40K UnRant - The Mission Cards

One of the big issues with the tournament segment of 40K players on the new edition is with the Maelstrom mission cards. There has been a tremendous resistance to using those and a lot of exaggerations such as "unplayable" applied to using them in the game.

I've played them and the game worked just fine. There are videos online of people using them and their games seem to work as well. Even that first Frontline Gaming batrep where 7th was declared unplayable due to demonology and the mission cards being broken ended in a tie - somehow the doomed non-demon player managed to pull that off! Imagine that!

Anyway, rather than talk in generalities why not take a look at the actual cards and see which ones might be problems?

There are 36 "tactical objectives". It's based on a d66 chart (roll a d6 for tens, roll another d6 for ones) and each set of "tens" has a theme of sorts.

• The 10's, 20's, and 30's are all "score 1 VP for having objective X at the end of your turn". These are the core of the system, the bread in the sandwich, the baseline. Half of the cards drawn will be these.
• The 40's are more nuanced objective-related goals.
• 41 is related to Mysterious Objectives - I know this could be a problem because I know we've never used Mysterious Objectives and I think a lot of other players ignore them as well.
• 42 & 43 are related to having units near an opponents table edge - completely achievable by any army
• 44, 45, & 46 give multiple points for holding multiple objectives - again, this is certainly within the realm of possibility for every army 
• The 50's are combat-related goals
• 51-52-53 are scored for eliminating enemy units - this seems reasonable
• 54 is scored for issuing a challenge - not winning one, just issuing one, so if you have a character in the army, you can arrange this
• 55 is scored when an opponent fails morale, pinning, or fear tests - there are armies that are less likely to fail one of these but it's pretty rare to fight the 100% Fearless force, I'm calling it "conceivably impossible to achieve".
• 56 is scored for successfully manifesting a psychic power - you would need a psyker to do this so Necrons and Tau are out, though I hear there are allies in the game
• The 60's are the kill point objectives
• 61 is "slay the warlord II" and every army has to have one
• 62 is kill a psyker and so without one there's no way to score this
• 63 is kill a flyer - certainly there are armies without those
• 64 is kill a character and that's 100% do-able
• 65 is kill a building and there are lots of armies who do not use those, could be a problem
• 66 is kill a vehicle or monstrous creature - while it's certainly possible to build an army without either one, every army has the option for at least one of the two and many have both. In a smaller fight, maybe, but I don't think this one is going to be "unplayable" in any battle of 1500 points or more.  

So, what's our worst-case scenario? Cards 41, 55, 56, 62, 63, 65, and 66 are specific enough that they might not be involved in a game. That's 7 out of 36 possibilities. However, at that point you are fighting a Fearless army with no Psykers, Flyers, Vehicles, or Monstrous Creatures and have no Psykers of your own. So we're talking Tau (with no vehicles or riptides) vs. Necrons (with no vehicles) and both have somehow become fearless army-wide - HA! 

I just don't see that as likely, ESPECIALLY in a tournament situation where most of the complaints are concerned. Tournament organizers could easily cut this down by one by including a building or two (or more) on their tables.

What is a more reasonable scenario? No MO's, no buildings, no flyers, and maybe a lack of psykers on one side. Call it 4 non-scoring cards. That's 1/9. If you draw 3 cards per turn for a 6-turn game you will draw 2 non-playable cards on average. The rules allow a player to discard one card per turn. This seems like a perfectly fine solution.

Note I am not counting "well the enemy is sitting on Objective 5" as making "score for holding objective 5" an unplayable card, which seems to be a part of the early complaints. It's not unplayable - that's the !$%$#%$# game! Go take that objective from the other player - it gives you points and keeps him from scoring his own! This isn't the old edition where you can just sit back on a few objectives on your own side of the table and go for first blood or slay the warlord to win at the end of the game - you have to go take them away during the game! Think of the objectives as your orders from high command - sometimes you're ahead of them (I already have Objective #5), sometimes you're behind (The enemy has Objective #5), and sometimes you get orders that make no sense at all based on the current situation and you either clarify or ignore those - that's the discard!

The missions themselves are a part of this too: 

• The "draw 3 every turn" mission is nice and steady. 
• The "draw one per objective you control" doubles the incentive to go grab those objectives, regardless of the cards in your hand. 
• The hidden cards mission keeps things interesting and a little different from the others, allowing for feints and deceptions if you're so inclined. 
• Scoring from either player's objective cards blows things wide open.  
• The escalating draw mission keeps things really lively right up until the end.
• The decreasing-draw mission is the one where I can see some problems. Here, if someone did draw the worst possible hand, say 4 out of their 6 cards are unplayable, then they could find themselves in a hole at the end of turn 1, assuming their opponent draws the opposite kind of hand. Turn 2 it's a max of 5 cards. Assuming they discarded one of the bad ones , they start the turn at ... 5 cards - the same 5 they ended with on turn 1. That's how they spend the game. 

