Hello
and good morning! I think this is a first: me actually posting a Monday Morning
Gamer post on an actual morning! (It’s 8:14 am here, for those wondering).
Sure, pessimists might point to the fact that it is Tuesday instead of Monday,
but I choose to look at the glass as half full!
Anyway,
another shortish post for you this morning. I have a few thoughts on the new Empire
book. I know it’s been out for a while already, but I didn’t do a proper post
on it before so I’ll mention some thoughts now. Secondly, we have another
installment of our Farewell to 5th painting challenge. We’ve hit a
sizeable snag last week, which I’ll mention below, but most of us managed to
push through and get some painting done. Lastly, just some thoughts on the way
army selection works in our group currently. Nothing big, just some thoughts I’ve
had while playing in our Blood in the Badlands campaign.
Let’s
get to is, shall we?
Men of the Empire!
The
Empire book has been out for a fair few weeks now and I thought I’d give you
some of my thoughts on the army. This past weekend I’ve been trying to draw up
some lists to see if I could make an army I’d see myself play with, some I’ve
put some thought in it already. Of course, I haven’t played a game vs. the new
book yet, so whatever I say here is all just theory! So here it goes, my
thought on how I think Empire will work and what we’ll see once the dust
settles:
-Multiple
Warrior Priests will feature in every army. Empire is an army that relies on
buffs to put it over the top, and none of these buffs come in such a handy
package as they do in the warrior priest. A decent fighter (for empire
standards), relative low cost, Hatred for the unit he joins, some handy innate
bound spells, the ability to potentially generate extra dice in the magic
phase, all make for a very versatile character that has a place in every Empire
army.
- The best war machine in the game has just become the Volley Gun supported by an engineer. Using the Engineer’s BS of 4, coupled with his ability to reroll an Artillery Dice, will make the Volley Gun completely lethal. Put it in the centre of your line and opponents will be reluctant to advance to midfield. Drop one on a flank and you’ll have closed it off hermetically. Awesome combination.
- Buffs
being so important for the army, I think the Hurricanum will see more use than
the Luminark. 6+ ward save is nice, but not as nice as +1 to hit. Couple that
with Hatred from the Warrior Priest and even lowly halberdiers will start to
look fairly intimidating.
-
Greatswords and Cannons are still a mainstay of the army.
- I have
trouble seeing a place in the army for a Witch Hunter. His special rules aren’t
bad, but with his limited equipment options, coupled with the fact he can’t
ride a mount, I would think those Hero points are better spent on more Warriors
Priests or a Wizard.
- I
think “ Hold the Line” is a great new
rule for Empire. Good, but not overpowered, and it’s something that definitely
adds to the feel of the army on the tabletop. Well done, Cruddace!
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| The Culprit |
Farewell to 5th
painting challenge – week 2:
We’ve
all gotten distracted last week. I completely did not realize that Diablo 3 was
being released last week. That’s rather odd in and of itself since, like many
others, I’ve been waiting for it to be dropped for years now. Still, it’s here
and it’s been a popular game among the participants of this challenge. So much
so that most of the free time we’ve had has gone into playing this game.
Balephon managed to pour all his free time in this game (he does love his
barbarian, he does), while Bra’Tac and myself managed to tear ourselves away
from the game long enough to get at least something done. Oddly enough, we both
employed the same time-saving technique to get stuff done. I believe the official
term is “taking about 2-3 weeks’ worth of stuff to paint, assemble it and get
at least a basecoat on it, so that you can put proper paint on it later and at
least push the problem into the future”. Or it might be “ temporary solution”.
Anyway, here’s a pic of Bra’Tac’s progress so far (together with The Game). As
you can see, he’s getting good use out of his GW Hand Flamer-shaped spray gun.
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| Seriously, how cool is this army? |
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| Look Bra’Tac,no finger! |
As you may have
noticed, they are sprayed metal. The reason for this requires a bit of an
explanation. My friend Balephon plays Orks in 40k, and he has a lot of them, in
various stages of assembly and painting. I’m always amazed at how big a big Ork
army looks and about a year ago I asked him how many points he had. Like any
gamer who’s been collecting an army for years, he did not know exactly, but he
figured it was somewhere around the 10k mark. Then, being the nice chap he is,
he returned the question. How many points worth of space marines did I have?
I did
not know.
But I’m
always up for a good hobby challenge, so I decided to see how far I’d get if I
tried to line up all the space marines I had in official Space Marine Companies. To my astonishment I realized I could field two complete companies
and half of both the First company and the Eight company (Veterans and Assault
marines, respectively). This was actually quite a shock because up until then I’d
always kept my marines in various different containters, never seeing them all
together. What was most shocking was that most of the collection was unpainted!
I
decided then and there that I needed to do something about that. Now, even I realize
that I will never be able to paint 400 marines to a high standard and finish
before the turn of the century, so I decided on a simpler method. I would spray
the models metal, paint some details and then wash them liberally with either
GW’s Devlan Mud (old range) or Army Painter. Like always, I managed to stick to
this project for about as long as it took for someone to wave something shiny
in front of my eyes, but the idea has stuck.
So, long
story short, I’ve decided to use these following weeks to make some more
progress in my Space Marine department. I’ll expect these 20 marines to be done
by next week! There, I’ve put it in writing!
Army Selection
thoughts
The way
we (our group) normally choose our armies in Warhammer Fantasy is based mostly
on the way army selection is dictated by the tournaments we play. Over the
years we’ve been going to plenty of tournaments and we’ve come to a mutual
understanding that every game we play should in some way prepare us for the
next tournament. Nothing wrong with this, obviously, but I thought I’d take a
moment to look at the three major restrictions we impose on ourselves and see
if there’s room for change. Or something thing.
