Weekend of February 1

Hey folks,

Just a quick update for today. This weekend (weather permitting) I will be over at my local Hobby Town for some Saturday night gaming. In addition to 40K I am hoping to try out Warmachine. I purchased a Cygnar battle group to try out. I will get an article out on the weekend's gaming goodness. Also this weekend heralds the release of the new White Dwarf Weekly and Warhammer Visions magazines. I am reserving judgement on this new direction for the publications as well as the new weekly release schedule. I will hopefully be purchasing both magazines this weekend so I will give my impressions on both new publications in the near future. With the Dwarfs coming soon maybe John can muster up the gumption and do a review for the new book. So long for now and happy gaming, folks!

Hatred and Spite

Dark Elves

Howdy gentle readers. Today we shall take a long overdue look at the Dark Elves. This will be structured much like my look at the High Elves. 

Background

Not a whole lot has changed here since the last book. I would say that things have been mostly expanded upon and fleshed out. There are some interesting bits about some of the early years of the Dark Elves as they slowly descend into murder and debauchery. They have also expanded Morathi's role both at court and in Dark Elf society. One of the major changes is in the handling of male magic users. Previously all male Dark Elves who could use magic were killed out of hand due to the prophecy regarding the Witch King being overthrown by a male wizard. Now we have the addition of  the Doomfire Warlocks whose souls have been cursed to be devoured by Slaanesh. 

Units

So what all changed in the meat of the book? Well lets take a look at the army wide rules to start. First of all we see almost across the board Always Strikes First, secondly we have Murderous Prowess which grants rerolls on 1s To Wound in close combat. Next we have a +1 to casting attempts when using Dark Magic. Last we have across the board Hatred for High Elves (to be expected).
Onto the units. My favorite new unit from the book? That is simple, Sister of Slaughter hands down. 15 points for a WS6, I6, A2, 4+ ward save in close combat unit that ignores rank bonuses and doesn't allow parry saves, and they get a +1 To Hit and To Wound on units that have either a higher Strength or Weapons Skill. Yes please. Doomfire Warlocks are pretty sweet as well. 4+ ward save and a unit of fast cav spell casters are a pretty nasty proposition. Now we slide comfortably into the "pretty cool" category. Here I lump the High Beastmaster, Scourgerunner Chariot, Bloodwrack Medusa/Shrine, Black Ark Fleetmasters, and the Kharibdyss. All of them have features that make them useful and they will make good additions to any Dark Elf army. Lastly I turn to the Bleakswords, an entirely unnecessary addition to an already robust Core selection. As to the already established units what was good in the last book is still pretty good over all in this. Hydras are nasty, Cold One Knights are heavy duty, and the Corsairs are still terrors. Bolt Throwers got a boost with a point drop and the ability to take up to four in a normal army.    

Models

Rarely do I have to say that I prefer the old metal models over the newer plastic incarnations, but the new Executioners/Black Guard kit takes the cake. While I do enjoy the design of the models, the poses are some of the most static and least dynamic I have seen from GW plastics. There is no sense of motion or menace at all in these figures. I understand that they may have been going for a more disciplined or stoic pose for these models based off of their background, but for crying out loud make some of them look like they are moving foreword or bracing for an attack.  I also have to level this complaint against the new Spear/Sword/Crossbow kit. I get that they are going for ease of assembly for large blocks of units, and I like the idea, but again the poses are very static. None of the crossbows are in a firing position. Also another thing I have noticed, at least as far as I can tell, they have removed the female torsos from the above mentioned kit. Whats up with that?

Now contrast these static poses with the rest of the range. The new Witch Elves/Sisters of Slaughter are awesome examples of dynamic posing for plastics. I also would like to add that GW has finally done some female sculpts that actually look respectable. The new Dark Riders/Doomfire Warlocks look pretty nice too and they really did some funkiness with the new horses. The new Hydra/Kharibdyss kit looks pretty awesome. I have read some criticism of the Hydra design, but I think a lot of the unhappiness is due to the way GW has chosen to paint one of the models they have used for display (the green/red one). The new Cauldron of Blood/Bloodwrack Shrine is pretty awesome as well. The Cauldron has got some great detail on it. Lastly we come to the new chariot kit. The design has certainly stirred up some controversy. I certainly like the attempt to make them stand out from other factions, especially the High Elves, in terms of design, but in the end I don't like the mono wheel design. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the model. I really think they could have done a slightly more practical looking design.