I don't think that last one is likely, but it is possible. Luck is part of the game but a bad run of it on the first turn sucks, whether it's bad cards or deep strike mishaps, bad scatter rolls, or a bunch of ones on your terminator armor saves. Both players are drawing from the same pool of possibilities so the risk is equal. 

To mitigate this when it comes to the cards, here's my suggested house rule:

"After drawing objectives on the first turn a player may choose to discard their entire hand and redraw, treating the discards just as if they had been discarded during the game (i.e. they are out of the pool and cannot be scored or redrawn)."

This solves the biggest potential problem described above, mitigates bad luck in the smaller draw games, and protects against the cherry-picking discard of "well I like these 4 but these two are not good" by forcing the decision to affect the entire batch. Additionally it leaves it in the hands of the player - if you think you can manage a marginal set of objectives (say, all on the enemy side of the board) then you can do that and potentially score more points, or you can toss them and hope for the lower-hanging fruit on a redraw.

Motivational Monday

40K Friday - Updates for a New Edition

I always suspected this would work and it couldn't be any more expensive

Apprentice Blaster kidnapped my rulebook over the weekend and will likely be holding on to it for another week. That makes it hard to noodle over the finer points of the rules and how it might affect my armies, but thankfully the internet hysterics are keeping the debate over those finer points alive and well for contemplation.

I'm mainly interested in how I should change up the armies that are still being built. My Crimson Fists, for example, are built around a core of three 10-man tactical squads in rhinos, plus some sternguard and some predators. That's not going to change because they're built and painted. I'm not going to suddenly try to convert them to an all-biker army just because that's the hot new thing. If I wanted to do that I'd just start a new White Scars force ... but I don't ... not yet. I suspect my still-under-construction Blood Angels will become my 7th edition obligatory marine army, assuming I can get the 6th edition Dark Angels finished this year. Maybe White Scars in 8th ...

My Chaos Marines are still under construction but I finally have the core force sorted out. Chaos Lord in terminator armor, a daemon prince, 3 units of plague marines, cultists, a unit of nurgle-marked bikers led by a sorcerer on a bike, some nurgle-marked spawn, a defiler, some havocs, some obliterators, a unit of terminators, 2 units of possessed, and a helbrute pretty much fill out the force. It's all very true to the lore as all of the marine infantry units and the bikers are in units of six, Nurgle's sacred number in the background. I may add a heldrake in there to finish out the fast attack slots, but other than that I already have everything, some of it is painted, and some of it is getting painted.

Dawn breaks and reveals a defiler sitting atop the Falcon - what will Han do?

How did 7th influence this? Well, with everything scoring now maxing out the troop slots dropped somewhat in priority. I still think it's good to have 3-4 super-scoring units and I have those with 18 plague marines and 30 cultists, but the "regular" chaos marines seemed superfluous. I dropped them.

The looser force structures and increased power of the psychic phase now mean I might drop the lord or shift him and the plague marines to a separate force in order to get both the daemon prince and the sorcerer into the same battle. Before that was only possible at 2,000 points - now I could do it any point level. I also have a second Nurgle-looking daemon prince. While I was thinking about using him more for my Chaos Daemons army, it makes some sense to look into expanding that second force org and using him here instead.

Vehicles are a tick or two tougher than in sixth, though most of the benefit goes to AV 13 or 14 targets. It still makes me feel a little better about including the defiler and a helbrute or two.

Termies and possessed were not highly regarded either but since they score now I think they have quite a bit more utility than they did. Nurgle possessed (and terminators) are fairly tough and once they clear an enemy off of an objective they can now hold it and defend it too.

Not drastic changes but the new rules have helped solidify my plans. More next week.

(You can see more of the impressive lego 40k force here.)

Mixed Emotions - The ETU Kickstarter for Savage Worlds

I debated posting this but decided I might as well share. Plus it's not about D&D, Pathfinder, or 40K so it might a nice breath of fresh air.

What do you do when a game system you really like runs a kickstarter for a supplement on a topic you care nothing about?

I really like Savage Worlds and almost everything that Pinnacle puts out interests me in some way. They've spent a lot of time publishing games with a fair amount of real history embedded in them (Deadlands, Weird Wars, Pirates) but with a twist to make them more interesting as a game. They've also done some interesting things with fantasy (Evernight) and superheroes (Necessary Evil) to the point that I'l take a look at pretty much anything they do. I own all of the original Hell on Earth books, almost all of the Deadlands books, almost all of the early Savage Worlds books, and quite a few of the later ones. I backed the Weird Wars Rome kickstarter and I am completely happy with the results.

That said I just can't get on board with this one. I'm working through why:

• It clearly has a vision behind it - the descriptions so far seem cohesive and make a lot of sense.

• It's set in Texas, modern-day-if-it-was-haunted Texas. That may be where my problem starts. 

• It's set in a school. I know that's part of the problem.

