Black Library Live Review (for realz!)

I had a great time there.  This is truly an excellent even to attend if you’re into the fiction (from all aspects of BL, not just Heresy or 40K).  It was loud, crowded and busy, but I’ll give a brief rundown of various things I saw/attended/harassed while I was there.

On the Friday, my friend Alex and I headed to Warhammer World at about 6 and I have the fun task of showing him round the place.  He’d never been before, so it was nice to be able to see the place through fresh eyes.  Spent far too much time in the Miniatures Hall which, although small, does have a tonne of beautiful stuff crammed into it.  After that, we went to Bugman's for some light drinking.  Doing so, we fell in with a couple of other guys (Nate and Steve) by teaching them how to play the Bugman’s board game.  We spent about three hours just drinking, playing and chatting bollocks.  That’s one of the great things about this hobby.  It may (not) surprise you to learn that I am fairly shy amongst strangers, even to the point of being socially awkward.  It comes with the Aspergic territory.  However, having the framework of these games and stories that the hobby really helps me talk to people I don’t already know.  As it happens, it was a great few hours with those guys. (Yes, I won the game:  in your FACE, Alex!  You and your Elven Wine!)

A short time after we met up with Dagmire and went for a Chinese, so it was a pleasant evening.  The big deal was on the Saturday though.  The queue for book-buying was manic and definitely the kind of thing that would reward the patient purchaser.  I really should have waited until about 12 or so before picking up the books I wanted, because queuing at 9.30 with an armful of varying grades of literature almost made me late for the first seminar that I’d booked: Writing for Black Library.

Very interesting seminar this one, approaching the dos and don’ts of the BL writing trade (no squig POV novels, damn…), but had a bit of a disheartening air when they started laying statistics on us.  Their previous submissions window at 1,800 entries, out of which only 12 saw any kind of daylight.  That’s roughly two thirds of a percent success rate.  Well, balls.  I’m gonna try anyway.  Nothing to lose, eh?  They’re also accepting Gamebook submissions as well, which is certainly an interesting prospect, although far beyond my capabilities.  I’ve been trying to make a gamebook since I was 8 and well into my Fighting Fantasy.  Never managed it.  I can’t deal with the non-linear plotting.

Anyway, the next seminar I went to was about Black Library Audio, which has been generally very impressive over the past couple of years, so it was cool to hear about the behind-the-scenes stuff that have to happen to get one of the audio-dramas to print.  We also got to hear some extracts of forthcoming audiobooks/dramas, all of which I think were on sale at the event.  Convenient, eh?  Suffice to say, Butcher’s Nails sounded feckin’ awesome and I’m looking forward to giving Eye of Vengeance a spin as well.  Gotta love Telion.

The final big seminar was on Xenos writing, given by Rob Sanders (who wrote Atlas Infernal) and Andy Chambers (who wrote the sqeesome Path of the Renegade).  There was a lot of technical talk from both speakers referring to story structure and alien mindsets, albeit with a heavy Eldar/Dark Eldar focus.  I have to say that I’m now really curious about reading Atlas Infernal, as a lot of the ideas that Rob put forward were great food for though and I’m curious to see how he put them into practice.

Then there were the signings.  Being the 21st century denizen I am, I eschewed the passé signature-on-paper bullshit that so dogged our civilisation in aeons passed.  I got them to sign my Kindle instead.  I even bought some permanent markers especially.  I wound up with four signatures after the day was up, only two of which I had to queue for.  Just as well.  The queues for some of the authors were downright crippling.  One of the great things about the authors for BL and, well, BL in general is that they’re all enthusiasts.  The love the background that they help to craft and can talk about it happily for hours.  Which, in a book signing context, is mildly inconvenient to say the least.  The queue for Andy Chambers was nice and short, because it was for a book that either hadn’t been on general release yet or had only just hit, although quite a few of the guys wanted their old edition 40k rulebooks signed.  Wish I’d thought of that.  Or had my stuff in such a state that I would be able to actually find things.  The queue for Gav Thorpe was a different matter.  It was forty-five minutes of solid trudgery.  I’m glad I went for it near the beginning of the slot; otherwise I wouldn’t have got my Kindle defaced at all.  Perish the thought.

