Games Workshop; Finally Getting It Right

Welcome again readers,

So as you will have noticed its been a good few months since my last blog post, life got much busier and I found myself taking on a number of new projects and ideas. Now winter is upon us I have time to catch up on painting and blogging, starting with GWs recent changes in behaviour that have gotten me looking back at their franchise;

Some time ago, we heard a report from an investors meeting whereby GW announced that they were a models company, not a games one, despite their name and product. Since this controversial statement GW has made a drastic u-turn under their new leadership and i'm once again looking at their franchise in awe.

Getting into the Hobby
The entry level to the hobby has always been high, given the time and money required (not to mention the skillset) to get into it, many falter early on in the hobby. GW has historically relied on its existing customer base to recruit new blood, using only the 2 player starter sets as an incentive to get started into the hobby.

Now look back over the last 2 years. Age of Sigmar came out with essentially out of the box rules, whilst the models were really high quality, the ruleset was inviting (unlike 40k and Fantasy). Age of Sigmar received a lot of criticism from existing players, but ultimately this game will serve as an entry into the hobby.

GW has been eyeing up smaller games that are more fast paced and can be played more frequently than your average game of 40k, with smaller rulesets to bring in new players. Look first at their numerous board games, some successful, some not so much. Games like Betrayal at Calth were mostly overlooked due to the box value, customers found themselves buying the game for the miniatures, however having had a few games of this myself I am amazed at how simple GW were able to make a 40k themed ruleset. Now look at their upcoming releases, Blood Bowl and Space Hulk are being released again in time for the Christmas shopping.

I have to be honest, I also bought Betrayal at Calth to start a new Iron Warriors force and saw the box for cheap marines. However having looked over the remainder of the contents I printed out a number of Marine pictures from GWs site, laminated them and stuck them on bases. This was to allow myself and others to play the board game, as well as abuse the box for miniatures, and I would love GW to provide cardboard alternatives, however I don't see that happening somehow.

Above I have looked at GWs game design and inviting in new players through the ruleset, now lets look at the miniatures. Blood Bowl is being re-released once more and it's worth looking at the miniatures. Not only are the models snap-fit, but the plastics are coloured in the box. This means that customers can assemble the miniatures with ease and get on with the game without having to paint and glue miniatures. That is massive for GW when it comes to bringing in new blood.

FAQs, these were always internal questions that were raised and answered in an FAQ until of course GW stopped updating them a few years back. After a long and quiet spell, GW started asking for questions one faction at a time on their facebook page, then released draft FAQs for the community to look over and provide feedback. Now GW have begun to release the finalised FAQs after taking onboard the community feedback.

Things are looking up for GW, and now there's a new Chaos Legions book on the horizon i'll definitely be keeping an eye on things.


For my next article i'll be going over one of the games i've started playing over the past few months, Frostgrave.

Until next time, Happy Wargaming,

Peak Wargamer Aaron

Beyond the Gates of Antares; Rules We Get Wrong

Following on from my previous blog, I figured I would go through some of the rules I have been forgetting, getting wrong and didn't know about at all.

Light Support Weapons (p.75)

First of all is Light Support Weapons. Go to page 75 in the rulebook and you'll find mention of these failing a res test on a roll of 10. Incredibly handy given that Ghar Outcasts with a Disruptor Cannon would otherwise fail on a roll of 5 to 10. All weapons mentioned in this section are covered by this rule.

Break Tests (p45)

If your unit rolls a 10 on a break test it is destroyed, very brutal.

If your unit fails whilst down, it suffers an additional pin as penalty.

A pass on a roll of 1 removes a pin, nice compensation given the above results.

Blast Hits (p.35)

If your unit is down and is hit by a blast weapon, things are worked out differently to other ranged weapons. Instead of re-rolling to hit, you suffer half the normal number of hits (rounded down). For example, if I inflict D5 hits on your unit thats down, and my result is 5, halved and rounded down I only scored 2 hits. The same applies to pins from Net Ammo.

Line of Sight (p.25-26)

Until recently I was somewhat baffled by the whole terrain/obstacles and line of sight part of the rules until I sat down and re-read the whole section and thought it through.

There are 2 types of terrain which can each be treated in 2 separate ways.

- Intervening Terrain/Occupied Terrain

- Obstacles/Defensive Positions

You cannot draw line of sight through more than one obstacle and/or intervening terrain. However this does not include defensive positions and occupied terrain, otherwise neither side would ever be able to shoot. A defensive position if an obstacle you are in base contact with and shooting over, and occupied terrain is a piece of terrain your unit has moved into.

Recovery Test (p.16)

These must be took if your unit is down at the end of the turn and you wish to return the order dice to the bag. This is a normal command test with penalties for the number of pins the unit has.