Going in reverse order:

I've never been a fan of the high school RPG, whether it was the old Teenagers from Outer Space (the first one I can remember), the various superhero high school games, the Buffy RPG, or even a Trek game set at Starfleet Academy. This one is set in a university but that's really not all that different in effect. I've never really felt the need to revisit the teenage years in a game. When I was a junior high/high school kid I wanted to play grown-ups, not teenagers. When I was in college we never wanted to play high school or college kids. As an adult I've never felt the urge to go back there either. Clearly some people do, or  these kinds of games wouldn't exist but it's not my thing.

As a side note, I could see playing (and probably have at some point) the college professor or even a college student in a game that wasn't set in a school. I think I had an "academic" in an old Traveller game and I know I've used "student" as a secret identity/day job on some superhero characters over the years. The key factor there was that none of those games were set in or focused on a school - it was just a piece of their background.

As far as setting it in Texas, well, it's probably a little too close to home to be all that fantastic. I drive to and from parts of East Texas several times a year whether for summer lake visits or springtime car shows. I have friends out there. I'm talking an hour or two's drive from Dallas, and while that may seem exotic to someone from way out of state or in another country it's just not that exciting to me. Drop it back 150 years and then we might have something, but as a "now" setting it's just very plain in my eyes.

The fact that we've been looking at colleges for the Graduated Apprentice for two years and that there are a great number of "Directional Texas Universities" probably adds to the lack of the fantastic in my eyes as well. The thought of getting familiar with another school, even a fictional one, with monsters and cultists, just sounds like more work to me.

My personal lack of interest aside the game looks like it's well done. There are not a ton of games set in modern day Texas, and the "Pinebox" guys do seem to know the area well. I like the art style. Savage Worlds seems like a great system to do this in. They have some nifty "unlockables" - though they are based on number of backers and not amount pledged which seems like an odd way to do it, but if it works for them that's cool. Even the miniatures seem pretty useful for a modern game in general.

Working through this, as much as I like Savage Worlds in general, I just can't get on board with this one. I hope it's successful for Pinnacle and everyone on the team, but I won't be backing it. By talking about it here, maybe someone who otherwise would not have seen it will discover it and jump on board. Regardless, I will keep an eye out for the next one and hopefully it will be something I can support.

The End of the School Year Gaming Update

This is the last week of school for the Apprentices (except for the one who's already out) and I wanted to collect some thoughts on what we've done so far and what we might do over the summer.

RPG's so far: The thing here is "Pathfinder". We've been playing it a lot and we'e managed to finish book 1 of the Wrath of the Righteous with full intent to finish the whole thing. During the school year we also managed some Mutants and Masterminds and some ICONS, which I have not written up, but we've had a lot of fun with them. I have not been in as much of a superhero mood lately, and the boys haven't been asking for it. The last couple of months have been busy enough that keeping PF on track was about all we could do.

Miniatures: We were playing a fair amount of Star Trek Attack Wing, to the point that I went out and bough a nifty new space mat so we wouldn't have to play in the Paisley Nebula anymore and then the 40K news came out and blew Trek right off the table! I suspect we will get back to it over the summer but we've had a drastic slowdown. The new edition of 40K is the big dog here and I expect it to stay the big dog for the rest of the year. After watching Band of Brothers we've talked about getting into a WW2 miniatures game but the time and expense of building at least two new armies (in whatever scale) is just not that appealing to any of us right now. I think the plan for the summer is "finish what you have" and then we will see what next year brings.

Board and Card games: About all we've played consistently is Memoir 44 (there's our WW2 fix), while the boys play Magic and Heroclix fairly often among themselves. This is not our main thing but maybe we should do more here.

With graduations and first jobs and kids learning to drive we've done pretty well in keeping the fun stuff going.

Plans for the summer:

• Keep Pathfinder going
• Get our 40K armies and terrain tuned up and get them some exercise
• See if STAW is a long-term thing or if it's just going to be a once-in-a-while game
• Play some supers, even as a limited campaign
•  Find time to play some Savage Worlds

The new edition of D&D will probably have an impact in there too but I'm not sure how much. The boys don't seem terribly interested as they're happy with what we have now. We will probably work in a test run of some kind at least.

I'd like to get the 4E game going again too but it's been a real challenge with schedules. Not sure how this will go but I'll keep trying. 

I'd also like to get a Trek game going, even if it's a limited run and just with the boys. I have extra copies of the LUG Trek TNG rulebook so it is possible. It's another "TBD" game. I just need a good idea and a mostly-clear weekend ... 

In between the usual swimming and movies and general time-wasting that's how I see the summer going.

Motivational Monday - Extended Graduation Edition

Yes, as hard as it may be to believe, there are still kids graduating high school ...

For Lady Blacksteel and I that's one down, three more to go.

While I snicker at the above, you can only play the cards you are dealt, and so far "school" is their biggest thing and unlike a lot of the rest of life there is a definite beginning and end and you can "finish" it with a clean sense of accomplishment.

