Not-40K Friday: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 5th Edition is Coming

 

Alright, well, I admit that was unexpected. I haven't followed 4E that closely as I have a low-mileage set of 2E books sitting on the shelf and that's what I figured I would run for any campaign likely to develop in the near future. I did look at it a little in 2023 when I ran my one-shot game. As I began picking up their 40K RPG books and AoS books I also looked it over just to see how Cubicle 7 was managing their various product lines. It's only been out around 7 years AND they just launched an Old World RPG which is an alternate fantasy option so I didn't think they would be redoing their main Warhammer game but there it is.

Now I haven't run or played a ton of WFRP since the 80's & 90's - and even then it was always behind D&D - but I've always felt like it's underrated by RPG players in general, and especially as a sort-of traditional fantasy setting RPG that feels very different than D&D. By that I mean it's recognizably medieval European style fantasy with knights and elves and dwarves and wizards but it plays about as differently from D&D as you can imagine while still keeping those trappings. It can be a tough transition for someone who has played D&D to walk into this game and have their expectations rearranged. I think the part of the OSR crowd that's looking for lower-powered D&D could like this - if they aren't completely caught up in classes and levels for mechanics. 

This new edition is launching next year so it's the 40th anniversary edition which is ... weird. Yet another game that I remember being the hot new thing hitting a milestone like that. I am very happy  it's still being produced and supported, especially in a form that looks a lot like the original. 

This is the cover on my original book

I do wonder, business-wise, about launching a new edition of the mainline Warhammer RPG at almost the same time as launching a new separate line of Warhammer RPG. I'm thinking most people are only going to play or run one or the other but I suppose enough people will buy both to make it worthwhile. Also this one is all about backwards-compatibility - a notable trend of late - as the game is in that fairly common place of having been out long enough to have produced a shelf's worth of supplementary books that update or flat-out replace sections of the core rulebook so why not go ahead and integrate that material into the core. It's an admirable attempt and I like it but I also know there will inevitably be some compromises. "Now that the new core rules include systems from the Magic book, we can revise the magic book too and add more spells and items and optional stuff." It's just the way things work with RPGs.

Reading about this has me thinking I ought to do something with it. We are close to finishing up the Temple campaign so maybe a short run in the Warhammer world is a possibility. I had really been thinking about an Old World RPG test run but maybe giving original recipe WFRP another go is a good option too.

40K Friday: 40K, One Page Rules, The Old World, and Kings of War

 

One of the downsides of playing a Games Workshop game long-term is that they drop models and units out of the game - often without any kind of immediate replacement. This can wear on one's soul. Between buying it, building it, painting it, and playing with it - possibly for years - many of us get attached to these tiny figures and it feels bad to see a kind of forced retirement of something like that.  Blaster has just about burned out on the game after being into it for years. He is really displeased with the current state and edition of 40K and the whole 3-year cycle of book-buying and the regular replacement of perfectly good models. I get it and I've been doing this long enough that a lot of that bothers me less but it has been piling up for me too this year as a big chunk of the classic Blood Angels army was culled in the latest Codex and it really took the wind out of my sails for a while.

As just one example back in 2nd edition when dreadnoughts were still metal the BA's got a special dread with a unique combination of weapons called the Furioso. This continued into 3rd. Then somewhere in 4th or 5th we got a brand new plastic kit that made 3 different dreadnought versions unique to the chapter:

This kit made the Furioso, the Death Company dread, and the Librarian dreadnought - all unique units. There was some weapon interchangeability with the Furioso and the DC dread but but you still had the options of dual fists, dual claws, or mixing in a frag cannon with one of those and then the librarian dread had his own special gear and look.

These were all great and the librarian dread was very unusual in being a vehicle that could lead your army since it was a character. 

If you can't tell I love this kit and have built it multiple times. In fact I still have a couple that need to be built which didn't help my feelings on this.

Well, fast forward to the 10th edition Blood Angels release and these options are now gone from the codex. The librarian dread is no more. We do still have the standard space marine 'dex options for the Redemptor, Brutalis, and Balistus - fine. The Furioso is gone - if you paint your Brutalis red it looks the part at least but no special rules or equipment apply anymore. The Death Company dreadnought is still a separate datasheet at least but it's not all that different from the regular Brutalis and neither one has a frag cannon option so that's gone too. For this particular edition we do have the index rules for these things and so we can still make it work but it's debatable if and what kind of Legends rules these will have for the next edition and going forward. So it's going to be swimming upstream to use any of these models in 11th.

Dealing with this for years means you expect it here and there but when it hits a big chunk of a favorite army it hits harder. You might start looking for a refuge from the constant grind. I dug back into One Page Rules looking for relief. It's there, to a degree. Grimdark Future (the 40k type module) has rules for many obsolete 40K units that are perfectly valid and they even divided "Battle Brothers" (firstborn marines) from "Prime Brothers" (primaris marines) and then each of those has subdivsions into the various specialist chapters like "Blood Brothers", "Wolf Brothers", "Dark Brothers" etc. Under the Blood Brothers list there are options for all of these dreadnoughts including the psyker option. So there are ways to keep them on the table within a modern set of rules. This is honestly pretty gratifying to see.

The other option of course is to just play an old version of the game. I have kept all of my old rules and codexes from each edition so I have the full range of options. I do like this idea but I can also tell you "edition bleed" is real so trying to play an old version at times and the current version at other times ... it's more challenging than you think as rules from various editions collide in your head. There is defintely some nostalgia at play here too and if I can get one of the crew to try it I will make the attempt but I suspect using a different set of rules - like OPR - is probably smarter in the long run.

