take a list that is not equipped to deal with whatever Charlie brings, seeing as he's been at the top of the NZ scene for the last 2-3 years. Especially since this was a small event, and you are going to have to beat him to win the tourney. Of course, we could have just had a tourney to see who comes second, but would we really be competitive tournament players then?

I reckon this pic deserves a second run out

The list I used was:

Baron Sathonyx

3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters in Venom, extra SC
3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters in Venom, extra SC
3 Trueborn, 3 Blasters in Venom, extra SC

5 Warriors, Blaster in Venom, extra SC
5 Warriors, Blaster in Venom, extra SC
5 Warriors, Blaster in Venom, extra SC
5 Warriors, Blaster in Venom, extra SC
5 Warriors, Blaster in Venom, extra SC

5 Beastmasters, 9 Khymerae, 6 Razorwings

Ravager, Shock Prow
Ravager
Ravager

So not much subtlety really. An excessive amount of poisoned shooting backed up by darklight weapons, and in theory, a heavy hitting combat unit in the Beasts.

Reports to follow

Sports at the Masters and Sports Scoring in General

2011-12-15T10:02:00.001+13:00

I've just seen the full results for the Masters and it's a shame that last year's record of perfect sports in both Fantasy and 40k was not repeated this year,

Two people in 40k and one in Fantasy failed to score perfect sports over the event.

I can only speak for myself but it takes a lot for me to give out a Sports hit these days. The last one I gave out was two and a half years ago for deliberate slow play. On the weekend all my opponents received max Sports from me. In one game there was a few niggles but not enough to incur a penalty in my book.

So if you are playing at an event what does it take for you to give out a sports penalty?

Generally I'll tell someone if they are spoiling my enjoyment of the game. Typically it will be for moaning or deliberately slowing things down. I expect rules discussions because we all either have areas where we don't know, make mistakes or forget. Personally I'll ask the Umpire and in this role I prefer if the Umpire is proactive in providing guidance or a ruling. I'd never sports hit someone for questioning a rule or action but I do expect them to abide by Umpire's decision once made.

Milestones

2011-12-14T14:50:00.001+13:00

This week has seen some notable milestones.

The site went through 150,000 visits
Today saw our 500th post; and
Yesterday was our biggest ever day with 1200 visits.

Thanks to you all for your support!

Skaven FAQ - Headline News

2011-12-14T10:19:00.001+13:00

GW released an updated FAQ for the Skaven yesterday. Here are the highlights/lowlights as far as I’m concerned:

Characters in Slave Units

Q: If a character joins a unit of Skavenslaves, can you still shoot at enemy units in combat with the Skavenslave unit? (p36)

A: No.

That’s how I’ve been playing it for the last three months after it was pointed out to me. Nice to have it in black and white now. Makes the naked engineer less of a no-brainer (or alternatively makes the Skaven player think things through).

Template Versus Bell or Furnace

Q: If a template hits a Screaming Bell or Plague Furnace being ridden by a character, how is this resolved? (p42 & p48)

A: It is resolved as per the template rules in the Shooting at Ridden Monsters section on page 105 in the Warhammer rulebook.

For example: a Rock Lobber hits A Screaming Bell ridden by a Grey Seer. The central hole is over the base. As such a D6 is rolled to determine who takes the Strength 9 hit. A 4 is rolled and so the Screaming Bell takes the Strength 9 hit while the Grey Seer takes the Strength 3 hit.

In the past because Bell and Furnace are “Unique” their Army book rules for allocation of hits overruled the Rulebook. This FAQ changes this and means that the model now takes multiple hits.

Crack’s Call

Q: Is the 4D6” line from Crack’s Call a template? (p78)

A: Yes.

This is a mixed bag for Skaven. Characters will now get a “Look Out Sir” (negative) but ridden monsters will now test on every part at their own initiative rather than a single test at high character initiative (positive).

WLC and Multi-Wound Models

Q: If a shot from a Warp Lightning Cannon does not kill a Monstrous Infantry/Beast/Cavalry or Monster model does that shot stop? (p68)

A: No. All models are still hit.

This is a huge clarification that I argued based on wording, and feels good to get after the other changes Always thought this was the case but nice to have confirmation.

Plague Banner

Q. Do the Plague Monk crew on the Plague Furnace benefit from the effect of the Plague Banner? (p110)

A. Yes

Again I always thought they did. Other people had a different view.

So mixed for the Skaven. The biggest negative and positive is Crack’s Call ruling.

The Masters - Another View

2011-12-14T08:55:00.002+13:00

Browsing the net you find other people's reports of your games. Here are three I lifted from the Masters:

Game Three – Daniel Butler (Daemons)

Yech, I didn't play well here, and by that I lost the game in the deployment phase.

This was a red flag match for me, and I would have been cheerful with a 9-11 loss, but due to a brainfart... in my head, I would march confidently into a nearby building with my flamers and herald, his HPA would be too scared to move, his WLC would misfire and kill his grey seer, and I would then Pit of Shades his Furnace till it was gone.

However, what actually happened was this. My herald would die to a hail of poisoned slingshots, my flamers turned into rats courtesy of the Dreaded 13th, and the HPA gleefully turned some fiends I had over that way into mush. The rest of my army deployed off to the far side, dug a trench and opted for trying to stop the haemorrhage,

Pete looked over at that end, decided he'd done more than enough and sat his boys down for some well earned Cheesy bites. We agreed that neither was going anywhere, called the game early, and wandered off to check out other peoples battles.

Game Five – Joe Dixon (Warriors)

Should I bother telling about the game or can we just leave it at "10-10"? Me and Pete must have gone 10-10 in our last four or so games, so we almost didn't bother playing it.

But we did.

I've always found it a really tight matchup, with my lists not anything that could stand the Furnace or HPA in combat, and the WLC is another acronym my Knights aren't pleased to see across the table. I decided to go into shooting-mode, like in the Empire game, and try and magic off the HPA and WLC. Depending on how early this happened and how many Knights had been blasted, I could then try and engage.

I rolled up first turn and my 10-wide lines of Knights shuffled awkwardly like no Knights should. Magic saw a Chain Lighting zap 2 wounds off the HPA, and kill the WLC outright. Nearby some slaves felt liberated by the removal of such an oppressive symbol, and ran off. Awesome start.

The game went on with me and Pete hurling magicks at each other, coming to a bit of a stand-off. Pete Plauged a unit of Knights down to 3 models, who decided it was time to see a doctor and "pulled back". Meanwhile, I got a huge Fireball off on his HPA and the oil-covered bait Marauder Horsemen (ooohhh... that's why they're black...) it had just eaten caught fire, obliterating it. Pete's alphabet now only had 18 letters, and I was feeling cosy for the win. But he had a plan and the gods of "10-10" were watching...

With balls of steel in the face of an Infernal Puppet with some impressive scalps, Pete unleashed a Thirteenth against the Warriors, melting half of them. And then did it again the next turn, melting the rest.

Game Six – Antony Kitson (Ogres)

Not having any real idea of how the standings were, but knowing Pete was top of the pops on day 1 and not likely to losing too many games on day 2, I knew that this was really the “danger” zone. Good stuff. Pete had beaten me pretty convincingly with his Skaven in the two (three??) other tourney encounters that we had played.

On one flank my Mornfangs killed the Cannon, and the A Bomb killed my Leadbelchers. On the other flank the Bullstar was tied up by slaves.

The decisive moment of the game occurred in the centre when Petes’ Seer failed to Teleport out of his bunker that was in charge range of the Gutstar and without anywhere to run. This lead to the loss of the Seer and an overrun charge into the Skaven BSB bunker. Having boosted the Gutstars toughness they were also pretty invulnerable to the subsequent flank charge from the furnace, which lead to the eventual loss of that too. The eventual exchange of points was heavily in my favour.

Baby Seal Reprise

2011-12-13T16:11:00.004+13:00

So following my post regarding the 40k Masters’ lists and the variance of opinion with most participants, was I right?

Were the lists taken the fabled “Baby Seals” I labelled them? Well as far as I saw, pretty much. Certainly I don’t think that there was a level playing field. The three lists I identified – Charlie’s Space Wolves, Doug’s Grey Knights and Jack’s Dark Eldar – were the three strongest lists there.

Jack and Charlie finished 1st and 2nd respectively, having played each other in Round One. I do think Charlie’s list was probably the better all-round list but Jack’s list was optimised to fight Charlie (who he correctly identified as the best player there) and was paper to Charlie’s rock. However Jack was clearly paper to Doug’s scissors. And that’s the meta that Jack needed to play to win – beat Charlie and hope he could get a result versus Doug.

For me the other thirteen lists (with the possible exception of Hagen’s IG) were all susceptible to these three lists. Obviously it is difficult to state that conclusively as luck and player skill comes into it.

I was surprised Doug didn’t do better but I’m sure he will have learned a lot and be back stronger (in terms of experience) next time.

I also suspect that we’ll see the Baby Seal lists start to show the vestiges of Walrus tusks and 4++ blubber saves.

With No-Comp lists will get tougher. However that doesn’t mean you have to take a net-list to win. It just means you’ll have to play better to tread water though.

And a big thumbs up to Daniel Hayden for his T-shirt “Club Sandwiches Not Seals”.

Skaven at NZ Masters - Day Two

2011-12-13T15:02:00.002+13:00

Day Two dawns wet and bloody cold…..I thought this was meant to be the Tropical North. I’ve run the numbers and I reckon that I need to score at least 34 points to be in with a chance of winning. To date I’ve dodged the two armies I don’t want to play but I know that at least one of them is going to tap me on the shoulder and introduce itself.

I arrive at the venue and am greeted by a nice surprise….

