Guff!

Hey guys!

A bit of a weird one this week, as I honestly have very little idea what to talk about.  I pretty much summed up my feelings about 7th in the last post and I’m apprehensive about going in for more until I’ve played a few games first.  There’s a limit as to how far theory can get you after all.  The problem is that I’m in an ‘off’ state for 40k at the moment.  I was sensing a build towards burnout a couple of months ago (before I headed off to Adepticon, if I’m honest) and had to keep playing on.  I still like the game, but I know how burnout hits and I’ve decided to cut some slack for a few months instead of flaming out for a year.  I’ll be getting some 7th Ed games in soon though, as I’m slated for the invasion of Haven at the Overlords this month, so I’ll get my baptism of fire there at least.

I’m with the bad guys this time (which shouldn’t shock many of you) and this time round I’m bringing some Chaos rather than the bugs.  I decided to stick with the traditional enemies of the Imperium because later in the year there’ll be the big games, and that is non-Xenos only, so I didn’t feel right bringing the Nids to the warmup event.

I’ve also decided to go for a slightly different style of list.  My decent Daemon/CSM list was pure Khorne and most of my other lists have run a Khorne/Slaanesh mix, but now I think I’ll go for pure Slaanesh and see where that gets me.  The Slaanesh list will be an odd mix of stationery and hyper mobile given the fact that Noise Marines had to stay planted to be any good, but Slaaneshi Daemons can dash around the board like billy-o.  Choosing Slaanesh rather than Khorne will also give me a chance to give the Psychic Phase a test-drive and see what it brings to the game.  Should be fun!

So what have I been doing with my gaming time now that 40k is on the backburner?  It should be Malifaux, I guess, but I haven’t been in the mood.  I guess I’m just waiting for plastic Freikorps to fire me back up again.  I still haven’t played a game of 2nd Edition yet.  It’s a shame. 

I should also be pushing Netrunner.  I really don’t know why I haven’t.  Maybe I’m getting a bit bored of the standard starter decks, but making my own is a lot of work when I have to dismantle them every time I play anyone else down the club.  The problem is that it hasn’t properly taken off yet, and I need people to literally buy into it before I can start injecting a bit more variety into it.  It doesn’t help that out of all the people I know who play the game, I’m the only one who likes playing Corp.

So what does that leave me with?  Magic: The Gathering.  I know, I know, I’m disappointed too… Only joking of course, but I thought I was out of that game for good a few years back.  It is just easy to bring along, doesn’t require much space or anything other than a deck.  It’s just a really convenient enjoyable game, but I don’t want to go far enough down the road where it starts becoming expensive.  A lot of the club play with whatever they have in their collections, but nearly everyone has at least one standard deck as well.  I’m enjoying the game a lot, given the inherent frustrations of land flushes (or droughts).  I think partially it’s the fact that it is a very low-dedication game, certainly compared to the amount of work that is required for a game of 40k.  It also is far less of a downer when I lose!

Anyway, my apologies for the content-less guff this week.  When I have more of a handle on 7th (or maybe when I get my hands on the Orks) I’ll have more content-full guff for you…

We can dream right?

Rising from the Depths

Well, that’s at least one resolution broken.  Things got hectic, I had some games to play on another continent and everything broke loose at work.  Nevertheless, I’m back now for a nebulous amount of time before the next calamitous disastrocity hits.  Or a new game comes out.  Or I forget. Or my time machine works. Who can tell?  I can’t.  That’s why I need a time machine.  Oh, wait a sec…

That was my future self.  Apparently my time machine was a failure, so that puts the kibosh on that plan.  Anyway what has happened in the world of my favourite hobby?  Well, one of them anyway.  Yep, trailing ponderously late behind the news, this post is about 7th edition, or at least my thoughts about it.  There’s been a bit of a drip feed of information about this and I feel that GW has actually been handling this release about right.  The White Dwarf Weekly format has been a great help with this and it seems like they’ve really hit their stride with that publication.  Which is more than I can say for Visions.  I reckon they should call time on that one, personally.  I don’t hate it though.  Not really.  Some of my friends do, and I can understand why.  I really don’t think it’s worth the asking price.  I only get it because I’m on a standing order subscription-y thing and it’s less than half price and even then, I’m deeply dubious about its value.  It’s not worthless.  The photos are great and some of the displays, set pieces and Golden Daemon stuff is fantastic.  One of the recent editions had a Sanguinary guard trying to escape a veritable tide of Tyranids and it was truly exceptional.  It’s called The Last Light, and you all really owe it to yourselves to see it.

Anyway, with that tangent dispatched, on to 40k 7th edition.  My initial response to the rumours was to believe that this was a tweak edition, 6.5 ed, I suppose.  Just a tidying up of the existing rules, incorporating Stronghold Assault and Escalation.  Maybe a few alterations to some of the more contentious rules.  However, I was wrong and the dripfeed of new rules and teasers began.  My reactions to change are usually equitable to a few of the stages of mourning, if I’m feeling pretentious and dramatic about it.  I usually don’t go for the denial or anger stages.  Depression (or more accurately, pessimism) is a fairly hefty stopover for me though and this is where the added clarification of the rules really helped me through into the acceptance category.  I’m not sure if ‘Cautiously Optimistic’ is one of the stages of grief, but that’s roughly where I am at the moment.

I’m nowhere near as amped about this as I was with the advent of 6th.  That’s probably because 6th hasn’t been around long enough to wear out its welcome.  I was getting seriously sick of 5th when it finally received the bullet.  I’d had enough of endless mechanised armies and the infuriating survivability of vehicles.  That hasn’t happened in 6th.  Not yet.  Yeah sure there are a great many things I don’t like about 6th.  Especially with Escalation and the like, it was becoming too much of a scissor-paper-stone game.  If some brought a D-weapon and you couldn’t kill before it fired twice, then you would most likely lose.  If you took it down before it could fire, then the opponent would most likely lose.  That didn’t look like fun to me.  Still doesn’t.  Will 7th change that dynamic?  I don’t know.  There are tweaks to how D-weapons operate.  You’ll get invulnerable saves against them for example, which is nice.  Unfortunately, that does heavily imply that there will be more of this crap in even low-level games.  And there I go into pessimism again.  Is mood swing one of the stage of grief?

