Warhammer World New Year's Open Day - All The Gossip

Without further ado, I'm going straight into the assorted pictures and nonsense I managed to pick up at the Open Day. There's no real revelations here - there's prettier pictures over at the Warhammer Community site - this is more about what I saw and what I thought about it.

Lets start off with Blood Bowl. The new stuff here was some additional Goblin Secret Weapons, including one with wings, one with a pogo stick, and an 'Ooligan with a bunch of noise making gizmos. These are the sort of thing I expect my darling wife may pick up at some point...

There's also an alternative troll sculpt if that's your thing. This one seems to be wielding someone's leg, which is pretty cool. Some extra variety is really nice to see.

Helmut Wulf and Karla von Kill had already been announced (and can in fact be ordered from Forge World now) but it was great to see them in the flesh. Karla is a bad-ass female character whose background is simply that she's a great Blood Bowl player. That she's sensibly dressed is a relief. Meanwhile, Helmut Wulf is a lunatic with a chainsaw. What could possibly go wrong?

On to Necromunda. If this figure looks familiar, that's because it was formerly available for the now discontinued Forge World Renegades range. The discontinuation inconveniently made it a little harder to get a Rogue Wyrd for your campaign, so he's getting a repackage and rerelease into Necromunda. Which is kind of sweet.

The Am-bot is a robot designed to look like an Ambull that any gang can hire. It looks like either there's more than one way to build the kit or more than one version going to be available. I love these to death, they're great.

Wait a second. A Blackstone Fortress expansion . . . called "The Dreaded Ambull". Surely not?

Apparently so! The Ambull is back in 40K as a monster in Blackstone Fortress. I cannot foresee a circumstance where I won't be buying this. It's amazing!

They also had an early copy of "Urban Conquest", a new campaign system for 40K. I really like this, it looks well thought through and rather clever.

You make a "map" of the city by dealing cards into a five by five grid in a wallet. It's designed for four players, with different starting map layout options. Each "campaign" turn can be after any number of games, including none if you've missed a round! You rank the players depending on how they did, then they do stuff like capture territory, select strategies for the next round of games, and accumulate their victory points.

This would be a lot of book keeping if there weren't reusable stickers supplied with the back so you can just fold the map up and get it out next time, with all the player positions and stratagems all neatly laid out. The designer also said it should work quite well for Kill Team. I'm not sure if it's designed for it or if it would need a little modding.

The pack is designed to handle the usual campaign woes of people missing weeks, or getting a drubbing and ending up near the bottom - it's intended to be quite forgiving of that and give people who are significantly behind ways to catch up. It's not just a case of winning the most games - if you outmanoeuvre the other players on the campaign board, you might win the campaign without having won as many games as them.
 

There were a bundle of other releases - this was a Mechanicus who'll be in a Kill Team expansion box. I'm assuming there will be 40K rules for them as well. There was also a ton of Genestealer Cult stuff, an announcement of a Ghoul vs Skaven box, and various other things I didn't have time to find and photograph.

The goblins, or "Gloomspite" were also out in force. Jes Bickham has been making an all troll / Troggoth army. I'm resisting things one for now - I had a few good talks about what I'm looking to get out of Age of Sigmar and I'm getting slightly more concrete thoughts about what I want to collect. I'm going to keep those to myself for now.

I'm pleased to say that a weekend away seeing amazing hobby stuff, and hanging out with awesome people has really ignited my hobby keen. I can't wait to get underway with various projects, and then tell you about them on here.

A Review of Codex: Imperial Agents

One of our focus group gets to work

The new Imperial Agents Codex came out at the weekend, and as a massive nerd when it comes to obscure little detachments and the weird corners of the Imperium, I was super excited. I've inhaled the entire thing through my eyes, so will now regurgitate some excellent and useful facts and opinions for my dedicated readers.

TLDR Version

This book is quite good and has plenty of cool stuff in it. Narrative gamers will have plenty of awesome ideas to plunder. More competitive gamers will find several old favourites thoroughly nerfed, and only a few 'good' options amid some really weird stuff. Some of the rules stuff is a bit unclear and needs a little clarification.

Cult Mechanicus

Broadly, this gives the Astra Militarum Tech Priest the Cult Mechanicus faction, a few more equipment options, and lets them have "Canticles of the Omnissiah" rule from the Cult Mechanicus Codex.