I figured up that with all the kids, if everything goes well, we should have eight graduations over the next ten years. So we're going to have to get comfortable with all of this regardless.

So congratulations Red! The time as a horse mascot is done, the full-backpack-stair-climbing is done, and it's time to go look for the Coming Thing.

(I wonder if he'll get that reference?)

Regardless, Apprentice Red will still be making appearances here. He'll be here most of the summer and I expect he will be making frequent appearances here at the home base even afterwards so I'm sure I'll have something to write about that involves him.

After the ceremony Saturday and the party Sunday, hopefully the rest of us will be getting back on a more normal schedule as the rest of the kids finish up for the year. It's another change of seasons. Summer is coming!

40K Friday - Battle Report for 40K 7th!

It's been a busy week here as Apprentice Red graduates tomorrow. Next week maybe things will get back towards normal ... whatever our new normal turns out to be with one out of high school.

Since we were off on Monday for Memorial Day, we decided to give the new edition of 40K a try. We went for 2000 points since we had some time. With the new flexibility on structuring an army we decided to mix things up from our usual single force-org single army style. He took Necrons with a side order of Orks, I took Chaos Marines with a side order of Bloodthirster Chaos Daemons.

Main Force:

1 Daemon Prince of Nurgle (HQ) @ 315 Pts
     Flying Monstrous Creature (Character); Hatred (Daemons of Tzeentch);
     Shrouded; Slow and Purposeful; Daemon; Fearless; Veterans of the Long War;
     Fear; Psyker (Mastery Level 2); Wings; Power Armour; The Black Mace;
     Nurgle

1 Chaos Lord (HQ) @ 185 Pts
     Fearless; Champion of Chaos; Independent Character; Terminator Armour;
     Burning Brand of Skalathrax; Blight Grenades; Sigil of Corruption; Mark of
     Nurgle; Lightning Claw; Warlord

5 Plague Marines (Troops) @ 169 Pts
     Fearless; Feel No Pain; Power Armour; Mark of Nurgle; Plague Knife; Bolt
     Pistol (x5); Bolter (x3); Meltagun (x2); Blight Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Plague Champion @ [29] Pts
          (character); Champion of Chaos; Mark of Nurgle; Power Armour; Bolt
          Pistol; Plague Knife; Bolter; Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs

5 Plague Marines (Troops) @ 169 Pts
     Fearless; Feel No Pain; Power Armour; Mark of Nurgle; Plague Knife; Bolt
     Pistol (x5); Bolter (x3); Meltagun (x2); Blight Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Plague Champion @ [29] Pts
          (character); Champion of Chaos; Mark of Nurgle; Power Armour; Bolt
          Pistol; Plague Knife; Bolter; Krak Grenades; Melta Bombs

7 Possessed (Elites) @ 250 Pts
     Daemon; Fearless; Fleet; Vessels of Chaos; Fear; Power Armour; Mark of
     Nurgle; CCW

     1 Possessed Champion @ [40] Pts
          (character); Champion of Chaos; CCW; Power Armour; Mark of Nurgle;
          Gift of Mutation (x1)

9 Chaos Cultists (Troops) @ 59 Pts
     Improvised Armour; CCW; Autogun (x9)

     1 Cultist Champion @ [14] Pts
          Champion of Chaos; CCW; Autopistol

9 Chaos Cultists (Troops) @ 59 Pts
     Improvised Armour; CCW; Autogun (x9)

     1 Cultist Champion @ [14] Pts
          Champion of Chaos; CCW; Autopistol

1 Defiler (Heavy Support) @ 205 Pts
     Vehicle (Walker); Daemon; Daemonforge; Fleet; It Will Not Die; #Daemonic
     Possession; #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; Warpflame Gargoyles; Battle
     Cannon; Reaper Autocannon; Power Fist (x2); Havoc Launcher

5 Havocs (Heavy Support) @ 148 Pts
     Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x5); Bolter (x1); Missile Launcher (x4); Frag
     Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Aspiring Champion @ [23] Pts
          (character); Champion of Chaos; Power Armour; Bolt Pistol; CCW;
          Bolter; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

Models in Army: 49

Total Army Cost: 1559

Ally Detachment:

1 Bloodthirster (HQ) @ 300 Pts
     Flying Monstrous Creature (Character); Daemon of Khorne; Demonic
     Instability; Deep Strike; Daemon; Furious Charge; Hatred (Daemons of
     Slaanesh); #Warp-forged Armour; Lash of Khorne; Axe of Khorne; Lesser
     Rewards (x1); Greater Rewards (x2)

12 Bloodletters of Khorne (Troops) @ 145 Pts
     Infantry; Daemon of Khorne; Demonic Instability; Deep Strike; Daemon;
     Furious Charge; Hatred (Daemons of Slaanesh); Hellblade

     1 Bloodreaper @ [25] Pts
          (character); Hellblade; Lesser Rewards (x1)

Models in Army: 14

Total Army Cost: 445

I ended up with slightly over 2000 points, but so did Red so we were good.