The only downside to OPR is that they change up the rules and the army lists once per year. They did make the promise that it will only be once per year - unlike GW's quarterly (or more) rules updates - but it still does change once per year, which can cause some upset when your army gets nerfed. I still think it's easier to live with than GW's current approach. 

A similar thing happened with fantasy. When GW killed off classic Warhammer Fantasy after 8th edition and replaced it with Age of Sigmar we were left with a completely different setting, the outright elimination of many armies and dramatic changes to others, and a completely different approach to the rules. If you had been playing Warhammer for 20 or 30 years when it happened there just was not much left that looked very familiar. Along comes Kings of War and, well, look at this - square bases, large blocks of units, similar maneuvering, and a lot of very familiar-looking armies. It was an incredibly welcoming refuge for orphaned Warhammer players. It was also willing to make some interesting changes such as eliminating individual model removal and cutting way back on magic items and spells. It was a little less flavorful in some ways but it worked really well and felt like your units were doing the bulk of the work, not your tooled-up level 4 wizard with Von Carsten's Ring riding on a dragon. Hey, nobody said Warhammer didn't have a few problems - but this was a well-done approach that respected what had come before. 

The only negative thing I will say is that over the course of 3rd edition and now going into 4th edition (coming in December) is that Mantic is really looking to promote their own setting and put it out in front rather than being a simple shelter for old Warhammer players. If I'm being honest I don't care at all about their World of Pannithor - not the background, not the armies unique to it, and not the fiction they are publishing. I get it, they are trying to build their own thing and I certainly understand that from the company's point of view, but there is no lack of settings in the fantasy genre and for miniatures I am anchored pretty deeply into the Old World of Warhammer.

Now when a beloved game goes out of print there are usually some fan driven options as well  - like OPR -  and they can be really good. Heck I played some NetEpic 25+ years ago when GW dropped support for Space Marine/Titan Legions and it is still around today! Warhammer had Ninth Age and Warhammer Renaissance seems to have some fans but GW eventually did the unthinkable and brought it back!

They even added a new army this year - Cathay!

Warhammer: The Old World is a truly unexpected gem. They brought back the old setting (pretty much), the old armies (pretty much), and even the old miniatures line (pretty much). The rules are new and are a really nice mix of things from old editions with some new ideas mixed in and I think most people were genuinely shocked to see this kind of product line coming from this company. It was a real effort to bring something back to life, not a token Specialist Games one-off book. It's just amazing and it absolutely kneecapped my interest in Age of Sigmar and even some of my feelings for Kings of War. 

I have a few armies for Sigmar that I will keep for Sigmar, either because they are unique to that game or because I am not going to rebase yet another army. These are my Stormcast Eternals, my Fyreslayers, my Seraphon on team law, then my Chaos Warriors and all of my chaos daemons for team chaos. The rest, including Undead, Beastmen, and some of the Chaos Warrior stuff are being retasked for Old World and I am pretty happy about going square-based with these. 

Who thought we would see these guys hitting tables again as part of a new army?!

So yes, as the years and the editions roll by it is possible to find refuge from much of the chaos. I'm still going to play 40K, but I'm also going to play some OPR. I will pay some attention to Age of Sigmar and Kings of War but I am heavily leaning in to Old World, and I am happy to have the options - some really good options.

Checking in on Warhammer+ with Kill Lupercal

 It's been awhile since I mentioned Warhammer+. GW's subscription service that includes a TVshow/animation app and a separate set of game tool type apps. Frankly, not much has changed. There are a few more animations than there were in 2022 - but not that many. In 2022 I noted there were 10 episodes of Hammer and Bolter, for example. That's their traditional animation series about various random topics. Some of them are really good. Now, 3 1/2 years later there are 16. Not exactly prolific there are they? There are some more lore shows - available for free on many YouTube channels these days, even if not "official" GW takes. The games have all moved to new editions since launch and the apps were suitably revised. So ... sure. It's fine.

The big new thing recently was "Kill Lupercal", a CGI animated "series" - all of 3 episodes - which was hyped up as this an awesome new production. Set near the end of the Horus Heresy it's all about a titan battle group that heads out in less than optimal condition and ends up on a mission to take out the Warmaster Horus Lupercal. The concept is fine and the animation looks good. The problem is the execution.

The whole thing is made up of three 15 minute segments:

• Part 1 is the extremely drawn-out build up of the titan being repaired and various discussions of it's condition and what can be fixed and the Mechanicus doing Mechanicus things ... it's a bunch of standing around and talking and it takes half of the episode before out titan actually walks. They get out of the hanger, shoot up some traitor marines, and then at the end they encounter a lone mysterious titan. That's it, that's 1/3 of our story done.
• Part 2 is a discussion with the mystery titan, getting the other tians in the group introduced and lined up, and then everyone heads off to kill Horus. There is a fight with some superheavy tanks and then more discussion about what they should do.
• Part 3 finally gets to the point of the exercise and we get a real fight against traitor titans and the resolution of the whole Horus thing. This one is pretty good.

This show is analogous to Warhammer+ as a whole: too little too slowly and often focused on the wrong things. 

While the individual shows are better about this, the multi-episode series tend to plod along, especially at the beginning. I'm usually a fan of the gearing-up sequence in a movie or show but there are limits. They also need to realize that most of the people paying for this service are already invested in the 40K universe - they're not newbies. You don't need to explain what sisters of battle, or titans, or for goodness sake Space Marines are - we know. We want to see them doing stuff, not a lore-dump about what they are supposed to be doing. Some of this stuff feels like a cutscene intro to a videogame we're never going to play - let's get to the point, especially if we're going to have less than an hour to work through this story! We don't need minutes and minutes of characters standing around talking about auspex readings and how bad things are and what the Emperor would want  - it's 40k! How about we have those conversations while we're jumping into the action?

