Warhammer Quest Released

Rodeo Games have just (last 2 hours) released Warhammer Quest for the iPad and iPhone.

This is the return of a GW classic game of the 1990s. The UK price is GBP 2.49 so I'm guessing around $5-6.

Get on it.

Where to for Lizards?

All the tea leaves are saying that Lizardmen are the next Fantasy book and that it could be as soon as next month. I personally think that Lizardmen are the strongest book in the game - this has evolved due to the nature of 8th Edition and with the release of new books over time. The killer books of 7th have been de-powered with an 8th ed update.

Why are Lizards so strong? Well because they compete in every phase and I hope that this is one aspect that they don't change with a new release.

So what has to happen and what would I like to see happen?

The answer is, surprisingly, not too much at all. The key issues for me are that we see more of a reason to take Saurus over skinks. For the tigers, skinks are currently the way to go. Learn how to double flee and then sit there blasting away with either two Slaan or a souped-up party Slaan. I would like to see more of an incentive  to take Saurus over skinks. It doesn't need to be much of a nudge - Saurus are already a good choice - so can probably be through a small nerd to skinks. How would I do that? Probably by retaining cold-blooded but not allowing them to use General's Leadership.

The other things I'd like to see are a fix for Temple Guard and Kroxigors. Both are rarely seen these days and that is a shame. These are the Lizzie Elites and there has to be some slight nudge up in terms of power. One might be to provide the TG to buy an item that gives them protection from miscast damage while with Krox I'd increase their Scaly Skin save to 3+.

The final two things I'd like to see is a sorting out of M&H rules for Salamanders by change to Sallies rules. The free ward they get now makes them a non-brainer. And some sort of push for the Stegadon the big monster has become the forgotten reptile of the Warhammer world.

It will be interesting to see what GW do.

Review - GW's Clean-up Kit Scraper

Recently I posted some pictures of some Plague Drones I had completed and the Painting Intelligentsia (Jack and Charlie) pointed out the mold lines I had left. Cut to the quip I immediately decided I had to do something about it or bear ongoing derision from that quarter.

Luckily for me, Domus on "The Magnificent Bastards" then popped up and reviewed Games Workshop's Clean-up kit. Inspired by his review I wandered into GW Wellington Hobby Centre passed across $26 of my savings and bought one for myself.

If you remember this kit was released in the wake of the Finecast debacle - along with Liquid Green Stuff - as the tools that would patch up any model failures you received. As I recall, it was ridiculed as a waste of money at the time adding little utility at what was seen as exorbitant cost. I certainly didn't see the need to purchase one and so my tool rack has been absent said kit.

Fast forward two years and intermittent attempts to clean up mold lines on resin and plastic figures. I use a craft knife and generally find I cut into the plastic if it is too sharp or my hand if too blunt.

Colour me skeptical as to the utility of this kit, but fortified by Domus' review I have used it over the past four weeks.

Let's put aside the brush. Yes it nice but is an adjunct rather than the main proposition. The scraper is fantastic. It has a soft rubberised grip with a metal business end. This scraper is brushed steel and works a treat. the edge is sufficient to remove resin plugs and plastic dags and it cleans up joints with no gouging of the model. The tool is also sufficiently sturdy that with a little pressure you can remove lines in one fluid movement.

I am a convert. The tool is fantastic. It can get into tight places due to its design and I know find I use it far more than any other craft instrument on my desk.

Fully recommend. In fact, if you haven't got one then go and buy one now! 

ETC Comp - A Better Way?

Last evening I watched a series of YouTube videos prepared by two members of the Polish ETC team in response to the composition being developed by the Army Restrictions Committee for this year's ETC.

In essence, it was a study on how and why they are getting it wrong and in particular how they are creating a new game that deviates significantly from Warhammer. They indicate that, for continental Europe at least, this is highly counterproductive as it creates a barrier for entry for new tournament players. This is largely because the powerhouses of Central Europe adopt ETC restrictions for their own domestic tournament play. Whether doing this is a good thing is not discussed but I think bears consideration.

So what do they think is wrong with the ETC comp?

It is their contention that:

• The wrong people are doing the comp;
• That there is a lack of a clear statement of what they are trying to achieve;
• That the first step is to be restrictive which leads to a long, cumbersome and overly complicated document;
• That the lessons of the past have been ignored.

Putting aside the first point - as not knowing ETC politics I suspect they have a dog in that fight - let's look at their other points. 

They contend that the AR.com don't have a clear goal. Obviously the AR.com think differently but I do think their point has some merit. Reading the ETC comp I don't get a clear understanding of what is trying to be achieved. Is it balance between books? Is it to make matchup process largely irrelevant? Is it to balance the game? Is it to neutralise the paper-scissors-rock aspects prevalent in Warhammer? With 15 books I'd contend that it is hard to achieve all of these things at once. So therefore I agree with the Poles that a clear statement would be helpful. 