The other two signatories were Sarah Cawkwell (of course!) and Josh Reynolds, who I was surprised to learn, actually listens to the Overlords!  Presumably of his own volition.  I don’t normally read Warhammer Fantasy novels, having tried one or two of them and finding them to be too generic (with the notable exception of the Blood Bowl novels), but I think, with my new Beastmen army taking vague and fuzzy shape, I may have to get a bit more into the background and I have heard good things about Josh’s Knights of the Blazing Sun.

The rest of the evening was taken up by drinking, food and more Bugman’s gaming with Nate and Steve, who managed to earn my ire and jealousy by nabbed a couple of the posters I was really interested in.

The Sunday was a good and borderline relaxed affair, with a brief meet up with a couple of folks at Warhammer World before nearly missing my train home.  There was also an ill-advised trip to Forge World, but at least I’ve now got an Iron Hands force to assemble.  That’s actually one of the last impressions that the weekend left me with.  I’d forgotten just how much I like the Iron Hands as an army.  The Primarchs book had a neat Ferrus Manus story in it and the reprinting of the Iron Hands novel is an undeniably cool looking book, so I’ll be chewing my way through both of those in the forthcoming days.  In fact I’ve already finished the Manus story in the Primarchs.  It was cool, but doesn’t seem to affect the broader narrative, which was a shame.  Never mind, though, because I have the story of Gdolkin to get through, and that is definitely going to be fodder for the ol’ Codex!

Anyway.  Capsule review of the event: Awesome.  Would go again.

Roll on the weekender!

Black Library Live Review : Preamble

Last weekend, I was at Warhammer World attending their Black Library Live event.  I had a very good time there, a lot of fun.  I’ll do a proper write up later in the week.

What with all the pre-releases and artwork there, I actually spent a lot less than I expected.  I was in control.  I’d only blown about £60 on stuff, so I was feeling like, you know, a responsible adult who has the self-control to stick to his budgeting.  Half an hour before I take my leave of the place and take a taxi to the train station, I decided to have a brief look round the Forgeworld store, see if they have anything new and interesting to look at.  Ten minutes later, I was told this:

“That’ll be £95 please, sir.”

Well… fuck.

Broadening My Scope

Hi everyone!

Recently I’ve been looking outside the 40K game a little.  Actually, it’s not really all that ‘recently’.  I’ve been on and off Fantasy for ages now (I’ve still got two decent-sized armies from previous forays).  Having played a couple of games of 8th edition, I do have to say that overall I prefer it to 7th.  It causes fewer headaches and seems geared towards a more fun game.  I understand some of the objections to it, what with uncounterable spells forcing gigantic blobs of death onto the field, but I don’t really play that kind of game.  Or, more importantly, my regular opponents don’t.  So this latest bout of square-basing has been brought on by one of my friends, Alex.  He (for some reason) seized on a Vampire Counts army book and then set to army listing.

Naturally, I couldn’t let one of my friends wander down this dark path alone, so I bought an army book for a force I’d been thinking about doing for a while and starting researching Beastmen.  I was initially uncertain about going for Beastmen, as the other two armies I own are Lizardmen (a lot of Stegadons) and Warriors of Chaos.  There is a common theme running through these armies as you may well notice.  Pretty much bugger all in terms of ranged combat.  That and the worrying level of anthropomorphism that runs through a lot of these forces.  Thank god I’m not doing Skaven as well.  I’d need to report to some body dysmorphia specialist or something…

Anyway, the new load Beastmen (if I ever collect them) will pose a bit of a challenge, painting wise.  One of the main problems I had with collecting Beastmen was from a painting standpoint.  They are just so, well, brown.  It’s kind of unavoidable.  I don’t particularly like brown, or many hues that fall into the earth tones range of utter tedium.  And the Beastmen, being Beastmen do tend to be focussed around one of my least favourite colours.  I have, however, stumbled upon a colour scheme that may well work and keeps the brown-ness to a minimum.

I plan on painting my army very pale.  Almost albino-style.  Certainly for the skin.  The fur I haven’t settled on the colour.  However, I plan to go for very pale flesh and some woad tattoos and plenty of blood splatters on them as well.  It think the deep red and blue will contrast nicely with the anaemic pale flesh and provide a distinctive look for the herd.  That’s the plan anyway.  To add to the challenge, I’ll also be trying out a different style of painting in general, namely wash-painting.  I love washes; they’re an excellent substitute for talent and patience.  I tend to go through a good amount of wash whenever I paint.  Undercoat, basecoat, wash the hell out of it.  But working with washes as the base of the paint job is not something I’ve ever done before.  Fortunately some of the guys at the local GW are going to show me how to do it (hopefully without needing airbrushes or anything that silly), so that’ll be another string to my unimpressive-looking bow.

