I'm Back!

 I haven't been all that active of late mainly due to the epidemic, work and the lack of gaming opportunities. I want to start up again and get back to posting. My plan is to do at least one if not two posts a week. I'm not going to focus on battle reports as I don't feel I do them justice so I'm going to start covering my thoughts on various aspects of the game and army reviews.

I have managed about a dozen games when we haven't been in lockdown after the release of 9th edition so I feel that I know something of the edition - what works and what doesn't. That'll be something I'll cover as well later this week even if a 9th edition review is a few months late.

Hopefully you are all still out there and reading, and we'll get back to regular posting.

May the Emperor protect! 

Update

 Apologies for lack of updates. I lost my internet connection for a couple of weeks due to the uselessness of my provider. But I'm back now and in the next couple days I hope to post up my thoughts on 9th edition and a new 9th ed battle report. Stay tuned.

9th edition rules available

Today Games Workshop have released the free rules download for the new 9th edition of the game. You can find them here: 9th edition rules.

Winter's SEO has released a rules review video as well. It's a goof view if like me you were getting a bit wound up by the dribs and drabs of rules we were getting.

What are your thoughts on this rules now we have a better idea of them?

Happy Days!

With Lockdown coming to an end here in the UK, it looks like I might get my first Warhammer game since it all started. Can't wait. Hopefully it'll all come back to me and it'll be a good match.

Keep an eye out as I'll write up the battle report soon.

9th ed Terrain

We're being hit hard and fast with new 9th edition teasers, and today we have received a look at the new terrain rules. You can see the full article here.

Well... knee jerk reactions aside... I do and I do not like them. 8th edition had the problem that terrain was pretty much pointless in the game when it needed a more dedicated set of rules for their use. That seems to be what we are getting here so why do I have a sense of being not happy with what Games Workshop have showcased here? I think because in one example of rules changes, which I will come to below, they seem to have listened to the nonsense that comes out of the ITC format.

Let's take a look.

Terrain Traits
When setting up a battlefield, you and your opponent(s) decide which terrain traits will be applied to each piece of scenery. The traits are designed to be stackable, so a single terrain piece can actually be given as many different traits as you wish. For example, you may decide to count a bunker as both Light Cover AND Heavy Cover, offering the benefits of cover at every range.

I'm sorry... what? We have to agree on what each piece of terrain counts as? That will end well outside of tournaments. TO's will set that up themselves but in friendly games there are already rules arguments and this will probably generate more. Why not just assign specific rules to specific terrain types? That would solve this issue. I'm on the fence with this one.

This is nice and I like that the two types can be stacked. Ruins should always be both though rather than something you should be picking. About time that melee allows cover saves in ruins though. Why did it take nine editions to add that?

This is where I start to have issues and call BS! This is what they have copied from the ITC tournaments where complaints were made about being to shoot through ruins with windows or doors, so they made it so that doors and windows are effectively walls. I hate this concept. If you don't want players to shoot through such gaps, don't build them into your terrain pieces. Simples! I really hope this is one of those optional traits so that you don't have to have to use it.

Secondly, what happened to Aircraft that they need that second bit? Last I knew aircraft were not hiding behind walls on a regular basis and were not overpowered (well, maybe one or two Aeldari ones... *Ahem*). Models that are Titanic I get. Those things are towering over the terrain anyway realistically. I just don't see why aircraft are being singled out. But hey, I guess it won't be too much of an issue.

Oh look... ruins should be obscuring.

Yes, I am having a knee jerk reaction but I've walked away from the computer, painted some models and watched some Youtube to chill before I made this post. I've thought about it and chilled but some of this just is not sitting well with me. It seems like they have gone from minimal rules under 8th edition to the opposite extreme under 9th.

We shall see. While I'm not keen on the idea of 9th yet, and they are messing with my game, you do have to accept that editions change.

What do you think about what has been showcased today?

40K through my years

First edition, aka Rogue Trader, was where I started with the game. One cold and windy October Saturday my best friend at school and I went down to London, to Games Day 1987 for this release. That was my first and arguably best gaming convention I had ever been to. Nothing I have been to since ever came close to how awesome that day was. I still have the little pamphlet flyer thing they gave me at the door as we went in. On that day I bought my copy of Rogue Trader, the old plastic space marine box set and the metal space orks box set.