Regardless of my exponentially fracturing mental state, a lot of the new rules discussed are looking interesting.  The varying objectives mid-game will provided a very interesting dynamic.  Bound and Unbound, initially one of the horror stories about the new ruleset has been counterbalance by scoring advantages for Bound armies.  The Psychic phase is a new addition and it looks like it will be a nicely interactive event, even for the non-pysker armies.  As a Dark Eldar-turned-Necron/Khorne player, I was never a fan of the lack of decent psychic defence (I felt it a step down from 5th) and the new phase looks like it will add more of a push-pull feel and add more narrative depth for those so inclined.  It should also give us a way of denying blessings, which is where a lot of the filth settled in 6th.  I’m hearing heavy rumours of Ignores Cover meaning only a modifier to cover save rather than a full denial, which is a move a highly support.  No, it has nothing to do with me playing Nids and Venomthropes.  I haven’t heard a great deal about the allies system, and I know that my ideal situation of nixing Battle Brothers entirely my well be out of bounds, but (like most other things in 7th) I remain Cautiously Optimistic.

Guess we’ll find out on 2th, eh?

So long meatsacs!

Tournament-a-gogo!

Well, it’s that time of the year.  Tournament prep time!  Nothing too serious.  I left all pretentions to ‘serious’ competitive stuff behind me a while ago.  It was just stressing me out and making me too much of a downer.  Nevertheless, I still love the odd tourney.  The ones coming up are of the ‘not-entirely-competitive’ stock, or at least I’m not entering them with that mindset.  Coming up, I have a Throne of Skulls event in March, the Warzone-apolooza in Adepticon and the Team Tournamentathon the day after.  To make matters worse, I’m probably taking significantly different lists to all three!  And none of them are painted yet! Yay!

The Throne of Skulls is a tournament I haven’t been to for a while.  I can’t remember if I went to it at all last year, which is unusual.  I normally have a great time there and I try to go at least once a year.  This year has me a little trepidatious though, as Forge World and Superheavy, etc. stuff is now allowed.  I’ve tried my best to stay positive about this and ultimately, the proof is always going to be in the pudding.  I just personally feel that too much of the Forge World stuff and too many of the Superheavies are too unbalancing at this low a points value.  Most of the superheavies I don’t have a great deal of problem with though.  It’s mainly the presence of D weapons that irks me.  D, in this case, stands for ‘Delete’.  The complete lack of anything you as a player can do to mitigate or ride through the damage really doesn’t sit well.  In big games, that’s fine.  You have a bucketload of troops, vehicles, buildings, targets of all varieties.  Small games, much less so.  In small games you also have far less opportunity to deal with the superheavies in the return punch.  In a way, this makes sense and when written into a specific scenario can be cool and thematic.  But that requires preparation.  From a ‘fun game’ perspective, if someone puts a Transcendent Ctan with the Hellstorm D-weapon and plonks it behind a Bastion, I’m going to find it hard not to concede Turn 1 and have a good time elsewhere.  Much of the arguments in favour of these units is that ‘You don’t have enough points to have much in the rest of the army’ and that’s true, but you don’t need it.  Necrons and Eldar (the two main offenders in this little rant) both have ways of buying fairly cheap troop units and keeping them safe for the entire game (wave Serpents for the Eldar and Night Scythes for the Necrons), that the lack of backup is not that big of a problem.

I realise these games are far from unwinnable, provided you have the right set up.  If you’re playing marines you can drop pod sternguard and tactical squads with meltas for a heavy turn 1 or 2 meltafest that will end the overwhelming majority of tanks and titans and deal significant damage to a lot of the Gargantuans. Tau have a lot of high strength long range stuff to deal the punch.  Dark Eldar have a lot of options with lances, poison and haywire.  Monstrous Creatures have a far better chance of survival versus D-weapons, so lists with a lot of them would have a good shot at surviving enough to deal their damage.  However, most of these shift very much into a ‘who goes first wins’ format.  If the D-weapon goes first, they will eliminate the significant threats to limit the received damage.  If the takedown units go first (particularly in the case of the drop-podding melta marines), then the Superheavy goes down Turn 1.  Either way, that game either goes to a straight rolloff or a scissor/paper/stone style of play that goes counter to what I enjoy about the game.

Also, while I’m in a whingeing mood, another thing that really annoys me about D-Weapons is the auto-‘splode for vehicles.  A shot that automatically destroys a Land Raider if it so much as gets clipped, may well only deal two hull points of damage to a superheavy given the majority result of D3+1 Hull points removed.  This wind me up, as on a raw damage perspective, the Land Raider (or Defiler, or Monolith, etc) could shrug off two out of the three results.  I would be far more optimistic about all this if it just dealt a number of auto-penetrating hits instead of “Nope, Dead”.  Oh, and the Revenant can suck my balls.  4 D-weapon blasts a turn is bullshit, whichever way you slice it. Ugh.

Anyway, my sincere apologies for the negativity of this post.  I will be happier in the next one now that I’ve got this out of my system!  Like I said earlier, I have had a great time far, far, more often than not at Throne of Skulls and I’m fairly optimistic that my opponents will be decent guys or girls who will be playing for fun rather than an uninteresting victory and, without the D-weapons, most of the Superheavies and Gargantuan Creatures strike me as a different and interesting challenges to come up against.  Just ditch the D-weapons okay?

End of line.

New Year's Dissolutions

Well, Bah Weep Graaaagnah Wheep Ni Ni Bong everybody and Happy 2014!  As I am sure many people and news sources have reported, it is now a whole new year in the Western calendar.  The Earth has completed one full orbit from its initial arbitrary starting point. Yay.

As is traditional, now is the time for resolutions to be made before be swiftly rationalised into ever more watered-down and unimpressive versions of themselves prior to being disregarded and forgotten about entirely for the rest of the year.  Yeah, bleak, innit?

Nevertheless, I plan to thwart this sequence of events by aiming deliberately low to start off with.  Ha-hah!  I’ve got the standard personal resolutions (become less spherical, learn Gaelic, win a fight with bear, etc.) but the hobby ones are, I think, most applicable for this venue.

1) Update the blog once a week.  I know, I’ve been playing this tune badly for quite a while (again, with decreasing standards of what’s acceptable), but I couldn’t resist give on more encore that no-one asked for.  Hopefully I can make Mondays regular post days.

