Hulk-A-Mania

We played the new Space Hulk yesterday and we were all big fans of the original.

It was incredible. Moreover, it was beautiful. Where I play is a place that has a lot of non-gamers coming in and out. Friends, pizza people, friends of friends, etc., and we set up the board (mission 4) up in a place where anyone coming into the house would pass us up to see it. We had people oggling it, and not the miniatures which are phenomenal, but as per usual with GW, need to be painted (that's really a drawback in my opinion).

The game played smoothly. I found the time limit dynamic to be immaterial (on no turn did it ever actually matter), but I believe they resolved some of the issues of the original game and made it a heck of a lot better. I really like the on-guard dynamic, especially with the Storm Hammer sergeant who puts the fear of the Emperor into genestealers but who ends up not being able to move much. The game provides real tactical choices for game play and can be played in about an hour easilly.

I have, however, two major complaints. It seems to me that the doors are still a major problem in the game as it's far more easy to open them to break them (so why break them?). Genestealers end up spending far all their forward momentum closing doors behind them so as to keep up their shields. As a result, in both games, the marine players won (though in both games, they won with 3 out of 10 marines left!).

My second complaint has to do with the assault cannon which has all these strange rules associated with it once it has fired ten times. You'll probably never fire it more than three. We fired it twice in our game to take the objective. It is highly possible that this was mission contingent, but I just can't imagine a space hulk game going for ten turns, much less more. Part of the game's fun is that it doesn't take very long to play. Having said that, I'm sure I will run into a giant space hulk battlefield at some Con where the game takes forty turns, and the assault cannon's maximum of 20 shots will come into play, but for my money, games of that size are better played using the 40k rules (or even Apocalypse--yes, I did say that).

Regardless, though, I think the game is a great occassional alternative to 40k. It is beautifully constructed, and with more than 10 missions, has great replayablility. I'm sure that some people will flinch at the $100 price tag, but it's well worth it (though don't count on using the genestealers in a regular game, they're poses would prove innefficient for purposes of cover and line of sight).

New Rules, Old Codexes

When the new rules came out, I had just finished painting enough Thousand Sons to host an army, and a rather, inconceivably awesome armada it was. I had converted Rhinos to look amazing, I had decorated terminators and defilers with headdresses, I had found appropriatly crazy spawn...

And then I lost for about 6 months straight. I've moved on. I tried Orks, which admittedly makes me the worst player imaginable because I lost with them. My defense is that I didn't play them for long enough until I moved on. I've met with failure, likewise, with Necron, and have had some success with Eldar. I have felt in no position to offer advice, but here it is anyways.

The new rules are entirely unforgiving. You simply can't pick up an old codex and make your army any fool way you want. At one time, grinding out a point or two here and there gave you a slight advantage. This is simply no longer the case. If you are playing the necron and you are buying anything but phalanxes (monolith/lord/20 warriors), you are wasting points that will end up costing you the game. Thousand Sons are simply cost inneffective and an army of them cannot win. CANNOT.

Now, obviously, someone may play badly, but equally matched, rolling well, you simply paid twice as much for your army than you should have. Invulnerable saves aren't worth it except on guys with powerfists and lightening claws. Moreover, you pay for that force weapon and it can't kill anything anymore.

What's more, I find that cheat armies can stand up in the new rules with greater impunity. Feel No Pain means that you should always play Nurgle if you play Chaos. If you aren't, you aren't doing the math. Deathwing terminators as troops choices make them win, and win big, because you can't get them off an objective across a board.

Now, the good points. The truth is the newer armies are a hell of a lot more powerful than the previous editions which means that the game becomes more interesting. Cheat armies from the previous edition are as good as the normal armies for the new edition.

Lastly, and I think this is the most important thing--game play in the new edition is much better. Tactics really matter more than they did before, and mobility is key, even more than 3+ invulnerable saves. I think the Eldar and Dark Eldar are very good armies right now, but that means that they're evenly matched with the Marines--making it a good battle.

So, the problem is that you have to wait for your codex, but the good news is that, as it stands right now, once the new rules make you even with everyone else, the battles offer far more options for scoring a win.

My two cents anyways. When are they making the Necron Codex anyways?

a few Nurgle-y tips

It's been awhile. I got two orders back to back-one for a 6x4 city and the other for a 6x12 landscape, and well...that's an f-load of scenery. I'll be returning soon with many other interesting ideas, but as for now I'll have to keep it short.

