[News] Dark Eldar Pictures!

Thought I'd share these for those who don't get GW: Incoming! emails.

Codex: Dark Eldar Cover

Archon

Lelith Hesperax Special Character

Dark Eldar Warrior

Dark Eldar Wych

Incubi

Reaver Jetbike

Raider

I absolutely love everything about the new Dark Eldar minis. Let's hoping I can earn a big Xmas bonus to get hold of some!

Advance orders begin on the 5th October.

SB

[Painting] My first Night Lord!!!

Well after planning on starting Night Lords for the last well... 3 months or maybe more, I finally made a start on my first model, this is just a test model, but I was more than pleased with the paint scheme.

From the front you can see that I went for silver rather than gold. The traditional gold symbolises that ever night has a dawn. However I wanted something that was stand out but still matched the lightning, and in my opinion the silver symobolises that every night has some light (usually moonlight). A bit like the Night Lords are fighting for the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is a better shot of some of the lightning, which will be repainted as its too thick and obviously painted, but I need to get myself a white pen, or a much thinner brush. However for a first attempt at a proper detailing technique I was quite proud and hope to improve towards the end of the army.

Lastly this shows you the typical skull faceplate which I wanted to keep in the army and each will have some distinguishing feature by the end, at the moment this one is being kept plain as it has quite a daemonic look already.

So, all in all, I found it quite easy to paint this model in about half an hour, which is a long time for a basic bolter boy, but given a few more tries I think I can get these guys done a unit a day (the hour or two I get free). The hardest part is the lightning and the faces, but the overall look is worth the extra effort.

Have at it, let me know what you think of my first Night Lord, and hopefully within a week I can get the full squad painted up and a Rhino to go with them (but no promises)

[Necrons] Tomb Stalker

So FW are releasing a new unit for the Necron army called the Tomb Stalker. I was hoping that it may make it into the new codex, but I can't see them releasing a resin version of a model now, then a kit for it in 18 months (hopefully) time.

Anyway, here's the model itself:

I really love the whole Steel centipede thing that's going on. Feel like like really fits with the Necron style as well. Plus it reminds me a bit of a Pokemon (although I can't remember which one...)

Experimental rules can be found for it here, where it takes up a Heavy Support choice: Forge World - Necron Tomb Stalker

So waddya think? Can I bring it out to play? Pretty please???

SB

[Orks] Waaaagh! Nobrot!: Bikers

Morning all,

I've not had the Orks out on the table for a while, due to Battlefleet Gothic and generally being a bit bored after hammering them out at Britcon again. I was drawn to the fact there's not been a Waaagh Nobrot article for a while, due to a comment from a reader on the post about my Big Mek trio.

So, I checked through the articles to see where I was up to and thought since it's been a while I'll give you two articles for the price of one, covering both types of Bikers in the Ork codex - Warbikers and Nob Bikers.

First up, let's establish the common facts. What a Warbike gives to Warbikers, Nob Bikers and your bike mounted Warboss:

Extra Toughness and a 4+ Armour Save: This makes bikers a lot more survivable. Lots of people forget that the bike gives them the 4+ armour save and for months, I was still paying for 'Eavy Armour on my Warboss and Nob Bikers. This combination just makes them a heck of a lot more survivable to small arms fire such as bolters.

Smoke Clouds: This a is a Gork-send. Constant 4+ Cover save, even when in the open. Whilst it's not as brill as one may first think, due to the fact we already have a 4+ armour save, with the amount of High S, Armour save denying weapons, that are floating around, this will come in handy. The amount of times I've frustrated an opponent by explaining the smoke clouds rule to them and seeing lascannons, meltas and plasma guns vanish into the fumes, it's so, so handy.

Twin Linked Dakka Guns: This mitigates one of the major Ork weaknesses, while providing you with the firepower of a big shoota (although much shorter range). The fact this is twin-linked bypasses your poor Ork BS and allows you to weight of fire the enemy unit to death. A full squad of 10 Warbikers with a Boss (or Nobz) can be horrible through sheer weight of fire thanks to 3 shots each.

So - bikers can be pretty tough and pack a punch outside of assault to boot. So what choice of Orks do we have to sit on top of these 2 wheeled death machines?

Warbikers
Warbikes are a fast attack choice in the Codex, meaning they're not competing with your heavy hitters in the Elite section, although it depends on your personal preference of Fast Attack slots.

When I started out with Orks, I had 6 Warbikes as a fast attack choice, which were used to harry the flanks of the enemy force, whittle them down through hit and run style attacks and support Boyz units in assault thanks to their increased toughness, better armour save and mobility.

Unfortunately, I always felt that the Warbikers didn't pack a hard enough punch for my taste and for their cost. A stray flamer or two could really dent the unit and then suddenly it was crippled and easy to pick off.