2) Have at least one painting session a week.  Regardless of how much I get done during that session, if I can get into the habit of sitting down with a paintbrush and some models, eventually something will get finished.  I don’t actually enjoy painting.  I’m slightly jealous of those who do, as it is a major part of the hobby and playing with and against painted models just feels better than the bare plastic or undercoat versions.  My entire painting philosophy and method throughout most of my hobby life has been conveyor-belt style painting to get armies ready for events.  I think I still need that as a motivating factor, so I should have a bunch of club and third-party events over the coming year to keep some level of deadline pressure going.

3) Attend the Overlords at least once a month.  Apart from the occasional special event, I was barely in the HQ at all over the past year.  I live annoyingly far away from it for public transport not to be a massive ballache.  However, another driving test beckons in February, so maybe (if I don’t cock it all up again) this process will be made significantly easier.  I feel like I should make more of an effort to support the club over just turning up at the Podcast Bunker every few weeks to talk bollocks for three hours.  Plus, I now also have:

4) The Escalation League! Really up for giving this a go as it gives me a good consistently moving deadline for fairly small points-value painting every month.  For those not part of the Overlords Facebook Group, the escalation league is a club event whereby everyone starts with 500pts at the beginning of the year, and end with 2.5k at the end.  The points value goes up each month and you’re expected to play at least two games at that month’s points.  The nice bit about it is, that you can’t get rid of units you’ve previously added to the list, and your downgrading opportunities are limited to 10% of the current points value.  This means that you have to think about what units you include in each army expansion, because once they’re there, you’re stuck with them.  This works nicely for me because, I can choose some slightly unusual choice and try to find a niche for them over the year because, well, I’ve got to.  I’m throwing down with Chaos Marines over here and, for once, I won’t be allying in anything from the Daemons Codex.  Admittedly those armies complement each other very well, but I have other plans; ones that allow me to use models I barely ever have a role for, but would be perfect for the League.

5) Write more fiction.  I’m fairly certain I will never be an author, but I still come up with stories for various things that crop up in my head.  I mainly just lack the focus to put many (or any) of them down on paper.  I’m going to try to change that this year, and I’m aiming for a monthly short fiction post on this blog, just to keep in practice and mess around with a few ideas.  As ever, thoughts and feedback on whatever I write will be appreciated.

And that’s that as far as these resolutions go.  There are many more posts on the horizon, more fiction to read (and write), more podcasts to befoul, more games to play and a club to mismanage.  I’m swamped…

So long!

AutoBrit & Adepticon: Intro

In capsule, I thought Adepticon was brilliant.  Just so you know.  You need not lay awake wondering any more.  It was fantastic and (provided I can afford it) I definitely want to go again next year.   I wish it was held on a different weekend to Salute, but given the choice between the two, the Americans win, much as my natural jingoistic pride and xenophobia is loath to admit it…

This is no slight on Salute, obviously, but the scope of Adepticon is just so much bigger, encompassing new systems, trade shows, and more tournaments and events you can shake a squig at; whereas Salute is pretty focussed on the trade and club recruitment elements.  I arrived a touch early to the venue, and I’m glad I did.  Having that extra day or two to acclimatise to the place a get to know some of the other people there was immensely helpful and allowed me to prepare for the forthcoming hectic nature of the con itself.

And hectic it was.  A good few thousand people milling around the place, games aplenty and the highest beard:person ratio I’ve ever seen since the Great Lumberjacking Hobo Invasion of 1989.  There’s a lot to cover, obviously, so I’ll split the review/reliving up into a few sections: The 40K Friendly, The Malifaux Midnighter, Listener Games/Interesting People & Impulse Buys.

This post is just the capsule review of the event, which was overwhelmingly positive.  Thanks to Teras (of course) for arranging the whole thing, as I went as a fully paid-up Geek Nation Tours customer.  I definitely recommend the GNT packages for these things, provided you can afford them.  They are certainly worth the money!

But anyway, I have to go now and draw up a logo for my Chaos Blood Bowl team.  God, I’m such a nerd…

Adepticon Build-Up: The Battle Plan

Right-oh, this is the post for those who are attending Adepticon and wish to find me, but it’s also an aide memoire for me as to where I’m meant to be going and when, and it’s easier to reference than cross-checking my emails.

Or just writing it down on a piece of paper.  Ah, to hell with that!  This is the FUTURE!

I’m heading to the event under the auspices of Geek Nation Tours and the very affable and considerate Teras, and I’ll be landing in the state on Tuesday afternoon.  I’ve got nothing planned in particular until the main event other than just acclimatising to the similar but different surroundings and the general, well, bigness that America seems to bring in almost everything it does.

When it comes to the Adepticon itself, I’ll taking place in the 40K Friendly on Friday and bringing the list that everyone who reads my blog now knows how to beat (there’s no excuse now!).  I’ve been veering away from the competitive scene of late, as the pressure and the general samey-ness of the lists is something I find quite disheartening.  That’s not to denigrate anyway who does go in heavy in that area, but I just do enjoy that style of play any more.  I fair prefer semi-comp nowadays and to design and play against more characterful lists.  That’s an 8 hour play time, starting at 12.

Saturday is a busy one.  I’m starting off with the Dirty Tricks seminar, to give me a bit of a boost in painting, as I am not a painter by nature and dislike the process in general.  The seminar should either help me speed things up even more, or make my usual stuff look a bit better.  That one’s from 10.30-11.30.

After that there’s an Inquisitor game at noon.  I am so looking forward to this!  Inquisitor is possibly my favourite spin-off game from GW and it has been far too long since I had a go.  I’ve just got to get my arse into gear and paint my models for it, although it appears that could be unnecessary, as the description does say that they have spares.  Nevertheless, there is some degree of pride in me!

I then lie in wait until 7 for the final event of the day (and night); the Malifaux evening.  This will be my first ever Malifaux event, so I have no idea what to expect, but I’ll be flying the flag high for the Outcasts until it ends and 2 in the morning.  A very unusual timeslot, that, so I wonder how I’ll be playing that early in the following morning!  Could either be fun or torture…

Thankfully, Sunday has no plans for me and I’ll just be free-roaming the halls and looking at stuff, or just recovering from the previous two day’s worth of gaming.  If any of you are coming, feel free to track me down or send me an email at ciaran@theoverlords.co.uk and we can arrange time for a drink or two.

So long all!