It’s not just Beastmen on the horizon for me though.  I’ve finally started making inroads into Malifaux.  Down at Manufactured Conflict, we’ve got some of the very nice WorldWorks card terrain.  The only criticisms I have about it is the length of setup (it took two of us about 25 minutes to set up before we could start to use it) and the area of coverage.  The setup length is unavoidable given the amount of customisation inherent in the terrain, so I can’t realistically complain about that.  However, we found that we were just not able to cover the recommended area of ground for a game.  The rulebook states that small games should be played on 3’ x 3’, but we were just not able to cover that with the one box of terrain and one box of clips to hold them together. We got close (2.5’ x 2.5’), so maybe it’s just splitting hairs, but it’s still a bit of an irritation to need just a little more of a really quite expensive kit to fulfil its purpose.  Nevertheless the stuff looks really good and you can get some very interesting skirmish terrain out of it.  Soon we’ll have to break out the other two sets!  I’ll address more Malifaux as I play it more.  I’ve only got two games under my belt, so I can’t really talk with any authority other than to say that I’ve really enjoyed the system so far.

And I’ve won twice.

But that’s probably not statistically viable!

Necrautopsy: Part 8

Here we go again.  More Necron blathering.  This time I’m dealing with some special characters, in this case, Nemesor Zahndrekh and Vargard Obyron.  These guys are pretty much the buddy movie of the Necron Codex.  To have one but not the other just seems slightly off.  Not only that, but you also miss out on some added bonuses on the Vargard’s end.  I’ve been using this double team for a few games now and find them interesting and fun to use, but not without their quirks which can make them difficult to get the most out of.

Let’s start with the reason why they’re a buddy movie.  I mean, aside from the back-story (which I advise you read, it’s quite amusing!).  The big draw to having these guys comboed up is that if you take the Nemesor, the Vargard doesn’t take up an HQ slot.  In larger games this can be a very big deal, as the Vargard has a couple of cool abilities and hits like a sack of bricks attached to a speeding bus.  The ability to fling another Overlord (or whatever HQ choice you fancy) can open up the game to some nasty combos for you to exploit.  But that’s for another day entirely.  Today (and possibly tomorrow), I’m just focussing on these two.

First up is the simpler of the two, and (in my opinion) the less viable on his own: The Vargard.  This guy is pretty much the best Necron assault character going in terms of damage output.  However, much like the halberd-wielding Lychguard, he needs to be precisely targeted to work.  Obyron is unique in a couple of ways, but the most obvious deviation from the norm is in his statline.  Most specifically, his Weapon Skill.  One of the (many) quirks with the Necron lists is that the characters don’t actually have improved statlines apart from wounds and attacks.  All Necrons are Ld10, all have WS4.  Okay, Overlords have S & T 5, but that’s nothing their regular elite entries can’t have.  Obyron breaks the mould in this regard by packing a WS of 6.  He is the only non-C’Tan in the ‘dex that has WS of greater than 4.  It won’t make him harder to hit for most opponents, but usually means that he’ll ht in assault a fair bit more than a Necron character normally would.  This is handy because another great strength of this guy is the wealth of attacks he can strike with.

His attack stat is fairly average at 3.  However, in combat he has a trick to play.  Every enemy attack that misses him grants him a bonus attack (up to 6 bonuses).  Here the character has actually managed to get the appalling I2 to work for him.  This means than, on a charge and with decent luck, he can rack up a full 10 attacks at WS6.  Add the bonuses of a Warscythe to that and you can see how much this guy can literally scythe through.  He has another major strength on top of damage output, but I won’t address it yet.

This guy, unfortunately has a pretty major flaw.  He has no invulnerable save at all.  This is a pretty major problem for an assault character whose main ability relies on him being endlessly wailed on.  If it’s a power weapon doing the wailing, then there is a great risk that he will not strike at all.  As such, placing him in any given combat is a precise affair.  Ideally you want him to be that target of as many attacks as possible, which necessitates him being in base-to-base with as many faceless grunts as possible whilst staying away from anyone wielding a power weapon, particularly a high strength one.  When he’s on his own, this is very difficult to do unless you’re dealing with a very large squad, so other tricks need to be employed.  The best way is to have another of your models in base with the power weapon guy.  Models have to attach an enemy in base-to-base contact as opposed to one that’s only within 2” of a friendly engaged model.  Mastering this form of combat placement is vital if you’re going to get the most out this whirligig of destruction.  It can often mean throwing your other models to their doom in his favour, but hey; that’s what the game’s about anyway!