Game Four – Henry Poor (Orcs & Goblins)

I’ve never played Henry but I was happy with the Orcs & Goblin draw. The key thing for me was to get Henry’s warmachines as they were the things that could really hurt my army, read HPA, WLC and Furnace. Unfortunately for me I didn’t get them fast enough and they started taking wounds off my Furnace and WLC. While I scorched his Black Orcs, Henry pushed his wolf heroes forward. I mananaged to gas one and the second wore a brass orb to the head. However then his Wolf Chariots charged the HPA and did 11 impact hits. Henry didn’t inflict too many wounds and the big guy had his way with them.

The funniest moment of the battle was when Henry got Foot of Gork off on my Furnace unit and then continued to hit it three more times. Somehow (Henry rolled 1s to wound twice on Furnace) I survived and the unit was charged by Night Goblins and the Wyvern. The rest of the Plague Monk unit was killed off and both Wyvern and NGs were separately charged by Slaves. The Slaves saw off the NG unit but Wyvern survived.

Win 12-8

Game Five – Joe Dixon (Warriors of Chaos)

Now the last four tournament games Joe and I have played have finished 10-10. So we were both expecting a tight game. Joe’s army was awful for me as it comprised 5 units – 2x 10 Knights, 1x 25 Warriors, 2x 5 Marauder Horse plus characters. I knew it was going to be hard to get more than 150 points out of him especially as he had the Puppet. For the only time in the event I took Plague Magic plus the 13th Spell on my Seer.

Game started badly as Joe Chain-Lightninged my WLC off which caused a unit of Slaves to panic off the board. Over the next few turns we very tentatively eyed each other – my HPA getting a unit of horse before dying while his other horse went down to Magic and Shooting.
In the middle turns I tried to reduce one of Joe’s Knight units with Plague but he managed to pull them back out of range while he killed a unit of Gutter Runners. Going into my last Magic phase I worked out Joe was 447 points ahead. So having reduced his Warrior unit in Turn 5 I picked up my Magic Dice and rolled 25 for 13th Spell. Joe’s four dice were not enough and I turned them into rats. I got to yell the immortal words “TAKE THEM OFF”.

This gave me a 3VP win.

Win 10-10

While all this was happening Dan was giving Henry a 20-0 bashing which meant he had leapfrogged me into 1st Place, 8 points in front. Now I knew that Joe and he would do the dance of delicate flowers so I need a big….18+….win to take out first. However, my opponent was Antony Kitson with his Ogres. We were both on the same points.
Game Six – Antony Kitson (Ogres)

I hated this match-up. One of Skaven’s best tools is removed from the mix. However I had a plan. I was going to deploy back and let Antony come to me and then look to reduce his characters and big blocks with a mix of WLC, Crack’s Call and the Brass Orb. The game started off well. In the first turn I managed to get off Skitterleap which drew out his ‘add a die to Dispel roll” toy. Going into Turn 2 I had survived his first Ironblaster shot and then it had blown off its cannon but as in all these situations I cauld pinpoint the actual point it started going wrong. My WLC landed a Str 10 shell on his Mournfang cavalry and I failed to wound one which subsequently cost me the warmachine and opened my flank.

Antony came forward and I saw he had a charge on my Furnace and potentially my Grey Seer. I then made a decision which cost me any chance of the game. I got greedy. I needed to get off Skitterleap – option Seer or Brass Orb Engineer – and instead of throwing six dice at it I threw three dice at Crack’s Call first. Antony let it go – lost one out of three Ogre Bulls and BSB – and held three dice against my three dice. He stopped the Skitterleap and that was the game. The brass orb engineer would have thrown his orb and diverted off the Iron guts while all my units hit the Bulls.

Twice in the last two years I’ve lost 20-0 and both times they were when I didn’t throw six dice at Skitterleap. To be fair it still needed to go off with IF as Ant was holding a scroll. From there I played catch-up and though I forced some flees etc Antony rallied three units on 7 and one on 4 to rub salt into the wound.
Loss 0-20

Wrap Up

So I had a shot at glory and I blew it. Henceforth I’ll be known as the stepladder that Antony climbed to Masters’ glory. The maximum win was enough for him to leapfrog Dan for 1st Place. I felt that Antony really deserved the win in our game because he got up in my grill. I had a plan but I couldn’t execute it and he took full advantage. Well done to him and to both Dan and Joe who finished 2nd and 3rd. Fourth Place was Mal.

So I mightn’t be a Master but if you scroll down you’ll see I can pick them. My three picks for podium finished 1st, 2nd and 4th. Back to the Commentary Box for me.

An excellent event. I had six enjoyable games against strong opponents. Seriously what more can you ask for?

Skaven at NZ Masters - Day One

2011-12-13T10:54:00.001+13:00

So I was lucky to get a wildcard to the 5th NZ Masters over the weekend. I’m not a big fan of wildcards but the words “gift horse” and “mouth” sprung to mind and I had had to forgo the first two Masters as I was umpiring, so……

I took a small but aggressive Skaven list as my intention from the outset was to win the event – having finished second last year – and I have the view at the Masters that 1st is everything!

It was a good weekend to catch up with Jack and also a lot of the friends I’ve made through the years in the hobby. However I did my best in the weeks leading up to the event to alienate most of the 40k gamers by declaring their lists “Baby Seals” who would spend the weekend being clubbed by the Orcas – specifically Jack, Charlie and Doug.

Hagen and I travelled up on the Friday night and were bright and bushy on Saturday morning. Reviewing the lists prior to the event I flagged two lists I’d have trouble winning against – Joe’s WoC and Antony’s Ogres. However I had a plan for each.

Game 1 – Basil Moskovis (Vampires)

Basil had the standard VC list with big Ghoul blocks and VC-led Grave Guard with Drakenhoff. I knew that 12/13 points was the most I could expect from this game and so set out with that target. My rats danced around, fled when they needed and pulled all sorts of ratty tricks. I managed to isolate and destroy two ghoul bunkers, a black coach, cairn wraith and corpse cart. Against that I lost a unit of slaves and a unit of gutter runners.

Win 12-8

Game 2 – James Page (Dark Elves)

James was very confident going into this game but likewise I have fought Dark Elves a lot with Skaven and view it as a good matchup for me. With the first shot of the game my WLC hit the Hydra and killed it. From there the result was heavily influenced by James failing a Leadership 10 test with a re-roll but I’ll contend that he put himself in such a position by giving me a Doomrocket shot that gave a target area of 12” – he turned horde formation corsairs flank on and had them anchored on his spearmen. Very juicy.

Once I was a few points up I initially maintained distance working over the Executioners with Scorch and Warp Lightning. James failed a 16” charge and a 14” charge which meant by the time they got to my lines they were severely depleted. I lost a unit of Gutter Runners while he had his archers, cauldron and a unit of Shades left.

Win 20-0

Game 3 - Dan Butler (Daemons)

Dan is a member of next year’s NZ ETC team and has been this year’s “Bright Young Thing”. He had a very strong list headed by a Bloodthirster backed up by usual suspects.

This game was won at deployment. A lot of people say that but here it really was true. I had the view going in that Dan would be happy with a 10-10 so I knew I had to throw out a tasty morsel. Enter Strategy “Tethered Goat”.

Early in the deployment phase I realised that Dan might bunker down so I deployed the Hell Pit Abomination away from his army to see if I could draw out his Flamers (which for me are a key target). And Dan bit! Down went the Flamers opposite and from there he effectively split his army with one flank having the flamers, three fiends, a unit of furies and the Tzeentch Herald. He also made a mistake by deploying his Nurglings rather than scouting which gave me the +1 to first turn roll.

Knowing I had +1 to go first, I scouted with my two units of Gutter Runners 12” from the Furies and the Herald. In my first turn I killed all but one Fury and the Herald. In the second the Flamers became rats and the HPA landed an inch from the Fiends. They were forced to charge and were wiped out in two rounds.

Dan pulled his army back while I didn’t fancy the chances of running across to fight him piecemeal. We totalled up the points and it was a good win to me.

Win 14-6

Day One Wrap

At the end of the day I had three wins and was on top of the table with 46/60 BPs. I was happy with the way I was travelling and felt I was playing well. However I hadn’t played either of the armies I feared.

FAQs for Ogres, Skaven and Tomb Kings

2011-12-13T09:58:00.003+13:00

Big day for FAQs from GW.

They released the initial Ogre Kingdoms FAQ and then superseded it an hour later. In the amended version Jervois Johnson says that you can take armour on OK Mages but it is not in the spirit of his intentions!!!!!!

Seriously WTF does that mean!!!! What a pathetic answer.

As far as I'm concerned that means that you play by the rules - yes to magic armour - not some weasel words that portray a lack of decision-making. How hard is it? Really?

Lot's of changes in the Skaven FAQ. I'll go through them later but you can read them here

5th Annual New Zealand Masters - December 2012

2011-12-13T09:42:00.001+13:00

This is the heads-up for the 5th Annual New Zealand Masters to be held in Wellington. The tentative date is the first weekend in December 2012. I am waiting to hear back regarding the hall. If that date is not possible then it will likely be the week before (last weekend in November).

Here is the proposed format for the event:

Competitions – Flames of War, Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy

Competitors – 12 people maximum per competition

Umpires - TBA

Rounds – Six

The selection process will be as follows:

Automatic NZ Masters Champion Entry – 2011 Masters’ winners

Automatic Geographical Entry – Top two ranked 2012 South Island Flames of War players (as per RHQ)

The subsequent 11 (9 for Flames of War) places will go to the top ranked players in each system as per RankingsHQ after all tournaments to 31 October 2012 are entered. Selection will go down to and include the player ranked 20th in each system UNTIL the twelve places are filled. If the places are not filled but there is an even number then the event will run with at the reduced size. If there is an odd number the organiser will select a player to make the field an even number – this is likely to be the next ranked player but it is at the organiser’s discretion.

