Something Funny Saturday

 

40K Friday: Grey Knights for 9th Edition

 

Pretty fired up about this one - the Grey Knights have been around since Rogue Trader  where they were a very specialized unit - not an army - that dropped in to fight big daemons typically. They are Space Paladins after all and they definitely look the part.

This continued on into Epic which is where I painted my first batch - the requisite 4 squads of terminators that were something any Imperial force could use. That was around 91-92 when the second edition of that game came out so I can say that on some level I've been playing Grey Knights for 30 years, right?

So I've always liked them but I never built them up in 40K, even after their emergence as a separate army and subsequent domination in 5th edition. I finally decided to fix this gap a few years back in 8th edition and I am very happy about it - I love the lore and I love the models.

Lots of good news this week with a new codex coming next week:

• New Stuff
• New Psychic Abilities
• A bunch of updates to units and strats and powers

I think it looks very promising  - it's always hard to tell with isolated chunks like this but I like the pieces I have seen so far. 

I have probably 4000 points total now with around 3000 of that painted so I'll be ready to go when the book comes out but it is a good reason to dive in and finish the rest of those units too. I don't really need anything new at this point  - maybe the new Crowe model - but it would be nice to have another one that I could call "finished" with a shiny new codex.

The Tomorrow War

 

It's a new movie on Amazon Prime that you may have heard of ... Chris Pratt, time travel, aliens, fate of the human race ... it checks a lot of typical sci-fi boxes.

NOTHING BUT SPOILERS BELOW!

I kind of want a prequel to tell us about this guy now.

Longtime 40k player take: It's Imperial Guard vs. Tyranids

But I have to admit ... I liked it better than I expected to ... a lot better.

The premise: Current day Chris Pratt is an ex-special forces sergeant who is now married, has a daughter, and teaches high school biology while trying to get a more scientific research type gig.  He's happy but frustrated. Then a terminator bubble/gateway pops open in the middle of a soccer match and humans from 30 years in the future walk through and announce that humanity is being eaten by aliens in their time and they need help. That help involves sending humans from "now" forward to "then" to help shoot aliens for a week, after which they return home ... if they live. Somehow the entire world agrees that this is legit in fairly short order so a worldwide draft is set up and people get notified at random that it's their turn to go. They get a brief training period - a week or less - and then they get sent forward 30 years to shoot aliens. 

As you might guess, this does not typically go well. Humans are still losing and the survival rate is something like 20% for the draftees. 

This is where I have some questions:

• They do go out of their way to cover the potential paradoxes in that only people who are dead prior to the current future time are drafted - no running into yourself.
• They also explain that they can only travel a fixed distance so it's only 30 years forward or back - to the day. This avoids some other questions and considering time travel was developed during an apocalyptic war it makes sense that  there might be some limitations.
• I'm still not sure how it works from our end - apparently you just need the one transmitter in the future and you can jump back and forth. Seems pretty loose but ok. 
• Location is never defined - apparently you can drop a shipment wherever you want and pick up form wherever you want. So it's kind of a teleporter too. This isn't discussed at all in the movie but it's hardly a dealbreaker. 

My biggest problem with the film is the aliens. A completely non-technological species the size of a horse ... there's just no way. There's no way they are going to take over almost the entire planet facing modern military technology. 