Finally, we come to the true tricksiness of the Vargard.  He (and any squad that he’s attached to) can teleport, just like a Harbinger of Despair with a Veil of Darkness.  I won’t talk about the teleporting, because I’ve already done so in a previous Necrautopsy post.  However, Obyron’s teleportation doohicky brings a big advantage with it.  You can use it to get out of combat.  This can be fantastically useful, particularly if you’re running for a last-turn contestation of a point but getting held up somewhere else on the board.  His teleport also a couple of odd abilities that specifically tie in with the Nemesor.  If you’re aiming to arrive within 6” of the Nemesor, then him and his squad won’t scatter, which is a useful, useful little perk.  But the stranger ability that this brings is that if the Nemesor or his unit are assaulted, then Obyron has to leave wherever he is and teleport directly to that combat and pile in.  Immediately.  You get no choice.  On the plus side, it means that you HQ guy has a big heavy hitter suddenly turn up to help him out in a combat.  On the downside, it means that the unit he was with are now slogging it everywhere again, without you having any say in the matter.  The quickest way to rectify that is to have Obyron teleport out of the combat during his next movement phase and rejoin his unit again, but that’s a full turn down the drain for them.  That ability is really both a strength and a weakness.

Anyway, that’s a rough run-down of Vargard Obyron.  Later, I’ll approach his bestest friend, Nemesor Zahndrekh.  I’ll maybe even make sense doing it…

Necrautopsy Part 7: C'Tan Shards

Last weekend, I went to the Throne of Skulls and, without false modesty, I can say that I did fairly well.  Four wins and one loss isn’t bad in anyone’s books (especially when that loss was one Genestealer away from a draw, dammit!).  Anyway, my brief summation about the tournament can be heard on the podcast, if you have the inexplicable interest in it.

This post is about a new unit I tried for the tournament.  I had used a C’Tan Shard once before going to Nottingham, so was still very much unsure as to its capabilities, especially when you have to spend so many points to acquire them.  However, now that the tournament’s over, I’ve bought another one.  My Shard was pretty much the man of the match in every game.  He was also good fun to play, which always helps.  So this blog post is going to focus on my experiences using the C’Tan and the lessons I learned.

First, the set up.  For this Shard I was going for a very specific build to complement the rest of my army.  Writhing Worldscape was the key ability here.  For those who may not know, WW is a passive ability that means for as long as the Shard is on the table, all Difficult terrain becomes Dangerous as well, and all Dangerous terrain will cause damage on a 1 or a 2, rather than just a 1.  Naturally, this applies only to the opponent.  Nice.  This was a cornerstone of my build, as I was running with three Harbingers of Transmogrification (probably one of the most clunkily named units in the game) who are, by default, armed with Tremorstaves.  Tremorstaves are a 36” range blast weapon that inflicts Difficult terrain on any unit it hits.  This stacks with the Writhing Worldscape ability to make a nasty little combo that can really hamper enemy movement and against which there is little defence.  A vehicle will immobilise itself on a 1 or a 2.  Hordes of guys will dies on rolls of 1 during their own movement phase.  Before, Tremorstaving was a delaying tactic.  With the addition of this guy, it was now a proper weapon.

The other ability I gave him was Swarm of Spirit Dust, a fairly unflashy and utilitarian piece of kit that gives the Shard assault grenades, defensive grenades and Stealth, allowing him to better resist being charged, strike at I4 when assaulting through terrain and also give him better odds of surviving being shot at (provided he can find something big to hide behind).  I found that the Annihilation Barges were about the right size and shape to provide this cover easily.

The statline of this monster also gives you a much-needed close assault element with S & T 7 and five attacks on the charge.  Combined with the fact that he’s a Monstrous Creature (it’s worryingly easy to play a NecZilla list!) and he’s very good at taking down swarms of S3 and decent quantities of S4 without really breaking a sweat.  Vehicles are, of course, easy pickings for him and his 4+ invulnerable save will also stand up against other MCs and power fist/klaw wielders with decent odds.  His downfall, as with most other Monstrous Creatures, is Rending (by the bucketload) and Poisoned Attacks.  That Invulnerable save will only get you so far.