It doesn't help with Guard formations that have to include a Tech Priest, which is where most of them are likely to turn up in an army, but if you are not putting them in a Astra Militarum formation, use this to buy them, as you get some nice free rules.

Law of Unintended Forge World
Trojan Support Vehicles are a Dedicated Transport for Tech Priest Enginseers. If they are allowed for Cult Mechanicus Enginseers, that adds an extra unit with Canticles for cheap.

Aeronautica Imperialis

I want to like this so much, but it's really not very good at all.

So, you get a Fast Attack slot with an optional HQ, with the Aeronautica Imperialis faction. The only options available are Valkyries and an Officer of the Fleet as an Independent Character. The latter is amazing, the former is rubbish.

The problem is Death from the Skies. That supplement has a detachment for Valkyries that grants them Objective Secured in hover mode, which is spectacularly better than getting to reroll some reserve roles. Getting to hide away your Officer of the Fleet as an Independent Character rather than part of a Command Squad is great - but not at the cost of your flight wings losing Objective Secured.

Law of Unintended Forge World
This will be where this detachment could shine. If Forge World put out a PDF listing any number of it's fighters or bombers as Fast Attack options for the Aeronautica Imperialis faction, then they gain nothing from the Death from the Skies detachment and something nice from the Imperial Agents detachment, and you can take your improved Officer of the Fleet.

Adeptus Astra Telepathica

This is where good stuff happens. Primaris Psyker is more or less the same. The Astropath from the Astra Militarum Codex gets a nice tasty upgrade, getting an option of a second psychic level, and becoming an Independent Character. As cherry on the cake, the HQ option then gets bonuses if near a unit of Wyrdvane Psykers.
From a competitive standpoint, this leaves you with an excellent source of Telepathy Psykers for cheap. From a narrative gamer stand point, I really want more Astropath figures...

Adepta Sororitas

Most of the most recent Sisters of Battle Codex, with tweaks. Mostly, it has an impact on how Inquisitorial Warbands work later. The Ministorum Delegation is a fun little unit that lets you have a Priest, with a pick of optional miscreants to accompany them.
Arco-Flagellants, Crusaders and Death Cult Assassins are all now Adepta Sororitas units with tiny minimum unit sizes (the size, incidentally, of a blister from GW). You can then package them up with a Priest or Uriah Jacobus to form an Ecclesiarchy Battle Conclave, like the old unit.

Special Mention goes to the Mace of Valaan, which gains Fleshbane and Armourbane when wielded near a model with the Daemon special rule. Over in Inquisition-land, a Daemonhost can be put in a unit with a Priest, who can take said Mace... Do not take this combination when playing with people you want to stay friends with.

Deathwatch

Simple squad of Deathwatch, included as relevant for future options. Mini Kill Team detachment for the casual buyer who doesn't have the Deathwatch Codex - which has much better synergies. This stripped back approach may be worthwhile for people wanting a small Deathwatch investment though...

Grey Knights

See Deathwatch. Just a little bigger - you get a Troops or Fast Attack unit as Compulsory with an Optional Heavy Support. The key thing here is that you're not restricted to the units included in the book. They just have to have the Grey Knight faction. So, you can still have Purgation Squads, Stormravens and so on if you want (although I've not looked at which ones get good synergies with the detachment itself).

Legion of the Damned

Those whacky invulnerable saving, deep striking, cover ignoring ghostly Space Marines are back again. They don't have the Relics from the LotD book, but do get a command ability in their detachment to choose to automatically pass or fail reserve rolls. I'm not sure if that was there before or not.

They remain the Legion of the Damned. They're pretty good. They do a job. I kind of want some.

Officio Assassinorum

See Deathwatch, except it's basically every rule from the Assassins Codex. Including the formation.

The Inquisition

... what a show!

So, this is where it all gets a bit weird. There's quite a big overhaul, and this removes almost all the broken "competitive" combos people were using the Inquisition for before. Servo Skulls are gone, warbands are no longer a Codex entry, and you can get Acolytes, Jokaero and Daemonhosts.

You now get a Detachment with one Inquisitor and 3 Elites choices, and a Formation called an Inquisitorial Henchmen Warband.
And this is where it gets really weird.

Acolytes get Dedicated Transports from the Sororitas (Rhino), Aeronautica (Valkyrie) and Grey Knights (Land Raider variants). This is fine, despite people's panicking (p120, main rulebook - Dedicated Transports gain the faction of the unit they are picked with).