Secondly, they believe that the AR.com has included restrictions that have no clear goal and build on one another to little end. To demonstrate they cite the example of restricting Lizardmen Scar Vets to two. They point out that due to item choice the inclusion of a third Scar-Vet actually weakens the army as it stops points being spent on producing an offensive Skink level caster. However by then trying to ensure some "concept" of external balance this leads to restrictions in other books and pretty soon you have band-aids everywhere to little purpose. This results in the tome we now have. 

The final point about the lessons of the past is probably the most compelling. In 7th Edition we had the years of the Big Three. This was 2008-10 where Daemons, Dark Elves and Vampire Counts dominated tabletops around the world. The solution adopted then and now rejected was to reduce the points level of those armies. This has the effect of creating internal competition for points and leads to natural restrictions rather than arbitrarily imposed ones. Certainly I think that this approach bears investigating again as it means that you can reduce the overall number of band-aids being applied and greatly reduce the complexity and potential for failure of comp.

I remain firmly in the camp that less comp is good and that by playing scenarios, big magic and terrain you alleviate the need for heavy comp in most singles competition. However if you must have comp - and what would Europe be without some central bureaucratic behemoth trying to control the market - then the approach they are suggesting bears serious consideration. 

The Nicon Lists

Looking through the Nicon lists, by far the most interesting (besides by own :-)  ) is Brian Smith's Dark Elves. The big block of Executioners backed up by two Cauldrons, two Hydras and a big block of Corsairs looks formidable and ill be very interested to see how it plays out.

Neil Williamson's Dwarfs look far more interesting than normal tournament Dwarfs and kudos to Neil for bringing a list that looks like it is set up to give his opponents a game.

As to the strength of lists otherwise on show. It's good to see Tom Mawdsley's list getting a run out. It certainly has all the tools to do well - Rune Maw, Crown of Command etc. I expect that it will place well.

Mike King's list is also very formidable - having played it a lot recently. Mike has opted for Death & Metal which looks strong in this field but also suits me as the dual Light Slaans were a ball breaker for my Daemons.

I can't comment with any confidence on the new Warriors as I have only had a couple of games versus the new book. I expect them to be solid but I can't help thinking the small model count in most makes them very reliant on the vagaries of the dice.

Overall it looks like it should be an interesting weekend.

Review - Quartermaster App for iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad

For those of you that have an iProduct there is a very handy little app that provides all your list building functionality for a minimal cost.

Over the past 3-4 years I've been waiting for Lone Wolf Development to put Army Builder on the iPad. Although there have been numerous promises over that time it has never eventuated. Now it may be that they needn't bother.

Sean Rogers has completed and refined the Quartermaster app to a point whereby it does most of the list building functionality required for WHFB and 40k. His app is a framework which allows you to download and utilise fan-built templates for the armies in both those games.

You can view the application here

Here are some screenshots from the application:

 The key to this product (and the reason that it doesn't infringe IP) is that game-specific content is provided by users at no-cost. This is a similar model to Army Builder. Where this appears to score above AB is with the speed that new content comes to market. The High Elf template was up within 2-3 days of book release in time for users to start constructing lists. Generally with AB there is a one month period before new content is uploaded.

The templates for various armies can be accessed here at no cost.

So where does this set vis a vis Army Builder?

Pros

• Cost - it is only $5.49 in NZ Apple App Store. And there is no annual licensing fee
• Portability - AB is PC/Laptop/Netbook only. No phone or tablet version has been created to date. Therefore you can construct lists far more conveniently and take them to your games
• Speed to Market - the user templates are available almost upon release of new books
• Editability - any template errors are easily corrected. I found one in the DoC template which I was able to instantly amend. However the instance of errors appears far less than in initial AB releases for new books

Cons

• Apple only? I'm not sure if there is an Android version?
• No automatic advice of updated templates

Overall I am very very happy with the app and think that it is almost a must-have if you have an Apple product - especially as it costs no more than a large trim soy moccachino with a twist of lemon.

NiCon Lists Released

The list for NiCon have been released and can be downloaded from here

I will be looking at them in detail in the next few days and will post my thoughts.

It is incredibly sad that two people have decided that it is okay to spoil other people's weekend by bringing Dwarfs.

New Podcast - The Watchtower

Just like every monkey with a keyboard can write a blog, it seems every geek with a mixer and a mic can create a podcast. Over the past year we have seen far more being produced - to the point where I currently have 18 subscriptions in Instacast for GW programming. This is even after a recent cull. It is now got to the stage where the availability of "free" content has seriously curtailed my Horus Heresy audiobook listening.