Therefore if you want to compete at the NZ Masters you should strive to attend enough tournaments to qualify in the Top 11 ranking places for each system (Top 9 for FoW if no South Island players in Top 9). There is a chance you will still qualify if you are ranked 12-20 put that will depend on dropouts.

I have set out this process upfront to provide clarity to tournament goers. Having clear criteria means that everybody knows what they have to do to achieve selection. Hopefully it will encourage tournament attendance as players strive to qualify.

This should in no way be perceived as a criticism of this year’s attendance list. Different TOs do things differently and that is their prerogative. This is my methodology after some discussion with the community. It might not be everybody’s preference but the criteria are there twelve months out from the event and are clear to all.

As I have previously flagged, the Sixth Annual New Zealand Masters will be held in December 2013 in the northern part of the North Island. I’d suggest interested parties from the clubs and gaming groups start talking to one another to who is looking to put their hand up to run the event. If there is more than one candidate then a mechanism will be put in place to resolve any impasse.

Finally I would like to give a big thank you to Phil Wu and all his helpers over the weekend. When I started the NZ Masters the intention was that it be an end of year celebration of tournament wargaming in New Zealand. Phil and his team did a fantastic job in furthering that aim. Thanks again.

Happy to answer any questions.

Old people, new champions, and other masters snippets...

2011-12-12T20:13:00.003+13:00

Hi all,

just a quick update on the masters 2011 results. I'm sure much more is to come over this week, but here's a quick update.

After crushing me 20-1 in the most brutal turn 1 tally I have ever taken, Jack went on to take out the event and come first overall with a record of 5 wins, 1 draw, 0 losses and finishing on 104 points out of a maximum possible 120.

I managed to close the lead down to just 5 points to finish on 99 points, but it was not to be and I managed to finish second, which I am very proud of, with a record of 5 wins 0 draws and 1 loss.

Third went to Dave Dawn with Tyranids, who played a very tight game with a reserve bomb tyranid army.

The upset of the event I guess was Doug Sainsbury doing so poorly with his Grey Knights, still struggling to come to grips with the right way to play the list, and having historically always lacked that "killer instinct" saw him pilot his way to just 2 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses I believe. His list was still one of the toughest at the event however, in many ways it is a shame to see that Dougs reaction has been the same that he has after every event, tinker tinker change change swap swap.

All of the above being said, the event was highly unorthodox in a most disappointing way. Although Pete is now surely so ancient that looking into the many folds in his face reveal the very secrets of time itself, he still runs the most fantastic tournaments with the greatest level of transparency that are easily the most polished and satisfying to attend.

I have a bit more to rant on that in the future, but don't wish to rob our very deserving newly crowned champion at all, especially as it affected the outcome not one iota. There was however a huge sense of relief from most in the hall when it was revealed that Grandpa Dunn would once more be running the masters.

Three cheers for Jack, and thank god he finally stopped letting me down and let my predictions come through!

- Charlie "Son, if you ain't first, yerr laast" St Clair

A Very Old Dog!!!!!

2011-12-09T09:20:00.001+13:00

So the NZ Masters tomorrow.........

With work I didn't manage to get any games this week. So I am going in very very raw.

This will be the first event for me since last year's Masters and I am really looking forward to it. As I've mentioned previously I don't agree with the "Wildcard" inclusion but I'm hypocritical and selfish enough to take advantage of it for my own enjoyment.

So how do I think I'll go?

Well I am very impressed with the strength of the lists. The majority look like "Masters" lists in that they are built around points denial. In over half of the lists you will be doing very well to get more than 400-600 points out of them. That means I can see a lot of 12-8/11-9 results over the course of the event. That said, there are a number (3-4) of "Baby Seal" lists where it would be possible for a good player to score more points. Because of that this event will be very draw dependent. Typically if you score 80 BP over 6 games at a masters event you podium. In particularly balanced events 75 points can win it - so every point counts.

I've looked through the lists and have a clear view of which ones are good matchups and which are bad for my rats. Four good matchups would give me a chance, four bad ones will rule me out - put the same holds true for everyone.

I think it is always good to be realistic in your expectations. It helps you form a tournament plan and puts pressure on you to perform. My target is Top 7 and I'd be absolutely stoked to go Top 4. A bad draw would push me down to 10th but I'll be very disappointed if I place in the double figures.

Check back monday and see how I went of follow me on Twitter over the weekend at @peterdunnnz or check out #NZMasters

Another 40KUK update coming...

2011-12-09T01:02:00.002+13:00

Hi hi fatties!

I've just got off the blower from recording 3 separate sessions with Dave Symcox that will be released in the coming weeks. Keep listening to http://www.40kuk.com/ as we cover an array of local topics, from the masters, the genesis of our tournament scene and the changes it is undergoing, and the Barbelescu fiasco!

- Charlie

A Solution Desperately Seeking A Problem

2011-12-05T16:02:00.001+13:00

This weekend the NZ Masters is not using the True Line of Sight (TLOS) rules from the Warhammer rulebook but rather an alternative system pioneered by the Danish Giant Fanatic Tournament and used at the ETC.

Here are the rules:

Size chart:
0: Swarms - models of this size never block line of sight or give cover.
1: Infantry, War Beasts, War Machines, and unique without the Large Target rule
2: Cavalry, Monstrous Infantry/Cavalry/Beasts, Chariots, O&G Manglers
3: Monsters, all Large Targets

Line of sight is always checked virtually, drawn "base to base". Models see in their front 1/4 zone. Line of Sight is blocked by models that are equal to or larger than both: the model whose line of sight we are checking and its target.

Line of sight and war machines:
Catapults (and similar) can place their template so that the centre is over any one unit that is at least partially visible to them.
Cannons can choose any point between themselves and a visible target when firing. Over- or under-guessing to shoot at units the cannon does not have line of sight to is not allowed

Terrain
Hills are size two for each level (so a 3-step hill is size 6) and block sight / give hard cover just like models of that size. Models standing on hills add the hill size to their own size.
Edit - In 2011 all hills are level 1, therefore size 2.
Buildings and large rocks always block line of sight completely.
Forests do not block line of sight, but soft cover applies to all shots fired through or into (but not out of) forests.
Ruins do not block line of sight, but hard cover applies to all shots fired into (but not through/out of) ruins.
Units standing behind obstacles gain soft (wood) or hard (stone) cover as per the RB.
Buildings are treated as: as infinitely high, units inside are height 2 (in terms of what they can see and determining cover against their shots). All buildings are level 1
Lakes – treat lakes exactly the same as rivers in the Rulebook
Hedges/fences etc. – treat all of them as stone obstacles: grant hard cover and -1 to hit in close combat against the defender, exactly as per the rulebook.
Fields – Soft cover for any unit inside the terrain (discerned by majority of models/base), no other effects.

Cover from intervening units/terrain
Cover is granted when at least 50% of models in target unit are fully or partially obscured by other units/terrain from the shooting model. In order for intervening models to grant cover, their size must be: larger than, equal to, or one size smaller than both the target unit and the shooting model.

Skirmishers
Skirmishers never block LoS, and are seen in accordance with their size on the chart, but provide cover as per the above rules. The gap between skirmishers is treated as part of the unit when determining if skirmishers give cover to something behind them. Skirmishers formed up for combat block Line of Sight like normal units.

So there they are in all there glory.

The first question I ask when I read them is - WHY?

I've had more than 100 games of 8th Edition (using the rules). and I have never had a problem in any of these games in relation to TLOS.

These strike me as a solution looking for a problem rather than something that is needed. In fact it screams unnecessary complication.

Overseas the ETC LOS rules were developed by one of the ETC Chairmen in the first two months after the release of 8th when he thought there would be a problem. However that problem never eventuated. They now represent a legacy of those who were trying to turn 8th into 7.5 Edition.

On the weekend i'll be asking my opponents if they would like to play by the normal rules (TLOS) or these rules - then go with their choice.

More Rocky Than A Philly Meat Locker

2011-12-05T09:55:00.001+13:00

Over the week I’ve managed a couple of games with the Skaven in the leadup to the Masters.

The first of these was against Tane’s Dwarfs where I was able to grind out a 300-400 point win. When I say grind out what I actually mean is that I was able to exert some early pressure and due to a failed panic test after a Doomrocket shot, one of his large Warrior blocks exited the table. I continued to push forward but lost my Furnace so then started a ‘tactical withdrawal’. This largely worked as I was able to pull back most of my army with little further damage – though the Plague monks wore some hurt on the way back.

My second game was against Ben with his Dark Elves. I thought he had a great list – Lvl 4 Shadow, Lvl 1 Fire, Cauldron BSB, Pegasus Pendant Guy, Spearmen block, 10 crossbowmen, 2x Harpies, 25-30 Corsairs, 20 Witches, 20 Black Guard, 2x 5 Shades and a Hydra. You can pack a lot of DE goodness into 2400 points.

In this game I was able to consistently snag points through the battle, while giving up very few. The Abom say off a depleted Black Guard after a hairy moment where he had to survive a Stubborn 8 roll. The WLC finally (he has been a disaster in recent games) did something – taking 4 wounds off a Hydra which was finished off by a block of Slaves who then rear charged the Pendant Guy. Mr Pendant had got cute and charged the WLC. Apart from that the battle was really about the ineptitude of my gutter Runners who failed to get any points. The upshot was a good win to the Skaven but a less than impressive consistency across the army.