My plans in each battle were fairly similar when it came to using the Shard.  He’d advance up behind my Barges for the first couple of turns and the engage small units of elite infantry where he could do the most damage.  In the first game he dealt with a weakened Strike Squad (Eternal Warrior was nice and the T7 meant that Hammerhand didn’t help them), the second game he tore through a terminator assault squad with their Chaplain, he ate a full squad of Striking Scorpions in the third game, the fourth game saw him dispatch a Trygon with ease (not a wound taken!).  Sadly, the fifth game he didn’t really get up to much, but that was Dark Eldar.  They were too fast and too far away for the most part.  His passive ability more than made up for his relative lack of activity in that game though, as four vehicles out of the ten he was field Immobilised themselves whilst trying to move throughout the game.

He died twice during the tournament.  Once when the Doom landed next to him and took three wounds off him immediately due to his death field effect (I had to roll very badly for that to happen) and having his last wound taken by a squad of charging Genestealers.  And second when I was up against the Eldar player and he spent two turns levelling every applicable gun at him to score a moral victory in a losing game.  Certainly not a bad survival rate.

Oh, before I forget, there are two more standard abilities for this guy that need to be borne in mind.  The first is that he doesn’t care about moving through Difficult or Dangerous terrain.  Having that full 6” move through craters and ruins is kind of liberating, especially if you’re trying to hunt someone down.  The second ability is the post-death explosion.  Everything within D6” of a C’Tan that loses its last wound will take a S4 AP1 hit.  This is a very nasty surprise for Terminators and Paladins!  However, it does necessitate you keeping him away from your more breakable infantry models.  There isn’t a more ignominious way to go.

Apart from perhaps Tesla-ing your units to death.  Which I’ve done.

Repeatedly.

And will probably do again.

Soon.

Manufactured Conflict Meeting-ish Thing

Most of you who read this blog probably already know that I run a gaming club in my home town.  If you don’t, then: I run a gaming club in my home town of Dartford.  You should stop round if you’re ever unfortunate enough to be in the area.  Manufactured Conflict, the rates are reasonable.

Anyway, as a fairly young club (just passed our first birthday), it’s taken us a while to get our shit organised, but we are finally getting round to it now.  We’ve got a club bank account set up, we’re going through the process of joining the GCN, all that stuff.  However, the most interesting matter we’ve had to address recently is that of upgrading the club.  Due to some very reasonable rates by the landlord and a nice and consistent turnout, we’ve managed to acquire a bit of buffer in the account.  Naturally, when you have money, you kind of want to spend it.  So a few of us met up and started discussing it, complete with all the umm’s and ah’s of a group of guys who clearly have no idea what they’re talking about.

The first call was for scenery so we can outfit our tables better.  Recently we had a bit of a record club-wise and had five full-size gaming tables out at one time and all being used.  This is undeniably a good thing but it brought into sharp relief how unprepared the club is for that kind occasion.  We only had four Battle Mats (we had to draw the boundaries of the game on the MDF board with a pen) and it was only due to some of the regulars bringing their own scenery that we had anywhere near enough of it.  We were fine on the day, and all the tables ended up being decently stocked with terrain, but it was still cutting too close.  As a moderately successful club that looks like it could grow even more in the near future, that just won’t do.

Another thing we needed was definitely an improvement to the terrain that we have at the moment.  We’ve got a small variety of terrain (some hills, some craters some ruins, a castle, etc.), but it is mostly unpainted and some it has fallen into disrepair.  One way to combat this is to encourage people to take the scenery away with them and tart it up while they have it.  I basically just instituted a free-day-for-some-scenery programme and it seems to have been taken up by a good few of the attendees, so that’s encouraging.  Hopefully we’ll have the scenery looking decent and in good enough supply for our first all-day event in February (Saturday the 18th, on the off-chance that any reader is interested).

So, various purchases were agreed upon during this meeting (although meeting seems far too formal a word for what was actually going on), not least of while was another battle mat for our tables.  We also decided to buy some really cool-looking card scenery from World Works.  Terraclips scenery, to be precise.  Although this stuff is specifically designed for Malifaux, it would look great for most skirmish games, really.  Particularly now that we’ve decided on firing up a 28mm Inquisitor campaign.  I’ll be GMing that one, which will be a bit of a challenge, I’d assume.  It’s been years since I played that system, but it was one of my favourites from the specialist games line and I’m looking forward to introducing a load more people to it.  It really helps you get a different perspective on the world(s) of 40k.