I'm working on three armies right now, my ultramarines (as always), my Thousand Sons, and my Death Guard. For the latter two armies, I have figured out how to make their terminators. For Thousand Sons, it's kind of obvious (add a head dress), but many I love my death guard termies, and really nurgle in general. Here's a hint for those of you playing Nurgle or planning to build a Nurgle army. Get yourself some self drying clay and some cheap zombie miniatures. Plus, the dollar stores sometimes sell something called a fly launcher which comes with little fake flies (just big enough to put in someone's head mount). I also recommend getting dollar store versions of Battleship. The little pegs are great for spikes.

Easy Roman Columns for Warhammer 40k

So, I got tired of buying roman columns 4 to a pack (cake topper aisle at Michaels) and decided to build my own en masse. Here's how it's done. Go to the dollar store and pick up one of their mops. You're going to be using the handle of the mop as the column so you want something that has that column texture to it. Okay, great. The stuff's made of cheap metal so you'll need somthing to cut it with that wont crush it. I used a dremel cut off wheel. It's really thin stuff so it won't really take much effort to cut it. Bases of columns and tops are the real tough part. I just cast mine with Hirst Arts molds--it's just easier. If you don't have Hirst Arts Molds, you still have a few options. For one, there's the Scrapbook textrure strips. They stick on but you're going to want to reinforce them with glue. If you wrap them around something already round and slightly larger than the handle (say a coke bottle cap) they'll have a seem, put it away from the world and you've got a kind of base. You can also use the spout of a two liter: cut it below the threading (just below the flat part and turn it upside down (this looks particularly sci fi). For the top of the column you can similar to the base, but an easier move (especially if you're dealing with ruins) is that while you're at the dollar store, pick out some of that crappy statuary they've got around. Normally it mounted on flat bases with some kind of texture to it. Bus. t that for the base. Remember to save the statuary itself. We use every part of our kill. I'm waiting to put all of mine together in some kind of demented chaos collage.

Apocalypse Yesterday

Has anyone figured out a way to fix Apocalypse? I just scratch built two titans, a Cobra, and a Scorpion and I'd like to play them in something resembling a game. You know, with rules...

Summer for casters

It's summer. It's hot. That means for those of you who cast, your molds are beginning to go out of shape. A good tip, always, is to pop the cast first, fill it and then leave it. A mold with a casting in it is far less likely to contort.

5th ed. a review

Well, like the rest of you, I have seen "the new edition of Warhammer 40k" (if the version I saw was legit, and I think it was) and it is...not good. I'm not sure that they fixed anything that was wrong with earlier additions and from what I can tell they mostly reverted back to 3rd edition. They don't clear up cover (though the forests are now 4+ saves so there's no point in playing space marines), they didn't fix rending, nothing. I was kind of hoping there would be a reason for producing a fifth edition aside from them wanting more money, but none of the arguments that you have at your table will be solved with this new one.

Because the new rules basically allow troops to block one another and because there is that 4+ cover save everywhere on the board, I imagine this will be the hey day of hand to hand and big shooty armies. Everything in between will probably have to call it quits for awhile. Like I said, I don't see any reason to play space marines (maybe Blood Angels). Maybe they'll fix this in the codex but if there's going to be consistant 50/50 cover saves for every army, they need to make the 3+ a little less of a factor in marine costs (or give them a 6+ invulnerable, that I think would work too).

Good things? Not much. I like what they did with the area affects (though BS for blast weapons has now become totally irrelevant). Being able to shield is kind of cool, but it will make the Hormagaunt/genestealer combo absolutely deadly. I think its interesting that they'd include city fight rules in the main book, but hey, how about covering how hills work. Seems like that might be worthy something to someone.

Overall, I just don't really see the point. The book corrects little, changes little, and what they do change or correct they either get horribly wrong or the rule is now as it was in 3rd edition.

Baby's first Titan

So, lot's of work to be done still. But this is, I think, a pretty good start.

Eldar Titan

Eldar Titan, minus head and gun arms...$6.99.

Beat that.

Apocalypse on the cheap

It is, perhaps, not good that I am setting my sites on apocalypse, but I am.