Sadly, my friend Chris and I only ever played a handful of games. About five or six I would say. I have always loved space marines ever since that time and is why I go back to them time and time again, even when they fail me so much. I ended up ditching them though when the Realms of Chaos books came out and I bought a sizeable Black Legion army. Once we left school though, Chris went off to university and with no one else to play against, I ditched them and continued with my main love of table top role-playing games.

There was always something cool about the universe of the game back then. It didn't take itself seriously and there was so much room for individual interpretation of both the universe and one's own army. Back then the game wasn't so up it's own backside as it is now. Random mission scenario generators could have your ork mercenaries paid by an Imperial governor to rescue his daughter  who had been kidnapped by squats. Or space marines could be sent in to break up a mining dispute. While silly really, the universe was more fluid and less set in stone like it is today.

The rules were... well, let's be honest in light of modern game design, were awful. I wouldn't even want to try and play that system again. Too complex and awkward. Warhammer Fantasy Battles 3rd edition, which used basically the same system, suffered by this as well. I don't know what it is about war gamers that they want massively over complicated rules systems.

I no longer have my original copy as that fell apart in about 1989 due to the amount of reading and rereading I gave the poor thing. I do still have a well worn second hand copy though which I keep for the nostalgia of those days.

Thankfully I avoided the horror that was 2nd edition. It was many many years before I saw a copy of these rules and from my personal opinion this was just terrible. An overly complicated system yet again and a universe setting that had all the life in it just bleached. Bland and dull. I know there are many players out there who fondly remember this edition and it's probably for the same reason that I fondly remember Rogue Trader but for me, 2nd edition was a big no no.

And what was with all the bright colours? The grimdark had turned the lights on. I was told a story by a Games Workshop manager back in the mid 90's of which I do not know the full truth about. He told me that it was due to someone on the old 'Evey Metal team leaving the company but it was in their contract that all models painted by them belonged to them, so when they left, they took so many models with them that Games Workshop had to rush out new fully painted armies for the photos. As I say, I take that with a grain of salt but it makes me wonder just how much truth there is in that.

I came back near the end of the 90's when a friend at the time wanted to get back into the game. We went over to our nearest Games Workshop store and pooled our dosh for a single shared copy of the rules. He went with Chaos Space marines, Black Legion specifically and I decided to try out a new army that didn't exist in my day, the Tau. After reading their codex, and deciding that this was not to my liking, I went back to my trusty space marines. I created a homebrew chapter called the Sons of Osirion which were painted this lovely colour that Games Workshop used to do called Fire Dragon Crimson. We built and painted a few models before he lost interest and we dropped it. Somewhere I think I still have that copy of third edition.

Rules wise, it was the first edition I think where the game was more like how we have the game these days. A far cry from those Rogue Trader days. Rules were simpler and easier to understand. A lot of the unnecessary elements had gone. Although I never actually got to play it, I think I would have enjoyed this rule set quite a bit.

By the time of third edition the universe of the game was much more set in stone than it was under my day. You could still see some of that whimsy in the lore and even the models, but you could see them cementing more and more together.

The fourth edition of the game was really where I came back into it. By this time we had our own local gaming store where we went to for board games, card games and role-playing stuff, and the owner was interested in stocking Games Workshop. A few members of our gaming fraternity said that yes they were interested. As I had been running tournaments and such for a few other games, I said that if there was enough interest then I would put a club together and that is how our current club came to be - all because of Warhammer 40K 4th edition. I decided on space marines once again and bounced between Silver Skulls and Ultramarines during this edition.

Unlike third edition, fourth had become a little more rules heavy but nothing too unwieldy. The only real issues I had with fourth edition was just how overpowered it made certain assault based armies. Khorne Berzerkers got three or four times as many attacks in melee than the equivalent shooting army could put out. Genestealers could outflank coming in from the sides of the board, assaulting your units and cutting them down before they could ever do anything about it. It really used to get on my nerves, and I'm being polite in the way I am saying that. The rules were fun to play but certain aspects were OTT.

By this time the universe was pretty much what we know now. Gone was the openness and in it's place was a huge stone with everyone chiselled on it. It took some of the enjoyment away but I think that was the nostalgia talking.

