40K Friday: October? Orktober? Chaostober?

 Looking back at the last few months' effort it was mostly Grey Knights, then Dark Angels & Blood Angels in late August, September was Blood Angels & Custodes, and for the last week or so I've been going though my ... Chaos Knights! Yes, another small elite army! Yes another mostly-painted-but-not-quite-finished army!

Battletech Terry (not that surprising really considering) brought up 40K knights a couple of weeks ago and sent me down a path.I counted it all up and I have roughly 3000 points of the things and a bunch of it is magnetized and so ridiculously flexible. I only rarely use magnets as I'm more of a "commit and learn to use it" kind of guy but this was done before I acquired them and I admit it does make a huge difference, especially with an army like this. I "only" have six war dogs but I have enough magnetized weapons to build them pretty much any way I want, with at least 3 sets of everything. I can't see myself wanting to use more than that really as much like some other armies* I didn't get a Chaos Knight army to play baby knights - I got into it to play the big boys. The 10 little ones + a single big knight is just not something I'm interested in playing. 

So they are totally playable now but there's work to be done as they are not nearly as pretty as they could be. I am starting with the smaller ones to work out paint schemes and then I will dig into the bigger types. With all of the magnets I have to paint more arms and weapons than bodies so it will be interesting. I may add one more abominant chassis to accommodate some more options. I'm also looking at aftermarket heads and parts to see if anything catches my eye. For now though the focus is to gwt what I already have closer to "done".

As far as the other mentioned armies ...

• The Dark Angels are kind of set aside for now. I know what I want to do and I have most of what I want but it's going to take a while to get it all built and painted. I'll come back to them down the road. 
• The Blood Angels are still on the desk and I will work on them as an alternative to the knights. I'd like to finish up a few more units for them and they are 2nd or 3rd priority for now.
• The Grey Knights have seen a lot of progress this year so I'm taking a break. I will go back to them , mainly to finish their vehicles up, but it'll be a little while.
• The Custodes are in great shape with a few new additions. I have less than 20 models to build/paint to complete everything I have 4000-ish points of them and while there are a few gaps - especially with the new stuff coming out now - I'm pretty happy with the mix of units I have. I'll keep my eyes open for a few things but I'm not feeling much urgency to add anything here. 

Finally there are the Orks, who I have been fooling around with in the background these last few months. There is a pretty big pile of "to-do" and having the new codex means I can settle down and commit to certain unit types and sizes without the uncertainty that's been hanging out there for months. A lot of the new stuff will be revitalizing my Evil Sunz contingent but some of it is going to the Goffs so neither will be left out. There's just a lot of it and I need to at least build it in complete units. Ideally I'd like to paint it that way too but we will see.  

*Just like I didn't get into chaos marines to play a bunch of cultists and I didn't get into Custodes to play Sisters of Silence - I want to play the thing the faction is truly about. 

I Did Finally Receive My Scientific Barbarian Kickstarter Books

 

I've talked about this one before but the story does finally have an ending. The Kickstarter funded in November 2023 with an Estimated Delivery of Feb 2024. After that we got various updates and long periods of silence. This month I finally received the package with all 6 issues and at first glance it looks like everything is correct. So it's on the shelf and I won't be posting about it any more here. 

Am I happy I backed this? No.

If I had known up front that it would take this long to complete would I have backed it? No.

Will I back any future crowdfunding efforts by this team? No.

A thing to keep in mind with any RPG Kickstarter is that the vast majority of them will get made whether you back them or not and the days of great deals or exclusive extras are long gone. I often find RPG Kickstarter items available online for less than I paid for them via the KS very soon after release. I also find that any "exclusives" nowadays tend to be "exclusive until six months after launch" or so - so don't let that fear of missing out push you into backing something. Most of the time I would say just wait - they will make it and they will want to sell it to you once it's finished. In the meantime, you don't have money tied up in someone else's drama and health problems. 

40K Not-Friday: Custodes!

 

The Wolves Land Raider is still under construction so the Howling Griffons let them borrow the car

We did manage play a 4-player game a week or two back. I took the Custodes out for their first 11th edition game. Variable Dave brought his Votann, Battletech terry brought his Space Wolves, and Invisible Patrick brought his Eldar. We are trying to make this a regular, ongoing thing so hopefully there is more to come. 