Besides the shows being slow, their rate of production is terribly slow.  Under the "Animations" banner on the site there are 12 entries:

• Astartes existed before this was a thing so it doesn't really count as a W+ production
• Angels of Death was their first CGI series and is still the best. Extra points for Blood Angels. It's from 2021.
• Hammer and Bolter was also a year 1 effort and has actually added some new episodes over the years - not many, but some.
• The Exodite is another 3-part CGI series that takes a while to get going and runs 30-something minutes total. Again it looks good but there just isn't that much there. Points for being Tau vs. Eldar and Imperials. It's from 2022.
• Interrogator is a 9-part series using traditional animation that has 15-20 minute episodes and ends up being around an hour and a half total. It's black and white too and a pretty serious dive into the grim dark civilian life of 40K. It's decent and it's from 2022.
• Blacktalon is a 6-part series using traditional animation set in the Age of Sigmar worlds. There are 20+ minute episodes and so you get an actual story here. It's from 2023.
• Pariah Nexus is a 3-part CGI series from 2023 and is one of the better offerings. It ends up being a little over an hour of story.
• Iron Within is a 30-minute CGI one-shot with guard and dark eldar and chaos marines that's more buildup than action. I think it's supposed to be more "horror" than action but ... we all know what the dark eldar are about, and we all know what chaos marines are about so you're not going to surprise anyone with the various bad things that happen. Even the title spoils what could have been one interesting wrinkle. I was disappointed with this one. It's from 2023.
• Broken Lance is a 30-minute CGI one-shot about a knight household. Once it gets going it's not bad. It's from 2024.
• The Enemy Without is a 5-minute glorified CGI trailer about the deathwatch and I'm not even sure what the point of it really is. It does at least get right to the action, so there is that. This one is from 2024.
• The Tithes is a 3-part CGI series from 2024 that totals up to about an hour. There is some interesting variety here.
• Then Kill Lupercal is the lone entry from 2025

So the output has not been great. Nor has it been consistent with formats and story lengths jumping all over the place. Some of this stuff is interesting and even good but there is just not that much of it. Someone could subscribe for a month and watch everything without breaking a sweat.

I really like this one

The rest of the offerings are battle reports, painting guides, lore videos, and pretty much the kind of thing you can find all over YouTube and the rest of the internet. I would not pay a subscription fee for these.

I suspect that most people pay a sub here for the 40K and AoS apps - those are actually handy and useful for building an army and playing some games and encourage one to maintain it. There are alternatives there as well.

There is an annual miniature that's free to subscribers and those are usually pretty cool and this is the only way to get them. Not sure I would pay just for that but it's one benefit to sticking with it.

Also very cool

For now I will be continuing my own subscription here, despite my problems with the service. I do use the apps, I do like some of the shows, and I keep hoping it will get better. We will see.

Not-40K Friday - The Old Chaos Army for Old World

 

I've had the 3D printer running this week to finish out the movement tray expanders for Old World. Something bit me and I got fired up to get the trays I needed done and I also decided to go back through and check figure-by-figure what kind of shape they were in after a decade of disuse.

Somewhat to my surprise they were in really good shape. I haven't used my chaos warriors "in anger" since the first few months of Age of Sigmar and I think the last time I talked about them here was right after the move. I played a lot of chaos armies back in 4th-5th-6th with 7th trailing off into not much by 8th. In the earlier days a chaos army was truly "Chaos" as it mixed warriors, daemons, and beastmen all together and as they were gradually separated in the rules I found myself without enough of any one part to make a real army. I decided to focus on the warrior branch of things and had a pretty solid army there painted up during 5th. That continued into 6th with many battles against my friends' Empire and Dwarf armies and people playing my High Elves.

The silver chaos warriors here are that first multi-part Warhammer regiments set they did in the 90's promising us that troop costs would be a lot more reasonable ... uh, yeah. I liked the rough metal look and so did most of the army this way, discovering that drybrushing silver over a black base coat went pretty quickly and looked pretty good. The banners in this army are paper, drawn up in Visio which was fairly new at the time, enahanced by some interesting fonts - an Ultima font among them - and then printed out, painted, and with some decals added on I thought they worked pretty well. They are still holding together 25+ years later so I can't really complain.

Old Two-Blades over there on the left has seen many hours on the table in both Warhammer and as a D&D character, maybe a GURPS character, and maybe even a Fantasy Hero character so he is well-loved here.

There are a couple of converted chaos wizards in the back and then a unit of marauder horsemen after I mostly got over my "I don't need puny skirmishers" phase. At the very least they are good for soaking up those goblin fanatics before they hit my real units. 

Here in the center is the real heart of the army. The red-armored warriors were my Chosen of Khorne - yes kids there was a time when "chosen" were a paint job, not a special model. The kits at the time only had weapon & shield, then later they added a halberd option - in metal. But in the rules we had an option for two weapons and with Khorne's frenzy rules you can bet I wanted that two weapon option. So, I hand-drilled all of those left hands and added in weapons from various other kits, including 40K Ork melee weapons from Gorka-Morka I believe. The unit leader has a pair of spiked maces and a big cape and he has served as an RPG character more than once too.