Computer Games I Like: Probotector

Way back in the mists of time, before every games console had context-less numbers and letters after their names, I owned a Sega Megadrive (or Genesis in the US).  As a family we were quite late into consoles, I suppose.  I mean, we had an old Sinclair Spectrum that we could boot up on the black and white TV.  Tape-fed, man.  There’s no sound quite like the skkkkkrrrreeeeeeecccchh of a data tape firing up whilst nonsense fluctuating lines pulsate on the screen.  Seriously; that’s what scrapcode sounds like.  Horrible, but a price we all paid to play Dizzy or Horace Goes Skiing or Rainbow Island.  Anyway, eventually (upon entering secondary school, I think) I got a Megadrive for my birthday and that was one of the most awesome presents ever.  Sonic 2 was the game that came in with the console and it still holds a very special place in my heart.  We even got a colour television for the Megadrive that Christmas and it was one of the most fantastic Christmas mornings I have ever had.

Anyway, all this is preamble to say that I have a large amount of fond memories wrapped up in that device, but above them there were a few games that I really connected with and have stayed with me.  So let’s get started with Probotector.  Yes, yes.  It is a very silly name.  But the game is awesome!

See: things explode!

Probotector was really just a reskinning and renaming of one of the games in the Contra franchise for the European market.  I think it was Contra 3: Hard Corps.  Basically, the Contra stuff had more of a human angle and human sprites participating in this mass carnage and slaughter and some of the countries in Europe had tighter censorship laws for that kind of thing.  So the entire game was reskinned to have robots in a couple of the key roles rather than humans.  Apparently that helped.

The game itself was a side scrolling shooter and was very pretty for the time, boasted an absolutely awesome soundtrack for 16 bit and was brutally difficult.  One hit would kill you, lives weren’t all that easy to come by and you see that explosion on the screenshot above?  Nearly all the enemies exploded like that, often obscuring other enemies in the blast and occasionally getting the odd cheap shot in because of it.  And with so few lives and no capacity for taking punches, this could get infuriating at times.  Nevertheless, there was something about the game that kept me and brother just coming back for more punishment.

Maybe it was the challenge, maybe just something about the sheer ridiculousness of it of all, but I think it was the variety.  There were different routes through each of the game’s missions and that really helped the longevity of the game as you could always try out that ‘other’ option and encounter an entirely different level and bosses.  The sheer inventiveness of some to the levels was a joy to behold.  Want to fight a cyclopean skyscraper-tall robot who throws cars at you?  Done. Want to fight a jetpacking robot assassin whilst hanging to the underside of a Police Jet?  No problem.  Want to fight a Cthuloid horror on the top of planet-busting warhead rocketing into the stratosphere? Go ahead.  Personally, I prefer dealing death to a bobble-headed robot Elvis who tries to kill me with projectile kippers.  Oh, they have that too?

There were not only different paths through the levels, there were different game endings too.  I never completed the game to one of the full ‘proper’ endings until I went ROM and had access to savestates, but when I was a kid I didn’t manage to uncover one of the hidden endings instead.  In one of the levels, one of the climbable wall lead off screen and up to an arena, wherein you fought a gauntlet of very weird and difficult bosses, until the last one you beat opens up a rift in space and time and you get sucked into it.  You are taken back to the dawn of humanity and become the Robot Kings of the Cavemen!  Yeah, this game was strange.

Help me, gun!

There were also four characters to choose from, each with their own armoury of special weapons, which certainly helped the longevity.  You had a Blue Guy (who was on the punchier side of average), a Red Guy (who worked more on homing weapons), a Little Guy (who had a jetpack for short-term hovering and a smaller hitbox) and the fourth guy, Lord Doomblast von Wolfington.  At least, that’s what I cal him.  He was definitely the trickiest character to use, as he stood taller than the Red & Blue and about double the height of the Little Guy (CX-04 was his name, I think) and dealt pure damage.  Definitely the hardest hitter of the four, but with a complete lack of homing weapons and two gun which could even reach the other side of the screen.  I can’t remember which my brother favoured, but I’m certain it wasn’t as good as mine.

Anyway, that’s my brief run through of one of my favourite Megadrive games, and one I will be returning to every now and again, purely for shits and giggles.  Relentless silly, still really pretty to look at and the soundtrack was one of the best noises ever to come out of the system!

Continue kicking arse, you mismatched weirdos!

Well, er... Whoops

It seems a shame that the longest delay in the Dark Eldar in 6th series has had to come right at the very end, on the last post.  I had most of the post written out and just needed to finish it off, but with one thing or another, that didn't happen.  And now Death From the Skies is due out.  Arse.  I'm afraid there will be a bit more of a delay while I get that books and see what changes have been made to the DE flyer section.  Soon the coup de grace will be delivered on this accursed series!

Honest...

Apologies and Procrastinations

Hi guys.  No new Dark Eldar post for today, unfortunately. It was club night yesterday and so I haven't has the time to do prep work for the Fast Attack posts.  You should be seeing a mournful op-ed piece on the poor, poor Hellions either tomorrow or Friday and then usual service should resume next week, finishing off the Fast Attacks and then moving on to Heavy Support.  In the meantime if you have any idea for future posts, let me know or if you have anything to add to my opinion pieces, feel free to challenge my didactic authority in the comments thread!

So long.

Christerval and Wintermas

Well, it’s been a while since I last wrote on this thing, due to a confluence of events.  Stuff gets busier towards Christmas, naturally, and I also had coursework and studying taking up most of my lunchtimes.  Or at the very least, I had worrying about coursework and studying taking up most of my lunchtimes.  I didn’t think after leaving University that I’d be stuck with coursework again, and I’d underestimated just how insidiously it would annoy me and make me slightly less happy.  Every time I’d do something I’d normally enjoy, the spectre of coursework would be there, squatting at the back of my mind, idly scratching itself, just reminding me that it was still undone.

But that ended on Monday, just in time for me to be ill. Yay, I guess.  Regardless, here I am now, work has slowed down to a thoroughly lethargic pace and I can at last alleviate my boredom with waffle.  In the spirit of the season, I proffer you all belated and ill-considered Merry Christmas and Happy New Year platitudes, without the receipt for either, so you can’t exchange them.  For me, this has been the Christmas of IT problems.  My Mum received an iPad 3 to replace here old model and I spent most of Christmas and the Boxing Day transferring her seemingly insurmountable pile of crap from one device to the other whilst reconfiguring a used laptop that she had been given as well.  It was an experience so aggravating that I may well elect to get a non-iPhone come upgrade time, purely to put more distance between myself and fucking iTunes.