The reason it's not good is because I am one of those players who can field a 10000 point army, in sheer man-power, but that's not really the point is it. The point is that you want to field a Titan, and well...I don't have a Titan. Not yet, anyway.

But what in the hell are these people thinking over at Forgeworld? The scale of superheavies is the scale of cheap toys. Seriously, go to the toy aisle at Big Lots, Walmart, Target, or the dollar store and tell me you can't, in five seconds, pull a model off the shelf that's in Apocalyptic scale. Hell, they sell a tank for army men for $9.99 at Big Lots that looks a hell of a lot like a Baneblade and it's the exact right size. I know they don't expect people to have great modeling skills, but really, how hard is it to glue some bendy straws to the thing and maybe pop on a few extra guns you got from a GI Joe lot auction on Ebay. How much do they want for a Baneblade?

For $18, I found a Scorpion that is nigh-playable right out of the box. I just have to get the barrels of the cannon on it. Do you know how much forgeworld wants for a scorpion. I'm not kidding. Right out of the box. Now, I know what you're thinking, "how much conversion are you going to have to do?"

If I were sloppy, none. I'm not sloppy though so I'm going to have to cut up a frizbee a bit to fill out the back slopes of the wings. Still $18.

And now, I've set my sights on Titans. Did you all know that they're only 10.5" tall. You know what else is that tall? ED 209 vinyl models on Ebay. You know, that robot? From Robocop? Looks like a titan? So, now I'm cruising the cheapo store to find a headpiece that looks remotely like a dog, though I've already figured out that it also looks like the cockpit of a plane, maybe with the nose sanded flat, but how hard could that be to get for under $5.

Seriously, $500 for a 10" model. Are they fucking high?

Making daemonhunters not suck!

I like that 40k finally came up with an army for the daemonhunters, but they are the worst army they've so far devised. They aren't even really that good at killing daemons unless they take the options. An army called Daemonhunters shouldn't have to take options in order to hunt said daemons.

On the other hand, they're such a great idea for an army that it seems like a crying shame that they suck so bad. I've seen a few people try to work their way around the "suck" factor which I thing revolves around the lack of any ability to kill a tank, and this seems to be how people have managed.

First tactic, Allied armies: This tactic seems to work a bit. There's a direction you can't go. I think you have to do Space Marines with Daemonhunter allies rather than Daemonhunters with space marine allies, but there are problems here. You end up having to buy way too many troop choices to get a single las cannon on the board. Also, don't you want to load the grey knight terminators in the land raider? Well, it's like Mac and PC--the Ultramarine land raider is for Ultramarines, the Grey Knight land raider is for grey knights, and you can't buy it unless you have a Grey Knight hero along with the Ultramarine hero. It gets to be too many points just to play a normal army. Lastly, the problem is in conception. Are you playing Grey Knights, or Blood Angels with some Grey Knights hanging out. And hell...why not just make it Eldar with some Grey Knights hanging around.

Second tactic, IG/Grey Knights: Great tactic so long as you know you're playing IG. I even think that this is a great idea to punch up your IG's hth possabilities. But don't fool yourself. You can't just drop IG guys into another army. They need to be there in numbers to be effective. Otherwise, this only looks like a fix, and will normally come back to bite you in an actual game.

Third tactic, IG/Inquisitor: Again, this tactic is more about making a scary IG army than a real daemonhunter army. You're basically still playing IG with the added benifit of an Inquistor in a Land Raider. But the army will play the same thing and it's not nearly what you want to do, which is to play a grey knight army that doesn't suck....

Which brings me to tactic four, which comes to me from one of the guys in my group:

His reasoning is this: First, no psycannons. Aside from daemons who realy does it hurt. It's a waste of points.
Second, Daemonhunter dreadnoughts, un-modified with all the stuff you can buy dreadnoughts, are cheaper than marine dreadnoughts. Okay, use them. Three of these guys aught to take care of your more obvious tank problems.

Trade in the force nemesis weapons on the terminators for thunderhammers. They bust tanks. The urge is to throw around strength 6 power weapons, but you should think about at least trading over a few thunderhammers in order to make the terminator threat more real.

Lastly, you are a shooty army. You're not that great in hand to hand, but at a range of 24", you are mean. Anything longer, leave to the dreadnoughts and the inquisitor with heavy weapons servitors. Set up some fireplatforms, defend them at medium range with your grey knights, and kick the hell out of people as best you can with your terminators.