My plan was that the Daemon Prince, 'thirster, bloodletters, and possessed all charge across the table. The plague marines would grab nearby objectives. The havocs would park in a ruin and spend the whole game shooting as would the defiler. The cultists would start in reserve to let them jump on any rear objectives I unexpectedly lost and to keep them alive a little longer.

His army was his ridiculous Necron Horde, this time with 4 units of 20 warriors, each with a lord and a res orb, plus a monolith, led by that pair of characters where one id the teleporting bodyguard, and aided by one unit of 20-something ork boyz led by a warboss. All 100+ infantry start on the table, his monolith starts in reserve, waiting to deep strike in and teleport one of those hordes through its gate.

We wanted to do one of the new missions using the cards so we rolled on that table and got the "start-with-one-card-and-get-a-new-one-for-each-objective-you-control-at-the-start-of-your-turn" mission which I will use because as I write this Apprentice Blaster has my copy of the rulebook. It defaults to the usual long side vs. long side deployment zones so it was pretty conventional otherwise. Officially now you're supposed to set up the table and place the objectives before rolling for the mission and choosing sides and we mostly did that.

Warlord traits: they are much better in the book now, and if you're using a FOC your warlord gets to reroll his result. I ended up with all friendly units withing 12" can reroll 1's in the shooting phase which was pretty nice. Red ended up with a unit of his choice becoming "tank hunters".

One thing I did discover: Taking a new set of rules, using CSM's for the first time in a while, and Daemons for the first time in 6th/7th, there is a LOT of pre-game setup.

• Warlord traits (normal)
• Mission (normal)
• Draw cards
• Roll for psyker powers (normal for most armies)
• Roll for Daemon gifts - I took a lot of these
• Roll for Chaos rewards

On top of this I was setting up first so Red got to twiddle his thumbs for quite a while. I set up, he set up, then it was my turn.

Turn 1 Chaos Movement
Starting at the bottom the bloodletters ran out towards the Orks (though I was hoping they could get past them), the Havocs parked in the red ruin (which was also the home of an objective), the plague marines and the chaos lord moved into the central ruins (another objective) accompanied by the defiler. The other unit of plague marines moved into the woods (another objective) backed up by the daemon prince. The possessed and the thirster moved up near the castle at the top.

(On his side, Necron mob #4 is lined up at the back of the board behind the orks, out of site.)

Turn 1 Chaos Psyker
Prince Greymaw failed his attempt to summon demons.

Turn 1 Chaos Shooting
The havocs open up on the orks (hey, they don't get back up and they're the only assault threat he has!) and blow away nearly half of the densely-packed greenskins. Awesome!


The defiler drops a battlecannon round to finish them off, it deviates, and tags one necron, who gets back up. Not so awesome! Everything else is out of range.

Turn 1 Chaos Assault
Nope, not close enough

End of Turn - I get a VP for having Objective X.

Turn 1 Necron Movement

The orks run up, predictably enough, but the woods are slowing them down. Then the bodyguard leader-guy teleports his tank-hunter squad up in front of the ruins. Gulp!

Defiler-eye-view

Turn 1 Necron Psyker
Heh! No ...

Turn 1 Necron Shooting
He fires a bunch of shots at the big walker, and with the super-special necron rule + his warlord trait manages 4 glances. Defiler has 4 hull points. If I make even one daemon save I can blow them off of the board next turn ...

Ouch

... and FAIL! Defiler out turn 1! Later I realized that I'm sitting in a ruin for a 4+ cover save and I rolled at least one 4 ... ah well. Not a whole lot more happens as all of his guns have a 24" range.

Turn 1 Necron Assault
Heh! No ...

End of Turn - Red gets a VP for having an objective and another one for First Blood, so he's up 2-1

Turn 2 Chaos Movement

The plague marines plant themselves on the two center objectives, the havocs stay put on a third, everyone else moves up to get ready for an assault.

Turn 2 Chaos Psyker

The daemon prince pulls off a summoning and drops ten plaguebearers in near his HQ warrior mob. This new power is pretty cool.

Turn 2 Chaos Shooting
The havocs blow the orks into single digits but the warboss is still around and they pass their leadership test. The plague marines pop off a few shots but nothing significant comes of it.

Turn 2 Chaos Assault

The Bloodthirster is just about close enough ... what the heck - charging! The robots open up with 33 shots and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! They hit, but need sixes to wound the beast and then I have a 3+ armor save. After this moment of glory I do fail the charge distance, but still ... it was fun. 

The bloodletters charge into the tank hunter necron mob and cut down a bunch of them. The bodyguard HQ kills the bloodletter champion in a challenge but the overwhelming tide of daemonic violence rampages through them and wipes them out. There are no pictures of this, it was too ugly. Red hates the Sweeping Advance rule, especially when he plays Necrons. 