I put this down to the new set of Skaven dice I’m trying to break in before the weekend. There performance to date is less than stellar but I’m hoping I’ll have them trained by Saturday.

Thanks to Ben and Tane for the games. I’m hoping for a runout versus Tom’s Daemons tonight and then a final run versus last year’s master, Raymond Dick on Thursday.

Sphinxii Hit the Boards

2011-12-04T21:19:00.001+13:00

After three-four months sitting on the painting table my Sphinxii are ready for basing.

They are painted to a tabletop standard to get them onto the battlefield.

The Howdah come off so the Necrosphinx can be use as either a Necro or Warsphinx.

The Earth is Flat!

2011-11-30T09:42:00.001+13:00

Okay after upsetting everyone yesterday by posting my opinion that there was a large disparity between the strongest and the weakest of the Masters 40k lists, today I turn my attention to the Fantasy lists.

These can be found here.

The TO this year decided to use the ETC restrictions for the Fantasy competition. I applaud him using hard caps as it removes the subjective part of the equation, though the ETC restrictions are towards the harder end of caps I like to play under.

So what does this mean? Well a couple of things.

Firstly, the lists are far more even in strength than was evident in the 40k mix. I think that there are approximately ten lists of similar strength and six lists that are grading weaker from there. That's good for a Masters event.

Secondly, the ETC restrictions reward very defensive builds. The ETC is probably the most overtly defensive event in the world with teams trying to score on average 13 points per game. As a result builds are designed not to give up points and that is pretty reflective in the stronger builds here. This is compounded by the de-fanging of the magic phase by limiting the effect of "big magic".

I expect that a lot of games between the top players will fall in the 7-13 point range.

For my own list I decided to go more aggressive. Normally under ETC restrictions I should be using a Bell list. This allows me to pour my points into the unit and if threatened in the last couple of turns, present my rear and rely on Unbreakable.

However that doesn't strike me as a great deal of fun - nor would that style of list give me the opportunity to push for big wins. Masters events are normally won by Battle Point scores sub-80BPs. This is because all players have theoretically earned their place at the table AND all lists are designed to be as strong as possible within the restrictions.

Therefore there is two ways to approach it - look for 6 wins or 4 big wins plus moderate losses.

For this event, I haven't played a lot of players so I'll be trying to chance my arm (where appropriate) rather than try and grind an overall result. That gives me the best opportunity to be in the mix - and if I'm attending then I aim to be contending! The target I'm looking for is 72 Battle Points which works out at 12 per game. How I get there is going to be the interesting part.

Looking at all the lists and taking into account what I know of the players, I'm picking the following podium:

1. Joe Dixon (WoC)
2. Antony Kitson (Ogres)
3. Mal Patel (Lizards)

Someone Call Greenpeace!!!!!

2011-11-29T10:27:00.001+13:00

The lists are up for the NZ Masters and I ran my eye over the 40k lists this morning. You can find them here.

All I can say is “I’m astounded”. These guys plead for No-Comp and then come up with this.

This is going to be like watching a Norwegian Hunting Party on a Baby-Seal Clubbing Expedition. Of the lists posted, only three are what I would call competitive no-comp lists (Note: Hagen Kerr’s IG is missing – but given his desire to be loved I’m not expecting competitive).

There are three truly competitive lists there:

Charlie St. Clair’s Space Wolves
Doug Sainsbury’s Grey Knights
Jack Dunn’s Dark Eldar

If these three do not all finish in the Top 5 then call me a stegosaurus.

So you know that people will turn up with lists like these then what do you bring?

Well, not Tyranids. Not Chaos. And not Eldar.

I’m guessing after this weekend that a lot of people aren’t going to be as keen on No-Comp as they were before.

Racked!!!

2011-11-28T11:03:00.001+13:00

Last week I wondered into my local café to pick up one of the many fixes I pour into my body.

It has recently changed hands, previously being a café cum specialty chocolate shop. On the wall they had a shelf that they had used to display chocolate blocks and my thought processes suggested it would be great for wargaming figures. When I ask them where they got it they indicated that they were getting rid of it as it was no use in the café. Spotting my opportunity I offered them $100 for it and on Saturday I picked it up.

Here it is on the wall of the Dunn-geon carrying its new “product”.

I’m really happy with it as it lets me rack up about 4-5 Fantasy army and have the units available for games.

That's The Sound of Hopes Being Built Up

2011-11-23T17:18:00.001+13:00

More Chaos Legions rumours courtesy of Warseer:

There will be 3 Chaos codexes - Legions, Renegades and Daemons

Daemons will appear in the Legion codex but not those awful lesser things they are now...not sure about Greater Daemons...
if you are doing a Legion list its based on "Black Legion(or the generic list)" or one of the others

legions - whats there ?, lots

world eaters with bolt guns you say... yeah there there

Expect very powerful characters here (they are 10 Millenia old)... my favorite is the overpowered red angel... now he IS angry

There are Havoc's for marked legions

Each Legion will get something unique to them, from force organization to individual units to HQs, for example Night Lords and World Eaters can only have 1 Heavy Support but get other bonuses

In some ways picking a Legion will restrict you, there are a lot of Chaos characters already in fluff so expect most to return, plus a few new faces

6th Ed codex will be hardback

Lot of inspiration from the 3.5 codex, with Warsmiths, Dark Apostles and the Alpha Legion rules (well lets say they have a dual command structure)

OK. I'm getting really excited about this now. It's a little known secret that I'm not a big fan of the current piece of Gav Thorpe shit.

Looks like they are channeling Pete Haines!

Skaven Dice

2011-11-23T12:40:00.001+13:00

I recently had some Skaven Dice made for me and had a few extra produced in case anybody else wanted some. They are Chessex 16mm dice with the universal Skaven symbol instead of "6"

Happy to let them go to fellow rat brethren at my cost plus postage in lots of 10.

Let me know if you are interested by dropping me an email at pete@thefieldsofblood.com

Forgeworld Vermin Lord

2011-11-22T18:16:00.001+13:00

Finally I finished painting the Vermin Lord I bought earlier in the year. Here are some photos of him.

More Fantasy News

2011-11-22T09:59:00.001+13:00

Okay first the new Mangler Squigs:

And courtesy of Warseer the big news is confirmation of Vampire Counts:

- they are coming January (100% now)

- mortis engine/coven throne (unsure if this is final name) - plastic kit. apparently HUGE. we may be talking arachnarok base for this thing...(edit: thinking a bit more about it, it will probably be a chariot base like the sphinxes; but i think these things will be bigger than your average chariot from what ive heard)

- wraith riders/black knights - confirmed dual plastic cav kit

- monstrous infantry unit (unsure of name) - plastic kit. has option for wings. adding the wings is probably a unit option and may not be a completely separate unit.

- new finecast krell model

- black coach is indeed getting finecasted

New Beastmen Monsters from GW

2011-11-21T13:42:00.001+13:00

Not the greatest pictures but here are the new Beastmen Monsters from Games Workshop.

Cyclops

Gorgan

These two come together in a box like the Stonehorn/Thundertusk, are plastic and priced GBP 33 - guessing $95 NZD.

Jabberslythe

This is Finecast and priced at GBP 41 - I'm guessing $120 NZD.

The pictures look like they come from White Dwarf and that is consistent with the rumoured December release date.

NZ Fantasy Masters - Meet the Contenders - Part Three

2011-11-18T16:13:00.001+13:00

Now the final part and here’s where the smokies are!

Tim Lind – ranked #21 and holder of the Empire Icon
I really like Empire armies especially under ETC comp. Now I’m hoping Tim is more original than most Empire players “My army is Nuln-themed, except it has been joined by an Arch-Lector and his crew of flagellants”.

Solid tournament year from Tim to date and if he can make the top half of the Masters at first run then I think he should be really happy.
Prediction: Thinking that a top half finish will be a stretch particularly given the modified Line of sight rules

Henry Poor – ranked #23

Another first time Masters participant. Henry steered the Greenskins into 2nd at Fluffycon. The opposing armies will be harder here and it will be interesting to see if he can improve on his other mid-table results.
Prediction: Form says bottom half but I know he will be the neutrals’ favourite.

Ryan Simister – ranked #66 but 2009 NZ Masters Champion

Unheralded in 2009, Ryan swept to the trophy in one of the tightest finisher yet. Last year he crashed to earth as we saw how difficult it was to defend the trophy. He’ll go back to his Lizards this year and we’ll see exactly how cold-blooded he is (see what I did there?)!

Prediction: No form going into the event. I’m going to predict he’ll crash and burn again (as much to wind him up as anything).

Joe Dixon – ranked #67878987 and owner of nothing.

Harry’s little brother – and fighting to get out of his shadow. Ask him late at night and you’ll get “Hates him, I do”. Joe jets in from overseas (no not Nelson) to give an international flavour to the event. He tells me he hasn’t played since august but I know that he and Harry sit up every night on Vassal playing e-Warhammer. Should Joe and I get drawn against each other Joe will hide in a corner happy to take yet another 10-10 draw.

Prediction: Top 5. Let’s not kid ourselves

Peter Dunn - ranked #5578967873270654444444 and falling!

Too old, too slow! Crowd favourite.

Phil Comins – ranked even lower than me!

Another international jetsetter flying in for the event. Not sure he’s played a game of 8th

Prediction: Golden Daemon is fourth door down on the left

NZ Fantasy Masters - Meet the Contenders - Part Two

2011-11-18T15:37:00.001+13:00

Continuing on with the field:
Daryl Painter – ranked #11 and holder of the Dwarf icon

I’d like to give Daryl the benefit of the doubt, I really would. Unfortunately investigators show he is a Serial Dwarfer. I suppose it could be worse….hey, let’s not kid ourselves, it couldn’t. Beware this man took Dwarfs to five tournaments in the last twelve months. Imagine how many innocent lives he has shattered.