What is confusing is whether the non faction Dedicated Transports can use the vehicle upgrades from the Inquisition list (psybolt ammunition, etc) - current strict reading is "no", but that may not have been intent.

There's a light upgrade to Inquisitorial Rhinos as they theoretically gain Shield of Faith. I'm also not sure if it's intentional that Ordo Malleus Inquisitors can use Malefic Daemonology as well as Sanctic, as the other Inquisitors can't, and the wording for each is "Inquisitors".

The Henchmen Warband has some changes. You can't go all Death Cult Assassins in a Land Raider - but you can still have quite a lot of Death Cult Assassins in a Land Raider, with a few ablative acolyte wounds, a guy who can repair the Land Raider, and an Astropath to try for Invisibility. This is on top of the light comedy of the Priest with Mace of Valaan and a Daemonhost.

There's also a side option that you can take of a unit of Sisters, Deathwatch or Grey Knights to be a buddy for your Inquisitor. I already have some plans for this from a narrative point of view.

Final Thoughts

I really like this book - the updates clear out some old tired combos and give us new ones from a competitive standpoint. From a narrative stand point, we can achieve more or less the same thing as we could before with Inquisitors. We just have to go about it in slightly different ways.

I've actually found that I was stalling on inspiration for a lot of my Inquisition stuff because there was so much choice. With the formation structure a little more ordered, I'm finding myself thinking up an assortment of ideas I really want to try out. I'm really pleased with this, and am looking forward to using it!

WarhammerFest: Cool stuff I saw, and summary

Well, WarhammerFest is pretty far in the past now. I should stop waffling on about it and finish up using the photos I took there.

This is a big Forge World display board - it's not necessarily "new" as such - sections of it are from the old attack on Calth board they did for the last event.

I love these civilian vehicle conversions. They're really characterful and the sort of thing I adore as I feel they add depth to the setting..

All in all, I really enjoyed WarhammerFest. It was an excellent use of a weekend, and I got to catch up with many awesome people I like and have time for. Staying on site was an excellent choice. I felt like I was less organised with what I wanted to do this year - I missed a couple of demonstration pods and similar I wanted to at least have a look at.

Glamour shot of shipping crates. I may be a little excited about GW's latest shipping container option, but need to assemble and paint some more stuff before I'm allowed to get them. :)

I mean, who doesn't love a good shipping container?

This was a board from the Warhammer World team, using some of their models and armies.
 

This excellent Coteaz is painted by James Karch.

So with that, I'll sign off on WarhammerFest until the next one.

WarhammerFest: Specialist Games - Blood Bowl, Lord of the Rings and Adeptus Titanicus

The news is all over the Internet, and the Blood Bowl Facebook page is definitely a thing. WarhammerFest (and later the Blood Bowl tournament at Warhammer World) had a load of information about what's coming for Blood Bowl.

There was tons of cool stuff on display. This was the beautifully modelled Orc board and dug out. They made up the full model, then took an image of that to use as the board - it wasn't computer generated!

These fancy templates should reassure old hands that not much is going to change rules wise. Questions asked of the guys working ont has also indicated that they're taking an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to much of the rules.

Here's a mock up of the final pitch - with an Orc board on one side and a human pitch on the other. There's a potential in the future for more themed boards if there appears to be interest.

Dice, cards, rulebook! The quality of all this stuff is already looking pretty amazing.

The stat cards will look pretty familiar to anyone who's played the game before.

Some people were freaking out a little at the first picture of the board and thought it didn't have squares - it does, but they're subtle - and obviously, the physical board they took the pictures from didn't have the markings. (This picture also shows the human board side.)

Again, the dug outs look familiar to those who played the last version of Blood Bowl. It's not going to be out a while yet, but it's pretty exciting already!

In other news, it looks like after Blood Bowl, we'll be getting Adeptus Titanicus. Going back to the original game set in the Horus Heresy, they've already taken the CAD for the Warlord and scaled it down - and the guy working on stuff like the Death Roller is also working on titans, I'm guessing the Reaver and Warhound, which pre-date Forge World doing CAD.

The scale is also likely to change slightly - probably to around 8mm. This is mostly on the grounds of looking at a few different scales and what titans look most awesome in...

This is a way out - it's after Blood Bowl, probably by at least a year - I'd say back end of 2017 is optimistic, possibly a 2018 release.