• They have tentacles that can shoot a spike to maybe pistol range. Wheeee! It is not particularly lethal because we see multiple characters get hit by one and survive so they aren't poisoned or anything. They are also not terribly accurate as we see many, many spikes embedded in walls or cars or other objects and they are not always surrounded by bloodstains. Plus we see a lot of missed shots during the action scenes. 
• Typical assault rifles can shoot 600 rounds per minute or more. Even with a 30 round magazine that's a lot more lead in the air than the aliens can toss and Planet Earth does not lack for bullets. They also have a much greater range, hundreds of meters, than anything we see from the aliens.
• A lot of time the movie acts as though assault rifles and pistols are the only weapons humanity has against these things. Sure, in a room maybe - but how did they get into the room? I don't think we see a single grenade used in the entire thing. We do see an M2HB in action so that was nice. 
• If the aliens had some superior technology or were spewing out some contagion I could see the problem but they don't - no heat rays, no black smoke, no force fields or super-tough alien metal ... they are basically animals. Mean animals that eat people sure, but still just animals to all appearances. They don't even have acid blood as an up-close hazard! We don't see them reproducing by laying bunches of eggs or anything like in some other movies so we don't know how any of that works. 
• If they have overrun so much of the world then presumably they have exhausted the food supplies on those other continents in the course of this 3-year war, right? Once the Russians are gone, what do the monsters in Russia eat? Given their size and activity level they would need to eat a lot.
• Back to how do these things overrun the world - They are roughly horse-sized. They are bright white in color. They are not particularly stealthy - no predator camouflage here. So again, how do they overrun any reasonably defended position? Helicopter gunships don't have to be  50 feet off the ground and in jumping distance to do what they do. We have infrared, night vision, thermal sights ... they're not going to sneak up on anyone really.

 

Now despite all this I still liked the movie. I just had to let go and take it as a given that somehow some way a series of colossal screw-ups meant that humanity was losing and losing badly to these things. I kept waiting for the big conspiracy-expectations-subversion-twist that the aliens were really from an experiment gone wrong on earth or some government or corporate bad guy was responsible for them but there was none of that - thank goodness. The movie stuck to its' original premise and that made me quite happy. There are some interesting twists along the way but nothing that is flat-out stupid beyond the core premise of the aliens over-analyzed above.

Well other than the final defense of the last human holdout. Seriously - it's in the middle of the ocean and they are totally surprised when a huge wave of creatures swarms up out of the ocean. They apparently had no early warning system set up, no picket ships, no mines in the water ... it's laughable and whoever was responsible for that should have been fired - if they weren't eaten.  

This movie does steal/homage from a LOT of other films. Alien, Aliens, Apocalypse Now, Terminator (it's sort of a reverse terminator in concept anyway), The Thing, Independence Day, Starship Troopers, ... even Stranger Things feels like an inspiration for some of the scenes here. 

Chris Pratt's family figures in significant ways, not just a motivation to "get back". The supporting characters are given just enough personality and capability to cover why they are there and to make it enjoyable while they are. The special effects look pretty good. 

It's not Star Wars. It's not super-deep. It is one of the better sci-fi action movies to come out in quite a while though and that surprised me. If you like this kind of thing it's definitely worth a couple of hours of your time. 

The Cortex Prime Handbook

 

I really like this book. It is exactly the kind of shoring-up or reinforcement that is useful to someone who already has a Cortex game like, say ... Marvel Heroic Roleplaying! Yet it is also an up-to-date full presentation of the system and the concepts behind it that a new player could use to begin playing. 

I won't break down every part of it because if you've played one of their games before then you have a good idea of how the system works. This is the most comprehensive presentation of that system published to date. The structure:

• The Core system - tests are the big focus here
• Characters - Stats, powers - all the different categories that might appear on a character sheet, experience, and yes - character creation, which was a source of complaints in the Marvel version at least. I don't see any gaps here.
• Scenes - this is a primer on how the game is structured and how conflicts work - combat and other types of conflict as well.
• Sessions - GM advice and how NPCs work in this system.
• Settings - this is one area I mainly skimmed because it has some good advice on defining a setting for this system specifically, with examples. I liked that. Then it goes into 3 new settings for the game. They're fine but I wasn't really looking for new settings with this book.
• Powers, Abilities, sample milestones, vehicles, and some sample characters.- it's the "stuff you can use in play" chapter. 