Anyway, with luck I can get the blog back on track and, thanks to one of my three commenters, I have a subject to occupy myself with here over the next several days.  But before that, there is the standard Christmas update to be had, and I have a ton of GW stuff to assemble.  So much so that I haven’t actually done any of the painting I had scheduled for the holiday.  I’ve just been too busy during my non-unpaid technical support time to get round to it and I much prefer gluing models together than getting them actually looking decent.  It’s just not an aspect of the hobby I really enjoy.  If I have the time and patience to figure out airbrushing then that might make the prospect somewhat less daunting.  At least a vague colour scheme has now been worked out for the Missionaries of the Whispered Word.  Grey base colour, black trim and red/purple spot colour with generic metal colours in the usual places and probably washed to crap to disguise my ineptitude.

The Warpsmith will be painted Iron Hands colours though, so: black.  The Chapter symbol will be red and bloody instead of white/metal, but that’s going to be the only Chaosy colour deviation for him.  He’s still an Iron Hand after all, just one who has lost his mind over protracted periods of bloodshed and sanity strip-mining in the Eye of Terror.  He’s just had the superstition surrounding warp entities removed from his mind and now treats them like any other resource to be modified and engineered.  The Imperium probably isn’t ready for that though.  Philistines.

The big announcement for the New Year will be my resolution, which is going to be quite a challenge by all accounts.  I’ll be giving up buying GW models for the year.  I’ll not be giving up the hobby as whole; far from it.  I’m going to Adepticon after all and I’ll still buy the paints and various books, but I’m staying away from purchasing more of the models.  I spend a lot on them (cue the regular jokery), and I don’t think I use a lot of them enough to warrant the expenditure.  At least for a while.  I am the type of person who will drop a far old whack of money on a couple of big kits for an army idea and then never use them again.  This resolution will help me better appreciate the models and armies I have now and at the very least, I’ll have saved some money in the process.  All that said, I have seen some of the new models for the Dark Angels and they look pretty sweet.  Damn…

In which I try to say something, but fail...

I’ve been playing a few games with my Chaos now and I’m starting to get a bit more of a feel as to how they play.  The results have been interesting and not entirely what I expected.  One of the things that surprised me was just how assault oriented my army has become.  That wasn’t really part of the plan.  They were meant to be fairly evenly divided between shooting and close combat, with the Heldrake, Forgefiend, Noise Marines and throngs of gun-toting cultists laying down a torrent of fire, with my CSM going for a jack-of-all-trades feel with bolters and additional assault weapons.  But repeated plays have whittled this down a little.  The Marines have dropped their bolters, the cultists do nothing bar desperate point-defence point-capture.  I’m seriously considering switching my Forgefiend for another Maulerfiend.

I played a 3,000 point game versus Deathwing/Codex Bike Marines a while back and was surprised to find out that about two thirds of the list didn’t have a range longer than 12” and half of them didn’t have a ranged weapon at all.  As I flooded the field with Possessed, Maulerfiends, Warp Talons and Spawn, I couldn’t help but think that maybe this was a subconscious backlash against playing the Necrons for so long.

This development appears to go against a lot of what the new edition seems to trumpet with the increased effectiveness of shooting vs assault and the advent of Flyers.  However, the Chaos codex does seem to be very much weighted in this direction from certain viewpoints.  The obsession with Challenges and the preponderance of short range shooting (Chaos weapon ranges do tend towards the shorter side of the spectrum when compared to their Imperial counterparts) do give that impression after all.

That’s not to say they can’t put lead downfield, as Havocs and Forgefiends can testify.  But even then, that’s only 48” at best and all in the heavy support slot.  You can have the occasional ranged specialist in the other slots, like Noise Marines, Chosen and Terminators, and you can get a smattering of heavy weapons for your troops, but it hardly dispels the image of Chaos being very much in the “Hack! Slash! Sever! Rend!” camp.  And I’ve decided to embrace that aspect of them a bit more in my lists.  Hence the third Maulerfiend.

And that’s the crux of the post really.  In every game I’ve played, the Forgefiend is a priority target for my opponent, which is understandable. 8 S8 shots a turn can be very scary.  The problem I’m encountering is a similar one that plagues the Venom.  The number of shots doesn’t necessarily add up to a lot of damage.  A mass of S8 Autocannon shots is all big and scary on a Dreadnought, because said Dreadnought is packing BS4 and twin-linked guns.  Per Dread, they will average the same number of hits as the fiend plus they’re cheaper and you can bring more along.  Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not complaining about the Forgefiend, I’m just trying to say that the perceived threat of the thing is definitely greater than what it can actually dish out. 

The Maulerfiends seem to be more on the other side of the spectrum.  At least, that is, until people see them move.  Stat wise, I suppose they’re not particularly impressive, as they come across as a standard dreadnought, albeit one with no ranged weaponry at all.  The look bigger, obviously, because they are, but they still only have 3 Hull Points and so can be fairly easy to write off on paper unlike the 4HP Defiler.  Then they move, and that’s when you can identify the people who haven’t looked at the Codex much by the expression of confusion and apprehension they exhibit when you explain that, yes they move 12” and no, they don’t care about difficult terrain and, yes they’re fleet as well.

Oh, and they have an Invulnerable Save.

Anyway, that’s my brief paean to close combat with my Chaos at the moment.  Not the most coherent of monologues, but things have been a bit weird at work, and as that’s where I write all this, any workplace strangeness is going to have a knock-on effect.

My next post ought to be less disjointed as I may actually have a point!

So long.

Living for the Weekend(er)

Well, over the weekend I’ll be in Nottingham for the Black Library Weekender and I’m quite looking forward to it.  The main focus of my time will of course be on the various seminars and signings, but I thought that I may as well mention a few things I’m amped about going into this thing.