On the left middle is my first converted mounted hero - he's one of the metal champions of Khorne (he has a bloodletter-y head) that I cut in half at the waist and mounted up I think using a rough rider of Attila lower half. He usually ended up with a magic sword and then for a long time my favorite thing to put on him was the Chaos Runeshield. Unfortunately his shield has gone missing but I remember what it looked like and I am going to have to recreate it and get him back on the table.

On the right in the middle is my usual warlord for my later games, the metal mounted chaos lord that came out a little later than the rest. He has a huge axe, a decent-looking shield, and is on a nicely sculpted horse. Smaller fights were led by the bloodletter-head guy above but any bigger fight from probably 6th edition on was led by the Horned King there. 

Then in the back we have my beloved chaos knights - no. no one really needs a block of ten chaos knights but it is the hammer of all hammers if you do use the full unit. Shoot them, fireball them, drop a cannonball on them - they can lose half the unit and still blow almost anything off of the board with a charge. They were usually led by the Horned King or Bloodletter-Head which just made them nastier. Granted, for many fights I just took 5 or 6 of them and I'm sure I broke them into two units a few times but the back rank is mostly fill-in guys (including some plastic Battlemasters chaos knights) so I didn't really like fielding them separately.

Almost every force selection started with these two units and one or both of these leaders.

The righthand section of the army has another big block of chaos warriors and these are the earlier chunky monopose versions that I think originally came out with Heroquest but were later sold as a straight-up Warhammer unit. I ended up with a bunch of them through trades and such and decided to make another regiment. I liked the irony of a unit of "chaos" warriors made up of identical models. I used the metal 4th edition era command trio for them, did the same drybrush look as the other unit, and painted up their shields to add some nice contrast. They've been used as guards and evil fighters in many RPGs as well.

Next to them is one of my favorite character models for chaos that I used as a wizard. he has a staff, and has a helmet with no face, but his raised hand has what could be an eye in the middle of it - very strong on the creepy to weird chaos scale.

Then in the back we have a unit of chaos knights from about 3rd edition, with weirder poses, proportions, and looks than the later ones. It's good to mix in some older units into your army when you can - especially a chaos army.

Yeah, these guys. I like mine better but they definitely have a look.

So there is the army that's intact after 25+ years and getting ready to get back on the table. I do have some additional units of similar vintage that I either never quite finished or took a beating in a move at some point, or that my kids got a hold of when they were toddlers - never leave your army out on the table overnight if you have toddlers! -  so I have some additions to make and I am really looking forward to working on them again. 

Old World-wise my next-most-finished army is my High Elves so they will be getting some attention this weekend, then I have a huge pile of orcs & goblins to go through, some Undead to assemble, the Beastmen I finally caved and converted over to Sigmar bases two years ago only to see them eliminated and returned to the Old World line ... sigh ... and then that shiny box of Bretonians guilting me from the shelf. 

More to come for sure.

Miniature Musings - Building for Age of Sigmar

 

Well, I've let it happen. Pretty much every one of my 40K armies has some kind of backlog but they also can all make playable and at least partially painted armies. I try not to let a gathering of plastic sit too long in an unplayable state even if it's not painted. So having achieved that state some time ago I decided to start expanding my Age of Sigmar forces ...

Yep, that's a big ol' pile of angry dwarfs waiting to be built. They are completely unplayable as nothing is built. I wanted to do this one a certain way so I ordered custom stonework-looking bases for the whole damn army and that meant I couldn't really buy already built or painted units so here they sit ... on the sprues. Now this has all developed this year so they are not too backlogged but I haven't made much progress beyond the "acquisition" stage. That's multiple Start Collecting boxes because they are a hugely better deal than the newer options and some individual unit pickups of Vulkites and Hearthguard. Grombrindal there in the blister pack will be my first Grimwrath Berzerker.

Beyond what's already here I don't need much - maybe a few more Magmadroths if I like how they play (I have 3 at the moment) and probably a few more Berzerkers and Doomseekers down the road to have more options. I want each of those to be unique so it will take a little more effort but I'm not in a rush.

The chaos warriors are in a slightly better state though it may be hard to tell. I talked about restarting this journey a while back and I did follow though on that. I put together a squad of chaos warriors, dusted off some knights I picked up a while back, found a heckuva deal on some painted chaos knights (the red guys up there), finished gathering up marauder parts and at least one of the Warcry warbands which seem to be big players in the AoS chaos books. I have some characters put together as well so while it's not all pretty yet I could play them in a 1000 point game at least - progress!

The big additions here were in the Slaves to Darkness army box that came out last fall that came with the new army book, new daemon prince, new chosen (finally in plastic!), and new "Ogroid Theriadons". That last unit is a pack of 3 ogre/troll/minotaur-looking things and I really like them so I added 3 more to make a nasty unit of 6. I used to field chaos trolls in the old days so I like having a brute squad in my otherwise mostly human-ish force and these are the new heavy hitters. I already had the prior Start Collecting box with warriors, knights, and the lord on karakadrakadrakka thing sitting around from a prior flirtation with these kinds of thoughts. Converting some of my old characters to round bases meant I had a pretty solid force right away so now the big task ahead is to finish building and get the rest of the painting done.

Then there are the Beasts! I've been bouncing these guys around for more than 20 years and I may finally get them onto the table as an actual army soon. In the early to middle years of Warhammer Fantasy "Chaos" armies included everything - warriors, beastmen, daemons,  whatever. Over the years as they expanded the range they split each of those forces off into separate armies which felt very forced at times but that's how it went. These beastmen started off as add-ons to my Chaos army that was mostly chaos warriors. The daemons I had back then eventually became a separate army and ended up used in 40K more than fantasy. The beastmen though just kind of sat. They made good gnolls for D&D but I didn't really care about building them out to be a full Warhammer army. A few years ago I seriously considered making them a "The Herd" army for Kings of War so I picked up a Cygor/Ghorgon to be a potential centerpiece but I ended up just letting them all sit in a box for the next few years. 