Fifth edition was an edition that I loved. A lot of mechanical issues seemed to be fixed and in general the game flowed better. It carried a much more narrative feel although I probably can't tell you why I feel that. Games just worked better under fifth edition. It still experienced certain issues like the psychic phase being overpowered, especially by the Eldar and to a lesser extent Chaos Space Marines. 

At this time I came up with a new space marine chapter, again, called the Knights of the Void. Ice Blue in colour and with the concept of them being knights in space. Had fun with those but by the end of the edition I had lost interest and swapped chapters.

When sixth edition was launched I got a half six in the morning bus over to our nearest Games Workshop for the release day and I was rather disappointed. I was there during the last days of Rogue Trader for the Games Workshop stores' grand opening and I had to get there for the same time to be ready as I helped out in store from time to time. The crowds were huge even at seven in the morning. I expected the same for the sixth edition release but there was no one. Disappointing. No one else turned up for like two hours! Oh well. At got my copy though.

Sixth edition was good but it started to ramp the power level. Units started to become slightly too overpowered. The psychic phase was again too strong for certain armies and underpowered for others. One thing I really did enjoy about this edition was the addition of what we would consider now to be war zones. Sixth edition introduced basic rules for different planetary types and the club used these in a lot of their games.

During this edition I read the Salamander trilogy of books by changed my chapter yet again to Salamanders. I enjoyed playing them but I started into a spiral of not winning matches and losing interest in the game.

Seventh edition. I had an issue when this edition dropped. I have the opinion that an edition needs several years to mature before it should get replaced. Sixth was only out for two years before it was replaced. This put me in a bad place for some reason and I stopped playing for nearly six months. I still run the club for the guys though. It took my friend Jon to bring me back into the fold. He showed me the new tactical objectives deck and we played a game of seventh using them. That one new mechanic reversed my opinion and I jumped back into the game.

I had sold my Salamanders by this point and so I decided to start something new. Watching my friend Joel with his chaos daemons I decided that I wanted to play an army that could summon. I started a Death Guard army with some summoned plague bearers as support. Through this edition I had a really good time with that army and especially when they released the Traitor Legions sourcebook which made them so much better.

Then along came eighth edition and this has been without doubt my favourite edition thus far. At first I was a little sceptical after all the changes to this edition were major. It became a whole new game in my eyes. You had to forget everything you knew about the previous incarnations and start a fresh. Some of our gaming club didn't like it. They felt that the game had lost it's way. No strategy and no tactics but they were so wrong. Things just changed and we have to change with them.

I don't know what happened about my Death Guard under this edition. They went from being a really good army under seventh edition to losing something once they received the new books. Gone were bikes, raptors and heldrakes and in their place they got some cool new toys but nothing that compensated for the lose of those units. In the end I lost interest and sold them, and bought a Genestealer Cult army. I wanted something different and unfortunately they just didn't play the way I wanted them to. I returned to my old reliable, the space marines. Since the release of eighth edition I had been curious about an all Primaris army so I decided that they would be my next choice. The Rift Wardens were born... a crusading Imperial Fists successor.

I haven't done amazing with my Rift Wardens chapter but I have enjoyed every game I've played. Eighth edition certainly does seem to play better when you let go of the mechanical aspect and just focus on the fun.

I'm not sure what to make of what we have seen of 9th edition yet. It seems as though for the most part the game system will remain the same but with some small changes here and there. We shall see when the game comes out.

Command Points

Today we have another 9th edition from Games Workshop and this time it deals with command points. You can find this article here.

The number of command points is now based on the point size of your game with both players receiving the same initial number. This then get's modified by the detachments you take. The standard Battalion detachment is effectively free as it appears to give you it's points back. Other detachments will now cost command points.

Initial, maybe knee jerk reaction, to this is a little disappointing from my narrative perspective. If, for random example, I played a Dark Angels Ravenwing or White Scars army with everything on bikes then thematically I want my default detachment to be the Outrider (I think that is the name) where Fast Attack choices are dominant. You can't do that now without it costing you command points. Also, and I am assuming this is covered, what about Imperial and Chaos Knights? As I recall they don't use the default battalion detachment. At initial glance, they are getting screwed over by just being the army that they are. As I say though, I hope this gets covered either in the new rules or the 9th edition temporary FAQ.