The first is the pre-release stuff.  It’s an outside chance, but I’m really hoping that Path of the Incubus will be up for sale.  Four months ahead of release isn’t that long is it?  Definitely looking forward to that.  It’s probably not pre-release, but I’m itching to get my hands on Pariah.  The Inquisitor series by Dan Abnett are still in my mind as the best series (or series of series) in 40K literature and I dearly want to read more about it, even if we know what happens to Zael now…

I’m also enthused about hearing more from Chris Wraight, who has done a really good job with my favourite chapter, the Iron Hands.  He has so precisely nailed my vision of the Iron Hands in Flesh and Wrath of Iron, and although the latter of those titles is a real downer (and Flesh is only a little bit less of one), I feel that they are some of the most ‘pure’ 40K I’ve read.  This universe is cruel, nasty and it hates you.  You are insignificant and your death will mean nothing.  Even the good guys are bastards.  It’s something that most other 40k books shy away from, but something that is key to the universe and that Wrath of Iron bravely embraces.  Anyway, enough of that sales pitch.

I’m hoping to finish the book I’m currently reading (Path of the Outcast, for those that are interested) in time to make a decent start on any of the swag I hope to accrue on this trip.  I’m also hoping to finish it so that I don’t embarrass myself if I try to talk to Gav about it.  His Path of the Eldar trilogy is a really interesting read for anyone who wants to understand the Eldar mindset and explore the Path system.  If you just want a fighty book with cool aliens and shit, however, I wouldn’t recommend it.  I read a review of Path of the Seer claiming that the end battle was good, but it wasn’t worth wading through the gumf and padding in the first half of the book.  It was a bit of the a headshaking moment for me, as the ‘gumf and padding’ is the point of the book.  It’s not an ‘Eldar Battles’ book, it’s an exercise in world-building and the exploration of an alien race.  Anyway, I digress.

It would also be fun to catch up with Sarah Cawkwell and see what she thinks of the new Valkia model (and what took GW so bloody long?).

The thing I’m most looking forward to is just the whole experience of it; hanging out with a bunch of nerds and a few friends and hopefully reinitialising contact with old podcast guests and having a chat with them over some booze.  If any listeners are headed to the weekender and want to say hi, then let me know.  Twitter, email, hollering, the usual methods.

So long!

The Whispered Word and the Malicant Locus

Well, I skipped out yesterday, but 4 out of 5 isn’t bad is it?

First, some brief housekeeping:  I got the Daemonforge rule wrong last post.  You can only do it once per game and have to declare at the beginning of the shooting or assault phase in order to pull it off, so, although the downside is still very minor, think a lot before blowing stuff up with it!

Next, I was going to do a unit-by-unit first impressions thing for the Codex, but my fellow Underling Ollie at Predictably Unconventional is doing that and in more detail that I would have done, so I urge you to give his series a read.  He’s up to Cult Troops and he’s more or less on the money as far as the analysis goes.  Good stuff.  I’ll just concentrate on what ever grabs my attention at the time, which in this case, is the prospective army I’m planning to build.  So sit down and pay attention, because its story time.

My planned CSM army is currently at about 2,000 points, but (as is the way with many of these things for me) could easily run to so, so much more.  This interesting thing for me is that the army is basically made of two different factions, each a force in its own right and both with their own backstories.  This makes it a fun deal for me and a nice exercise in army fluff, which I haven’t talked about much for ages, what with the competition-style Necrons I’ve been running.  My CSM aren’t going to be a hardcore tournament list, I don’t think (not that they’ll be any slouch in that department), but should be a fun force to play against.  I think of them as a more ‘Throne of Skulls’ level list.  Good for pickup games without me feeling like a prick.

Anyway, the first force is a bit of a holdover from back when I played Warriors of Chaos in Fantasy, and had an army called The Whispered Word, who were Tzeentch aligned but would visit Empire border-towns and incite rebellion, bring a fair bit of Khorne along with them because of this.  So I’ve updated the Whispered Word and brought them forward to the 41st millennium.  However, their god has now changed from Tzeentch to Slaanesh for, I will admit, game play reasons.  For your bog-standard troops in 40k, Tzeentch just isn’t an effective power.  For anyone with an Invulnerable save, Tzeentch is still awesome and its Icon is a lot of fun, but the Initiative bump from Slaanesh and the FnP from the Icon is just too good to pass up.  However, story wise, is still very easy to see Slaanesh as a Machiavellian corrupting presence in Imperial space, so it’s a change I’m fairly happy with.  This side of the army is the Power Armour side. Almost exclusively foot troops (with one Flyer for support) and almost exclusively Slaanesh aligned.  I’ve even got a couple of Warp Talons in there for shits and giggle, even if the lack of grenades and the high price tag could make them difficult to squeeze value out of.

The other side came to me when I was looking through the Codex.  I always knew I was going to get a Warpsmith.  It was a given.  My favourite HQ choice in the original Space Marines codex was the mast of the forge and the model looks awesome, and this is his Chaos counterpart.  It had to be done.  In fact, this guy beats the regular master of the forge for a simple reason.  He has access to an Invulnerable save.  It still boggles my mind that the master of all the technology in a Chapter cannot even get his hands on a bloody Refractor field.  Imperial Guard Officers get them for Emperor’s sake!

Anyway, another thing I liked when looking through book were the Daemon Engines.  I think they’re a good step forward to making Chaos more unique on the table and I really like the models too.  The image of the hideously beweaponed Warpsmith walking alongside these gun-wielding metal clad monsters the same way master would his hounds was a good image, and so the Malicant Locus was born.

Then there was the matter of the cultists.  I’ve made no pretence about my feeling about these guys.  I think they are an excellent addition to the ‘dex and long, long overdue.  There was never going to be a serious chance of my lists not having a sizable quantity of them.  Both of the forces can easily take them due to back story, but in the end I decided that since I want to run a massive mob of Khorne assault cultists, and as the models mainly look like crudely bionic-ed manufactorum workers, I decided that they should be part of the Malicant Locus. 

My Warpsmith (let’s call him Threx) would target Forge worlds and manufactora planets and infect the more vulnerable systems and altered personnel with scrapcode, causing widespread unrest and violent sedition.  My Chaos Lord (Hieronymus Reach) and his cohorts would make contact under the guise of the loyalist chapter ‘The Emperor’s Call’ and assist in quelling the uprisings whilst undermining planetary defence and communications.  Eventually the chaos caused by Threx would come to a head and the daemon Engines would be unleashed against the combine forces of the loyalist PDF, Imperial Guard and skitarii, supported by the space marines of the Emperor’s Call.  Who would then turn on the loyalists with whomever they had coaxed over to their side.