This year as the Sigmar interest developed and I started going through boxes and drawers sorting out fantasy parts I realized I had a pretty good amount of them. With the Beasts of Chaos battletome coming out for 3rd edition as well I figured the time was right so I started basing them up and adding up points and I realized I didn't really need to add much. I have enough old figures that are effectively Gors to make the battleline units I need. I have old metal shamans and beastlords so the characters are covered. My old metal dragon ogres are complete and while they aren't as pretty as the newer ones they are still perfectly usable here. The Chaos Warhounds I bought years ago to use as Flesh Hounds in my daemon army when the official models looked bad are still the current model for Warhounds  so why not pull them back into the army they're supposed to be in?

The minotaurs are a pure indulgence on my part - I like minotaurs, I like the current GW models in particular, and I thought an all-minotaur army would be a fun skew list to play so i started buying some. Right now I'm at 6 which will probably be one unit and I also picked up an old metal Doombull I can use to make them Battleline. This is really the only part I have spent money on with this army other than the book and it's probably the most playable of the three. 

Future acquisitions will likely include more of the giant monsters as those would be fun too. More minotaurs obviously. I'd like to get up to 18 of those to be able to throw out 3x 6-bull squads. I know Bestigors and Ungors are major parts of the army but I just don't care about them that much. One day I'm sure I'll want some but for now it's mainly what I have plus Bullgors. 

Beyond these newer arrivals I still have the half-painted-mostly-built Seraphon army in the miniatures closet from a few years back and also the large pile of Stormcast and Blades of Khorne I acquired through multiple boxed set purchases back in 1st & 2nd edition. 

There are also the 4 daemon armies that are mainly for 40K but work perfectly well in AoS too and those are actually in pretty decent shape - probably the most "done" of any of these forces. It helps that you can play them in both games. 

So yeah, this is a fairly stupid way to get into an army - stumbling into it with half-done units over multiple editions. I would not recommend doing it this way at all. The choose it/buy it/build it/paint it approach, ONE army at a time, is far more sensible. So if you're not already invested in one of these games do it that way, two armies at most so you can play games or teach people on your own. Hopefully I can make enough progress on these to feel it's worth posting about them again later this year. Maybe even play some actual games too ...

Onward!

Age of Sigmar: Return of the Chaos Warriors

 

After the move comes the unpacking and as a part of that process I got to spend time with things I had not really  touched in a long time. One of those was my old school Chaos Warrior army that I built from about 3rd edition WHFB through 7th edition. It was one of the few armies that I could say was "finished" back then - though they're never really finished, right - in that I had a decent sized force that was fully painted and didn't really lack anything. 

Since the end of WHFB it's been sitting in a wall-mounted display case in the game room providing occasional armored guards for D&D games and not much else. Putting it back up in the new hobby room gave me a chance to look back through it and beyond realizing how many arms and horse tails I need to re-glue it reminded me how much I liked the whole Chaos Warrior thing and that I've missed not having an active force of big armored elite soldiers to stomp things with on demand.

So ... let's see where things are in Age of Sigmar ... oh look there's a big new army set coming out for Slaves to Darkness - the more dramatic name we have now for the old Chaos Warriors army. I had picked up some of the newer style knights and warriors a few years back but never did anything with them. With the prospect of some new releases, at least one possible player, and an interest in building something completely new, well, it all came together.

So now there is a pile of plastic in one corner of the hobby room and I have built my first unit in the new place. It's just one ten-man unit of chaos warriors but a) I am finally back in business after months of zero building or painting and b) it's an elite army so it will only take a few units to make it playable. Heck, there may only 20-30 of these guys in the army anyway, along with some knights and characters. So it's technically a new army but it's very manageable in terms of avoiding a big backlog.

Meanwhile, the old veterans await the return of The Old World ...

Not-40K Friday - The Evolution of Warhammer Dragons

There's a cool post over on Warhammer Community that runs through the designs of dragons for Warhammer over the decades and it's worth a look if you've been around fantasy miniatures for any length of time. There are 4 or 5 of the metal "S" dragons floating around here so it felt relevant. You can see changes over time in all of the fantasy ranges, not just Warhammer, and the trend has been towards the bigger and bigger, especially the last 5-10 years. That's one of GW's brand new big dragons up top and I admit it's pretty impressive and hits a lot of the right notes for me. 

This is one of the classic S-dragons, maybe the first as the high elves were I believe the first army to be able to take an actual dragon as a mount for some characters. This version was around 4th edition (there was at least one earlier non-S version for 3rd) and set the pattern for many years. I have a pair of these, plus a pair of the dark elf version of the same vintage, plus some of the orc war wyverns with a similar look. I had mixed feelings about some of those color choices even when this thing was new but that was the look they used across the entire range.

This is probably the least-Warhammer paint job I have ever seen on one of these beasts but it does show that the old models hold up pretty well if painted well. This makes me want to do something with my unbuilt models like this. 

I remember when these came out for 6th or 7th edition and it was shocking ... compared to the old guard metal models above this thing is just a revolution. That pose! Apparently plastic does allow a much greater range of options as there's no easy way to get something like that out of the old versions. It would take a ridiculous amount of pinning and also never moving it anywhere for any reason to get one of the older models to look like that. 