End of Turn - I get two VP's from cards as I hold two objectives mentioned on them. I'm now up 3-2.

Turn 2 Necron Movement

He had thought I was going to charge his Orks. now he moves the greenskins into position so he can charge the daemons.

Turn 2 Necron Shooting

The Necron horde in the ruins blows the remaining bloodletters off of the board. Ah well ...

The HQ Horde opens up on the 'thirster once again - 38 shots, 1 wound!

All they really did was make him mad

Turn 2 Necron Assault
The orks stand around looking sad.

End of Turn - Red gets 1 VP for killing a unit with shooting. We're tied, 3-3.

Turn 3 Chaos Movement

The net closes on the HQ mob

Also, a unit of cultists moves in between the havocs and the dead defiler

Turn 3 Chaos Psyker

The prince throws a plague wind into the necrons on the ruins to my right. It does nothing.

Turn 3 Chaos Shooting

The havocs begin softening up the necrons in the ruins. A few actually stay dead.

Turn 3 Chaos Assault  

It's ugly. Overwatch fire kills one plaguebearer, then the hammer falls.

His warlord actually survives - with one wound - his challenge with the daemon prince, though it doesn't matter in the end.

End of Turn - I pick up two more VP's, one for an objective, one for Slay the Warlord. I'm up 5-3

(This pretty much kills his morale though he does not actually quit).

Turn 3 Necron Movement
The orks eyeball the nearest objective and the small squad of plague marines guarding it and begin their advance. The back-of-the-table necron mob advances forward. The monolith tries to deep strike in by my assault force, mishaps, and goes back into reserves.

Turn 3 Necron Shooting
The "ruin" necrons pick off a plague marine.

Turn 3 Necron Assault
The orks are not close enough to assault the plague marines, or anything else, but they did get close enough that it might happen next turn. The marines - and the Chaos Lord leading them - are not terribly worried about this.

End of Turn - Red gets no new VPs as he didn't really do anything. Chaos is still up 5-3

The cultists (played here by members of the local Imperial Guard company) draw a bead on the Orks

Turn 4 Chaos Movement
My daemonic assault group moves in on his mob in the ruins.

Turn 4 Chaos Psyker
The Daemon Prince summons a group of familiar-looking bloodletters behind the ruin we are about to assault.

Turn 4 Chaos Shooting
The havocs and the bloodthirster shoot up the targeted necrons while the cultists and the plague marines finish off the orks.

Turn 4 Chaos Assault 
Realizing what's about to happen (and needing to get ready for a date) Red concedes.

Post-Game Thoughts:

I like pretty much every thing I see in 7th. Most of the core move-shoot-assault saw only minimal changes. There are really three major areas of change:

• The relaxed force org situation has a lot of potential. It's much more than one force org plus an ally now - you could do two normal force orgs, or three, or four, plus a few allied roups as well, if you have the points. 
• The psychic phase as its own thing is a good idea and does give you a chance to focus on the characters and powers to actually accomplish something instead of it being an afterthought like it has been for the last few editions. Daemonology looks pretty powerful right now though I expect it to come down some over the next few months as people learn to deal with it. It's a lot like flyers when 6th first came out.
• The new mission objectives are a lot of fun. Tracking VP's during the game does add some tension as the end of each player turn brings a new update to the totals. There's been a lot of chatter about these online and while there is one mission where I can see a potential problem with the way they are handled, the rest seem fine to me and I like it a lot better than the previous method where objectives only count on the last turn. 

Red would probably do better with a more mixed force. We've talked about it over the last few days and he has an idea on which direction he wants to go. He has other units, he just didn't use any of them in this battle.

As for me, what I want to do is a) play more and b) upgrade my terrain. I'm working on both now. Also, Chaos is a fun army. They may not be a "power" army but they have a lot of interesting units and look good on the battlefield. 

If we can get another game in I will post it up next week!

40K 7th - The Stuff

Alright, I jumped on this one on Day 1 - I hope it sticks around awhile.

The books (yes books!) come in a nice heavy slipcase. It feels heavier than the one my D&D 4E books came in if that's a point of reference for you. It looks good. We're still putting Dark Angels on the cover but we're getting away from that ugly yellow-green tone of 6th edition's cover.

See? Books! We have the rule book, the history book, and the pretty miniatures porn book.

We also have cards! These are not included in the slipcase. I sprung for the whole set of stuff.

The objective cards look to add a whole new element to the game. I'm still reading the rules but the cards allow for instant scoring of victory points each turn if the objectives on them are met. This is going to make things a lot more dynamic than before. The box is really nice too. It's very heavy cardboard.

The psychic cards also come in a nice heavy box and this set is all 50 powers from the main book. Yes they changed from the prior edition. No your codex-specific powers are not included, but the handy reference chart of who-gets-what is there.

