Good news everyone

Don't call this a comeback. It's more of a rebrand...

I've invented a device that will cause you to
 read this sentence with my voice.

Yes, this place has been awful quiet over the last year. For over a year actually. I managed to get some more important stuff out of the way (the Bar) and so the hobby side of things took a back seat. It turns out the timing was was impeccable: GW released 6th edition 40k and it was appalling. Thankfully I managed to miss out on it almost completely. I did a few tournaments up to November 2012 and didn't bother with it afterwards because it just wasn't up to scratch and wandered off to Warmachine like so many others.

I know that it is a subjective matter (one of my gaming group reckons it was the best edition of 40k they've had) but I reckon there's enough data to back up my theory that it was a terrible edition. Arguably the worst produced. So bad it had to be rewritten less than halfway through its life cycle and the company's stock has bombed as a result of people abandoning ship and spending money elsewhere. Like on Kickstarters that may never arrive...please Kingdom Death, just announce a shipping date. Please. 

But good news is on the horizon: 7th has been released and isn't a complete turkey (from my limited experience), the Space Wolves are on the way and arguably the biggest news for GW in a long time: Tom Kirby will be stepping down. Apparently.

Blood Angels: Synchronise!

Some of Burkhardt's Blood Angels.
They're much nicer than yours. And mine.

As Duncan will tell you, this article is late. Like, really late. No, it isn't a crude reference to Blood Angels bleeding profusely and suffering from insanity for 5 days a month: nor is about the phenomenon of menstrual synchrony; its about a few blogs that have got together to throw up a few ideas about how 6th edition has affected how they build Blood Angel armies now and how they've changed compared to how they were in 5th. I've just had to deal with the fact that I've been too ill to post recently despite this article being almost entirely complete for two weeks already. I'll add a few ideas to how to build army ideas that the lads have suggested beforehand and things I think will work based on games I've played, such as Allies which the lads have given scant regard to.

Little Dave over at the Red Thirst and Caolán of the Skibb Wargamers and are my co-conspirators in this endeavour, although I hope that a few more heads will contribute their thoughts on how they've rebuilt their BA (or their own armies as is the case with Dan from Tzarkahn40k and his Guard), especially with a return to the scene of an ETC veteran (2007) in the shape of Big Rog (pronounced Roj) recently running a Blood Rodeo list and Burkhardt (such pretty, pretty models) overcoming his distaste for anything random and inefficient. How un-Germanic - it must be the case that he has been here for too long already.

Ultramarines live longer with Calgar

I wonder if Mat Ward sees this when
he looks in the mirror?

You know the jingle used at the end of Calgon ads? They have it here in German but not in English for some reason. Anyway, if you use the words in the title of this post in place of the ones actually used you'll have that jingle stuck in your head all day. Now that its in there, you can hum along while you're reading the rest of this post.

The reason for it being here is because of a thread on w-ired that reminded me to go back to something I'd been looking at for a while in 5th but abandoned because it wasn't very good - the Calgar wave. Basically the idea is to have a ton of Marines sprinting across the board and getting Hit-and-Run lite in order to hop in and out of combat and pump out as many shots as they can get like waves hitting a beach, or bogging units down in combat when they need to pin something in place like that annoying floater that sometimes decides not to go down the toilet when you flush. What does that floater want anyway?

It didn't work in 5th because the worst things in the Marine army were Marines but with 6th vehicles have taken a hit and infantry is better and you can now run a horde of guys and stand a decent chance against most armies. But there's something that really gives it a big boost: Guard Allies.

Stormy's A.S.S.: Rules Questions

One of  Dan Abnett's best.

It's been a while since I'd done one of these but a few things have arisen in 6th edition that have piqued my interest with odd rules interpretations, despite GW's best attempts to cock-block silly combos through the use of Allies.

One of these is how Victory Points for Lone Wolves after the latest Space Wolf FAQ. On page 2 it says:

Page 29 – Lone Wolves, A Glorious Death.
Replace the last two sentences with: “Furthermore, in missions that award Victory Points for each enemy unit that has been completely destroyed, a Lone Wolf does not concede a Victory Point if he dies in battle. Instead, to represent his failure to meet a spectacular end, a Lone Wolf awards a Victory Point in such a mission if he survives until the end of the game!”

So the thing I'm wondering is if the Lone Wolf is the first unit killed in a game does he deny the enemy a Victory Point for First Blood?