Pass on a roll of 1 = -2 Pins and Order Dice returned to the Bag

Pass = -1 Pin and Order Dice returned to the Bag

Fail = -1 Pin, unit remains down

Fail on a roll of 10 = unit remains down

The important thing to note here is that unless you roll a 10, you will always be able to shrug off a pin when performing a recovery test.

Rally (p.16)

The order test for this ignores pins suffered, unlike in Bolt Action. Get these games mixed up at your peril.

Assault Results (p.43)

When failing a break test following an assault, the unit is automatically destroyed, very brutal, so be careful when committing to assault.

That's all for now, don't forget to take part in the Antares 6 week campaign!

Peakwargamer Aaron

Beyond the Gates of Antares; Xilos Campaign

Hey all,

Following the posting of a few battle reports in the Antares campaign I figured i'd give this a shout out. The campaign is 6 weeks long and every week a new mission is introduced, based on those in the current supplement "The Battle for Xilos" and the results of the campaign will be used by Rick Priestley as the basis for the next supplement.

  

On the campaign website, you can sign up and immediately start posting your battle reports. To encourage quality, you are encouraged to write up your battle report, upload photos, army lists, link videos and link up your report with your opponents version. Further to this people can rank your reports and comment on them, giving you vital feedback where you need it.

Now stay with me here, you might be thinking, that sounds very boring, writing up a turn by turn analysis of every game for people for criticise? Well have a look this segment from my 2nd battle report;

"Of the remaining squads, one was constantly on its knees struggling to comprehend that Grog himself was still alive. The Imtel had clearly not anticipated that Grogs own battlesuit would still be intact. Further still Grog had passed every resistance test, break test and command test the remaining C3 squads could put on him, how was this even possible? Well Grog didn’t care." (http://battleforxilos.warconsole.com/battles/vs-s-kerman-1466539721)

My writing skills are not amazing, but you get the idea. I took an amazing event on the tabletop of a model not giving into its fate and worked it into a story, a story I intend to continue with future battle reports, where every game I will nominate a model to be Grog, and the report will be written from his perspective.

So, the reports themselves can be great fun.

Campaign Site: http://battleforxilos.warconsole.com/

My latest battle report: http://battleforxilos.warconsole.com/battles/vs-malach-bur-1467138128

If your already building an army for Antares and are searching for a player, here's a player finder recently made available in its Beta stage; https://antares.wannarumbl.com/#/login

Alternatively, if your new to the game, head over to the Warlord Games website or their youtube channel and start looking over the Antares range and choose an army suited to you!

Best Regards,

Peakwargammer Aaron!

Open Combat: A Game for Any Collector

A few weeks ago I was introduced to a game called Open Combat at my local club, and it caught me by surprise. The developer of the game Carl Brown was running demos, of which I decided to take part in. Below is something of an introduction to the game incase you have not tried it yet, obviously I cannot give you a demo in the blog, but I can show you the main appeals about the game and what I love most about it.

The main appeal with Open Combat is that you can use ANY of your miniatures, as long as you keep to a certain theme so it’s not a ragtag band of Skeletons, Eldar, Vikings and Giants. You select some of your favourite miniatures, lets say between 4 and 8 that are somewhat underused or are your best painted models that you really want to show off, and then you build a profile for those models. That’s right, you get given a blank profile for each model, and every stat, special rule and piece of wargear you give a model costs 1 point (known as renown in the rulebook).

The Nervous Archers warband I choose from the sample at the demo

Below is an example for my Welsh models that I have been using for SAGA, this is a 100 point list that took a mere 5 minutes to throw together without having to consult army lists and such;

Welsh Warband	SPD	ATK	DEF	FOR		MND		WEAPONS/SKILLS/ABILITIES/INJURIES/NOTES
Warlord	4	5	4	4		2		Sword, Shield, Javelin
Hearthguard	4	4	2	4		1		Sword, Shield, Javelin
Hearthguard	4	4	2	4		1		Sword, Shield, Javelin
Levy	5	3	1	2		1		Sword, Javelin
Levy	5	3	1	2		1		Sword, Javelin
Levy	5	3	1	2		1		Sword, Javelin

The process of army building is simple, grab a handful of models and give them the stats based on whats on the model. What weapon does your model carry? Does it have a shield? How heavy do you reckon its gear is? Above my Warlord and Hearthguard carry heavy armour, so I gave them slower movement speeds (SPD) than the levies and more health (FOR) and defence (DEF). If you have someone carrying a legendary weapon, say Excalibur, you might choose to have an insane attack (ATK) such as 15, and throw some special rules in there such as double handed to give it some special effects.