Last week I fought this force and won, but by the skin of my teeth and with a Thousand Sons army who are basically designed to wrip through Grey Knights like a hand goes through air.

Hope this helps.

Painting the nids, pt. 2

Here's the thing you should understand: my other color for the nids is orange. Orange is yellow and red. Purple is red and blue. Between orange and purple I make black. In other words, if you put orange over purple its likely to turn black.

Step 7: moistbrush all the appropriate areas orange. Moistbrush all the appropriate areas burned umber. Moistbrush all the appropriate areas green.

Having completed only this step and having done nothing by way of shading. My miniatures look like the Tyrant guard mini in the picture. That's without shading and already you can see three different layers of color (red-orange, orange, and light orange). This is clearest on the creature's head and chest. After this, I need only paint on light orange and then a dull yellow and the sections in orange will be done.

I go over the white/purple sections with a strong white to dull out the purple and to make it nearly white also.

Nonetheless, it took me about an hour and half to paint the hive tyrant.

Painting the 'Nids pt. 1

So, first of all, this is what I hope my Nid army will all look like after they're painted.

And here's how I'm painting them... I say this because I think they look good, and my method is extraordinarilly simple.

Step 1: Paint it black! Everything.

Step 2: Drybrush it white. Heavy heavy drybrushing. The figure after all is said and done should look white with black only in the cracks and low lying areas. It doesn't matter if it looks scratchy.

Step 3: Using a method that I'm calling "moist-brushing" apply purple over the entirity of the miniature. Moist brushing here refers to an ammount of paint on the brush somewhere between dry brushing and normal ammounts of paint. Take the brush. Dip it in the paint. Drag it across the paper until the paint is thin but still apliable to the miniature in one stroke. The goal here is to basically, cover the miniature in purple but in such a thin coat that the black remains visible underneath.

Step 4: Drybrush it white. Heavy heavy drybrushing, but a little less than in step 2. This should make a miniature where the deep spots are purple with a darker stain at the really deep crevices.

Step 5-6: Pretty much do steps 3 and 4 with violet, and drybush white even less. The overall result should look like the Tyrant guard in the picture.

ICon update: The Tournament

The guys over at The Brothers Grim turn out to be pretty good at running tournies. Out of 20 or so tables, I think there was a game going in all three rounds. No Orks, No Eldar, No Necron, 1 Dark Eldar, a couple of tyranids, and a few chaos. It was surprising how many people were playing marines and daemonhunters, but no biggie.

How'd I do. Well, the first two rounds I lost the raptors and a daemon prince and that's all. The first battle, I left behind a squad of marines and an immobilized predator. The second, 3 plague marines. So, I'd say I did pretty well.

I have no idea how to score tournaments and still don't so I can't really help anyone with that. I don't think I was in the running for overall victory, but it wouldn't have mattered because in the third game I played against this really hostile kid who cheated from beginning to end of the game. I actually thought about walking away from the table at turn 3 and telling him to go fuck himself, but then I think he would have scored a massacre against me, and I didn't want to give him that.

By the way, cheating included 6"=8", rolling dice when I was talking to people, rolling dice at random and just yelling out numbers of hits, giving his land raider the Grey Knight cloaking thing, and before the game even began, offering me a IG guy as his "traitor" when he should have handed me over a Grey Knight terminator.

Is there a W40k version of shinanigans that can be called on people like this in tournaments?

Everyone else though was awesome. The scenery looked great; most of it made it down in one piece; and a lot of it didn't get used because they already had too much to go around. I don't know if any of you reading this live anywhere near New York, but if you do, I recommend you go to ICon for the Warhammer 40k tournament. It's really fun.

By the way, I now love rhinos like they are the center point of my army, but I'll save that for another time.

Apocalypse Now!...or later

I played Apocalypse at ICon. Here's my review. If you don't have a bunch of squadrons and all that stuff, it reminds you quickly why you don't play 5000 point battles in 40k. This was our front line at the beginning of the game. It was 19 tanks big and there were about an equal number to that waiting to come in on the reserves. You can't even see me in there. I'm the orange guys. 1500 points of chaos stationed between 9000 points of Space Wolves. And it just kept getting weirder.

