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.

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.

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 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.

6th ed White Dwarf (PW now AP2?)

The random: it hurts my brain.

Issue three-hundred and something of GW's-monthly-catalogue-and-Jervis-rant has pics of some of the new crap being flogged to coincide with the release of 6th, but intriguingly it also has some hints at new rules including psychic powers.

Wolves are able to take Divination, Biomancy and Telekinesis, as well as the powers in the Codex. Hopefully we'll still be able to select from the book while rolling for the ones in the BRB is another option open to us.

And that pic leaked a few days ago is of the rulebook, Mr Flood. It'll retail for £45 which will be €60, or more like €50 from a shop or even €40-odd from an internet retailer.

Who actually buys full-price stuff from a GW these days? Storm Ravens for €65?

Lol.

6th ed Teaser Trailer 2

This is the rulebook. Not the Teaser Trailer.

I've been very quiet recently as I've got plenty on my plate. I've been following the rumours about 6th ed like everybody else but I'm doing my best not to add to the confusion by linking left, right and centre to contradictory rumour-mongers.

There's also the fact I don't intend on getting both other's and my own hopes up about the changes being forecast: I'm hopefully optimistic that I'll still be playing it in 12 months time despite all of the lelrandom that is supposed to be introduced.

Here's another cryptic teaser trailer from GW via Heresy-Online. It looks like a Navigator in the video. Probably some guy cranky that he can no longer rely on getting the good powers from his codex but is now selecting them at random.

New Paint Sets have DA in them

As you can see from the picture on the left there is going to be an updated basic paint set released, probably to coincide with the 145 new paints that GW are bringing out.

While the Fantasy box has HE Sea Guard in it, the 40k box has Dark Angel green marines featured on the front of the box. I'm going to read too much into it but I find it interesting that they'd move away from Ultramarines in favour of the dress-wearing pansies.

However, with DA and Chaos rumoured to be in the 6th ed box due out later this year, it does give stronger credence to those rumours. Although I must say that I'm surprised that it isn't Chaos Marines that they've chosen to put in the box with the alleged push to set them up as the new poster boys.

Make of it what you will. Pinches of salt and all that. Afaik, there'll be less blurry pics out on Saturday.

Relic 40k

A post about this FFG game has just gone up online and apparently it'll be released in the summer. It'll bascially be a 40k version of Talisman with Spehs Mahreens and other Imperial servants looking for Treasah.

It's claiming that it'll include "busts" of unpainted models which makes me wonder if it won't be complete minis (which Talisman had) but rather FW-style busts instead. At the very least they'd make nice objective markers or something that could be incorporated into some fancy terrain for normal 40k.

Chaos Legions after Necrons?

This popped up over on Naftka's blog and I was immediately interested as I have a sizeable Emperor's Children collection and would love to press them back into service without restoring to pink Oblits and Plague Marines. Because most of the other choices are sub-par.

As he's already stated the accepted rumour mill has it as Tau, Chaos Legions (with Renegades getting the White Dwarf treatment), 6th edition in book form in June/July and the box set(s) in August with Eldar to follow, so this is something to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Still, I can finally begin to dream of wielding my collection of pink and black Traitors made of rape and win again.

Hey Eoin: Especially for you (New Necron fluff).

Having seen the controversy that's erupted over the leaked Necron pics (Beasts of War are apparently a front for Wayland Games) there's been a post over on Faeit 212 about the changes to the Necron fluff. He's oft accurate about rumours that Naftka.

Cue nerdrage. Vodka Eoin might show up soon.

I'm not sure I'm sold on them being more blatantly Tomb Kings in Space. Hopefully they'll become one of the few Xenos factions that can do well ala Dark Eldar I'll live with it.