Prediction: All Dwarfs gravitate to the centre.

Jeremy Brown – ranked #12

I don’t know Jeremy but I know he plays VC. That means he either has a Twilight fetish or he’s like a giant squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that looks like fun (see comments re Basil and VCs above). I’m hoping he likes Twilight.

Prediction: Depends on his list but if net-list Vamps then 7th to 11th

Antony Kitson – ranked #15 and holder of the Brets Icon.
Hands up who thinks Antony will bring Brets? Anyone with arm extended is wrong. I’m guessing he’ll bring either Dark Elves or possibly borrow an army from elsewhere. The Brets were good – but that was when we were worried about the Y2K bug and sub-prime was TV3.

So why will Antony bring Dark Elves? To right the blot on his copybook when he let some visiting Englishman slip past him in the last round of the 1st Masters. Watch it Mal, he won’t let it happen again.
Prediction: Top 3. Worse case he’ll finish 6th.

Glen Tibbles – ranked #16 and holder of the Beastmen icon
So which Glen Tibbles will turn up? The cranky old man that strikes fear into any whippersnapper or the faithful old hound that rolls on his back and let’s you scratch his tummy. Rumour has it that Glen is breaking out the Tomb Kings for this event so hopefully it’s the former rather than the later. I’m expecting lots of Monsters regardless.

Prediction: Honestly don’t know. Could push the top five or fall into the bottom three.

Nick Irvine – ranked #17 and holder of the Wood Elf icon

I’m not fooled by Nick’s five year façade in dominating sports scores. I know that inside that body is a WAAC gamers waiting for the opportunity to rip somebody’s face off. Sadly Nick, this isn’t it. I could make all sorts of derogatory comments about Wood Elves but being the only VC player ever to lose to Beastmen, I’m too smart for that.

Prediction: Soft scores won’t save you here Nick.

NZ Fantasy Masters - Meet the Contenders - Part One

2011-11-18T14:45:00.001+13:00

Okay so the invitations for the 4th NZ Masters for Warhammer Fantasy have been released. Time to indulge in some smack talk.

So without further ado here’s my take on the field:

Mal Patel – ranked #1 and holder of the Lizardmen icon.

The man who bills himself as Team Andy Joyce’s token ethnic, Mal has had a great year……winning pretty much all the major events in New Zealand and representing at the ETC. Mal finished 4th at last year’s Masters and there’s only one of that year’s Top Three turning up at this event.

Let’s say it would be a major surprise if mal uses anything other than Lizards but given his new found love of the ETC he is shifting from his comfy carnosaur couch to a one trick pony where he pushes 1200 points of characters in with a big block of saurus and shouts “All aboard the Funbus”. Buffed up by Beast magic he pushes it forward and smacks it into the nearest target with all the finesse of a rutting rhinoceros.

Prediction: There or thereabouts. Biggest weakness is if there is a bar onsite.

Daniel Butler – ranked #3 but sadly holds no icon (that looks a scab to pick)
The poster boy for Tronhammer and being honest, what else is there to do in Hamilton? This year’s “Next Big Thing” has come from nowhere to sit at #3. However, I bet he has those little doubts that nag at him in the wee small hours of the night – “Am I only here because I play Daemons?”

Prediction: He’d have to be very disappointed if he didn’t make the Top 5 and really how hard can it be to Point ‘n Click?

Basil Moskovis – ranked #5 and unlike Daniel he has an icon – for Vampire Counts

Rumour has it that the hardest thing for both basil and his opponents will be staying awake during the games. Unless he springs a surprise Basil will be bringing a Ghoul horde with massive Grave Guard bunker. If you like champagne Warhammer you won’t be watching Basil’s games! Let’s just say if any games vary outside 12-8 I’ll be very surprised. The question Basil needs to ask himself is whether 65-72 points out of 120 is enough to win the event.

Prediction: I’d bet my house he finishes between 4th and 6th

Thomas van Roekel – ranked #6

So what can I say about Thomas? Well the big question is whether he will bring Dwarfs or High Elves. Or will he panic and fall back on his Lizards. I’m guessing that he will err on safety first and pick the Lizards. But is that the right decision? Well anything is better than ruining 6 people’s weekends by playing Dwarfs. The brave decision is to take High Elves and to be honest if he did that should scare a lot of people.

Prediction: Lizards top third. High Elves, pretty much the same. Dwarfs? Who cares!

James Page – ranked #9
The man with the famous name. I think the most obvious line here is “Well Toto, we’re not in Kansas” and James will find this mudpuddle a little bit deeper than the one in Tauranga. Speaking of which I have real misgiving about people from Tauranga given that they elected Winston Peters as their MP at multiple elections. Suggests something not right with the place…..so up to James to prove they don’t all have six fingers.

Prediction: Never liked Led Zep so James will need to be on top of his game to impress the audience.

NZ Masters - Warhammer Fantasy

2011-11-17T16:16:00.001+13:00

Just like Charlie gave a run-through of the participants in the 40k Masters i'm looking to do the same for Fantasy.

I am just waiting for Phil Wu (TO) to confirm the final field as I don't want to offend anyone (unknowingly at least!).

What I will say is that it is a very open field and we'll have to all be on our game to stop Mal Patel's Lizards from continuing their recent domination. However I suspect that more than one person will be working on tactics to remove Mal's 1500 point Saurus Fun-Bus.

I also expect to fight out my traditional 10-10 draw with Joe Dixon at some point.

Rhellion's Review of the Skaven Book (Podcast)

2011-11-17T16:10:00.001+13:00

Brad Schwandt (Rhellion) appeared recently on Ohiohammer, a US based podcast.

He gives a review of the Skaven Book and I think does an excellent job - I suspect coloured by the fact that so many of our views are aligned.

You can check it out on here or by downloading it from iTunes. It is Episode 10 and Brad's content starts around the three hour mark.

Masters 40k entrant breakdown

2011-11-14T10:27:00.002+13:00

Hi hi!

So we're now less than a month out from the 40k masters, so I figured we'd look at a break down of the field with a quick summary.

I assure you any jibes are tongue-in-cheek and come from a place of love with a well established friendship ;)

Hayden Korach: Hayden qualified after playing Eldar better than anyone else for yet another year. A large amount of his success has come from people chain shooting their inadequate amounts of ranged anti tank at a fortuned avatar all day long, but with a fair bit of anti psyker stuff floating around this weekend, it will be interesting to see how it pans out. That being said, Hayden recently had been looking at dropping the avatar and chunking his army out with a huge amount of s6 anti infantry firepower, so it will be interesting to see how he goes.

Matthew Robinson: No disrespect to Matthew, but I have no idea who he is. I've never played against him, and I've never heard anyone talk about having played against him. I don't actually understand his inclusion, as he's ranked 42nd, and has a season high of 19th at battlecry with his dark angels. *shrug* - it will be an interesting weekend for Matthew.

Daniel Hayden: Daniel has consistently played the pants off everyone hes come across all year, and year after year keeps improving. Daniel is the new Boy-Wonder on campus, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he brings to Masters. Dan has been running the Swarmlord, a brace of Trygons and a brace of Tervigons along with 3 units of Hive Guard and a bunch of chaff to fill out. It will be interesting to see if he brings the same list or an adaptation of it, or if he is working on something new. Hopefully he doesn't join Team Disappoint, more on this later.

Andrew Bartosh: Bartosh has produced pretty consistent results with his Chaos time and time again, and it's good to finally have him at one of these. That being said, when pushed quite hard he tends to roll over, and this is something he will need to overcome to do well at the event. His list historically has been quite generic, usually having a big unit of terminators, but this probably won't be enough to clinch it, with some almost certain losses in the match-up matrix.
Andrew has also been working on blood angels on and off, so he may toss the Chaos to run these. That being said, Hayden Korach is convinced that every time he loses with his new BA's he gives up and starts again, so perhaps he'll never finish them ;D

Mark Buttle: Mark got here with consistent results with his tyranids throughout the year, but is now looking to make this his first event with his new Eldar. They are looking fantastic, and did well at Armies on Parade, so I look forward to seeing them. He's working hard to finish them and I'm sure he'll get them finished to a point where he's happy with them. The alternative would be to join Team Disappoint, and he has too much self pride, and respect for his opponents to do this.

Henare Akari: Hen has been performing consistently all year long with his Chaos, but is now working on making the most out of the new Black Templar FAQ. Hen plays solidly and gives it everything right until dice down, so should perform quite well at this event.

Damien Avery: Damien performed awesomely all year, and plays a nid list and play style and focuses on board control. Damiens now working on GK's, but will be running his nids rather than joining Team Disappoint. He's improved all year long and on ability alone, is probably the best Tyranid player in the country now.

It's at this point I should probably explain Team Disappoint. Generally speaking, NZ tournaments mark on a mix of Painting, Sports, Comp and predominantly Battle scores. Historically, everyone at the masters has been running a decent enough looking army all year, so doesn't mark any painting, everyone get full sports because you don't make it to masters if you were a dick in the first place, and it has wound up being just Comp and Battle. That being said, this year is compless leaving just battle in the mix, which is fine - great even.
For the first time ever though, some people are looking at bringing partly, or completely unpainted armies and this really is a huge disappointment. There are many, many people out there (and many threads on the subject!) that find playing against an unpainted army absolutely no fun what so ever, for me it just seems disrespectful. In the past if I've just not been able to get a unit finished in time, at the very least I've managed to borrow a finished unit from someone else.