Typhus Ideas.

With the favoured disciples of the other three Chaos Gods dealt with (here, here and here) its finally time to move onto the most popular of all the characters in the new dex: Typhus. Why is he the most popular?

One reason. Well, there are a few but one reason stands out moreso than any other.

He gives you access to Zombies. Hordes of the mindless dead. 40k Grimdark Zombies. Resident Evil with Space Marines. The Walking Dead. 

I could go on and on making cultural references but I'll stop before I get completely sidetracked. What I will do is commend myself on the timing of this by having this blog post coincide with Hallowe'en.

Lucius Ideas

If only Lucius' rules were as awesome as this guy...

When the rumours of a new CSM dex started to surface I was hopeful that Lucius would get a handy boost to enable him to tackle all-comers and be a bit more survivable. I knew that getting a Celestine-style back from the dead effect would be out (because its maddeningly powerful) but I was hoping for something that would reflect the background that he takes over the body of the guy that killed him, rather than having his armour reflexively kick out after he gets a slap in the mouth.

What we did get was one of the items that wasn't improved massively from the previous 'dex. He is the only character to get a Doom Siren and he tends to get extra attacks in challenges, which you are doubly encouraged to partake in with the Boons table but there is one major drawback: Lucius is average in combat. In fact there's a song that reminds me of him (Emerge by Fischerspooner) for the repeated use of a single world: Hypermediocrity.

Kharn the Betrayer Ideas

Kharn. He's some man for the skulls.

I was in two minds about my next article but I reckoned that I'd run with more thoughts on Special Characters before moving onto units and army builds. Next up is another of my favourite feens and arguably most iconic of all Chaos Marines: Kharn the Betrayer. Or Betrayer the Betrayer if you are able to read Arabic, according to some.

I've been a fan since his short story by Bill King featured in Inferno Magazine #1 was included in White Dwarf (the one with the kill-count ticking away in his helmet's visor) although there's a resident gamer in my group that is an uber-fanboy of Kharn, but his blushes will be saved and he'll not be named, but you know who you Daire.

So how best do you help Kharn collect skulls for his perpetually angry patron?

Ahriman Ideas

I'll bet you he's really poring through a skin mag.

So like many of you reading this I've been digesting the Chaos Codex for the past week and seeing what silly combos are available and what units have been grossly undercosted/overpowered with the book. So far there's nothing that I've found that's quite that ridiculous as its been very balanced: if you want something then you have to pay for it or you have to mess around with your very limited HQ slots to get what you want (usually Fearless units as Troops) and things start to add up very quickly. I note that one of the playtesters over on the B&C forum (the jeske, iirc) reckoned that the army operates best at 2k points levels.

I'm going to go with 1850 though as that it what is usually played in tournaments over here. Aside from the general overview above I wanted to throw out some thoughts about Ahriman as he is one of the characters I've always liked and I've wanted to include him in a list for quite a while and now thankfully he might be worth including as he's got a few things going for him.

Horus Heresy: Horus' Stats

Horus: Probably an 'after' pic.

While I'm more interested in the impending arrival of the Chaos book I am keeping a weather eye on the Horus Heresy supplement that Forge World are doing. Well, I was until I saw that the first book in the series, Betrayal, came with a price tag of £70. That's about €90 which will get me plenty of Cultists or more likely, enable me to go halves on both the Hordes starter and Dark Vengeance in order to get the factions that I want (Legion and Chaos respectively).

Anyway, I've still got enough interest in the Horus Heresy (thanks to the growing heap of books and audiobooks released) to have a sconce at the rules for Legions and their Primarchs. Specifically the Phoenician and his Legion before they become depraved psychopaths. His rules are available elsewhere but it would seem the gobshite that started it all has been hiding out. Proper order, as the loyalist Legions will be on their way for him soon.

New Chaos Marine Rules

Up yours Khorne! I have all of the skulls, now.

Having been distracted recently with the phenomenon that is Gangnam style and the need to paint up some Nurgle-esque Undivided units I've been saying little on the upcoming release of the updated Chaos Codex. While plenty of other sites are sharing out pics and scans from this month's White Dwarf I've been waiting to hear of anything of interest concerning how the Emperor's Children are affected by rules changes.

Thankfully they've finally started to emerge and it's looking good so far, but I won't count any chickens before they hatch. We all know how useless the rules and how little the Pyrovore has sold since the Codex brought out something way different to the rumoured rules. I'm an optimist though so I'll remain cautiously optimistic.