The Takeaway

Overall I am pleased with this release, with a few reservations as mentioned above. Another complaint I have to level is the price of a particular kit, I am of course speaking of the Witch Elves. $60 for a ten model kit that is a core choice as well as a rare? What the bloody hell GW?!?! I get that they want to get revenue off of what is a powerful core choice and rare choice in the form of the Sisters of Slaughter, but with the current emphasis on large core blocks this price is utterly absurd. I have a small but growing Dark Elf army. Thankfully I have been able to get a hold of some of the old metal Black Guard, Executioners, and Witch Elves. I have enough of each unit (15) so that adding the plastics should only take a box each to flesh out the units to playable levels. I definitely want to get them on the table again and give the new book a proper try. Hopefully that will be sometime soon. Until next time, be well and happy gaming!

Rumors

Hey folks, before I begin this article I just want to say one thing: I suck at updating and posting, I know. With that out of the way I want to talk about something I don't normally weigh in on, internet rumors. We all look at them on various sites such as Bell of Lost Souls or Faeit 212 (my personal preference) and often times we get some pretty outlandish rumors filtering through from various sources. Recently Natfka has been reporting some strange rumblings about the future of GW as a company and the direction Warhammer Fantasy will be taking in the future. Let me state for the record that I have nothing but respect for Natfka. He reports the rumors and clearly states what each article is about. He doesn't pretend to report the rumors he posts as the gospel truth and corrects himself where applicable. What set  me off on this rant was what I saw today regarding changes to GW stores, mainly mass closures, in Europe, and the elimination of support for no less than FOUR Warhammer Fantasy armies. Check out the site and read the rumors and comments for yourself http://natfka.blogspot.com/ .

Now I am certainly no financial expert nor do I have any intimate knowledge of how corporate GW works. I am simply a fan who has been in the hobby for over a decade and who has had the pleasure of visiting hobby stores outside the U.S. What strikes me as bogus about this whole rumor set is the incredibly drastic nature of it. I could see possibly closing a few stores, but to eliminate your company stores on in not one, but two major European markets? I find this to be highly suspect. In July of 2013 I had the pleasure of visiting several GW stores in France, namely GW Clermont-Ferrand and GW Paris 15e. I also follow both of these stores on Facebook. GW has a pretty heavy foot print in Paris with at least four or five stores across the city. I went to both French stores on "off" days (not the weekend) and both stores had people in to game and paint as well as customers making purchases. I know that this is in no way representative of what their profits are, but it wasn't like the stores were dead. I can't imagine that Germany is any different. I am sure we all have seen the GW financial report that came out a few days ago. I think a lot of these rumors stem from people who are either trolling or hate GW for whatever reason yet still enjoy frequenting forums about the hobby. What I do find more plausible is what some have suggested, and that is a merger in regional management into a centralized management in the UK for Europe.

Regarding the rumors about Fantasy I really can't say much other than I find them very hard to believe. Eliminating support for four armies is a radical move to say the least. A lot of rumors and discussions have been floating around the web about the direction Fantasy will take. Some have said that a new edition is in the works that will include all of the army lists in the core rule book while others have said that armies with "similar themes" will be rolled into single books (Empire and Bretonia into a single book for example). I find all of this talk of merger a bit hard to swallow. In the case of The Empire and Bretonia you have two very culturally and technologically different civilizations with The Empire being a late medieval/renaissance Holy Roman Empire and Bretonia being very clearly feudal France. The same can be said for the three Elven factions and the undead as well. The only thing I could see making sense for a merger would be the factions of Chaos. If they rolled Warriors, Daemons, and Beastmen into one giant book I wouldn't feel so bad about dropping $50.

So where am I going with all of this rambling?

 Well I don't really know. I guess my point is to be careful what you believe on the web.

Been a while....

Howdy folks,

Well it has been a while but I am back to do some blogging again. Since I last wrote I have been there has been a lot going on, both hobby wise and in my everyday life. Over the summer I had the opportunity to go back to France to do some archaeological work. Not only was this an amazing time with some great excavations, but I was lucky enough to scope out some hobby goodness while in Clermont-Ferrand and Paris. Needless to say I will be reporting my findings in a future article. I also have moved into a new apartment/condo/thing and I have a pretty awesome set up for hobby activities now. In the realm of hobby a lot of great stuff has come out over the past few months. The biggest things for me have been the new Space Marines and the Dark Elves. With the new Marines I have decided to do a small force of a codex related chapter, the Iron Snakes in this case. I will be doing a review for the Marines and Dark Elves and new models like I have done for the High Elves and Dark Angels in the past. I hope to have some cool stuff for you folks in the near future, that is if I can get off my busy yet lazy ass to write!