David Wilson: Right, back into the swing of things then. David Wilson is a hugely nice guy who has traveled to many tournaments and done fairly well with his Witchhunters. That being said, many people aren't a fan of the new WD list, and I can't say I really blame them, so he's moving on to Orks, triple battlewagons to be exact. That being said, Last I heard they were still in their shrink wrap, let alone not yet painted, so hopefully he doesn't become the captain of Team Disappoint ;)

Hagen Kerr: It's good to see ole Grandpa sneaking in the back door. Hagen runs a fairly typical mech guard list, but has a few variations that tend to be slightly less logical to some of us ;) I'm sure he will do well though and will be one of the few people who can give Doug a good run for his money.

Doug Sainsbury: For his first masters, Doug has broken the bank and purchased the national supply of Razorbacks. Doug performed exceptionally well all year long with smart objective based play and efficient mobile lists, usually using a lot of the ravenwing units. He's looking at running his next years tournament list, a fairly typical and extremely strong GK list. That being said, Doug can sometimes give up a bit early and be a bit doom and gloom, this could betray him at the event if he's not careful. The only thing that is certain is that Doug's list will change 900 times between this event and the week after, even IF he goes undefeated and cleans everyone up ;D

Jack Dunn: Historically I've backed Jack to win events, and this time is no different. The only thing that has changed is that this time Jack is also playing an incredibly competitive DE list that really plays to his strengths as a player. The 3 main challenges for Jack will be myself, Doug, and Hagen due to the match up. That being said, Jack is a much better player than all 3, and depending on terrain, mission, and the ever beloved first turn roll, Jack should have this event in the bag.

Charlie St. Clair: I'm still torn between running the orks and running the spacewolves. While the space wolves have the tools to fight their way out of any tough situation, I find myself doubting my own ability with them. That being said, the playing field has changed an awful lot since the last 2 times the Orks stomped all over the masters. Jacks style of DE can pop the vehicles and wipe out the numbers before I even get to imagine being close. I can't pop the razorbacks protecting Dougs purifiers before hand, so they can comfortably smash 30man boyz units and instakill meganobs while im forced to play defensively against an army that out shoots me by a lot. In the past though, the Orks have always come through and won games I really had no business winning, so I'm not sure I should doubt them.

I'll probably run the wolves because they're something new, and enjoy the school of hard knocks learning with them, but realistically I expect a new name to be engraved on the trophy this year - we shall see.

That being said, I could just join team disappoint and go out and buy a bunch of shrink wrapped boxes then just prod them around the table, why bother to even clip them off the sprues, that's all this game is really about right ;)?

Well, that's pretty much it. There are a few notable exclusions from the field this year, which is a little bit perplexing - but ours is not to reason why.

- Charlie

No.....After You!

2011-11-14T10:01:00.001+13:00

On Thursday evening I managed to get a game in against Locky and the Daemon list that he has recently been running amok with (if the reports from other recent opponents are to be believed).

Locky’s list was built around strong character selections – Bloodthirster, Level 2 with Shadow on chariot, Herald with Siren Song in Daemonette block and a BSB in a block of Plaguebearers. This was backed up with a block of six Fiends, a single Fiend and two units of Furies. The game ended up as a very big win to the Rats with just the unharmed Thirster and 3 Furies left.

When we sat down and de-briefed after the game I suggested that the game was heavily slanted in my favour when, after winning the roll for First Turn, Locky gave it to me. This allowed me to dictate the pace of the game and pressure parts of his army before Locky could implement the full court press that Daemons are renowned for.

The whole go-first or go-last is a real conundrum that is driven by your army and tactics and that of your opponent. I’m guessing about 90% of people choose to go first when that is not necessarily their best option.

To me it is a key consideration in building a list as I will either seek to maximise my changes of going first (reducing drops) or accept I’m likely to be going second and therefore include more drops and more diverters. More drops let me control the deployment process by not betraying my hand too early – thereby potentially minimising the immediate effect of going second. More diverters let me establish roadblocks that again minimise that effect by stalling and annoying combat blocks.

I’m not sure that people give this area of the game the necessary thought it deserves. For me, list composition should factor in strategies so that you are not exposed whether you go first or second.

Review - BaneLegion's Flint-Fang

2011-11-08T16:00:00.001+13:00

Last week I decided to order one of the new BaneLegions models produced by Maelstrom Games. I had previously purchased one of their BaneLords miniatures – their Verminkind Standard Bearer – and I was very happy with the model. I felt that it painted up well and so was keen to see what the larger models looked like.

So introducing Flint-Fang. I purchased the model as an alternative to my twin-maw blind wyrm and my recently sourced Forgeworld Brood Horror. And you never know when you’ll need three Hell Pit Abominations.

I ordered the model last Tuesday evening and it arrived in my letterbox just after five days later. That is astoundingly fast given Wellington is 12,000 miles from Mansfield. It came very well packaged in full colour box with various parts separated into two crush proof bags and packed out with bubble wrap.

The resin is certainly harder than that of either Citadel Finecast or Forgeworld. It is a dark greenish grey in colour. There was minimal flash but there were quite a few pouring lugs that needed to be removed. This was easily done with a set of clippers and a craft knife.

Mould lines were minimal – a very small one on the tail and a more visible one through the rib-cage. Again they were easily removed with a knife. One small criticism is that whereas GW have become masters at concealing mould lines on their most recent models, here the ribcage mould line was very visible and definitely required removal.

After lugs, flash and mould lines were removed I had a dry run at putting the model together. It comprises body, two arms, two heads, tail and four spikes with ears. There were a couple of gaps between the heads and torso (similar to what you get with Forgeworld) but these can be easily filled with the new Liquid Green Stuff.

Overall I’m very happy with the model and it will certainly provide an alternative to my current HPA. Expect it to hit the painting table in the next few weeks and I’ll get some pictures up shortly.

Urge all Fantasy players to check out the range at http://www.maelstromgames.co.uk/

Skynet in action?

2011-11-07T12:36:00.001+13:00

These things don’t take long do they?

On the day of its release a copy of the new Codex: Necrons was available on the net.

Wonder f this istheir first step to world domination....making their manual more widely available. Cue Skynet jokes....

NZ WHFB ETC Team Announced

2011-11-07T11:36:00.001+13:00

The New Zealand team for the ETC 2012 in Poland is:

Dave Grant (Captain - 3rd cap)

John Matthews (3rd cap)

Chris Wilcox (3rd cap)

Mal Patal (2nd cap)

Dave Meachan (2nd cap)

Dan Butler (1st cap)

Locky Reid (1st cap)

Rowan Keating (1st cap)

Mark Skilton (Non-playing coach & reserve player - 2nd cap)

Out go the two Dixons and James (Kenny) Milner and in come Australia-based Oz Top 10 Player Rowan Keating, Locky Reid (Wellington) and Dan Butler (Hamilton).

And the appointment of Monty as non-playing Coach - great initiative and selfess testimony to Monty.

Good luck guys.

NZ 40k Masters (Melting Snowflakes)

2011-11-07T10:45:00.000+13:00

So over the weekend the players pack was released for the 4th New Zealand Masters. This is the first year it will be held in Auckland (the previous three I ran in Wellington) and it is likely we’ll see some new faces participating.

Today I am going to look at the 40k Pack which is almost elegant in its simplicity. Here it is:

Army Restrictions: Standard codex, The New Necron codex is not permitted pls use the older one.

Missions: 6 Missions will be revealed on Tournament day.

Composition: Masters will not have a comp component.

Battle Points: (120 pts)
Points will be scored as follows:

Win 15pts
Draw 7pts
Lost 0pts

Bonus of 1points will be scored by each player for each of the conditions below:-

" Enemy General dead or falling back at end of the game;
" Most expensive enemy unit destroyed, immobilized or falling back at end of the game;
" Your General is neither dead nor falling back at the end of the game;
" No enemy scoring units in your Deployment Zone;
" You have at least one Troop Unit that counts as scoring (as per the Warhammer 40k rulebook) at the end of the game.

Sportsmanship (30 pts of Total)

After every game each player will be asked to complete a sports score

Sheet rating their opponent’s. TO will check any irregularities that arises.

[0] your opponent more than occasionally displayed behaviour you would classify as border line cheating and was not what you expected to face at the tournament. Examples may include they employed a "rubber ruler", applied differing rules interpretation s to their sole advantage, stretched the rules when it suited etc. This score should be handed out only after careful consideration. Also this must be clarified with the T.O.

[3] Your opponent's behaviour clearly detracted from your ability to enjoy the game. They refused to resolve rules disputes amicably or displayed an unsavoury attitude throughout the game - whether too much gloating when winning or too much bitterness when things didn't go their way. PLEASE NOTE calling over a TO for a rules dispute is regarded as an amicable outcome and should not be punished.

[5] Your opponent gave you a decent amicable game or better. Your opponent was essentially in line with, or exceeded your expectations of another player's behaviour. Rules queries were decided amicably. Nothing they did detracted from your ability to enjoy the game, other than maybe having beaten you but you can hardly hold that against them...

So all very straightforward.

The Sports system is pretty much a copy of what I ran last year and I can say that for both Fantasy and 40k nobody scored other than the maximum. That is what you expect in a Masters event where the participants should know both the rules AND how to conduct themselves.

I’m not a big fan of running non-standard missions and keeping them secret until the day of the event. In my experience this tends to cut into game time as people have to dissect and digest the mission on the day (within the given game time) and also increases the chances that people will overlook a crucial aspect. Similarly unless you are incredibly good or lucky then it is unlikely that you will produce a suite of missions that create a level playing field for the armies that turn up. However if released before lists are submitted then people can cut their cloth accordingly and importantly can have no excuse that they were blindsided. This is definitely something that I would reconsider.