One of the most recent is The Watchtower podcast out of Sydney, Australia - the name is unfortunate as they share it with a lot of Jehovah Witness multimedia. The presenters are three members of the Sydney gaming scene and have, it appears between 6 months and 3 years Warhammer Fantasy experience. I don't personally know the guys - my Oz tournament days ended in 2010 just as these guys were starting.

What I enjoy about podcasts is getting an appreciation of a different scene's meta. In the case of Australia and New Zealand, 8th Edition has seen a massive divergence from a previous close alignment. By way of background, I largely stopped travelling to play in Oz due to their reliance on subjective - usually panel based composition system. The australians are slowly coming around to hard cap systems but the process has been slow and certainly their scene is more restrictive than permissive.

So with that background in place, onto the podcast. To date there have been two episodes. The first was an introduction to the presenters followed by a review of their performance at a recent tournament. The second was a review of the recent Daemon Book release.

The initial episode was a good start. Production values seem okay. There were initial problems downloading but these were soon rectified. I liked the introduction by Nick and Mick and you knew pretty quickly that you were listening to an Australian podcast. As a gross generalisation, there are no grey areas with Australians - and the podcast is very black and white. New Zealanders tend to find Aussies very opinionated and this podcast certainly leaves you in no doubt as to where they stand on every issue. This is not a bad thing, it certainly makes for interesting listening but there is a risk that things can be seen in overly simplistic terms. Tournament reviews are hard to do well on a podcast. You need to avoid the "then I rolled a 6" aspect which doesn't make great listening. However The Watchtower did this no better or worse than other podcasts out there. With tournament review I personally prefer to hard very short synopsis of the games and then a more in-depth review of what worked and why, whether this was list design strength/flaw or was symptomatic of matchups/luck/etc. Then a discussion as to whether a list needs to evolve. I'll be interested to see how TW tournament reports are handled going forward.

The second episode reinforced a lot of what I learnt on the first episode. It added a third host, Alex and then provided a long review of the new Daemons. Again there were not a lot of grey areas - something was either crap or amazing/broken. Having listened to a lot of podcasts reviewing the Daemons there wasn't a lot of new insight but that is likely a case of being later to the party than other casts.I found their review reasonably accurate - though as noted, not much inhabited middle ground. As someone currently dabbling in Daemons I think the book is very good in terms of internal and external balance. While there are obvious strengths that the cast identified I don't necessarily think that they gave enough credence to either book weaknesses or changes to meta that can immediately mitigate some of the strengths. A case in point was the focus on the strength of Skullcannons without a consideration of mitigator in the 5/10 point Dragonhelm/Dragonbane tax for characters. Similarly the emergence of High Elves (and BotWD) may dampened aspects of a DoC's tournament return over 6 rounds. All in all though I found the review interesting.

So after two episodes there has been enough on offer to make me return for future episodes. I'm keen to hear if there is progression in the Australian tournament scene and in their meta. Generally I give podcasts 4-5 episodes before I cull. On evidence to date I suspect that "The Watchtower" may be a keeper.

You can download it on iTunes, Instacast, Podcaster etc

Daemons for NiCon

Next weekend is NiCon in the Hawkes Bay. This event moves around the North Island, last year being in Auckland. There it drew a very respectable field of 34 and I was lucky enough to win it with my Skaven.

This year - being in a smaller locale - it has drawn a much smaller field. Currently there are 12 players signed up for the event. I'm going up as part of a holiday with my wife, her sister and brother-in-law so adopted a pretty relaxed approach to the event. Over the past three months I've been painting Daemons and so I've built a list out of my most recent additions.


Lord of Change - Level 4 (Metal), Greater Gift, 2x Lesser Gift

Herald of Tzeentch - Level 2 (Tzeentch), BSB

20 Pink Horrors - Full Command

15 Pink Horrors - Standard

10 Pink Horrors - Standard, Gleaming Pennant

4 Beasts of Nurgle

Beast of Nurgle

Beast of Nurgle

3 Screamers

3 Screamers

Flaming Chariot of Tzeentch - Blue Horror Crew

Skullcannon

Skullcannon

I've had a few practice games with the list and I am starting to get my head around it. It is very chaotic and sometimes you just have to accept what the dice throw up.

Weekend Gaming

This weekend my lovely wife is away in Auckland for a friend's birthday. While this will give her the opportunity to visit her two darling boys, I'm left at home to fend for myself.

So the intention is to spend the two days gaming. I intend setting up a couple of tables in the family room and have invited locals to drop in if they fancy the odd game or two or three.

Looking forward to getting a few games under my belt - I am trying to break in a new set of dice.