New FAQs: What's happened to the Wolves?

Logan's fine. What about the rest of us now?

Well it finally happened that GW realised that their their rulebook is quite sloppily written as they've released a slew of responses via FAQs to questions that were raised by gamers post-Dark Vengeance release. Here's the main rulebook and the Wolf FAQs respectively. So how have the Vylka Fenryka been affected by GW correcting their mistakes?

First up is that Njal's Lord of Tempest table doesn't affect Flyers and that he's also armed with a Stave (+2 S, AP 4 and Concussive).

Q: How do maelstroms, novas and beams – or indeed any weapon that doesn’t need to roll To Hit or hits automatically – interact with Zooming and Flyers and Gliding Monsters? (p13)A: Only Snap Shots can hit Zooming Flyers and Gliding Flying Monstrous Creatures. Therefore, any attacks that use blast markers, templates, create a line of/area of effect or otherwise don’t roll to hit cannot target them. This includes weapons such as the Necron Doom Scythe’s death ray or the Deathstrike missile of the Imperial Guard, and psychic powers that follow the rule for maelstroms, beams, and novas.

Clearly the head-honchos in Nottingham reckon they haven't sold enough Flyers yet so people are now pretty much forced to buy anti-Flyer units/Forts in order to get their Anti-Air on: the Wolves especially as they have so little of it in their army.

Hellbrute: Colour pics of the €85 6th ed Starter Set

The Hellbrute. Damn...

So the pics have been doing the rounds for a couple of hours now and many of you will have seen the pics of the painted Chaos Lord, BA characters and Cultists but the shots of the Chaplain have been few and far between. Oh wait, he's below the jump...

Purdy, aren't they? I'm looking forward to daubing these guys in Black and Pink and crossing my fingers that Noise Marines are really good now so that I can fire rainbow-coloured waves of destruction that would make Bronies spooge themselves. I'll have to wait for the Chaos 'dex before I can finally find that out though. 

As for this model - there's some scenery on the base and apparently all of the character models in the box have scenic bases already.

I also forgot that the ETC is starting a day early (today, Friday) this year so I'll belatedly say good luck to the lads and hopefully they'll do well for themselves. The latest (available here) is that they're on table 5 after 2 rounds and will be facing Italy after a loss to Latvia and a win against Belgium so here's hoping they keep the momentum going and get a few more wins.

6th ed Starter Box and Chaos Marines release dates

Oh My God: Someone finally made Lucius look good.

Naftka over on his blog has just revealed the dates for when the 6th ed box set (the one with Dark Angels and Chaos Marines in it) and just as important, the release of Codex: Chaos Marines. Oh, I've been waiting a long time to be able to wield Noise Marines that opponents were actually afraid of.

It's the last Saturday of August along with the White Dwarf previewing CSM. (the 25th).

This refers to the box set that was hinted at here. There really will be Plasma for all of the Dark Angels apparently.

As for Chaos:

The 25th is the white dwarf which is all about the new starter and chaos space marines.

Pre-Orders for the new starter set begin on the 25th, for release on the 1st.

Pre-Order for Chaos Space Marines go up on the 8th and the entirety of their range will be released in two waves on the 15th and the 29th

Daemons in 6th thoughts

So with the new rules changes brought about by the release of 6th and the subsequent White Dwarf update booklet the Daemons of Chaos have been given a nice boost and they're now no longer one of the unwanted step-children of the 40k family of armies. Even the Nids have been improved, but not to the degree of their Warp-spawned cousins, although rumblings have begun to suggest that they're due for a similar WD update that will allow Pyrovores to become an Anti-Aircraft unit. They might even appear in games if that were true.

Back to the Daemons: thanks to a large number of their HQs having Wings and with their Daemon Princes having access to them they are able to get a large number of Flying Monstrous Creatures (unlike their Chaos Marine counterparts) which has been dubbed the Flying Circus as this build relies on making their big guys hard to hit and also enables them to fly around torching units with Breath of Chaos before gliding down to assault units later on. As the lads over on the 11th Company Podcast said, when someone says a Flying Circus army is not that good he's a Nid player but when someone says they're really good they're a Daemon player.

What's not to like?

New Daemon rules in WD

Now Partybuses come in Cavalcades.