No Comp is great given the choir that has been singing for it over the past year. I’m really interested to see how it pans out – because I suspect a few people are in for a rude awakening. I’ll give a clue to some of the unique and beautiful snowflakes out there – it wasn’t Comp stopping you from winning events in the shark pool. Just remember – as this blog said earlier in the year – we wantt no tears. This is big boy pants time.

I think it is going to be a very interesting Masters. I think it will all be about stopping Charlie and people should think about that in their list design. However I suspect very few will be able to grasp such “advanced” meta considerations and will take their normal list and tweak it slightly. On the Sunday evening they will sit there thinking one of two things; either “well I knew my list was sub-optimal so I didn’t expect to win” or “the dice, the missions, the Moon in June stuffed me”.

Don’t worry snowflakes “You are all winners just by reaching the Masters”!

Heaven help that you actually try to go out there and win the thing!

Seize the chances Guys. Do your very best!

Loaded Dice II - This Time It's The Golden Daemons

2011-11-03T12:55:00.001+13:00

Last month I was speaking to the guy who had broken the story about the Australian gamer who had been caught using loaded dice at numerous 40k tournaments in Melbourne.

He told me to hold tight for Round 2 of the sorry tale. Well it has now broken across various forums/blogs. You can get a full rundown at http://chestofcolors.com/scandal-at-golden-demon-australia/

Not content with using crooked dice, the individual concerned has now alledgedly been exposed as having entered work commissioned from a Polish painter, Bohun as his own at the recent Golden Daemon painting competition at Games Day Australia.

Here are the photos of the entry and photos of the originally commissioned work*.

Games Day Australia Entry

Work Commissioned from Polish Painter Bohun

The Two Dreadnaughts Side by Side

Interestingly, the guy entered the event under a false name rather than his own. You draw your conclusions as to why he would do that.

From my point of view it is pretty hard to fathom why someone would feel motivated to go down such a route.

* Thanks to Chest of Colours where photos were lifted from

New Fantasy Plastic Coming Up

2011-11-01T13:36:00.002+13:00

The rumours are that Games Workshop has completed eighteen new plastic single figure sprues for the various Fantasy armies.

These will be similar to the Warrior of Chaos and Vampire Counts figures released in the past few months.

I’m really hoping this is true as while I think some of the figures have been “patchy” – the Necromancer, for instance – they represent a really good addition to the range.

Personally I’m hoping that we’ll see the release of a couple of Skaven characters e.g. Chieftain with BSB option and a Plague Priest.

GW's Brave New World

2011-11-01T10:18:00.000+13:00

I am wondering how Games Workshop’s new release policy is working out. Earlier this year the Company basically went into lockdown mode on new releases changing the way they approached this issue over the years.

In the past you initially had information released at Games Day and similar events about the projects the studio was working on. This was followed by a series of leaks/teasers around the net in the period 3-6 months prior to a release. This might be a “three-up”, an inclusion in a photo and general noise on the internet about the release. The month before there was a teaser in the White Dwarf followed by wall to wall coverage in the release month White Dwarf that came out to subscribers 2 weeks before release date. Finally the shop got a “black box” 3-4 weeks before so the staff could make and paint the models and acquaint themselves with the rules prior to release. All this was designed to create a buzz around the release.

This has all changed. Black boxes are gone, White Dwarf has no prior month teasers and its release is now delayed, with subscribers getting their copies AFTER the magazine’s release to the shops. The rationale given for this is that GW is looking to create an event around the monthly release day, so that if people want to see New Releases (hell, even know what the release is) they have to go into the shop.

The commercial reason for the change is supposedly twofold. Firstly, if people know what is coming out in advance then they restrain their purchases in the period leading up to the release. As a result GW believes their overall sales are dampened. Secondly, by creating an event they generate an excitement factor that leads to more impulse purchases as the customer is seduced by seeing something new and shiny. The expectation is that by addressing the first issue and introducing the second, this policy will lead to higher overall sales for GW.

It is going to be very interesting to see how this works out for them. I’m not convinced but will wait until the next set of financials to get a better handle.

I know from my own point of view the shift in policy has not really played out. I complained about the change in service conditions around my White Dwarf subscription and secured an extension of 12 months to my current sub and a GBP25 gift voucher. Against that my purchases direct from the GW shop since may have been restricted to Foundation Paints, GW Washes, the OK Army Book and Magic Cards plus the three Black Library books.

With the move to these types of restrictions plus the GW embargo of third parties supplying Southern Hemisphere customers my buying of their products is about 20% of previous years. Given that this is against a backdrop of two Warhammer armies I collect (TKs & OKs), from me at least some of their recent moves have destroyed a revenue stream.

Finally....A Way Forward

2011-10-31T11:18:00.002+13:00

The Necrons are now confirmed and I must say that I do like the new models. However my biggest hope is that the Codex continues at the same power level of the recent books. Given that it is going to be around for at least 5-6 years it is important that it is competitive through to at least 7th edition.

The word is that post Necrons the next Codex is Tau Empire. The rumours are that the fluff story has progressed and that the Tau are now looked in a major conflict with the forces of Chaos. Their greatest strength in this conflict is that they have not embraced the Warp and act as a null zone to the whispers of the Chaos Gds. In this I expect they are a little like “gingas” in that they have no soul! However this is all in keeping with their role over the past 3-4 years as GW’s red-headed stepchild getting no love. A least they will now have a “jobbing” role for the rediscovered poster boys “Chaos Legions”.

Now you are probably all unaware of this but I have been a little bit disappointed by GW’s treatment of Chaos over the past five years. To say that I think that Gav Thorpe’s Codex: Chaos Space Marines is a soulless piece of crap, seriously undervalues my hatred for that particular document. All the life, character and development work Pete Haines did was largely obliterated in Thorpe’s “work”. Suddenly the Legions ceased to exist and we were relegated to playing Codex: Liquorice Allsorts. I decried it at the time and I stand by every derogatory comment I’ve ever made about it. Chaos Space marines went from being characterful and diverse to Lash Prince(s) + Plague Marines + obliterators.

So how did that work out GW? I’m guessing not very well. You release the Horus Heresy books and then rip the heart out of Chaos.

This Ginger is Pretty Happy Gav Thorpe Will Be Nowhere Near Chaos Legions

CSM went from one of the two biggest sellers to a complete also-ran (based on tournament attendance). Some will put this down to performance but I believe that the largest part was mindnumbing boredom. Seriously who could get excited by Gav Thorpe’s “vision”.

Spot quiz – How many Red Corsair armies have you seen?

I pretty much gave up playing 40k when that codex was released. Therefore I pretty excited by the news solidifying around June 2012 when we will see the return of the Legions. The word is this will be the last 5th Ed Codex but written with 6th Ed in mind. Can’t wait! I’m hoping that either Phil Kelly or Jeremy Vetock get the gig because then at least it will have a soul.

Conquest This Weekend

2011-10-27T13:04:00.000+13:00

Good luck to everyone playing at Conquest in Christchurch this weekend.

This is the last tournament of the New Zealand ranking "season" and has attracted strong competitions in both Fantasy and 40k.

Without seeing the full field, I'm aware Mal Patel and Locky Reid who finished 1st and 2nd at Guardcon are there and I expect both to place in the Top 5. Expect also to see some real tight results as another 6 South Island players are in the current Top 20 - Basil Moskovis, Raymond Wallace, Damon Quaid, Darren Urquhart and Tim Joss.

This competition is going to have areal impact on the make up of the Masters field as people try to force their way into the Top 10.

Here's my take on the situation (I believe 200 points from 3 events is need to qualify Top 10):

Mal Patel (Lizards) - Safely ensconced as #1 and nothing here can change it.

Locky Reid (Skaven) - Protecting 46 points. Needs to finish in the Top 12 here to hold his place for Masters qualification.

Basil Moskovis (Vamps) - Protecting 1.5 points. Safe as houses for the Masters.

Raymond Wallace (Skaven) - Not protecting points but depending on other players needs to finish at least 8th or 9th to cement a Masters place.

Damon Quaid (WoC) - Again not defending points but needs to finish no lower than 7th to guarantee a place at the Masters table.

Darren Urquhart (Dark Elves) - Protecting 59 points. A near podium finish is required to muscle him into the Masters.

Tim Joss (O&G) - The man with the bullet. A finish in the top half of the field will likely see him qualify for the Masters. to date only has two results so all the points he scores are gravy.

Cheers

2011-10-26T15:18:00.000+13:00

Yesterday the site broke the 1000 daily hits threshold for the first time.

Thanks to all the regular and new readers of “Fields of Blood”.

I’m busy raicking up Charlie and Jack to post more but currently Charlie is working 80 hour weeks and Jack as Uni exams. In the meantime you’ll just have to make do with me.

Promise to get some photos up this weekend of my recent Skaven and Tomb King painting.

Urban Myth - Chessex Dice

2011-10-26T14:21:00.001+13:00

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away……an urban myth was born.
On Dakka Dakka the US-based wargames forum this myth has persisted and is treated as fact.
The myth is that if you use Chessex dice or any round cornered pip indented then you will roll “1” 29% of the time. You can read all about it here.

Twenty-nine percent…..when the expectation is 16.6%. Determined after thousands and thousands of rolls. Any idea how improbable that is. Well statistically it starting to get into the realms of “A Room Full of Monkeys Typing Shakespeare”!

I’m willing to say that you could look at the dice and clearly see the imperfections.

Dice are never perfect. However the chance of picking up a block of Chessex dice and rolling them 28 times then coming up with 29% “1”s or indeed any single number is about as likely as finding intelligent life in Newcastle.

I call “Bullshit”.