These newest versions ... that's another one up there ... they're just amazing. bigger and beefier, less serpentine and more dino-beast. They look more like D&D dragons have looked for a long time. Also more of a Hildebrandt-looking dragon:

Nothing wrong with that. I've probably used my old dragon miniatures more in RPG encounters in recent years than in straight-up miniature battles in recent years. It's always a big moment when a dragon shows up - at least it should be - and I do like having a decent miniature to drop when they do. Even the RPG-specific dragons have much bigger options now than they used to with some of the Pathfinder Battles gargantuan dragons coming on an 80mm base. 

Anyway it sent me down a trail so I thought so I would share.

40K Friday - Checking in on Warhammer+

 

This new service? Product? "Thing" started in late August and I gave my initial impressions here. Now it's been a few weeks  - how is it going?

I admit - I am a little disappointed. New material comes out on Wednesday so we've had the launch plus three release windows and it has been s-l-o-w - much slower than I expected. 

The high point: Angels of Death. This black and white and red CGI series is exactly the kind of thing I want from a Warhammer Animation Studio. It looks right, it sounds right - the voice acting is solid and the music is good too - and the developing story is interesting. The service released with the initial episode and a new chapter has dropped every Wednesday so far. 

Hammer and Bolter is the more traditional animated series with one-off stories from around the 40K universe. It released with 3 episodes and now has ... 3 episodes. Yes, the same 3. It makes no sense but that's where it stands. 

Battlereport is their channel for ... battle reports. There was one 40k battle and one Age of Sigmar battle at release and now we have three 40k batreps and one AoS batrep - yes, the same one.

They have added a new show "Loremasters" which talks about stories and backgrounds in the Warhammer universes. So far we've had one episode discussing Abaddon the Despoiler. 

They've added at least one painting guide. The 40k app has been updated regularly. They've released a beta of the AoS app which I have not tried yet. The vault has had some new material added like extra issues of White Dwarf.

So far it feels slow and underwhelming. Angels of Death is amazing but the rest of it is just ... intermittent. What was the plan here? Was there not enough in the can to sustain a steady release cycle for these other shows?

Where is the rest of Hammer and Bolter? I wasn't overwhelmed with the first 3 but I was hoping it would get better. So far we have almost a month of nothing. Great job!

It's GAMES F'ING WORKSHOP - How on earth can you not produce a battle report for at least one of your games every week? It's what you do! What a tremendous dropping of the ball.

What is the point of "Loremasters"? A game design type explanation from "outside" the universe might be cool, or hey, maybe this kind of stuff would make for a good animated series topic? More show, less tell? Nope! We get 18 minutes of a guy basically reading the Abaddon info from pretty much any of the Chaos Marine Codexes over the years. The first half of it is more about Horus anyway so we get to hear that story again. They intersperse a bunch of art that you've already seen if you're a chaos player but a lot of it is literally showing a man's face as he reads a bunch of well-known lore. It's like an incredibly dull audiobook which should not be something we have with the 40k universe. "Abaddon did this. Then he did this. There was a battle. He won. Then he went somewhere else. Then he destroyed Cadia." - it is incredible to me that they landed on the least interesting way to convey information about some of the biggest events in 40K . It drains all of the life and energy from them. 

I'm not giving up on it but I do feel like they are letting the opportunity get away form them. A steady, solid stream of content would make this thing look a lot better. The battle report thing especially seems like a missed opportunity. It's not that expensive to make, you have people on staff already, you have the models and the terrain, and it shows people what they are supposed to do with your game! I don't understand why they don't have one for every single game they currently produce  on there already!

Anyway check back in a month or so when I touch on this again - hopefully with more positive things to report.

40K Friday - Warhammer+

 

I did go ahead and sign up for this. I've been subscribed to the 40K app since it came out so I went from spending 3$ a month for that to 6$ a month for that plus some shows and it doesn't bother me at all. I spend a great deal of my free time thinking about, building, painting, playing, and watching 40K stuff and do some side work in Age of Sigmar at times too so this is just an extension of that. I've watched most of what's available at this point so I thought I would share. 

But first ... there has been a lot of complaining online about this, threats of boycotts and such. GW had a talk with some of the people making videos online a while back and some of them joined up, some of them quit. This stirred up some people and had them slagging GW as doing bad corporate behavior, treating fans badly and then it turned into the usual piling on about increasing prices as well. 

I don't care about any of that. 

Some of the videos were cool, sure - but you don't own it. Trying to make money making videos of something you don't own ... there's your sketchy behavior. We've seen this with CBS/Paramount and Star Trek fan films already so  it should not have surprised anyone. 

As far as prices ... I started buying Warhammer miniatures in the mid-80's ... before 40K was a thing. I could give you a bunch of "back in my day 30 marines cost $22" stories but there's not much of a point. Prices go up, GW prices doubly so. No one is making anyone play this game - it is completely optional and a luxury. Just part of the deal.

So what about the service? 