By now most of the interwebs will be aware of the newly-released units for Codex: Chaos Daemons that will be coming out in the update in this month's White Dwarf as shown here, here, here and here. To sum it up, there are new rules for Screamers, Flamers and a couple of Slaanesh Chariots. There are rules for Fantasy too but since no-one really cares about that we'll move swiftly along.

The big questions are how much are they and how good are they? €46, which is a bit steep for them, but I'll probably end up getting one for all of the parts that I can use for my Emperor's Children army. Now for the latter part: how useful they are in a list?

40k Starter Set contents leaked

Yes Dark Angel: You get ALL of the Plasma.

You've got to the love the lads that dislike GW's strict silence on upcoming releases stance. Thanks to them we now know what's in the starter set. As previously suspected, it's Chaos and DA although Chaos only get 7 Marines but at least they get a Dread and some Cultists to hit behind.

Taken from B&C

DA has :

Captain Balthasar(with power armor, not in TDA)
Librarian(with power armor)
Tactical Sqaud(10 men, with 1 plasma cannon, 1 plasma gun)
Deathwing Squad(5 men, with storm bolters, no Stormshield)
Ravenwing Squad(3 bikes)

Chaos part:

Lord(in power armor)
Chaos Dread(with tl-melta and DCCW)
Chosen(6 men, with power maul, power fist and lightning claw)
Cultists(20 men, half with ccw and pistol, the other half have assault rifle)

So what do you make of this? The loyalist Marines are again fairly heavily favoured in this army-wise but with the opportunity to carve up the DA, other Chaos players must surely be considering getting one for themselves.

6th ed Space Wolf FAQ is out

Tell me: What has happened to my Axe in 6th ed?

Well, they're actually all out now but the one that I'm most interested in is the Vylka Fenryka (Space Wolves to non-Horus Heresy fans) and what the new rules mean for them. Much of it is bringing things into line with the new rules (ATSKNF for example) and Bikers are now base T5 which is nice for Attack Bikes as they aren't doubled-out by Krak Missiles anymore.

ICs on Bikes are the same making them a more attractive prospect for them now. Doubly so, as you'll get twin-linked bolters, the speed to get into favourable positions to snipe out fancy guys through torrents of firepower and Hammer of Wrath I10 attacks when you assault (with potential re-rolls to hit thanks to Preferred Enemy). Suddenly a Wolf Priest on a Bike is a really attractive prospect. Give him a 2+ save and he can soak up fire all day especially with his 2+ Look Out Sir save to have grunts take damage instead of him.

So let us see what else has changed.

6th ed Warlord Buffs

Look. It's Warlord from the WWF. How shiny and camp.

Many of us will have seen the Battle Report from the new WD and will have noticed how Creed was elected the allied IG/GK Warlord and received a buff.

There are 3 traits open to choose from and they are Strategic, Command and Personal. You pick the table you want and roll a D6 and that trait applies for the game.

If its a buff then its random I can live with as you don't get a debuff by rolling 1's. Some stuff will be useless: Ouflanking units get Acute Senses? Woo, my Wolf Scouts will be happy.

There are some fairly decent ones in there like forcing a unit within 12" of the Warlord to use the lowest Ld in the unit for Morale tests though. It'll be interesting to see how useful they prove overall and if they'll apply in games without allies, although that appears unlikely from the wording.

How Hull Points Work. Allegedly.

I just came across this one on B&C and wandered over to Tyranid Hive (yes, it burns the eyes) to see if anything further could be gleaned. Nothing further was.

She might be pulling Guardsmen out of tanks soon.

A Glancing hit remove one hull point. A Penetrating hit also removes one hull point, plus you get a roll on the damage table. Once hull points are reduced to zero, the vehicle is destroyed. Which is a HUGE NERF to vehicles. About bloody time!

So a big change to vehicles that was expected in some fashion due to GW's make-everything-good-in-the-previous-edition-crap-in-the-new to sell more stuff. So with most vehicles having 3 wounds/hull points weight of fire becomes much more effective at killing stuff off quickly.

I can see Dreads falling out of favour really fast. Even if I am taking this with lots of salt.

40k 6th ed Trailer 3 and new powers

So GW has seen fit to release a 3rd trailer and its available here. It's got a bit more artwork. Some people have already started to post up details about powers from the new Lores too and I have to say I'm not massively impressed with the ones I've seen so far but I've yet to see how the game plays to make a final judgement on them.

Anyways, enjoy the vidjoe, fwiw.