One refreshing thing is the way options are presented - as "Mods": equally valid choices you might use in any game, not as a Standard with some optional Variant rules. This is nice and it does discuss why one might be a better fit than another depending on the setting or just on what the GM and players want the game to do. The Doom Pool form Marvel is one option. Assets and Complications have some options. Your "Prime Sets", those different categories on your character sheet, are variable depending on the campaign. It looks to me like it takes every option they have ever presented in one of their prior games, refines them, and presents them side by side. It makes me think a lot of the 4th edition Champions BBB where we finally saw all of the options that the Hero System had been building over the prior decade presented in one volume. It's that good. 

I still love these character layouts - everything you need to know is right here!

Like that Hero book I think this one might be a lot to digest for someone totally new to the system. It's great but it's also somewhat generic in presentation and given the abstract approach of the rules it might be hard to picture what is happening with some of the rules interactions. There are examples and they do help but it is quite a bit different than most RPG's, especially if someone is coming from a strictly 5th edition D&D background. I think a totally new player would be better off finding a copy of one of their prior releases that covered a specific setting. Like ...

Yes, I will probably always view Cortex through a Marvel lens - a superhero lens at least as you could easily run DC characters with this as well. I think it's a great setting for playing characters you already know which is probably why they had so many licensed settings and why character creation was not tightly defined when this book was released. I've never been big on playing "known characters" in any other genre, and not many other systems, but for this one it just became the default for me and my kids and friends have had a ton of fun with it over the last 9 years. This book should only add to the fun.

If you want to see the system in play here are some examples of how it can go:

Session 1 from our campaign

Session 2

Session 3

Some thoughts after building some new characters in the system

There have been additional sessions beyond these but I never wrote them up. It has been one very drawn-out campaign with players and characters coming and going but it has always been a great game to play, with much laughing and much quoting of old books/shows/movies of course. A lot of that is the setting and characters but the system drives that as well. I am very happy to see a current, in-print book that could allow others to discover the fun we have had with this game. 

New Marvel RPG - I Went Ahead and Pre-Ordered It

 

I don't do pre-orders most of the time - outside of the occasional kickstarter ... and it's not going to be released until March ... and I don't like paying for playtest versions of games ... but it's ten bucks and I decided it was worth a shot. Superhero RPGs are an area of interest and I have been playing them for 40 years so I can step outside the lines here. No idea how the system will turn out but it's probably worth keeping an eye on Matt Forbeck's blog for clues.

If you're interested here's a link to the pre-order on Amazon.

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!

Rifts Savage Worlds Kickstarter - Atlantis!

 

Well it's time for another Savage Worlds Kickstarter, in fact another Rifts Savage Worlds Kickstarter. The first run was in 2016, then another one in 2019 to expand the books with Magic, Coalition, and regional stuff books, plus an upgrade of the original to the new Adventure edition of Savage Worlds. 

This time it's for Atlantis for this version of Rifts. I always thought Atlantis was one of the cooler areas of Rifts and one of the cooler books for it as well - magic items, races, tattoo magic, plus all of the worldbuilding and backstory that came along with it ... it was a very strong early entry in making Rifts Rifts. 

Now I never did much with it in my games as far as the region. It seemed horrifically dangerous for most characters to approach, much less enter, sort of like going to the Nine Hells in a D&D game. It was more an "aspirational" destination than a likely one at low to medium levels. With the Savage Worlds version of the game levelling the playing field a bit I can see where it might actually get used at some point. 

The short version is that the original Atlanteans look very much like humans but they were driven out or enslaved when the Splugorth invaded a long time ago.  The city magically TARDIS-d out when magic diminshed on Earth but it returned when the rifts opened up and magic flooded the world again. This is one of the major evil powers of the setting so it's a dangerous place but there is a sort of underground rebellion of True Atlanteans active there as well. Oh and it's also full of dragons. 

It's awesome but deadly. I've used Atlantean slavers several times as a campaign opener so maybe next time they won't go somewhere else - maybe they will go back to the big island.