The books are really nice - these are by far the prettiest 40K rule books yet. The covers are textured and the images are glossy on the otherwise flat background - again this reminds me of the 4E D&D books in presentation.  That one is the "miniature porn" book.

Lots and lots of pictures of the miniatures for every army.

Look, a centerfold - NOW do you see why I am calling it that?!

This one is the setting book.

It makes me think of the Time-Life history books, or some coffee table history books now.

There are articles about different armies, units, specific campaigns - all of the "fluff". Interestingly I don't think there are any pictures of miniatures in here - all of the illustrations are paintings or maps. I like it.

Finally, the rule book. Naturally they put my least favorite illustration (of the three) on the cover of the one we will use the most.

Even it goes full-color all the way through.

So there it is - if you're interested, there it is - a look at all of the "parts". I have to admit, I am ... impressed, and that's not something I expected to say when I heard a new edition was coming out this quickly. Now I am still reading the rules, so that's not an endorsement of the mechanics, but as far as the physical presentation, the bar has been raised. It finally feels like the premium product it's priced as, and I approve. If I'm going to pay that much for it then it should look and feel like something decent and it does.

I will say that other than the rules you probably do want the mission cards but the psychic cards are completely a convenience item, a handy reference and reminder as to what you have in play during a game. The mission cards are also a useful-in-play item but the way they can change during a game makes it even more important to have them out there on the table close at hand so you can deal with them as they come up. I'm pretty sure there's a table for them in the rulebook but I think being able to draw and discard them will come in handy.

Editorial: Oh, there is a $400 super-gilded-I-have-too-much-money-even-for-a-warhammer-player edition that comes in a really nice box with all of this including the cards and a 4th book with some extra fluff or pictures or something. I passed. People should be able to spend their money on whatever they want but honestly, this is already an expensive hobby. Get the regular edition and spend $300 on expanding your army, or buy a whole new one (eBay!), or get 3 more copies of the rules and give them to friends who can't easily afford to pick them up! There are so many better ways to spend that kind of $$$, even on more 40K stuff, than this.

More on the actual rules next week!

40K Friday: A Personal Look Back at Past Editions

On the literal eve of a new edition, I thought I would meander back through some of the older editions since I was there when they came out too. It's funny how I can tie each one to a certain period of my life.

Rogue Trader came out in 1987. Leading up to it was a series of ads in Dragon that had a look unlike anything else at the time:

Now I already had Warhammer Fantasy, and played it some using the counters from Battlesystem, so I knew what Warhammer was and who Citadel/Games Workshop was, but the biggest sci-fi game at the time was the newly exploding Battletech. This looked completely different, and the background was the complete opposite of genre-defining things like Star Trek and Star Wars. Orks! In space! With guns! Power armor! Plus it was a full-on miniatures game, not an RPG or a boardgame that happened to use miniatures - there was no hexmap in sight!

This hit me, and a lot of other people, in exactly the right spot. I was interested but it was a few months before I got into it so it was 1988 before my Eldar took the field for the first time, followed closely by some space marines. By late 1988 it was showing up at most local cons

Another big win: having a job (a high school/college job) I found the miniatures were not terribly expensive. We used to get around 5 metal guys in a blister for $5.99, or a box of 30+ plastic guys for around $20. Dreadnoughts were metal and about ten bucks. It was sort of like magic is now - I could afford to buy a couple of packs when I got paid, or wait and get a big box. The game also took fewer miniatures then than it does now. A squad or two, a dreadnought, a couple of characters, maybe a support gun or a speeder or a bike, and you had plenty.

There were constant updates in White Dwarf adding things like Terminators, Chaplains, Ogryn, Rough Riders, and Harlequins. After a couple of years those started to get complied into supplements.

Over the next few years most of the foundations of the game were laid - Eldar and their Aspect Warriors, the Chaos gods, the Ork clans, squats, the different marine chapters, and the components of the imperial guard. I was running Eldar and marines all through this, including a Harlequin army. Yes, it was once possible to have an "army" of about 20 figures, and they were pretty nasty. This was my college game and I have a lot of fond memories of it.

This stuff started to get a little clunky with all of the different books (some of them pretty bulky) and so in 1993 we got the Second Edition with the first big box o' stuff. It was time for an update and consolidation but we lost some of the more random elements of the game. I don't remember anyone in our group not liking it. In fact I remember a lot of new people joining in, including friends who had passed on the prior edition, maybe because it had too many books.

This, along with Space Marine - the epic scale game in the same setting - was my post-college game. I had a real job, my own place, a couple of good FLGS that had playing areas - we played it a lot. I stayed with the Eldar, expanded my Howling Griffon marines, and added in some Orks and Chaos for good measure. Those Orks and Gretchin from this box (and with about 4 more boxes worth of boyz) still form a part of my Ork army today. My Griffs are mostly RT models, my Eldar were a mix of RT and 2nd, but the bulk of my Orks are from this era.