Happy gaming folks!

I will leave you with some photos of what I have been up to lately:

And here is a photo from one of the sites I got to excavate in France.

The above photo shows part of a Medieval house. 

Painters block

So I was in a bit of a hobby slump so I had to get creative on how to get out of it. So after being all inspired with chaos and getting in to the shop to game with people, i got busy and couldnt game anymore and i am saving my monies for a nice new comp rig so no new models so I wasnt inspired anymore. I wasnt painting, i wasnt working on army builds, i wasnt drawing or reading any BL books I wasnt doing anything GW related, I wasnt even posting to you good readers.

Well I moved into a new apartment, really effing close to GW atlanta. so i decided to inspire myself.

almost everything

And before you ask, yes I did, new place plenty of room, no roommate, girlfriend or mom to make this awkward so i went for it. and you know what it worked.

My favorite part of warhammer has always been being the field general and just setting up my troops in formations. So here I took every army I have and almost every model i have and put it out there, so this is a conglomeration of high elves, dwarves, skaven, lizardmen, tomb kings and chaos warriors. So i deployed these as one big ass army, i would say around 10k points, probably more. all the cav on one flank, all the monsters on the other. skirmishers in the front, heavies behind, solid blocks behind and big blocks in the rear, with missles and heavy weapons generally on the flanks with characters scattered around. yes yes yes this would not be a good strategy for a gw battle but i like it because of the idea that this is how an army would fight if this stuff was real. I am a bit light on cav and missiles.

so this is almost everything, i have the old imrik on dragon model somewhere, some saurus cav also mia, an ushabti, tomb scropion, and a salamander that need to be made, plus a few other odds and ends that were too broke to make it on the field. But i enjoyed the exercise, it really allowed me to review my forces, and notice what i need to buy, some armies are character heavy or lite, others are combat heavy others are basically only multiwound. But it worked this got me at least momentarily inspired. I had a few boxes laying around i hadnt built, which is highly highly unusual for me, built 16 marauders and 14 skinks in a few hours(pictures dont have these new guys), went through and clipped the bits from the boxes i have bought the last couple months; and i also repaired a lot of my casualties from travel over the years, so overall i think this was good for me.

if anybody wants I will kinda go through everything i have here, not points but just listing, here is what made it in this row, and why i put this unit with this group and not another. I will make it a post, maybe start with general of list of what is where, then make a posting on each "area" of my army and the whys associated. I know the blog is a bit weak right now, but I dont have internet at my apt so i cant post there, and bob has wandered over to france for a while. so just let me know if anybody wants to know more on my overall collection. and also i really want to play a "empty ALL the boxes" battle. like i said new apartment so i can do whateva i want, maybe bob and i will duke it out before he heads back for his 12th or something year of college (a bit of an exaggeration but he is getting kinda van Wilder).

A Trip Down Memory Lane

 Hey folks, Bob here with some random rumblings for you. Recent internet issues have set me back a bit on writing so I am going to have to play catch up over the next week or so. Anyways the theme of today's post is some random stuff I found while at my folk's place. I recently did some rearranging of the living room hobby bookshelf and ran across some gems I had forgotten about as well as a surprise unopened kit from many moons ago. Before I begin in ernest I leave you with the following image and disclaimer as to the content and nature of this article. Enjoy!

Me in 40 or so years

WARNING!!! Random thoughts and observations incoming! Be prepared for talk of "back in the day" and other such rose tinted mutterings. Reader discretion is advised. Proceed at your own risk.

 Alright gentle reader, now that the disclaimer is out of the way I will now get to the crux of the article. So the random kit I found was an unopened box of Eldar Guardians from way back in 3rd edition. Check out the price on this sucker, $30 for a box of sixteen models.Now before you roll your eyes and go "great, another rant about GW price policies and how evil they are" stick with me. Everyone and their brother hates how much it costs to buy GW kits these days. "Back in the day" you could get a box of almost double the number of models for less than today. That isn't what was totally surprising to me. What was surprising to me was a different little sticker on the box.