Speaking of introducing people to new things (and speaking of scenery specifically designed for Malifaux), I’ll also be trying to get a bit of a Malifaux circle down the club as well.  I like the world and the test game I had at the IMPs was really enjoyable.  It’s also a really cheap buy-in for a game, as you can get starter gangs for about £20-25, so I’m hoping there’ll be a fair amount of interest in fellow MCers.

Well, that’s the round up from a club perspective.  Not really my remit on the blog, I suppose, but I couldn’t think of much to write today, and I don’t want to fall out of practice keeping this thing up to date.

See you all later.

Maybe even with something relevant to say…

Necrautopsy FAQ Updates

Well, the Necron FAQs are out and have, rather annoyingly, invalidated a bit of I’ve written in the Necrautopsy series, most keenly with the Deathmarks.  When discussing them, I worked on the assumption that attached members of the Court could teleport down with them and a lot of the things I was talking about relied on finding nice Cryptek matches to make the most of this.  We can (almost) ignore this now, which is a shame.

First, a bit of an explanation as why I came to my now erroneous conclusion.  I thought that the Court would work kind of like Wolfguard.  When you attach a Wolfguard to a unit of Scouts, then he doesn’t make the squad lose the ability to outflank and in fact gains it to keep up.  I therefore thought it was going to be the same principle with the Crypteks and Lords.  Whoops.

There is good news for the Deathmarks though, if you don’t mind losing the ability to piggyback onto your opponent’s reserve rolls.  The Marking ability of the Deathmarks also carries over to their attached characters, which opens up the nasty combo of the Harbinger of Despair, whose AP1 flamer template now wounds on 2s against the marked unit.  Add that to the fact that you can teleport about the board with the Veil of Darkness, then you have a tight and potentially devastating assassin squad for 155 points.  You’d need to be bold with the Deep Strike placement, but at only 155 points, it shouldn’t be crippling if you lose them.

Anyway, enough about Deathmarks.  There are more horrible things the FAQ opens up for the discerning robot Overmind.  The official seal of approval for Writhing Worldscape stacking with Tremorstaves and Orikan’s Temporal Snares is blood-pressuring-heightening nastiness to abuse (if rather expensive to lay the groundwork for).  For those who don’t know, Tremorstaves are blast weapons that force any unit they hit to move as if though they were in difficult terrain for their next movement phase, whereas Temporal Snares inflicts this on the opponent’s entire army during the first turn.  Writhing Worldscape upgrades difficult terrain to dangerous terrain.  You can see the horror implicit in such a combo.  Won’t hurt shooting armies much, but an assault horde? Nasty.

You can also now attach two member of a Court to the same squad, provided they come from two different Courts.  This brings up some nice 1-2 punches, giving the attached squad the advantages of say, a res orb and a warscythe along with Cryptek equipment. 

One combo that I like quite a lot (given my affection for the anvil squad of warriors) is packing two Harbingers of the Storm both with Lightning Fields.  What this means is that any unit that assaults the unit will have to suffer 2D6 S8 AP5 hits before landing a blow!  It also significantly increases the quantity of short range fire (8 haywire shots within 12”) without breaking the bank. The Harbingers of the Storm are only 25 points base and the Lightning field is a snip at only 10.  Bung a cheap Overlord or regular Lord in there with a Res Orb and you have a unit that will pose a risk to any approaching unit.  Bitching.

Spyder spawning and Ghost Ark repairs have been downgraded a little, no longer being auto-successes, which isn’t too much of a shock.  The Entropic Strike rule vs vehicles has been cleared up a little so that we now know that, yes, you roll to reduce Armour values on vehicles and then you roll to pen on the new values.  This was something that I’d pretty much assumed was the case (after a GW staffer and I went through the rules for it), but it’s nice to have it in black and white.  Most of the stuff in the FAQ are things that we had figured out (res orbs increasing the Everliving roll as well as Reanimation, for example).  By clearing this up in an unambiguous fashion, the Necron FAQ has done what an FAQ is supposed to do, so I guess I’m happy with it.

I just have to rearrange my Deathmark squads.

And buy a C’tan…