Now the rules are written based on the theme of Medieval combat, so everything is based on swords, spears, bows, shields etc. However, the rules can be used for any other period using a ‘counts as’ approach. For example, I recently used these rules to play a World War 2 game, whereby close combat weapons were uncommon and the game was played using Bows, Crossbows, Slings and Javelins to provide the variety in shooting options. Literally anything can be represented, if you have cavalry you may to up your speed (SPD) to 12, for monstrous creatures you may have 15 health (FOR) and so on.

Lets say I wanted to use my Bloodthirster who largely sits on the shelf doing nothing, here’s the first idea that comes into my head;

	SPD	ATK	DEF	FOR		MND		WEAPONS/SKILLS/ABILITIES/INJURIES/NOTES
Bloodthirster	16	16	16	24		12		Double Handed Weapon, Sling, Resolute, Intimidate

See what I did there, quick moving due to the wings, a few special rules that fits the model and it totals 88 points quite appropriately. Looking back in a week or so I will probably make some changes to better field the bloodthirster, but if your opponent asked “Can I fight a Bloodthirster?”, you only have to ask yourself “Do I have one?”.

The gameplay is very simple, the rules are written from a common sense point of view with regards to mechanics like stabbing enemy models in the back or pushing them over into a thorn bush. Using up to a dozen models per side you won’t have to remember a great many things, which helps the game really fun, you spend so little time thinking about rules and much more thinking, how would this little guy fight?

Most of what you need to play the game is found on the quick reference sheet, so you won’t find yourself looking up many rules in the book. And most importantly, a 100 point game can have so much go on in it, and yet only last for between 30 and 60 minutes, excellent for an evening game when you don’t have 2+ hours to spare for larger games. Each side requires a mere 3 dice (D6), 3 tokens which can be anything, tape measure, pen & paper to write your armies stats on and record your losses. Did I mention that the table size is typically 24”x24”? So you can fit this game onto any kitchen table.

If you wish to look any further into the game, please see the links below;

Store and Forums: www.secondthunder.com/

Second Thunder Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCiYQd5PurA7IwC6Q1P6nk4Q

If there's anything more you wish to know about this game visit the forums via the second thunder website, and if you feel I missed something feel free to comment below.

Happy Wargaming,

PeakWargamer Aaron signing off

Tutorial: Beginners Quick Painting Tips

This time last year I started experimenting with new painting techniques, having steadied my hand I was able to paint quite clean compared to my previous work, however painting was a painstakingly slow process. I had already used wash paints at this stage also, however they were used primarily as finishes for miniatures, as these provided a shade across the whole model and made the details in the model stand out.

Since then I have moved on with my painting techniques to drybrushing, and I have found there is a great way to get details into your miniatures quickly without any prior training. In this tutorial I will show you the basics in getting details into your miniatures whilst watching television (seriously, its that easy).

What you'll need;

• A set of cheap brushes (don't get expensive ones until your confident you won't ruin them, otherwise it will cost you), one of these will need to have a flat end for drybrushing
• Tissue to clean/dry your brush, maybe even one of those spongy pads that come in metal blister packs
• Water to clean your brush
• A Range of paints, such as Light, Medium & Dark Green as used in the example below
• Wash Paint, either the colour to match your scheme such as green, alternatively go with a Black or Brown wash paint to start with

Unfinished German Heer HQ 

(awaiting some real attention)

Step 1: Basecoat

First of all you'll need that basecoat, if you have the appropriate primer spray you can save yourself alot of time. In my case I lacked the appropriate primer spray, and had to individually basecoat my miniatures. I started with a dark green paint with the German Heer above.

Step 2: Drybrush

The basics of drybrushing is to pick a flat ended brush, not your typical pointy brush, dab a tiny amount of paint onto it (and I mean tiny), and then wipe most of that paint off again on the tissue until there is only the tiniest bit left. Now quickly and aggressively brush your paint brush across your miniature.

The strokes should be quick, and you should only notice small changes in the shade of you model across the raised areas. Keep repeating this until the shade is what your after. If you use too much paint and you get a large smear of paint on the model, don't worry, this can be remedied if done quickly, get a very wet brush and dab the area to keep it moist and start sponging away at it until the smear of paint has been soaked up.

For the Paint, I would suggest using a lighter colour paint than the paint that is already on the model, the idea is the make the raised areas stand out.

Step 3: Wash

Now get any old brush and apply your wash paint to the model. Some people prefer to use the Army Painter 'Dip', as this can be a fast way to get your models washed/shaded. Otherwise your wash paints will suffice, here I used the Citadel Biel-tan Green Shade paint.

The wash is very runny, make sure that it seeps into the cracks in your miniature, as your trying to get at the recesses and make them stand out. As I child I believed people hand painted every tiny detail, but even if that were true, this is so much easier and produces great results. Be sure to mop up the excess, otherwise this may take some time to dry.

Step 4: Drybrush again

As before, drybrush your miniature, only this time choose a different paint. In the example above I chose an even lighter green than before and drybrushed alot less aggressively than before. What I was trying to achieve was a transition, where the recesses had the darkest green and the raised areas had the lightest.