That’s the plan anyway.  But you know what they about plans and contact with the enemy.

That said, I think there could well be a Black Crusade RPG campaign in this army’s back-story.  Time will tell…

Games Day 2012

I know this is going to get a few eye rolls from the more jaded amongst you, but I’m really looking forward to Games Day on Sunday.  This is only the second I’d have gone to, so I suppose it could be a case of the shine not quite being off the apple yet, but I’m genuinely interest to see what’ll be going on.

Because I hear interesting things.  Talk of the new Chaos Codex.  The Horus Heresy expansion.  The Fantasy Flight booth (hopefully).  Last year I went to mainly assist Inquisitor Steve and Dagmire with podcasting reportage and we got a lot of stuff out of it in terms of sound bites and interviews.  However, that stuff took nearly the whole day.  We worked in shifts, because we needed to guys to stake out the writer’s seminars for the end of the talks. One to ask the questions, one to hold the camera.  This did well for the podcast, but was a really tiring day in all and I having to squeeze all the looking around and stuff into the occasional half hour/forty-five minute window wasn’t really conducive to my general ‘confused dithering’ style.

So I thought I’d go back without any regimented podcast responsibilities and see the place at my own pace.  I may keep you updated on that score, although my punctuality track record for this blog is fractious to say the least.

I have heard rumblings that there will be a preview of the Chaos Codex and the event and I dearly hope that’s true, as the Dark Vengeance box introduced of a couple of units that don’t appear in the old ‘dex.  Yes, I am counting the Hellbrute as new.  It lacks a built-in ranged weapon on the close combat arm and doesn’t go crazy at the drop of a hat, so it may well be new.  It makes sense to have a new Chaos Codex very close to the main box release and Games Day is an excellent time for some hands-on.  I want to have a decent gander at the new book to see what I can do with my cultists, as they are the reason I’ve got into Chaos recently and something that has sorely been missing from the game for a long, long time.

Another hope I have with Chaos is that they redo Raptors to be more in line with Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s interpretation of them and it would really help to distinguish them from the Loyalists rather than just making regular assault marines look spikier.

The Horus Heresy Forge World book is interesting and it’d be nice to have a look at, but I don’t anticipate purchasing it.  I’ve always baulked at buying the exceptionally expensive Forge World books and I have no great desire to play 30K, although there are a few people down at the club who would be undoubtedly up for it.  I’m sure I’ll be able to borrow the book from them somewhere down the line if it does take my fancy.

One big thing I’m looking forward to (or hoping blindly for) is potential new releases from Fantasy Flight.  Last Games Day was the release of the Blood Bowl Team Manager card game (more or less) and it was definitely a great purchase.  I still play it regularly now.  Great game.  And it’s getting an expansion!  Dark Elves and two Undead teams are being added to the roster and I am hoping that the expansion is going to be on sale at the Day.  Keep me occupied for quite some time, I can tell you.

Also, on the outside chance (but no less anticipated), is the new standalone 40k board game FFG are releasing called ‘Relic’, based on the Talisman system.  I am deeply intrigued by this and having a fun little 40k themed board game that doesn’t make your brain melt (lookin’ at you, Siege of Terra!) would be a great thing and a handy evangelising tool for board gaming people who don’t know much about the Grimdark.

Anyway, Sunday can’t come round soon enough, and I’m looking forward to seeing what GW and affiliates are going to put on this year.

Fingers’ crossed!

Message ends.

Friday Fiction

Hey guys!

If you’ll scan your eyes briefly to the right of this very sentence, then they will encounter the Underlings blog list.  Yes, these guy are all other Overlords forumites of various degrees of personhood who have taken it upon themselves to spew their own brand of gibberish onto the increasing corrupted noospheric tubes of teh Interwebz.  Enjoy or not at your peril.

Speaking of your own peril, below is an excerpt from my short story that I’m writing for the Black Library submissions window (closing in but a few short days!).  I’ll be culling the best 1,000 words from it to send in, but until then, why not enjoy these raw, unculled 1,000 words straight from the story itself.

In other words; this is a fanfic.  It is mine.  I hope you enjoy it.  I plan on posting it up in a number of sections every Friday.  Hopefully it’ll keep me writing, as I am very much the type of person who needs a deadline to do anything!

Any comments or criticism, please let rip.  I’m all ears.

Not literally.

Here we go!

Xandrei

Space isn’t cold.

Temperature is a property of matter.  Space, by definition, is its absence.

Cast adrift in the harsh void, Xandrei burned.  He burned with rage, consumed by hate and indignation.

The attack had occurred an indeterminate amount of time ago.  Xandrei hadn’t been able to get an accurate reading.  His chronometric systems had been knocked out by the explosion.  He had been maglocked to the hull of the Eisensperre overseeing void shield repair when the splinter fleet rent its way into the materium with a fractal burst of non-colour and a pulse of screams.  The ships were jagged, twisted things.  Foul grotesqueries that offended the eye with their mocking imitation of Imperial design.  Tendrils of warp-stuff trailed after them, slowly dissipating into the vacuum of space.  The raiders opened fire immediately, their tainted weapons sparking against the reserve shielding before overloading them in a blinding flash.

Forge-brother Xandrei Kimmel canted furious orders to his servitor work team to bring the main shields back up, but was interrupted. A red-black beam tore a mighty gash in the hull mere metres from Xandrei’s position and the resultant explosion of a hull-imbedded fuel line widened the gap quicker than he could react.  The sudden conflagration overwhelmed the maglock system in his armour and he was thrown voidward, shards of the Eisensperre’s black hull cascading after him.  In a desperate attempt to slow his flight he triggered his harness’s void-guidance thrusters and vented precious internal atmosphere and pneumatic gasses from his suit to add to the arresting force and turn him round.

The free-flying fragments of the Eisensperre’s hull bombarded him, the sound of the impacts reverberating inside his armour at a deafening volume.  He curled into a ball to reduce the debris collision, but too late.  A sheet of ceramite hull plate several metres across smashed into him head on.  He felt his chest crack and splinter, he felt his servos dislocate and he felt the air tear its way out of his lungs.  Pain lanced into his brain from every area of his stricken form. Unconsciousness claimed him.