Over
here (i.e. the Netherlands) we do not have heavily comped tournaments. Overall,
all tournaments are basically the same. You’re free to select any legal army
you want, with the following three restrictions:
-
No
Special Characters- No Duplicate Rare choices or Triple Special choices
- 2400 points max
Let’s
look at each of these in turn and see what we can come up with.
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| Link |
Why no special characters?
This one
I blame on two things. The first is called conservatism. For (almost) as long
as I can remember, there has been a ban on using special characters in Warhammer
Fantasy tournaments here. Balephon might assist me in trying to remember if the
very first tournaments we went to also had this restriction, but I think they
did. Anyway, the point is, for years and years it was the rule that special
characters weren’t allowed on the tournament scene. They were too cheap, too
good, too weird and generally too odd to use in a tournament setting. This went
for both 40k and Fantasy, btw. Over the years, 40k evolved to a point where not
only were special characters allowed, but you needed them for certain army
builds! Deathwing armies wouldn’t exist without Belial, nor would Loganwing
without Logan Grimnir. And imagine seeing a Grey Knights army at a tournament
that didn’t have either Draigo or Coteaz; now that would be a rare sight!
Fantasy, however, has remained set in its ways that Special Characters are nice
for fluff and models, but have no real place on the battlefield (of a
tournament, anyway)
I
mentioned two reasons for the ban on special characters. The first I outlined
above, the second reason is called Teclis. Not to single out any one special character specifically,
but Teclis is a prime example of the reason why Special Characters are still
not allowed in fantasy. The short version for people who do not know Teclis:
Teclis is too good at what he does. Sure, he has his weaknesses (nobody likes
having T2) but it’s fairly easy to work around these weaknesses and Teclis will
always dominate a game. I can certainly imagine losing the desire to play High
Elves if I knew that I’d always be facing Teclis. Of course I realize Teclis is
a holdover from 7th and that, looking at the current books GW has
released, Special Characters are vastly better balanced now. Still, since over
half of the armies currently still use a 7th edition army book, I
can understand the need to draw a big red line through all Special Characters
and disallowing them from Tournaments altogether.
The
point of this all, though, is to see why we don’t use special characters in our
friendly games. I’ve used, and had used against me, a few special characters so
far in our fantasy campaign. I’ve had Heimlich Kemmler and Krell trying to free
a captive Ghoul Lord from my Warriors of Tzeentch (they failed), I’ve seen the
Troll King screamed to death by an overzealous Terrorgheist (damn your eyes,
beast from hell!), and I’ve seen Slugtongue kill off just enough models of most
of my supporting units to make me rethink my plans even before the first turn
of a game!
What I’m
trying to say is, while all those characters had an effect on the game (well,
Throgg didn’t, but still), they did not dominate the game. Actually they made
the game more fun because we had additional units to choose from. I for one am
very happy we chose to allow special characters in our current campaign! I’d
advise all other players in our group to try one of them out before the end of
the campaign. Heck, I’ll even let Apophis use Teclis once if he really want to.
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| Cool, huh? |
Why no two rare or three
special?
This
restriction is actually two-fold. First, you’re not allowed to take any
duplicate of a Rare choice. Usually this even goes for High Elves, though I
know sometimes exceptions are made. Second, you cannot take any Special choice
more than twice.
Now, why
do we do this? Sure, it’s no fun facing dual hydras or twin Abominations
whenever you face Dark Elves or Skaven in a tournament game, and we all know
this would be an actual risk at tournaments. But why not use it in our own
games? As with special characters above, in certain of the games I’ve had so
far in our campaign I’ve either faced dual rare choices (Terrorgheists and
Ghorgons) or used them (War Shrines). And none of those battles were decided
just because the winner used dual rare choices. Sure, I lost the game vs.
Jerroii’s undead the time he used two Terrorgheists quite convincingly, but it
was the type of game where I couldn’t even kill one Terrorgheist, so him having
two didn’t change much.
And
using two of the same rare choices or three of the same special choices does
open up certain themed builds. In campaigns especially this can be a lot of
fun. GW has already introduced a max on how many of each choice you can take in
addition to the percentage restrictions. Why restrict things even more for
friendly games?
Why 2400 pts?
Ok, this
last point is a bit trivial, since you have to agree on some point level, and
having a set standard of points to work with means you can always compare the
army lists you make to other armies you’ve fought. This makes it easier to
think how a your new list would do to certain other armies. For instance, since
I’ve changed my Ogres list last time, I’ve been running it in my mind vs. other
armies I’ve fought. How would I have handled the High Elves I faced a couple of
tournaments back? How would they have handled the Doombull from hell? With a
set points value like that it becomes easier to determine how well your new
list will work.
On the
other side of the coin, I do like larger or smaller battles. Recently I played
a 4000 pts battles vs. Bra’Tac’s ogres in our campaign, and it was great fun! No
longer having to decide between taking a sorcerer lord of Tzeentch or of
Nurgle, but just being able to take both and seeing which one performs better! Equally,
there is something challenging about making a 1000 pts army that works well. I
know not all players enjoy this (ask Apophis how he liked making 500 pts High
Elf armies for our previous Fantasy campaign), but I enjoy the puzzle that is
making these lists. Additionally, I always have it in the back of my mind that a
1000 pts army will make for great project armies. I can’t count the number of
times I’ve made 1k armies with the idea that “I could make this a dark
bretonnia army, with Ghost Knights riding up from the swamps and Men-at-Arms in
ghastly pale colours” or “it would be really cool to do a squig-themed Night
Goblin army, and at 1000 points, that’s totally manageable!”. Suffice to say,
none of these ideas ever amount to much, but as they say, it passes the time
nicely.
Hmm,
well this turned out longer than I thought. It's now 9.45, so a good 90 minutes later! Hope you enjoyed the read, and
until next time!