However, they are a good unit, coupled with a Power Klaw nob or even a Big Choppa, they can happily get in the back of a transport, pop it and assault the inside unit, backed up by a Boyz mob. Another good use for them is to take out long range Ordnance vehicles like Basilisks and Whirlwinds that can really make a mess of your Boyz mobs.

Not troops? Not a problem!
One weakness that the Warbikers have initially is their lack of being a scoring unit. To me, that means they're left on the shelf since in my Ork force I like everything that's going to get stuck in, or speeding across the table, to be scoring.

So how do we do this? The big man Wazdakka. He allows Warbiker mobs to be taken as Troop choices, which then frees up your fast attack slots and provides you with up to 6 fast moving, punchy units. You'd also have Wazdakka himself in with one of the units to give that extra punch thanks to his special rules.

Nob Bikers
So Warbikers don't hit hard enough or can't take a good enough beating you say? I introduce you to the world of Nob Bikers, something the internet spawned and subsequently despised for a period in late 4th / early 5th edition.

What are the bonuses of Nob Bikers? We''re all the same as a normal Warbiker, with +1S, +1W and a whole host of upgrade options that can make the unit a nightmare.

I like to run with the following:
8 Nob Bikers - 1 w/ Power Klaw, 1 w/ Bosspole, 1 Painboy, 1 w/ Waagh banner

It's not as mental as some people go, but I'll cover wound allocation in a sec. This gives me an absolute ton of attacks on the charge, following the Dakka Gun shooting, combined with the increased strength from the Nob and Furios Charge combo. It generally means they can go toe to toe with the biggest, baddest and meanest Mo-Fo's in the 40k universe.

What's even better is when taking a Warboss, he allowed a Nob unit to become a Troop choice, meaning that him added in the mix, means this is one scary, albeit eggs in one basket, unit.

Being Nobz also gets around the dreaded heavy flamer approach. Having a Painboy on board not only gives you Feel No Pain to contest this, but access to an Invulnerable save, which after playing against Daemons with Breath of Chaos, is invaluable for a 50pt model.

Another handy option, which I'm thinking of incorporating is the humble Big Choppa. For a mere 5pts, this boosts the weilders Strength by 2. Meaning on the charge, your Nobz are hitting at a hurty S7. Ouch! For what you're already spending on the unit, I think this is definitely points worth paying.

Wound Allocation Hell
One thing people got hung up on with Nob bikers was the ability to mix and match cheap upgrades in the unit to make a Wound Allocation tarpit. This would mean that each of the bikers would be able to allocate wounds separately. Meaning there could be something along the lines of 12 wounds allocated to the unit (1 on each biker, 2 on the Warboss) before a model was even removed.

Personally, I don't go for this approach since I feel it's a bit OTT, but the option's always there if people want to go that way.

Conclusion
So - what do Bikes offer to the Ork Warboss? They offer an extremely mobile, fast moving unit, that can shrug off small arms fire and hold it's own against heavier firepower. They can create either an excellent support fire and assault unit to help with Boyz, or a mega hammer unit capable of holding the line on it's own.

If I could afford more bikes, I'd happily give a Wazdakka centric army a try, with Warbikers and Nob Bikers as my troop choices.

What do you guys think about Bikes in the Ork army? Especially any horror stories against Nob Bikers!

Peace,
SB

Battlefleet Gothic First Impressions

Morning all,

Over the last few weeks, part of the 40k circle of MAWS have attempting to give Battlefleet Gothic a run, as a break from 40k. Heavy tournaments, busy summers and general boredom made most of us take a look at our gaming storage and think "What else could we play?" and one that's stood out for a good 15 months or so is Battlefleet Gothic.

So where to begin... A couple of weeks prior to me getting involved, Angryman and Straken had a few games, read up on the rules and got the hand of it, then I observed and rolled some dice in a game between the two, on the Imperial side.

It seems like a pretty strategic game, moreso than 40k for me, simply due to the way in which the ships have to move. Ships have to constantly be on the move (or pass a LD test) and have to move in order to turn (in most cases). This means you'll need to be planning your attacks way in advance and how to react to enemy manouvres.

At one point on Monday in a 2 v 2 game, we ended up with a swirling, circling ship fight, as no one wanted to sacrifice their firepower in order to re-manouvre. It was a twist that I really enjoyed.

Shooting in BFG is also drastically different to 40k. It retains the target priority system, requiring an LD test to fire at further away enemies, but ththe ranges of weapons are a lot shorter than in 40k. A LOT shorter... as we found out on Monday when misjudging weapon distance.