Ah the good ole days of $30 kits that were actually kind of worth it

 Check out this little dude. A batch code number. What is this you may be asking? Well it is an obvious indicator of quality control, or at least an attempt at it. Now don't get me wrong, GW has always been great to me about replacing messed up models and stuff, but I really wish they would do a bit more quality control on the front end (couch cough Finecast cough cough).

Holy quality control Batman!

Okay so first out of the book shelf is a little book called "The Empire at War". It is a purely background supliment that covers five major battles in the history of the Empire from the first Battle of Blackfire Pass through the Battle of the Gates of Kislev and the Battle of Hel Fenn. It is written from the perspective of a retired Empire Marshal who wants to recount five types of battles and the tactics behind them for future generations. Each battle in the book centers around a theme such as encirclement, firepower, ambush etc. It is a great background book filled with rich descriptions of the battles and famous regiments that participated in them. The illustrations are great and highlight the actual movements of regiments during the battles phase by phase.

I really wish GW would do more books like this. They are great resources for ideas for campaigns or themes for armies. I also love reading more about pivotal battles in the history of the Warhammer world and the 40k universe.

Next up is a cool little book called "Xenology". This is a great book written from the perspective of an Ordo Xenos operative investigating a distress signal from an Inquisition research facility and reading some of the reports of the researchers as he goes along. I think the most important aspect of the book is that it gives us a deeper look at the often mentioned but never shown Hrud as well as a few other previously unmentioned/not shown xenos species. It is full of cool dissection drawings and interesting pieces of lore about each major species.

The last book I have for you today is my favorite of the lot. It is "The Sabbat Worlds Crusade" and it is of course based on the best selling Gaunt's Ghosts series from the Black Library. If anyone is looking for a series to start then by all means pick up the first Ghosts omnibus and the Eisenhorn trilogy, both by Dan Abnett. He is by far the best author writing for BL and his books never disappoint. This book focuses on the beginning of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade which took place in the mid 700s M41. What I love most about the Ghosts series is that it focuses on the Guard and has them fighting Chaos foot soldiers. It presents an Imperial war against Chaos how it would most likely be in terms of actual lore and background. Traitor Marines play a very small role compared to the massed ranks of human Chaos followers. The Crusade book gives the reader a glimpse at events eluded to in the Ghosts books during the pivotal early years of the Crusade and goes up to the events of the first four or five Ghosts books. I would LOVE to see an updated version of this book that brings events up to the most current Ghosts book. The action in the current Ghosts books focuses on the regiment and the actions of a single crusade army group while there are three other active fronts in the war.

Well that didn't turn out to rant laden or nostalgia heavy after all. Next up on the to do list of articles will likely be one of several things, a look at the new Eldar codex, what I have been building/painting lately, or a discussion about some different 28mm models from some emerging companies. I will do my level best to get another article out by Wednesday the 26 of June. I will be heading to France on the 27th for several weeks to do some archaeology and have some fun. I plan to go to at least one GW store while I am over there, most likely in Paris but possibly in the city of Clermont-Ferrand near where I will be working and living. So stay tuned and as always happy gaming!

Was it Worth It?

Today I would like to talk a little about painting. The question I would like to raise is how much painting is worth it? We see pics all of the time of the Heavy Metal Team and others who obviously spend hours/days painting every single model. I ask is it worth spending that much time on every model for the everyday guy.

 My first instinct is no, I might spend a lot of time painting certain models like this guy. but there is no way i am spending nearly that much time on non character models. I might spend an hour or two on average model, that is more than enough time to clean assemble, base coat and get several good layers and maybe a layer of wash, or a highlight. thats it.

 For me I am more interested in playing the game than making sure my models look amazing. So there is no way you can convince me to spend more time on my normal troops. Even playing against other people in an actual GW store has done very little to boost my desire on spending more time on said models.

 I love how this model turned out and would gladly do it again. In fact I will be spending more time on this lovely guy. and i think it is worth it but like i said minimal effort on the bulk of the army. I want to get my army ready to fight, not ready to go on parade.

 so for me its all about a judicial use of my time and effort. I have limited time and a limited care-ability. I will spend more time on armies and units that i play a lot. if i just get a model or unit or army because i felt like it I wont paint that much of it.

so in the end it depends. I understand the appeal of making a beautiful model, but its not for me. I would love to hear your opinions on to paint or not to paint; admit it you knew that was coming.