Also being shown at Warhammer Fest was some new Lord of the Rings stuff. That isn't really my thing, but I thought I'd show this "Fall of the Necromancer" table - I think it was actually borrowed from someone.

There's definitely a whole lot more coming for Lord of the Rings - there's various pictures of the new resin models doing the rounds, and there's also been a bunch of old metal models re-released as well.

WarhammerFest: Forge World Seminar - some thoughts

So, as promised, here's my thoughts on the Forge World seminar from WarhammerFest. This isn't my usual full write up - go to the Battle Bunnies for all that stuff.

I'm super pleased to see a Fimir model getting done - I'm a big fan of them, and I'm totally up for getting one.

The new Imperial Armour book is Tau attacking a Mechanicus world before the Red Scorpions and a Knight House rock up to save the day. It turns out Culln got himself a bit of a scratch, though... What I'm really excited about, though, is the possibility of some rules to allow 30K Mechanicum units in 40K games.

The updated Horus Heresy Space Marine army list is on the "to buy" list - I've been meaning to get into Heresy for a long while now.

As you might expect, there was a whole bunch of Mechanicum / Mechanicus units, like this flying automata that is clearly a Blight Drone precursor.

Conversion kits for the Skitarii! More awesome things I'd really quite like.

The archaic helmets are also pretty tempting here, too. I already love the Mechanicus look, and Forge World take awesome and turn it up a notch!

Oh, and something, something, Thousand Sons versus Space Wolves. Sisters of Silence, though...

So really, if we're being honest, Fimir, Mechanicus, and waiting on an updated book before starting a Horus Heresy Space Marine Legion...

Warhammer 40,000 Open Day: Some Golden Space Marines Demon Entries

I have actually been painting things! They aren't quite finished yet, though, and I still have yet more pictures from the Warhammer 40,000 Open Day. This time around, it's from the Sunday, where I had a run down the Golden Demon cabinets to get some photos of some of the entries.

This is an awesome Blood Angels Terminator that was in the staff competition, painted by Lizzie from the Peterborough store. We'd chatted a bit in the queue to get in before it opened - all the Seminar tickets had run out on the Saturday, so I got up early to make sure I got some on the Sunday. My wife had sensibly decided she liked a lie in more than going to seminars...

One of the squad entries - I really like the massively contrasted red to white style - does anyone know what's it's called. I think it looks like a certain type of comic book, but I don't know if there's a name for it.

Here's an Ultramarines entry to the squad category.

Here's another Ultramarines squad - sadly let down by my awful lack of photography skills.

The vehicles section was heavily contested. This is, I think, the Warhammer World exclusive Land Raider model.

I love the brass they're putting on Space Wolf Dreadnoughts at the moment - it goes really well with the grey blue.

A Chaplain Dreadnought. Black is a hard colour, and they've done some interesting weathering on the base, too.

I have a lot of time for this sort of sea green colour.

Someone is showing off how posable the Contemptor kit is... Again, my awful photography letting down a well done model.

Here, the Contemptor's hand is resting on the scenery.

More Contemptors! This one with a lot of hand painted battle damage. The Contemptor is a good model for painters to show off their skills, so you see a lot of them in Golden Demon.

Fellblades are also popular - and they have big areas to show off things like weathering.

Another well painted Fellblade.

Murderfang, bless his cotton socks. I do like his skull mask.

Spartan Assault tank, and taking the opportunity to go White Scars and show off how well you can do white, which is a difficult colour to do.

On to the Young Blood category. These are all done by under 16s.

The skill with which some of these are put together is breathtaking considering the age of the competitors!

I certainly couldn't have freehanded the name as well as that at that age - I'd be hard pressed to do so now!

There's a lot of really good entries!

Even the "OKish" entries like this one are still really good. Very impressed with the standard of entry by the younger painters.

This diorama was in the open category. I really like it.

It shows a group of Dark Angels attacking some chaos forces.

There's tons of little details, like this chap with a censor near the bottom, coming of a door near a pool of stagnant water.

All the while, his colleague is racing ahead, probably to stop some evil ritual.

However, this was the winning Open entry. It's amazingly done. If my photography was up to scratch, you'd be able to see that there's little red reflections in things like the assault cannon barrels where the other Marines reflections would be. A really worthy winner, and worth finding a good picture of!