I was correct when I said that the new command phase would be the same as Age of Sigmar's. Also, you get a bonus Command Point at the start of this phase so you always have ways to access your stratagems. I like this a lot because one thing that never quite seemed right under 8th was how few of your stratagem's you actually got to use during a game.

So far with the new edition there are some things I like and a few things I need to wait and see how they actually play out. 

Crusade Mode

Yesterday Games Workshop revealed to us the first look at the new Crusade mode of the game. You can find it here.  At first glance it appears quite interesting although I'm not sure exactly how it will work long term.



If you like the idea of building an army up from scratch, then developing and adding to it over the course of multiple linked battles, you’re gonna love playing Crusade campaigns. From humble beginnings, your army will grow in size and strength as you spend resources you’ve earned on adding reinforcements while your units unlock new skills from their hard-won experience in battle.


Over the course of a campaign, your Crusade force will forge its own narrative, winning glory and earning enmities with each fresh victory and defeat. Heroes will rise from among your ranks, earning great renown or the honour of bearing mighty relics – maybe even ancient archeotech wargear – into battle…Meanwhile, others may succumb to their grievous injuries, becoming pale shadows of their former selves as ill fate takes its toll on their war-ravaged bodies. 


What’s more, you’re not even limited to your local gaming group – you can use your Crusade force in any games you choose to play, be they friendlies against your regular opponents or competitive matches against hardened tournament veterans. In essence, provided you’re using the Crusade rules and your opponent is happy to have a game, every battle counts!


This all sounds quite cool. I love the narrative concept behind it where your force suffers injuries or gains access to something over time. That is great. However, it goes on to say that you can play your crusade game against any opponent if they agree. That's cool but let's say you play a game at home against someone, rather than at your club with other players. Does this mean that we are expected to take the honour system and trust the player with whatever happens to their army? Hopefully this will be covered in the new rules.


To take part in a Crusade campaign, you first need to create an Order of Battle – a list of units drawn from one of seven factions (Imperium, Chaos, Aeldari, Tyranids, Orks, Necrons, T’au Empire) with a maximum Power Rating of 50.* This is your Crusade force’s initial Supply Limit, from which you can choose an army list to field in each battle. Your Supply Limit can grow in size as you gain resources over the course of the campaign, enabling you to gradually recruit new units to strengthen the existing pool at your disposal.


Each unit has its own Crusade card to keep track of its progress, experience, upgrades and bonuses, as well as any Battle Scars they’ve picked up along the way. As the campaign continues, your Characters and units will become increasingly defined by the battles they’ve fought in and the narrative you’ve created for them, making it an entirely different gaming experience. As if that wasn’t already awesome enough, each new codex released in the future will include a wealth of additional, thematic options for that army specifically for Crusade campaigns for even more narrative-driven punch. We’re as excited as a Tech-Priest who’s just discovered a long-lost STC!


I find it odd that it will use power level over points but I guess that is for ease. Or maybe they are looking at making power level style games more desirable with this?

Crusade sounds fun but it makes me wonder how many groups will actually play with this. People seem to prefer points over power level, for understandable reasons, and I guess these updates/changes to units through the crusade might affect an army so that points wouldn't be so good a choice. I'm hoping that my local club members will be willing to try it at least.


What are your thoughts on this new format?

New Game Phase

It looks like we have a new phase in the 9th edition game turn, the Command Phase. We don't know what this means but I'm putting imaginary money down to say it will be like Age of Sigmar where characters have a command ability. Not a bad idea I guess but depends how it works out.

9th Edition Announced

It has been debated many times in recent years on many many forums but today the truth was revealed and it is that we are getting a new edition of Warhammer 40,000. How do I feel about this? Well, I'm in parts excited but also more than a little pissed off if the truth be known. In my opinion 40K does not need a new edition. The rules, bar those for terrain, are perfectly fine. The game play works fantastically well. Sure there is some power creep but that is a codex issue and nothing new for Games Workshop. At launch we were told, briefly, that this was to be a living system that would be updated with Chapter Approved and online FAQs/errata. There would not be a need for a new edition. So forgive me for saying this, but 9th edition smacks to me of a money grab rather than a necessary update.