My gaming group gave up on four person battles because they were just too much. Here we had a 12 person battle. People would walk in and just plop miniatures on the board. It was insane. Ocassionally in a good way. Occassionally in a bad way. Overall, I think if no one has a titan or a formation of baneblades or something, it's probably more enjoyable to play 40k. The sheer volume of crap on the board was amazing, however, and if I weren't playing, I think it would have been, in and of itself, an amazing thing to see.

The picture below, for instance, is just crazy. That unit in front of my 2 obliterators was 4 chapter commanders and a terminator.

ICON

I have officially prepared myself for ICON, which I will be going to tomorrow in time to watch the Armaggedon tournament and then hit the dealer's room. On Sunday, I will be sponsoring the great big tournament which has about 20 or some odd tables. I already told the guy who's running the thing that I'm not really bringing hills. Hills take up space. Let the guys who actually live in that state bring the hills.

In any case, last year we rented a van which was WAY too much. This year, we've got a subcompact, which is WAY too little. One day we'll get this right. Next post I should have some pictures from the Con assuming I don't lose my camera like I did last year.

By the way, my Chaos list....lost to IG. Yes, it did.

How? Well, the mission wouldn't allow deep strike and the guy took a division of Daemon hunters for support, namely an Inquisitor in a Land Raider. So, I was running up against 2 Leman Russes, 1 Land Raider, 1 Basilisk, 1 Chimera, and 40 guys with Las-cannons all within 4+ rubble (because of the crack that the makers of Cities of Death were smoking). I pretty much destroyed everything down to an Inquisitor with a servitor, a Leman Russ without a big gun, and a squad of storm troopers, but VP was easilly in IG favor by about 250 before the mission gave him another 200 for having kept me from getting a hold of a hostage.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: mission rules can break the game.

Ace of base- part 1

Okay more on the basing problem. This time with pictures.

Stituation 1:

Here we have a Thousand Sons Termie (converted from a chaos squat in exo-armor) shooting at a genestealer. They are 6" apart and nothing is between them.

Would you let the termie fire on the stealer? Does the stealer get cover?





Does that count as area terrain? If so, across the whole base, or only in part, and if in part, what part?

By the way, that's my new Tyranid color scheme and my new Tau scenery stuff that I'm planning on taking to the con and then putting up on eBay.

Ace of Base pt. 2

Okay, how about this? Clearly, this scene could be area terrain or just as easilly it might not be. Does the stealer get a cover save? Hell, is that difficult ground?

Ace of Base pt. 3

Last one. Clearly the stealer aught to get, at the very least, a cover save. Should the termie have line of sight? Note: there is not 6" of terrain between the stealer and the termie. At table level, the termie can see the stealers top claw, but nothing else.

The "Base" of the problem

Okay, here's the problem in a nutshell. As a scenery designer, I realize that if you make scenery that doesn't have a base on it, it will, most likely, fall apart. One of the guys in my group is an unofficial scenery durability tester and he habitually breaks little things off of bigger things and drops big things on the ground. In the real world he fixes computers. It boggles the mind.

Okay so, scenery needs a base. That's fine. I've worked through this a bunch of ways. I used to cut bases out of pink styrofoam insulation, which is fine, but I've switched. Hardboard is a pain to cut but turns out to be pretty good for odd shapes. I've settled on "plates" that I can pull out of a box, so tiles from Home Depot and CDs which you can buy en masse off the internet for really cheap (anytime someone offers you a free CD take it and use it as a base for scenery).

In any case, this post isn't about making scenery, it's about playing with it. When you put something on a base, it immediately becomes a point of contention for the people playing the game. Is that area scenery? Do I have to be behind something to get my save? Do I get my save everywhere? Is the whole thing level 1, 2, or 3? My IG player came to me with a piece of scenery to put ground on. It was one foot by one foot, had four broken walls around the edge. He wants to play it as level 2 area terrain ruins... 4+ save. Four walls across a square foot!

So, I ask, is it really that f'ing hard to put a tape measure through the center of a base to the enemy and see if it crosses anything. I mean, has that become a physical impossibility? I'm just curious. Because it seems to me that not everything in the world has to be area terrain. It seems to me that we might call the terrain by what it looks like and just figure it out, on our own, with the help of a straight line...just sort of figure out whether or not a miniature's line of sight is partially obscured, and if it is, give a cover save.

What are you guys doing out there?