• The 40K app is the same app it has been - there were no major changes for the launch. It's very nice having the rules and FAQs and codexes all in one place. For research and theorymongering it's handy. For army building ... I still like Battlescribe better.
• There is not a new Sigmar app yet. It's supposed to be coming but the Azyr app that's been out for a few years now works pretty well. We will have to wait and see how this goes. 
•  "Battlreport" - right now there is one for 40k and one for Sigmar. Each one is about an hour long. The 40k one was competently done with some nice informational graphics as the game was going on. There are YouTube channels I would still rank higher for entertainment value but it was their first effort. I would expect to see a lot more of this.
• "Hamer and Bolter" - there are 3 episodes of this right now and I have very mixed feelings. They are about 20 minutes long and cover very different parts of the 40k universe. The stories are OK but nothing really knocked my socks off. My biggest issue is that all 3 are in that limited-motion anime-style that honestly just looks cheap to me. I see people defending it as a "style choice" and sure ... maybe it was ... but it still looks weak.  Hopefully they will consider changing up the "style" moving forward too. 
• "Angels of Death" - the best part of it so far. It's a Blood Angels story with an incredibly cool black and white ... and red ... color palette. It's CGI but it's done in a visually interesting way. It too is only about 20 minutes long but it has by far the most promise in my eyes and I am very much looking forward to more. 
• There are some other videos - painting guides, how to play videos for each of their games, but a lot of them are out on YouTube for free already so it's not really adding a ton of value here. 
• The Vault - this is a repository of books and magazines that I expect to become more interesting over the next year or two. Right now it has the fluff sections from the Gathering Storm books, some other campaign books, last year's White Dwarfs, and all of their "Warhammer Visions" magazines. If they fill in a lot of the older material it could be a lot of fun.
• The miniature - if you subscribe for a year you  get to pick a 40K mini or a Sigmar mini as a bonus. I picked that nifty Vindicare assassin pictured up there. It's a nice bonus but honestly I would not subscribe just to get a miniature - if you really want one they will be on eBay next year one they start going out. 

 

So - overall take? I'd say it's an interesting experiment with a lot of potential down the road but with limited material right now. If you're into either of their major games I'd say give it a try but if you don't care about the app or the videos it's safe to wait a while and see where it goes. 

40K Friday Special Edition - Halfway through 2021

 

It has been a while since I made a 40K post but that doesn't mean I have not been active so I thought I would share some updates. 

We have played a few more games since my march post and the focus has been on Crusade. I played Orks and blaster played his Ultramarines primaris force but I expect we will branch out soon. With no ork codex I was just using the core book options and I thought it was still a lot of fun. More on that to come later. 

The majority of the effort this year has been on "finishing". I have armies that have been sitting around half-done and maybe not even in a playable state for years. It's stupid at this point in my 40K "career" to have this much unfinished so I wanted to make an effort to clean things up this year. I have way too many armies but with a little focus I should be able to put a dent in things. Blood Angels, Crimson Fists, Dark Angels, and my Iyanden Eldar have all received a fair amount of attention. My method here is to pick one army and for the next month spend most of my workbench time working on them - building the unbuilt or half-built units, finishing the half-painted or 90% painted units, and then making sure some things get finished - decal-ed, clear-coated, and based. Done. 

Now to aid this plan I also made a vow in December: "No new armies this year". Well for 40K anyway. With a wave of codexes coming for the new edition I knew I would be spending money on new books, new cards, possibly a new unit if one was released for a particular army - I really do not need to be building up a new force to leave half-finished for the next few years. That said I bought heavily into Flames of War around that time and it remains, uh,  "very low mileage" let's say. Those starter sets are still a great deal. 

I did manage to hold onto the vow for a month or three. Then I realized this was probably the best time in the history of 40k to pick up some Necrons as they had a major refresh to the models and are in 4 different starter set boxes right now. I looked around online and, well, the prices were right. So I have a Necron army now. In a concession to my plan for the year it remains unassembled. It's roughly 2000 points so I did not go completely nuts. I know how I want to paint them too so when it's time I should be able to get going easily. 

Eldar

• Iyanden :Lots of painting and base work to get a bunch of stuff to "finished". I added more wraithblades, more wraithguard, a second hemlock, two more wraithknits to complete the set - let's just say wraithknights are pretty reasonable right now if you are patient - some wraithlords with different mixes of weapons, a pair of Falcons to get me to the magic "3" if I want to go tank-heavy. Once I decided a few years ago to keep all of my Craftworld stuff Iyanden and avoid the mistakes of my marine forces it made for a pretty comprehensive force. I'm pushing 10,000 points now and around 8,000 of that is completely finished. It can be done!
• Dark Eldar: I built a drukhari force a few years back but I haven't played it much and it's never been in a really "finished" state. I've loved the models ever since the 5th edition revamp and then once we knew they were getting a new codex early this year I picked up a fair amount of stuff to fill in what I thought were the gaps in the army - mainly Venoms, Raiders, Talos/Chronos, and Mandrakes. Most of that remains unbuilt but they will get a month and I will put them all together and get them on the table. I'm thinking they would be good for a Crusade run where I could build up over time. 
• Harlequins: Blaster mentioned trying them out and I have plenty of clown trooper infantry and characters but I have zero of the transports and bikes that seem to be part of their typical armies these days. At some point I will pick some up and we will make that a real, modern army.

Orks

I have not really added a whole lot to them this year as I have quite a backlog of TBD units. I don't feel like I am missing a lot of units that I would want to play and our Crusade campaign has let me get them on the table again and shake off some rust. I built some nobz and a banner nob and I finally added a warboss on a bike but that's about it ... oh and the new Ghazghkul!. With a new codex coming and new boyz coming and a whole new group of ork units coming I feel like it's worth holding off a bit until I see what the codex looks like and then prioritize based on that. I'd like to get my Goffs completely finished and then start getting my Evil Sunz together as a coherent force. Then I have an idea for a customized Blood Axe army that could be a lot of fun too. It never ends, especially with these guys. 

Imperials

My biggest mistake in 40k was buying into too many marine armies over the years. If I had stayed on 1 or 2 I would be in a lot better shape completion-wise.