So with that rant over...

That trailer is just amazing! It's 40K all wrapped up in a lovely bundle. And people say GW can't do good videos. That take animation and make a two hour film of tv series please!! Yes, I know Angels of Death is coming but we'll see.

The new models look great too. I did notice the primaris with what appears to be a volkite pistol and my army will enjoy some assault primaris. Those have been too long in coming. The nicest but hidden reveal is the model for the Silent King. The necron walker looks tops too. Can't wait to destroy one of those on the battlefield.

All in all, I'm happy and I'm not, but what I am hoping will happen is that 9th edition will bring people back to our gaming club and playing some 40K again. We have seen a lacking in 40K games over the last year I think. We shall see but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

So, what are your thoughts on this new edition from what we have seen today?

Thoughts from the Lockdown

With the UK lockdown going into effect you would think that us gamers would have more time to devote to our hobbies. For many that has been the case but not so much for myself.

Other than painting a couple cars for Gaslands and working on my T9A vampire covenants army I haven't really done anything. But I'm not complaining because to be fair, I think it has been good for me. I do normally spend a lot of time reading the rules, my codex and planning what direction I'd like (and probably fail) to take our games club in.

Under lockdown I have just avoided 40K. My books and army remain where they were left several weeks ago. I just haven't bothered to look at them. It has been a break from years of weekly playing, painting, building and focusing on the game perhaps a bit too much. When we can come back to the club, possibly in a couple months, we shall see, I'm hoping having had this time away will help me enjoy the game a bit more than perhaps I have in the last couple years.

How has the lockdown where you are affected your 40K hobbying?

Update

I don't know about you all but I was hoping that with reduced hours at work, no club for the foreseeable future and spare time on my hands that I'd be able to focus on some hobby time. Mainly building and painting my space marines, AoS undead army and painting up some cars for Gaslands. Instead I'm just finding that I can't focus on that. Been that way for a couple weeks now and I can't get motivated to do anything.

I'm guessing from what I'm seeing on other blogs that everyone else is having a whale of a time focusing on the game. So, I'm throwing this out as a cry of help. Give me some suggestions for getting motivated back into the hobby side of things right now. How are you managing it?

Hope you are all safe and well though in this difficult time. Stay safe all.

Update

Unfortunately due to the Coronavirus outbreak our club has been put on hold for the time being and the venue has closed. Just as we started the league as well.

A post to get thoughts out

I have had a fair few games with my new space marine army over the last couple months. I just haven't had time nor drive to write up many battle reports. Just another case of real life getting in the way.

I started off doing really well with them and had a higher win-lose rate which was a nice change from playing Genestealer Cults. Lately I've had more losses than wins but I put that down to playing some good players and just relaxing with the game. I have fun, win or lose, and that is the point.

Lately I had a really good battle against the new Sisters of Battle codex. The way my opponent had spoken about them and the things they could do, I was expecting to get steamrolled but it turned out to be one of the better games I have had of late. We both inflicted severe casualties upon one another but I was able to score enough victory points to give me the edge.

Other recent matches against Grey Knights and Necrons have not gone so well. I've enjoyed the games but have come away a little disjointed. Were the dice not in my favour, did my opponent have more tactical skill than me, was there anything I could have done better? I dwell on things like that a little too much when I have a losing streak. My most recent game was against Tau using tactical objectives but on a table where we didn't have a lot of LOS blocking terrain which was just playing into my opponent's favour. Good game but walked away afterwards feeling rather put out. Not by my opponent. He was a good fair player and a good sport. I felt that in some way the game had cheated me. By skill alone, my opponent was someone who I should have beaten fairly easily and it didn't turn out that way.

In other news and something else that may have put me in the current gaming funk... I've been trying to organise a new 40K league. When I set the club up nearly 15 years ago we had several players and we used to run frequent leagues. Some were just play everyone. Some were map/tile control type ones with similar rules to the old Mighty Empires. The thing is everyone enjoyed them and we had a good time. Most of those players have either now given up the game, moved to other games (Horus Heresy for one) or just don't aren't all that interested anymore. The club has grown since those days and we have a host of new members. The issue is that they aren't the same people and some of them don't want to play a league for various reasons.

