Monday, May 22, 2017

Where are my orks?!?

Hey people,

So what the hell GeeDub? You keep releasing these Focus pages on the various armies....but somehow the orks haven't gotten one yet? What's up with that nonsense?

Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of you for releasing all these previews and rule snippets. But damn...give me my orks! :)

So as you can see, I've been keeping an eye on the 8th ed updates for 40K. I haven't seen anything yet that is worrying people or scaring anyone away. I've liked what I have seen so far. Just going to come down to whether or not any armies got screwed at this point. I own lots of armies, so the odds of one of them getting hosed is pretty high. But I'm holding out hope that they did they all a solid. For the orks, they need a way to mitigate morale. As a horde army, if they don't get some way to ignore morale, then their number of valid builds is going to be very small.

I am really hoping that GW is also working on a nice transport model for my Ad Mech. There are going to be lots of strategies using transports in 8th and that seems like a big glaring hole in their list right now.

All the rest of my armies seem to be pretty solid for the most part. I wonder if the necrons will get some sort of wound regen. And I want to see how the gauss weapons are going to work.

In other news, I've just plugged up some model needs for my undead army. I think it will be my main force going forward in Kings of War. I have always loved my undead, and while in Kings, they lose some of their sparkle due to the more generic army list, they still are going to look great on the table. I just need to get creative with some of the units and model choices. For the first time, I'm actually going to replace a GW model with a Mantic one. I've bought a bunch of the mantic zombie models. They are quite decent and actually fit better with the newer GW models than the old GW zombie. Maybe I'll even put some together and toss in a pic or two down the line.

Nothing new to report on the PC gaming front. Been pretty much playing the same games. For DDO, my dragonborn Sorcerer build is just crazy good. Granted, he is still only level 10, but the damage he can put out is just redonkulous. So much fun and since it's Monday, I get to use him...woot!

I did actually install and play the Blizzard MOBA game Heroes of the Storm. They had this Nexus 2.0 event going on where if you played games with "friends" you could unlock bonuses for Overwatch. It worked in that it got me to play again. But I'm not so crazy about some of the character balance I witnessed, so I doubt I'll play anymore than I have to.

Oh, I did get Dawn of War III, but I haven't played it yet. Meh..I'll get to it eventually.

Well, that is it for this week. The sun is coming out in the PacNW and that means models can be primed again. That means I might actually paint something. Till next time.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

And on the 8th edition, he played

Hello gentle readers,

Today we are doing the near unthinkable, talking about a GW mainline game. For those that have read my previous posts, they have seen a hate/hate relationship bloom with GW over the past few years. I watched my beloved games turn into miniature selling schemes and prices go through the roof. My investments in their miniatures have kept me in the orbit of their games if not actually playing them.

Well, GW is about to release their 8th edition of Warhammer 40,000 and the journey so far has been surprising.

Winds of Change or Clever Ruse?
First off, GW has been releasing good info about the new edition. Nearly every day they have talked about the various phases of the game, giving a general outline of how they work. These are actual articles with real words as opposed to a ten second teaser video that showed nothing. For those that are wondering, no, I don't know the name of the rogue GW employee that has released this info. For his safety, that is being kept very secret. :) You can't blame anyone for thinking that. This is a huge turnaround for GW from years past. So either someone hit their head really hard, or they actually paid attention to the community when AoS dropped. Either way, this has been well received by the community at large by all accounts that I have seen. Lets hope that this new direction for GW is a permanent one.

40K, Age of the Emperor
The rules themselves are very much like Age of Sigmar. Movement values are back for troops, and armor is no longer a static save. Since 40K has always been a skirmish game, the change isn't so drastic unlike Warhammer Fantasy Battle to AoS. I believe we have been promised a free 12 page rulebook. So more meaty than AoS, but still very simple and streamlined. This means that the units themselves are going to be loaded with any special rules they might have. I'm fine with that. I always liked that units could have very individual abilities in AoS that fit their nature. One sore point that may come up is that the 7th ed books are completely irrelevant now. But to sooth that over, GW is going to release info for every unit currently in the game, IIRC. So again, very AoS like. But learning from AoS, they are releasing point values for units from the start. Using them is optional, but at least they are there, allowing no disruption to the competitive community.

Is that Hope?
So what does all this mean? Well honestly, it means I'm actually excited for 40K again. I have friends that have sworn off GW, reading the forums and asking questions about the new rules. In one swoop, GW looks to be making 40K accessible to new players with the "Play with what you have" style of play, yet keeping the veterans happy with point values. Also, they have outright said that they are hoping to speed up play, so that a typical game (based on previous game size) will take only 90 minutes.

Wasn't Born Yesterday
That said, we still don't have the rules yet, nor a solid release date. Also, we don't have the "warscrolls" for the various units. Simplifying the rules is good and all, but if you don't get the flavor and balance right for the units, then it is all for naught. GW seems to be heading in the right direction with 8th edition 40K. Whether or not they will stay on that path is still to be seen. I will say that with what they have done so far, I would recommend people to keep an eye on this one. It could turn out to be not only GW's biggest win, but a win for the players as well.

Till next time...