• Howling Griffons - nothing new here. I do toy with the idea of expanding them at times but that would probably be best as a "when everything else is finished" goal. 
• Imperial Fists - my army of big yellow terminators has no recent additions. It's still all terminators with a few bikes and a land raider being built originally as a Deathwing force. I looked it over recently and it would probably be a dammed strong force if I put it back on the table. I need to clean it up and unify the basing, put some decals on some squads, but it's totally painted and playable now at 50 or so terminators. The only possible addition might be a some dreadnoughts since it has zero right now and they are kind of a Deathwing thing. 

• Crimson Fists - more dreadnoughts! I added a bunch last year and I just added a pair of contemptors this week, with another redemptor waiting. I would consider them my main "normal marine" army so they do tend to get more attention than a lot of mine. A primaris expansion is coming soon for them.
• Black Templars - for some reason I decided last year I needed yet another marine army so I built up a ridiculous Black Templars force which I have yet to play. Triple land raider crusaders, triple rhinos, triple crusader squads, all of their special HQs ... it's a stupid thing to do and I thought about selling some of it and using the generic stuff to reinforce my other armies - a lot of it is base coated but not painted - but with rumors of new BT units and a codex supplement coming later this year I just can't - I want to get them finished and play some games.
• Dark Angels - years in the making and finally possibly maybe making progress towards finished ... if I set aside a month for them. A ridiculous number of tac marines and bikes and terminators and land speeders ... it's all acquired and almost all built and almost all base coated - I just need to finish them. Latest adds I picked up a stalker and built a strikemaster and a deathwing champion. They are so close ... it's really dumb that they are not in better shape. 

• Blood Angels - One of my favorite armies and the one that really started me down the path of "hey one more won't be so bad". A lot of this I picked up painted but even then I had all different bases through the army and it didn't always look like a real coherent force. So this year I spent a big chunk of March working on their bases. I didn't want to do more snow or sand so I went with a gray dusty/rocky look and I am happy with how it came out. There is more work to be done but it's really coming together as an army now. Last year I picked up a bunch of primaris units for them and then completely failed to finish them so that's a goal for this year now too.

• Grey Knights - So once you realize you have a problem with too many armies and you decide you need yet another one the smart move is to buy painted units for it. That way you are at least not adding to the backlog. It also helps if it's an elite army with a fairly small number of units. This was my approach with the Grey Knights and it has worked really well. I have a nice playable army, about 3000 points worth, so I have some options to rotate through. This year though ... I picked up some actual boxes for strike squads and terminators and some unbuilt venerable dreadnoughts in anticipation of tuning up my force. With a new codex coming this summer I'm in a pretty good place with a playable force ready to go and reinforcements waiting to be customized based on how the rules change. 

• Imperial Knights - yes I have a set of knights acquired over the last 3 years. Have I played them? No. I have 3 big ones built, 2 more on the sprue, and 2 each of the smaller types awaiting construction as well. So plenty of stuff, just no time spent getting them ready. Another candidate for "focus of the month" sometime this year. 
• Imperial Guard - I've always liked the idea of the guard, going back to Rogue Trader and that picture of the Necromundan army marching forth, but I've never really enjoyed playing them all that much. It's one of the few armies I have ever gotten rid of and I've done it twice. Yeah. So why dive in again? Well, I decided it was a good candidate for an all-tank army, a deliberate, consciously chosen all-tank army, with only enough infantry to fill in some formation requirements and maybe hold some objectives. Picked up an extra Manticore, extra officer types, then took it against an expert crafters Eldar army and got shot off the table multiple times. I ahve added some more Demolisher turret options since then and I think some Bullgryn would be a smart addition .. and I also added a Vulture full of lascannons to put another threat on the table. This is another army in the 'tuning up" stage. I need to unify the look and then play some more games with it whether it's "meta" or not. 

Chaos

Beyond adding the killer robots I built up my Nurgle Daemons quite a bit early in the year. I've had the daeon prince and the soulgrinders finished for a long time as an allied force for my Khorne daemons - why not make a usable all-Nurgle force? So theyhave a great unclean one and a bunch of plaguebearers and the big flying bugs and a ton of nurglings. It should be a fun force though a lot of it is at varying stages of unbuilt, built, and painted. This was more of an acquisition effort, but it means my chaos daemons are in really good shape now with a sizable force for all 4 chaos powers. In 2018 I was building Khorne, 2019 was Tzeentch, 2020 was Slaanesh, and this year was Nurgle. This was also sort of laying the groundwork for when their new codex comes along as I will have a decent force with options ready to go and new ones waiting depending on how the updated army works.  The daemon bonus is that they are fun in Age of Sigmar as well so you can get double duty out of them if you play both. 

Not a lot happened with most of the rest of the Chaos forces:

• I picked up a fighter for my World Eaters and added a squad of possessed and a rhino for them to ride in. Then the Death Guard codex came out and possessed are now treated like terminators - they can only ride in Land Raiders and take up two slots. Great. Why do I suspect we might be getting new models, say "greater possessed" sized models, when the Chaos Marine codex comes out? Anyway no major changes - I just really need to finish these guys. 
• The Iron Warriors are one of my most-finished armies (6000 points at least, 90%+ painted/finshed/etc.) but I do have some units in waiting even for them. I did build my 6 newer style big Obliterators. They really look like mini-helbrutes. I just need to paint them and then I am looking forward to trying them out. I also have a bike unit I should finish up and a squad of possessed that I thought would be a good cargo for one of their six rhinos ... of course. 
• Death Guard: many changes here - let's talk about that tomorrow! 

Contained!