In 2019 I started up a narrative campaign using the Vigilus books and initially it seemed well received. After a couple months it started to go south. It seemed some didn't want to play the narrative style missions because they weren't 100% fair (bare in mind this was a fun narrative campaign with no reward for which player or faction won at the end) and gave up. Some didn't like the little narrative rules for each round. Others felt that they couldn't commit due to obvious real life issues, which is fair enough but as each round was 4 weeks long I just felt that that response was an excuse. After five months I think I had had enough and just dropped it. That was probably when I stopped posting on here as much.

Flash forward to a couple months ago and suddenly there are posters on our club Facebook page asking about a league. A discussion started and I started to become hopeful that maybe we could get the good old days of the club back up again. But then it started to go south again. Some people were interested but only if the army lists were fixed. Some don't like the idea of fixed lists because they get bored. Some didn't want to stick to the same codex because they would get bored. Straight away my hopes of getting this off the ground felt like they were being dashed.

Thankfully, the guiding light of the Astronomicon has pulled me through this and we have several of us actually going to try it out. We are going to be playing 1500 points, fixed lists including warlord trait, artefact, psychic powers, relics and pre-spent stratagems. I've got the players giving me their lists at the moment and once I have them, I'll assign an Eternal War mission to each round before I randomly assign opponents for each round. I have hopes that the players involved will stick to it and we can have a league like the good old days of the club.

I suppose the problem is that I feel our club has become somewhat stagnant. We have some great people who I am pleased to call good friends. We just don't get much in the way of fresh blood and if we do, they don't seem to last long. We don't just play 40K. There is some small interest in Age of Sigmar. We have a fair bit of interest in Necromunda, and a few of the guys enjoy Horus Heresy and Adeptus Titanicus. In the past Bolt Action was popular among a few. I sometimes feel that these games get in the way of 40K which was our original focal point but obviously as long as people are playing I'm happy. That's the point.


I want to feel empowered again by this hobby that I love but lately, this past year or so, I'm just not feeling it. I'm sure it isn't just the club or the games, but it feels like it. I think once I set this new league in motion (I am playing in it too) than I'll step back a bit and see if I can't try and find my niche in things again.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far. :)

Summer Update

I have been fairly quiet again lately unfortunately. Real life issues and training for a new promotion at work have kept me quite busy. I haven't even had much opportunity for painting lately. I'm hoping that as the summer progresses I can get back to painting and catching up on my battle reports.

Friendly grumbles about GSC

I'm really not having a lot of luck with my Genestealer Cult. It is to be expected though. I'm used to how MEQ armies play, due to finances I only have what I have, and I really need to get my head around how they play. However, I really would have thought that I'd have won one game already since the codex dropped a few weeks ago.

I keep reading about how great GSC are and how they can do all manner of twinky stuff but I'm just not seeing it.

I use Brood Brother squads as my default troop options as I want the heavy weapons - one with lascannon to deal with tanks and one with heavy bolter to mow down the infantry. The problem is that they don't have great saves and are easy to gun down with massed firepower. They never last long.

Genestealers and Acolyte Hybrids are my pop up units but neither are very good. The Genestealers pop up, charge and can usually decimate a unit but then everyone around them turns about and they get cut down by that massed firepower again. Likewise, I tend to use the stratagem that lets a unit pop up 3'' from the enemy with the Acolyte Hybrids so they can pour their hand flamers into them. But I only have five Hybrids and four of them have hand flamers. They do something, and then, they too become targets for enemy fire.

It gets really frustrating that I cannot get this army to deploy and act as a functional force. Obviously I need more units (thanks to my generous club mates, I do now have a Baneblade and Lemun Russ ready to go, and a Atalan Jackels box and Ridgerunner waiting to be built) but until such time as my financial situation improves this is what I am lumbered with.

I feel that I need more infantry but then I am concerned that I'll end up being very static and I want an army that will move about the table capturing objectives and doing something. Genestealers just don't seem worth the effort for what they are and how easily they die. I remember Genestealers being horrendous in previous editions (for Tyranids admittedly) but for GSC they seem like a one shot pony that dies after doing what you wanted it to.