The good news is that Pinnacle knows how to run a Kickstarter and I am absolutely sure this one will run smoothly and deliver what it promises pretty much on time. 

The part that bothers me a bit is that Pinnacle has a ridiculous amount of KS experience because pretty much everything they publish these days is done via Kickstarter. I know I know, it's rough for small publishers out there these days and doing it this way makes sense. Doesn't it seem like today, though, with 5E doing this record business for several years now, that the RPG market should be better? There were a ton of smaller publishers in the 80's and 90's and early 2000's who supported game lines for years before crowdfunding ... shouldn't it be easier now? Shouldn't an experienced, respected, well-liked company be able to sustain their main game line without having to crowdfund?

Who knows, maybe they could but they know this is just better - more predictable at least. 

The downside of doing it this way is that you can't just buy a $30 book like you can with many other games. No, you are going to get the book, some character cards, and a poster map. Now the basic digital-only version is pretty reasonable but if you just want a printed Savage Rifts Atlantis Book you're in for the $45 package. If that's all you want your best bet is to wait until after the campaign, whenever it's printed and shipped and you can buy it at the FLGS or online for the cover price or less. 

The other stuff in this campaign include a set of cardboard stand-up pawns, like Pathfinder pawns apparently, and a couple of map packs along with the book and the cards and the poster map. It's all cool stuff, it's just the forced bundling that itches just a bit and granted that is a temporary state that will only last until it's all released separately, likely early next year given what they are saying on the KS page.  

So yes, I will probably back it at some level - Rifts is a great setting and Savage Worlds is a great set of rules that works well for it. I like a ton of what Pinnacle does so I try to support them directly like this when they make something I like. If you have some similar inclinations then go check this one out. 

 

New Marvel RPG?

 

Looks like Marvel is releasing a new RPG. It has been ten years since the last one so we're probably due. Matt Forbeck has done a lot of good work on other RPG's so it's in good hands but it sounds like it's being aimed at the 5E crowd given the stats:

"...Might, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic ..."

So I'm assuming we won't see something as ridiculously interesting and innovative as Marvel heroic Roleplaying. It will be interesting to see how they use those - quick! Who has a higher Vigilance? Daredevil? Wolverine? Iron Man? That's sound, smell, and radar all competing in that race I would think. 

And what the heck is the D616 system? Do we have to call it that? I'm going to bet a 616 sided die is not at the heart of it. I guess we will see.

It's also a little odd that they're doing a "Playtest Rulebook" - shouldn't Marvel be able to fund a solid game development program? Paizo and FFG both did it I know but it's a little weird to see a paid test version coming out for Marvel - when it's published by Marvel! Time will tell.

If you're a fan of MHR it lives on in the very recently released Cortex Prime system you can find here. 

Interesting times - no doubt!

GW Goes to Numbered Rules!

 

It may be a sign of the apocalypse but Games Workshop is putting rule numbers into one of its flagship games! The article is here but the shocking - shocking! - image above conveys the important part! I mean it's only been 40+ years since Squad Leader and Star Fleet Battles started doing this 

GW's will be prettier and easier to read but considering this was done in 1977 it should be ...

I'm kind of impressed. This is the kind of thing serious wargames do and it seems they might finally be treating AoS as the kind of game that benefits from tighter and more organized rules. It's not an RPG! If you're going to run tournaments for it, might as well make the rules better.

A page from Star Fleet Battles Expansion #1 ... the one after The Movie - yes, the first one! People still play these games today and SFB at least hasn't had a major rules revision in about 30 years - because once they got it figured out they didn't feel the need to keep messing with them. Errata - sure. Change for the sake of change? Nope. 

Will this carry over to 40K? Lord I hope so. It will probably be in the next edition but doing it in AoS 3.0 lets them work out any kinks before they take it to the big game.

