Busy Month!

The old GW's Strategy for Improving Revenue 

Posts have been sparse here recently but games are still happening. I'm just choosing to prep and play them more than  write about them.

First, over the weekend I managed to run the second session of my 5th Edition "Greatest Hits" campaign. One prior player couldn't make it but Apprentice Blaster and Apprentice Red were both there so the assault on the Caves of Chaos continued. They've just about wiped out one of the orc lairs and there is an amazing amount of in-character strategy discussion so they're actually acting like Professional Treasure Hunters and it reminds me a lot of how my friends and I used to handle it.

I also continue to be happy with how the game handles ... well everything. It has a really strong element of playability, and it feels as if that was a conscious design choice rather than a happy accident. I saw some of this back when we were playing Next and it is even more evident in the final product. It fits really well with what I want as a DM right now.  Just as important, my players seem to be enjoying the different approach after 3-4 years of Pathfinder. I think we spent time looking up one rule the entire session, and that was only because it had come up a few times and we wanted to get consistent with it. That's a strong contrast to PF where we look up stuff every session, even after years of playing it. Pathfinder's detailed rules is a feature, not a bug, most of the time but I'm in a mood for a different approach right now and 5E is giving me that.

We also managed to get in more games of 8th edition 40K with the official release on Saturday. For me this mainly involved my first time to field the Dark Eldar as a full army. It also involved me getting blown off the table for the first time as a Dark Eldar commander. Different rules and a new army apparently means a big learning curve here. I'm not going to make a full report out of it, just some conclusions:

• The land raider crusader is tailor-made to kill dark eldar. That's 24 bolter shots for your warriors, a multi-melta shot for your flying boats, and 12 assault cannon shots for whatever is left standing is just hell on the boys from Commorragh.
• Splinter weapons are still cool but that only-wounds-vehicles-on-a-6 rule has a pretty big impact now. Bolters and shootas are wounding most vehicles on a 5+. It's the price you pay for wounding everything else on a 4+ but I'm starting to think dark lances in every warrior squad instead of splinter cannons is a better choice. With the new split fire rules it's usable, and while you lose up to 6 splinter shots you add a chance for some serious threat against the big stuff in the game. 
• It's still a very fragile army. Most of your troops are still Toughness 3 with a 5+ save and one wound. Power for Pain is cool now but a 6+ wound nullification doesn't save many warriors. The boats are much improved but even those are Toughness 5 and 10 wounds with a 4+ save and a 5+ invulnerable (vs shooting only). Assault cannons hurt them bad. 

I like the army and I'm adding some options to what I have so expect more Dark Eldar batreps in the future.