To show you how badly I am doing a few weeks back I played against a CSM army that was two daemon princes, three chaos cultist squads and two summoned daemons (one unit of bloodletters and one unit of pink horrors)... and they tabled me basically. This was an opposing list that I should have just hammered into pink mist and I didn't. We had a great game but boy is it getting frustrating.

I'm throwing this out to you, my audience, what can you suggest that I do to increase my chances of actually winning a game or coming closer to it?

The Ethics and Morality of List Tailoring

When our local war gaming club came to be in the last years of 4th edition we played our games with the knowledge of the mission we would be playing and which codex each player would be using. The idea was that players would tailor their lists to the mission and to what they expected to face from their opponent. It meant that games weren't always the same fixed lists week after week and it made them more interesting. It also helped our local FLGS because players would go out and make new purchases just for the games and opponents they had the following week.

At the time it made sense for us to do this. The problem was that some players were a lot more competitive than others, and some had more disposable income and were able to purchase exactly what they needed to best the opponents. Over time we slowly stopped playing like this but we still, even now, have a couple players who always ask what their opponent will be playing next club night for the purpose of list building. Most of us prefer not to ask unless someone wants to play against a specific army.

Is it right for players to list tailor against their opponent? In my opinion it is fine if both players consent to it. It's their game after all. The problem comes from when one player knows exactly what another player can bring to the table and builds their list specifically to counter that. Obviously this is an unfair way of playing and smacks a little bit of a WAAC (win at all costs) mentality. After all, why else would you do it? You can't do it at a tournament, so why would you do it in a friendly game?

I'd like to know your experiences and thoughts on this? Outside of a tournament would you engage in list tailoring? If you regularly play the same opponent do you find that you do it unconsciously?

The Primaris Question

This is a topic that gets debated a fair bit across the 40K community and it came up last night in a couple of discussions at my local club. There is a concern, and it has been there since 8th edition was released, that the older space marines (and their models) are going to get phased out in favour of the new Primaris marines (and their models).

Part of this stems from the idea that they are the cool new toys and that eventually as new datasheets get added to the Space Marine codex there won't be the room, so something has to go. Will that be the classic space marines of old? A lot of people think that is going to be the case and are understandably unhappy with the idea.

I even put forward the idea, partly in jest, that Codex: Primaris might come about because Games Workshop was unable to copyright the term "space marine" several years ago. Although I was joking, it does have hint of a possibility about it.

However, I personally do not think that the old space marines will go away. At least not anytime soon. Although nice additions to the space marine codex, the Primaris just do not have the options to be as variable as their regular battle brothers. They don't have devastators or dedicated assault marines in the same way. Some will say that the Primaris options are better but I feel that they are lacking the same punch. You'll always need the regular marines and the Primaris will fight well alongside them.

However, this is Games Workshop, and while in recent years they have become better in how they are handling the business, they are still a company out to make money. Forcing everyone to purchase a whole new range wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility but I cannot see it these days. There would be too much of an outcry from space marine players.

So, what are your thoughts?

2019 here we come

2018 has gone the way of all flesh and 2019 is just beginning. I'm going to take a few minutes to talk about my thoughts of 40K in the past year from my experience.

Real life events aside, 2018 saw my love of the game waver somewhat. Not because of the game itself as I still feel that 8th edition is the best the game as ever been but because of the sheer negativity that has been cast at the game by both the online community and sadly, a couple people in my own local club. While I try to be positive it was hard when so many people are putting the game down rather than seeing how good it actually is.

Couple that with my losing interest in the Death Guard army I had collected, I couldn't get motivated like I had in the past. That has thankfully changed with my decision to change to something else. I am really looking forward to getting some games in with my new Genestealer Cult force. Something must be right as I already have my starting force painted - something I never managed to do at all with any previous army I had. Wish me luck.

I'm always trying to get my local club motivated to try different things. In the past during the days of 4th and 5th edition I used to run frequent campaigns which always proved popular. These days we don't have the same players and the newer members don't seem interested for some reason. But I am pleased that we are going to be playing our own version of the Vigilus Campaign. I was quite surprised that there was the interest that I have.

I'm hoping that this slowly returning positivity is going to roll on and build up momentum. I really want 2019 to be a return to the 40K glory days of old.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Going to be back in the new year with some cool new content, battle reports and articles long overdue.

I hope Santa brings you lots of cool Warhammer. :)