It has to be said that neither 40K nor Age of Sigmar are anywhere near the complexity of modern Squad Leader or SFB (or Federation Commander) but any set of rules can benefit from being organized in a sensible way, and a competitive game can benefit even more. 

So bravo GW! Bravo!

The Machina Wars for Mutants and Masterminds

 

The Machina: Visually similar to, but legally distinct from, those other transforming robots you've probably heard of...

This is an interesting supplement for Mutants and Masterminds from Jacob Blackmon's Super Powered Legends line on DTRPG. It's a type we don't see a ton of these days. It's sort of an "enemies" book in that it does have game stats for a number of bad guys - but it has them for "allies" too. It has more than that though. There are notes on the history of this ... race? Civilization? Plus notes on the organizations or governments associated with them. It's a pretty thorough exploration of the subject matter in 36 pages and the best part is that it's totally a drop-in option for a campaign. They have their own history and battles and characters off in one part of the galaxy and then BAM - when you need them to they arrive on Earth.

I admit that I liked this a lot more than I was expecting to. yes, it's "Transformers" for M&M. Transformers was kind of after my time, more the realm of little brothers as I was already a teenager when it got popular and I was aware of it and could see the appeal but it was never "mine" like say Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica, or Marvel/DC superheroes. I've seen some of the original animated series and the movie and then the Michael Bay movies, then recently the grittier Netflix shows like "Earthrise". So I'm casually familiar with the whole scene but I'm not emotionally invested in it like Star Trek. There is a lot of potential here though.

This work gives us origins of the species and then covers the major eras of their history and some notes on roleplaying in each of them. Having watched the Netflix War for Cybertron shows (2 released so far of a planned trilogy) it makes sense to me. The evil bots have taken control and the good bots are a rebellion that's having ups and downs is one of the more recent parts that lines up with that particular show. I don't feel like I'm missing anything critical if I was going to add this to a campaign. 

The rest of the book is statblocks and personality descriptions of pretty much everything you would need to run these in a campaign: Generic Bad Bot, generic Good Bot, Bad Bot leader with the big gun, Red & Blue good Bot leader, other leader figures on both sides, Prehistoric Animal Bot leader, a big Combined Bot and an explanation of how that power would work so you can make more, and even the old multi-faced race that once controlled the Machina in the early days. Transformed stats are noted as well. Most of the "grunts" are PL7-8, and the leaders top out around PL12. This is a nice spread of easier to handle soldier types but leaving the bosses to pose more of a challenge - which sounds pretty true to the source material. There is also a discussion of their unique "biology" including how they heal etc. which is important as they are all built as robots and so have no Stamina score. To me it seems very solid.

The genius of the way this is put together is that is perfect for dropping in to an existing superhero campaign. Your heroes are doing their thing when a report comes in of some kind of armored bad guys or robots causing trouble downtown. The heroes investigate and then one of them hears the car parked next to them say "Please don't let them take me" and you're off to the races! I love the idea of dropping in recognizable pop culture/nerd stuff that totally fits in with what you're doing anyway. If you need a plot, well, the first live action movie is an easy go-to there, but instead of some human dork your Bumblebee stand-in is talking to Batman ("we have a problem") or Spider-Man ("uh, guys ... there's a car talking to me over here ...") ... or ... Thor "Fear not friendly carriage! The lion of Asgard stands between you and these foes!

Once you get through an introductory series of sessions then you can decide where to take things:

•  Maybe your players have had enough morphing robots for now and everyone parts on good terms with hooks to be explored later. 
• Maybe this is just the opening act of a war that spreads to earth and soon the government super anti-terrorist agency gets involved with all of their neat vehicles and nifty codenames. 
• Maybe it's time to take the campaign to Spaaaaaace and go check out their home world!

Anyway I really like the potential of this book when added to a superhero campaign. It covers just enough to be worth getting and noodling over but it's not something you're going to feel has to take over your game full time and that's a great sweet spot.