This was still a fun time. The first codexes came out, White Dwarf was still going strong supporting the game with new units and experimental rules, and even though it was a lot more "corporate" there was still a ton of the do-it-yourself spirit there when it came to conversions, units without official models, and terrain. Other than the occasional card building everything we played on, from ruins to forests, was home made. This was my biggest period of playing-with-strangers-at-the-game-store and we all had a lot of fun. There were some crazy situations back then and I wish we had all had camera phones so I would have some pictures to share with you.

Towards the end of the 90's the game wasn't as over-expanded as the prior edition but it was somewhat chaotic and favored big powerful heroes over rank and file and the mechanics had piled up in a way that was sort of like the second edition of D&D - even though you cleaned it up there are still a lot of underlying assumptions that mean it plays a certain way. So in 1998 we got 3rd edition.

This was a total revamp of the game. I remember getting the box and sitting down with the rules and being almost shocked - I know the people I played with had been hoping for a change but this was massive. Fortunately it came with army lists built right in to the main rulebook so we didn't have to wait for codex revamps as the old ones were just completely not compatible with these rules. As much flak as GW takes sometimes they did this one right. This is the game I was playing when I started having kids, so game time and paint time dropped precipitously during this edition.

With a sense of renewal a lot of us jumped back in. Late in 2nd edition I had started building a new marine army with a simpler paint scheme to get things done faster. For the new edition they became a major force in my games and my 3rd edition box marines are still the core of my Crimson Fist tactical squads. I never liked the Dark Eldar (introduced here) very much but my old figures are sitting in my wife's DE battalion box awaiting assembly.

As we played quite a bit early on in 3rd edition I decided to consolidate my armies. My chaos force, much of my eldar, and my budding imperial guard army were traded away for Orks. I built up a pretty nasty Ork force, though it was still mostly 2E era models, and I've been playing them ever since. I experimented with "dipping" my orks, again going for speed-to-tabletop.

White Dwarf was still good during this time putting out a lot of articles on terrain and a lot of special units and experimental rules. It was a total revamp so there was a lot to discuss. These generated an annual "rules update" that was pretty much required to keep up, on top of the new wave of codexes.

Also notable for me was that right before this edition a completely new version of Epic came out that killed the game for me, then Battlefleet Gothic came out a few years later which I really liked but could never get anyone else to get into. This meant that 40K was "the" game for a few years.

This is also the edition that was current while I was busy getting a divorce, which meant I was not doing much with it by the end. Late 3rd edition was not nearly as much fun as the beginning.

The next edition was the "lost edition" for me. I was not very active with 40K when it started, epic was gone (as far as I was concerned) BFG was not a big thing anymore, and I just was not that interested in anything GW was putting out. I played all of two or three games of this one. I never bought the boxed set, and only bought the rulebook late and on the cheap when I was thinking about getting back in. I was busy with other things.

Fifth edition was the renewal - within the first year of its release I was married and had picked up a couple of new apprentices and decided the time was right to introduce all of the boys to the game. To make up for missing 4th I bought two of these sets (for the older Apprentices) and fortunately it was a really good starter set. They swapped halves and the parts from each form the core of Blaster's Space Wolves and Red's Evil Sunz. This was their introduction to the game and piqued my interest enough to dive back in full-force, rebuilding old armies and building up new ones.

During this I dusted off the Griffons once again, reforged the Fists into a more normal marine army than the cutting-edge-of-3rd-edition they had been, acquired an entire Deathwing army in a confluence of interest and finances, added vehicles to my previously foot-slogging ork horde, and in general liked playing the game again. I was still having a lot of fun with 5th when word came that we were getting 6th ...

In the two years since it came out we've played as much or more 6th then we did 5th, which is pretty good. This time I only picked up one boxed set since it didn't really fit with the armies the Apprentices were running. They did get the big hardback rulebooks for this one though and they have been well-read. We've mostly ignored flyers and allies, the two biggest additions to this edition, but they've cropped up a few times. I put together enough mini's to field a Chaos Marine army and decided 3 loyalist marine forces weren't enough so I built up a Dark Angels force too - not the smartest move but why not have a marine army from (almost) every edition?

Red was in a local store league for a while and got to play against more than just family and learned a lot. He added a Necron army during this time while Blaster added Eldar. I think two armies is enough for them to manage so we're not in a hurry to add any more, and having them does make Christmas and birthdays a little easier to shop for in a pinch. Watching the kid open a well-painted Logan Grimnar feels pretty good - it's fun to make them lose their mind over something you know they're really going to like.

Apprentice Red will be done with high school in a little more than a week, so presumably this will be his "college edition". For Blaster it will be his main "high school" edition, and for Who it will be the first one he really digs into as he got his first starter mini's for Christmas a few months ago. I think it is a little ridiculous to be doing a new edition this quickly, but I'm going to roll with it. I'll be going to pick up a copy tomorrow so amid all of our end of year proms, banquets, concerts, and graduations I'll be reading up for the next round. It should make for a fun summer.