We each took 1000 points and we decided that this was imperials vs. xenos. Last time we played our storyline was the Eldar feeling left out of the Space Dwarves and Space Vikings having a party at the only pub on the planet where my Eldar teamed up with Paddy's Harlequins against those two. This time someone called the cops so the Custodes are here to crack down on the rowdiness and the Wolves are trying not to get in trouble (again) so the sides have switched around. "What, dwarves? No we don't hang with dwarves, No sir!"

Anyway, my list was tweaked slightly from what I posted before as I wanted another jet bike squad:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Adeptus Custodes

+ DETACHMENT: Shield Host (Martial Mastery)

+ FORCE DISPOSITION: Purge the Foe

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1165pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char1: Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike

+ ENHANCEMENT: Panoptispex (on Char1: Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike)

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 7

+ SECONDARY: - Bring It Down: (1x2) - Assassination: 1 Characters

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Char1: 1x Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike (145 pts): Warlord, Interceptor lance, Salvo launcher

Enhancement: Panoptispex (+5 pts)

4x Custodian Guard (170 pts): 4 with Sentinel blade

4x Custodian Guard (170 pts): 4 with Sentinel blade

1x Contemptor-Achillus Dreadnought (155 pts): Achillus dreadspear, 2x Lastrum storm bolter

3x Venatari Custodians (165 pts): 3 with Venatari lance

3x Vertus Praetors (215 pts): 3 with Interceptor lance, Salvo launcher

2x Vertus Praetors (145 pts): 2 with Interceptor lance, Salvo launcher

We managed to get through about 3 turns and it was pretty lopsided points-wise in favor of the imperials.

He took out a unit of bikes solo and then went straight for the biggest target on the board

It was a lot of fun seeing how the golden boys do against some tough opposition. My Contemptor Achillus took I don't know how may attacks from dwarf bikes, dwarf berserkers, and the land fortress (played here by a land raider) and never went down while dishing out some real damage. I lost the full jetbike unit after charging into a squad of wraithguard and then getting shot by them and everyone near them - but it took the firepower of the entire eldar force and some Votann as well to do it.

Monday Hot Takes: Stretch Goal Dilution

 

Originally it felt - to me anyway - that the goal of a "stretch goal" on Kickstarter was to incent people to jump in to help add value to the final product for the same cost. You would end up with a bigger book or more pieces in your game or more levels in your video game or more art in a book or full color printing instead of black & white only. I feel like that has been diluted over the last few years . It's probably related to the "crowdfunding as preorder" trend we see now instead of the old days where things were genuinely being created as part of the campaign. 

The Kickstarter for Underworld: Sunless Depths for 5E D&D and TOV has a good example of this:

New adventure ... alright ... another new adventure, sure ... pregen characters ...

Pregen characters? As a Stretch Goal? Implying there is some value in pregen characters? Seriously? This isn't even a new RPG where an example of some completed characters might be interesting to see - it's for 5E and Tales of the Valiant! In what world are 5 pregen characters worth anything?  In general I'm a fan of Kobold Press but this is just a waste of everyone's time.

The Guild had a Kickstarter to make a movie recently too and their stretch goals were mostly "make more movie" - what one would hope for right? At the end though they were adding music videos and finally an animated special. Not strictly making the movie bigger or better but at least they were fairly late in the game if still outside the boundaries of "let's make the thing better". I dislike this less.

Deathbringer had a big crowdfunding effort with a lot of stretch goals:

Most of them were adding monsters or items to the book so that's fine. Some were tokens to be used on the battleboard which was admittedly a significant part of the campaign so OK I guess. A VTT - OK not really part of the book and I'm sure they will sell access to this later. Online character creator -  That's fine, especially if it's free to everyone down the road. The one for offering unpainted versions of the statues which are pricey extras ... yeah that's a cop-out. There were a lot of these goals so I won't get too cranky about these few outliers but it's worth noting them. I feel like some of them are pretty loose-fitting as far as stretch goals should go.

Heck, the latest Savage Worlds Kickstarter for Deadlands didn't even bother with Stretch Goals. "Here's what we're making and here's a chance to order all of the other stuff we make for Deadlands too if you want it!" and that's pretty much it. Can't complain about your stretch goals if you don't have any!