He woke to a world of rage and pain. The sudden attack, the clear evidence of warp-taint in the ambushers, his failing to anticipate the assault, his inability to provide more than a token resistance.  All these fed into a maelstrom of anger and loathing, directed both at the enemy and at himself.  Such feelings were natural, inevitable and understandable; even for a Space Marine.  But Xandrei Kimmel was an Iron Hand, and such base, instinctive, emotional responses to stimuli were not to be tolerated.  Not in this state.

Within a moment, through a combination of hormonal regulators, Astartes conditioning and sheer force of will, the swirling morass of emotion was contained, harnessed and focussed; changed from a blazing fire to fine blue flame of purpose.  He took stock of the situation.  He could feel the abrasive grind of shards of his fused ribcage rubbing against each other as he breathed.  His right arm refused to rotate properly, sending a jagged spike of pain through his brain whenever he attempted it. Internal diagnostics reported fourteen minor breaches in inner atmosphere containment.  He could feel warm liquid pooling in the left boot of his power armour, although whether it was blood or lubricant, he could not say.  He did not register any internal haemorrhaging, but the damage to his form was significant.

The collision with the hull fragment had spun him, but thankfully had not propelled him much further from his starting point and his velocity had mostly arrested, the automated gyroscopic systems of his suit having managed to stabilise him even during unconsciousness.  He turned his gaze to the Eisensperre.  It was adrift.  The thermal imaging systems in his right eye registered patches of radiated thermal activity, indicative of multiple on-board fires.  The vessels of the Archenemy were clustered round the majestic barge like scavengers, boarding tubes penetrating to the various rents and gashes in the Eisensperre’s hull.  Individually they seemed tiny and insignificant, but Xandrei knew that that many simultaneous boarding contacts were often a death knell for any voidfaring ship, the defenders having to respond to too many invaders to maintain control.

The command ship of the enemy splinter fleet loomed large over the stricken Eisensperre, closing in as if for a killing strike, but without charging its weapons.  This was not a mission of annihilation for them, he surmised, but for resources.  They were planning to use the ship, his ship, in whole or in part to serve their unholy ends.  Whether they planned to strip out all the useful systems and supplies or retask the vessel wholesale, Xandrei did not know.  Nor did he care.  It would not happen.  He would not allow it.  He triggered his suit’s void thrusters and set his course.  The Eisensperre could not be taken.

====================================><=======================================

He didn’t know how it had started, really.  What had driven him to this point?  Fear?  Possibly.  Conversion instead of death was a common choice.  Anger?  The lies of his old life, futile untruths used to justify the cold unwarranted cruelty of an innately unjust system, were surely a cause for retribution.  Curiosity?  After the truth of the False Emperor was revealed to him, what other revelations lay ahead for him to explore? The temptation of forbidden knowledge was undeniably powerful.  No.  It wasn’t any of those.  Not primarily.

It was gratitude.  The lies had been stripped clean, the Emperor’s shackles had been torn asunder and the experience was exhilarating.  He was free.  It was bliss.  He would do anything to feel that way again, but knew that it couldn’t happen.  Nevertheless, he treasured those moments and not a day went past when he did not thank the man who gave them to him, although he could not be considered a man any longer.

Gideon Lock gave thanks when the airlock opened and the cool oil-scented atmosphere of the enemy ship flooded into the boarding tube.  He gave thanks as his men stormed through the spartan plasteel corridors, weapons ready.   He gave thanks as he pounced on the terrified black-clad deckhand, the warped scorpion’s claw that was once his right hand sinking deep into the man’s neck, severing both jugular veins and spraying him in the crimson backwash.  He gave thanks as he savoured the sticky warmth across his face and knew that he had freed one more soul for his lord.  He could hear the clatter of boots on the metal floor as enemy reinforcements approached.  With spittle dribbling from his distended jaws, Gideon gave thanks once more and broke into a run.

I'm back! But for how long...

Hello again.

Well, I’m back now.  Hopefully for a while, but you never know.  I’ve been on holiday in Ireland for the past few days.  It’s always nice to hang round there for a bit, even if there is nothing to do apart from look at the scenery, walk round the scenery and read about something that isn’t the bloody scenery.

In my case, my holiday reading has been some particularly thrilling Anti-Money Laundering coursework material.  Please don’t spoil the ending for me.  It’s really hotting up now, 57 pages in.

Anyway, aside from that I also took the holiday time to (finally) get started on my writing sample for the Black Library submissions window.  I possibly left it a little late, as the window closes in a fortnight.  I’m also not helping my case by doing my piece a little arse-backwards.  You see, the way the submissions procedure goes for BL, you submit 1,000 word sample of your writing, and then they read it, disregard it and you move on with your life.  A thousand words isn’t particularly hard.  It’ll take me about an hour, maybe two.  However, I took it on myself to write an entire short story (about 10,000 words) and then cull the best 1,000 words out of that and hand it in.  This seems unwise.

However, it hasn’t stopped me.  Not quite.  I was in Ireland for four days and managed to churn out just over 5,000 words of the story.  Hardly prolific, but I’m happy with the story so far.  Iron Hands based (so no surprise there).  I had a bit of a concern as to whether or not the main character was interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention, but I think I’ve managed it.  Anyway, that’s going to be the main project for the rest of the month.  I should get the whole story finished soon and then I can excise the best thousand words and send it off.  And then probably use it to keep the blog updated for a bit.  I’m thinking of posting the story in pieces every Friday.  Hopefully use that Friday deadline to get some fiction writing done.  If I can work it into my routine, then that can only improve the ‘thwarted writer’ status I’ve clearly been hungering after for so long.

Anyhoo, another thing that’s been getting in the way of updating this overgrown and ill-maintained piece of webspace is that during my lunchtimes, I have been reading the Malifaux background.  From all three of the rulebooks (one main and two expansions).  It’s been interesting to read about the world and, whilst the quality of the writing is variable, it really does help add atmosphere to the world.  I’ll do a bit more of an in-depth write-up of my impressions on the Malifaux stories later on the in the week, time and laziness permitting.  Speaking of Malifaux, I have fallen for the game in a big way recently.  Seriously enjoying it and trying to spread the sickness to other club members, as is my disgusting wont.  The key seems to be finding a model or concept that the target finds cool, be it undead cowboys, zombie Chihuahuas, hulking steampunk mechs or, in the case of my friend Alex, a Johnny Cash expy.

Sue is awesome.

That last sentence totally made sense in context.  I swear.