You're also allowed to fire different weapon arcs at different targets, meaning a ship can sacrifice volume of fire, in an effort to attack more ships. One situation on Monday had a Chaos cruiser wedged between 3 Imperial ships and fired each system at each of the ships, managing to weaken some for the other Chaos ships to fire.

We've yet to try some things like boarding, planets and celestial phenomena, but overall I'm really enjoying it.

Continuing playing at the minute is key, as I'm trying to build up an Ork Fleet to combine this into our 40k campaigns. At the moment I've been cannibalising Ork vehicle and weapon bits in order to make crude ships. I just need to make a start on the 4 Cruisers I need to actually play a Cruisher Clash scenario on Monday.

So I'd say to those who are interested, the premise of BFG is pretty easy to learn and understand and I've managed to read the core rules, take them in and understand them pretty quickly (with help from others). All the rules are free to get hold of, fleets can be made quite cheaply (if you're not a mega purist) and it's a quick enjoyable game.

If anyone's got any thoughts on BFG, feel free to drop a comment - my aim over the weekend is to get my Ships painted up and posted on here.

Peace,
SB

[NEWS] Dark Eldar officially announced!

Yep, the unbelievable has happened.

GW's blog has announced the presence of "New Dark Eldar" coming "very soon". More to follow at the upcoming Games Day UK.

Quote from GW blog:

Yes, you read that right - the Studio have made some brand-new Dark Eldar and they'll be here soon. I found out this morning when I was flicking through an early copy of October's issue of White Dwarf (it's out next week) and could barely contain my excitement. Once I'd composed myself, I passed the copy to Rob and with camera at the ready, told him to turn to the back page.



Once you're done laughing at Rob, you can click on the image for a better look. For those of you attending UK Games Day, I've some more good news: Jes Goodwin will be there to talk about the Dark Eldar and knowing Jes, show off some cool Dark Eldar-related stuff. If you haven't picked up a ticket to Games Day yet and if you live in the UK or Northern Europe, then you can order a ticket by clicking on this link. If you live anywhere else in the world, you'll need to use the 'Country Select' menu at the bottom of this page and select the United Kingdom for the link to work. At the moment this is all I know about the forthcoming Dark Eldar, but as usual I'll do my best to uncover some more information for you. Watch this space.

Source:
Games Workshop Blog 13th September

Go mental people! The unthinkable has happened!

SB

Left 40k Dead

Hi everyone,

Over the past couple of months, I've been holding onto a ruleset modification of 40k to replicate one of the most fun PC games I've played, Left 4 Dead. Originally, it was started by Mediocre Tales as a rough draft. However, I've since then expanded on it, added scenarios and covered content in Left 4 Dead 2.

So here we go, I unveil to you my attempt at replicating Left 4 Dead on the tabletop, using 40k as a basis.

Left 40k Dead v1.1 on Scribd

Hopefully, I'll be doing some playtesting on this first draft ruleset at the club over the next few weeks. If anyone has any thoughts or comments on the ruleset, then please, please get in touch.

Peace,
SB.

[Warhammer] GW sneak new High Elf stuff for advance order...

Hey all,

Normally don't put much about Fantasy, but with the new starter set garnering my interest, I'd heard nothing about more High Elf minis coming. Then to my surprise, I find this lot going up on Advance Order HERE

High Elf Phoenix Guard:

High Elf White Lions:

High Elf Dragon Princes:

Thought they were all pretty cool, and an added incentive to be getting the High Elf minis out of the Island of Blood starter boxset!

What do you guys reckon?

SB

[Update] MAWS Combat Patrol Cup.

Hi everyone,

I've updated the Combat Patrol Cup PDF to factor in the change in objective numbers and what is a scoring unit for Combat Patrol.

You can find the update here: MAWS Combat Patrol Cup

Any problems give me a shout!

[Event] MAWS Combat Patrol Cup

Hi all,

Thought I'd take a moment to pass this around. We spoke last week about running a 1 night tournament, using 500pt Combat Patrol forces.

You can find the first draft rulespack here: MAWS Combat Patrol Cup

Let me know what you think of the rules and whether you can see any changes that will be needed.

Rough estimate for the cup to take place is Mid to End of November, which gives plenty of time to everyone getting their forces bought, built and painted up! (Also a good excuse to get a project blog running in the lead-up to the competiton!)

Peace,
SB.

Rise of the Tau

Hi all,

Angryman here, for all of you 40K gamers who have read most of Rise of the Tau and been waiting for Revenant to finish it, I've got some news.

Rise of the Tau

Click the above link to read the full 235 chapters with epilogue PLUS the start of a Q and A session with the author Revenant.

This has to be the best piece of fan fiction I have ever read.  It incorporates pretty much most of the major fluff for ALL of the races current in the 40K universe and tries to answer some of the questions people have had but never answered.

After you have read the story please feel free to comment