Vermintide III

2011-10-26T11:04:00.000+13:00

Just a reminder to all that Vermintide III, the last NZ Fantasy tournament of 2011, is coming up soon.

Here are the details:

Tournament Officials: Neil Williamson (Umpire), Hagen Kerr (Registrar) hagen.kerr@xtra.co.nz

When: Sunday 11 December

Where: Cashmere Primary School, Khandallah, Wellington

Start Time: 8.15am for 8.30 start

Finish Time: 6.00pm (latest)

Army lists due: 3 December to nwsw@xtra.co.nz

Cost: $20.00

General Format

Army Size: 1200 points

Table Size: 5 ft x 4 ft

Rounds: 5 scenarios (no Battle of the pass)

Game length: 1 ½ hours each game

Composition: Light hardcaps

The Players' Pack is available from Neil Williamson (nwsw@xtra.co.nz).

The event promises to be enormous fun for both new and experienced players.

Necrons Confirmed for November

2011-10-25T15:59:00.000+13:00

Overnight GW posted on their Voxcaster blog a thinly veiled reference to the upcoming release of Necrons.

The 40 second Youtube video contains no pictures but largely confirms November as release month. More information to be released on October 29.

You can click on our previous post here to see the new Necrons and info on where further pictures can be found.

The Role of the Stubborn Character

2011-10-25T14:19:00.001+13:00

One character that has become more prevalent recently is the fast moving character (typically a flyer) with the Crown of Command (making him Stubborn). The premise here is that the character has a good armour save plus a passable ward and he can go into the enemy and kill them or at worst hold them there.

There are numerous variations depending on Army Book and access to the Stubborn ability. One popular variation is the Bret with Heroic Killing Blow on a Pegasus, the Dreadlord with the Pendant of Khaleth or the Chaos Character on a Disk.
Personally I think that while they can be very useful they are not without potential pitfalls. The most obvious of these is that you choose the wrong target for his charge. For me the most profitable targets are small units of skirmishers, lone characters, warmachines and possibly monsters – basically anything that lacks ranks.

On this basis I prefer Hero level rather than Lord level characters in the role?

Why? Well a number of reasons.

Firstly, a Lord level character is likely to be your Army General and you run a greater risk of him getting killed or at best being drawn away from where his Leadership bubble is most needed.

Secondly, the whole strategy is surrounded by an assumption that you will lose combat (otherwise why the need for the Stubborn crown) and are going to be testing Leadership at some stage.

If you test often enough you will eventually fail the Stubborn test and therefore I believe it is good practice to minimise this risk. For me this means picking your fights rather than chucking the character into any unit. I advocate “clubbing baby seals” (i.e. being a bully by picking unfair fights) and therefore only having to rely on the Stubborn crutch if something untoward happens. Personally I’d avoid engaging units with high static Combat Resolution unless it was absolutely unavoidable.

Stubborn “9” means a 1/6 chance of failing – reduced to 1/36 if the BSB is always there. Now a canny opponent will lure you away from or look to assassinate your BSB. If he’s very clever he’ll look to wait until you are looked in combat before doing it. Suddenly that Stubborn “9” doesn’t look so good.

Far better to my mind to get in and out of combats where you don’t start at a major disadvantage, killing the vulnerable and moving on. The Stubborn trait is your backstop not a weapon.

As always after your thoughts.

GW's New Terrain Piece

2011-10-22T12:13:00.001+13:00

How great is this?

I want one!!!!!

This is so going to be Seerlord Morskitta's Lair!!!!

The Golden Age of the Wireless

2011-10-20T15:18:00.001+13:00

So this week is the first of Charlie's regular spots on 40kUK podcast. It can be downloaded on iTunes or from here

New From Across the Pond – Charles St Clair (a new addition to the podcast) reports from New Zealand and the tournament scene there – 02:11:37.

You can click on Charlie at 2 hours 11 minutes into the show where he goes through his Ork army. given his success with them it's worth a listen.....especially those of you who are 0-7 against them!

#Brushtime

2011-10-20T10:53:00.003+13:00

A few of the guys I follow on Twitter have come up with a way of boosting painting output. They have labelled it #Brushtime and effectively it is a weekly target of ten hours painting.

They tweet their progress against the target through the week and it acts as an incentive/prompt to those participating. Coupled with attached pictures of their models it seems to be working for them.

I’m one of those people who likes to have targets and find that they do work as an incentive. Having no deadline means I’m likely to just let painting drift and suddenly a month or two has gone by with little or no output. The target of ten hours a week isn’t too onerous either – less than 1.5 hours a day average. In reality it means three evenings a week.

I’ll let you know my progress.

The Plague Banner

2011-10-18T14:00:00.001+13:00

One Skaven question I’ve never been able to reconcile to my satisfaction concerns the question of which banner is the best choice for a unit of Plague Monks.

The three most obvious choices are:

• Plague Banner (30 points) – Re-roll To-Hit and To-Wound rolls for one round of combat

• Banner of the Underempire (25 points) – 2D6 Strength 2 hits on every unit in contact, every round

• Banner of the Eternal Flame (10 points) – All attacks are Flaming

Let’s dismiss the flaming banner as this is situational and concentrate on the other two.

Now to some extent I expect it comes down to how you run the Monks, what number you have and definitely what you are facing. The two situations I think are most common are 20-30 Monks with Furnace and 30-40 Monks with no Furnace.

Over the past 16 months I have run my Monks in the first setup. Typically I’ll have them in a five wide unit giving me a file either side of the Furnace. I have always felt that the Banner of the Underempire was the best choice as you have insufficient attacks to the front – typically nine from the Plague Monks, 7 from the Furnace crew and 4 from the Priest – to make the Plague Banner worthwhile. However perhaps I’ve been underselling it. To try and increase its potency I have started to go seven wide which increases the PM attacks to 17. Certainly without the Furnace the extra 12 attacks would seem to make the Plague Banner a no-brainer, particularly if you go in Horde formation and have sufficient numbers to soak up any attacks that strike before you. The ability to dish out 51 attacks once is scary but after that I suspect the unit is toast.

So how have others found the Plague Banner – either with or without the Furnace?

New Necrons

2011-10-17T10:58:00.000+13:00

You can find lots of leaked photos of the new Necrons (November release) here

Here's a picyure of the new Ghost Ark

Very Cybermanny I reckon

Weekly Update

2011-10-17T10:33:00.003+13:00

I didn’t get a game in over the weekend…..Grrrr. But I did get one last Thursday night against Joel’s Empire list.

Joel used a list modified from his HomeCon army, swapping out the second unit of Flagellants for a War Altar. I thought that this was a far better build and gave him a pretty awesome offensive magic phase with the full Light deck and 4 from Shadow. He charged my HPA with the flagellant unit and though I managed to stop Timewarp when he cast Mindrazor with IF that was more than enough to see my big rat off. As I remember I had to make 16 4+ saves.

Although I managed to grind out a victory I was quite lucky in that Joel’s Seal of Destruction failed to destroy Crack’s Call and the second casting did for the Steam Tank that had been clogged up by slaves.

Over the weekend I made up some new movement trays for the army to better accommodate the formations and size of units that I’m using. These were the Litko ones I purchased earlier in the year. My preference is still for the Gale Force Nine trays which I think are a little more robust. These are now painted, magnetised and ready to go.

The repairing of chips on metal models continued. The initial batch I did with two coats of gloss polyurethane and then one of matt. I haven’t sprayed Dullcote on them as the hand brushed Vallejo Matt does a good enough job. Just about to start on my fourteen Lustrian PCBs –which are probably my favourite Skaven models.

New painting to be done includes finishing the FW Vermin Lord and painting the Avatars of War Vermin Warlord. I received the latter model last week. For me the jury is still out on this model as it looks a little naff unpainted. Hopefully it’ll grow on me once I paint it.

Today We'll Fight Waterloo........Again

2011-10-13T13:09:00.002+13:00

One of the most interesting changes from 7th to 8th Edition was the introduction of scenarios into the game. I’ve been pretty vocal that their inclusion has not only made things more challenging but act as a comp leveller on the more extreme builds.

However I know that my view isn’t the only opinion. The ETC used “Battleline” as the only scenario though I can understand that given the match-up process they already go through.
More puzzling to me are those general tournaments that choose not to use scenarios. In some case they then introduce new rules and layers of army restrictions to control troublesome builds.
One of the usual reasons trotted out is that scenarios can reduce the game to a non-contest by introducing randomness (particularly in deployment) into the mix. Where forced to play these games the proponents – if you believe the podcasting glitterati – turtle up in their respective corners and take a 10-10 draw.

This to me is really a failure in list design and/or unwillingness to adapt to anything that forces their gameplan out of the ordinary. If your total gameplan is predicated on getting a certain deathstar into combat, I can understand the unwillingness to play a game that mightn’t let you do that. But is that the fault of the scenario? Your army build? Or your unwillingness to think on the fly?

There seems to be a jump to blame the first option rather than consider the second and third.

When I build a list I make sure it can compete in all scenarios. I accept that I get certain setups where I’m disadvantaged but never to the extent where I feel that my only option is to turtle.

Take Watchtower for instance. I generally have 2-3 strategies around that scenario. In a lot of cases with the Watchtower I will not deploy in it and instead work to stop my opponent getting their through deployment of scouts, the use of vanguard etc. This stops the first turn charge on the tower by a powerful unit that will throw my weaker unit out. I’ll then try and occupy it later in the game.

If my opponent takes the building, I know the objective from the start. Throw him out. To this end I’ll tend to try and isolate him and then use a mix of magic and shooting to whittle him down so I can try a late game (Turn 4, remember random game length) assault.

So what do you guys think? Do you feel the added challenge of scenarios is worth it?