Step 5: Experiment

And experiment, change the order around and the paints you have used, see what works best for you. You'll never know what you can achieve unless you try.

Below are a few examples of where drybrushing and washes work quite well;

This guy was painted exactly the same way as above. He was painted as part of a box of 20+ Pioneer Grenadiers, after the above process I painted on the flesh and the metal, applied a wash over said areas and was done.

You'll notice also that concrete feel to the base. What I did here was PVA some sand/debris to the base immediately after I had assembled the miniature, and once it was dry I primed the model (among many others) with a grey primer spray. What little paint made it onto the base as I went along was covered over at the end with grey paint. Again a simple effect that anybody can achieve.

These Concord I had no inspiration to paint at all, and so I painted them mostly whilst watching TV. Basecoated dark blue, I worked my way to lighter colours with a blue wash in the middle. Not bad considering I haven't put any real work into them.

These Ghar were painted as above before and detail painting, and were finished with a light metalic drybrush. The metallic areas received a metal base, nulin oil wash and some metal drybrushing to give it that worn feel.

And that's all for now folks, if you have any questions feel free to comment below. I hope this will make you all more confident at painting your backlog of miniatures.

PeakWargamer Aaron

Hobby: Magnetising the Burning Chariot of Tzeentch

Hey all,

So, I recently received my second Burning Chariot of Tzeentch, the first one I assembled a couple of years ago as 2 Screamers, 1 Blue Scribes, 1 Exalted Flamer, 1 Herald on Disc and 1 Horror. This time around I am building the kit properly, and as usual have looked towards magnetising it.

Having looked online, there was a lack of material to show me how best to magnetise this kit, and one individual on the Miniwargaming forums indicated that it simply wasn't possible, so I rose to the challenge.

  

Magnetising isn't necessary for being able to switch between the Herald and the Flamer, however not doing so means ditching the fancy outer disc. The ball joint used to connect the characters base to the stand is secure enough, and can be further secured with either pinning, magnets or even blu-tac, that bits entirely up to you as in this blog I will be focussing on magnetising the outer ring.

1. Materials & Equipment
Firstly, you will need your magnets, I recommend the usual 3mm x 1mm magnets, of which you will only need 4. Now you need 2 metal discs with a hole in the centre, preferably 23mm outer diameter and >6mm inner diameter. For this I picked up a pack of M12 washers from my local discount store, these were precisely 23mm across. To name other eligible materials around the house, you could try a spare keyring or neatly bending a paperclip into a perfect circle, but i'd recommend the washer.

In addition you'll require your usual superglue, a craft knife for when the magets stick in the wrong place and some blu-tac for dry runs.

2. Magnets

Look at the picture below, what I did here was space out the 4 magnets evenly around the edge, pointing inwards. I did no cutting away of the plastic here, I simply glued the magnets onto the base. Don't worry about getting the polarity of the magnets the right way around, these won't be connecting to other magnets so you won't have any trouble either way.

However, ensure that the magnets are 1mm-2mm from the inner edge, as the magnets will jut out slightly given the angle that they will be glued on at, and you will need to fit your washer in through that gap. Don't space them much further away either, as the magnets will have less of an effect if they cannot make contact with the washer later on.

3. Washer Bases

Following the image below, simply glue your washer or equivalent onto one of the bases that fits into the outer ring. A little cutting away may be required to get it to stick.

Following this give it a trial run and check that your base still slots into the outer ring as before, if you struggle to manage this, check that the washer is perfectly lined up and that the magnets are positioned the right distance away from the inner edge.

4. Finished, onto painting

Once you've tested the configurations your good to go and start painting. Here's some photos showing the final results, as you can see I can have both characters on foot, disc or charriot;

I hope you'll find this helpful, if I encounter any more difficult kits such as this i'll be sure to post tutorials up on here.

Thanks for reading,

PeakWargamer Aaron.

X-Wing: Mistakes & Tactics

X-Wing & My Mistakes

Recently I played a game of X-Wing where I suffered a devastating loss, and I consider myself quite good at this game, despite still being new to it. I was up against a rebel team of ion turret Y-Wings, whilst I had 2 Push the Limit (PTL) A-Wings, 2 Assault Missile Z-95s and a T-70 X-Wing.

The rule for the game was no named characters, which I was more than happy with, but I made a huge mistake with my list build. I spent a total of 12 points in upgrades across what should have been 2 cheap and disposable ships. Those 12 points were largely wasted in this game as the Z-95s didn’t last very long, whereas the T-70 X-Wing with no upgrades lasted quite a while. If the T-70 had been upgraded with either R2-D2 or the PTL + R2 Astromech combo which use up 6 & 4 points respectively, it would have been a shining star in my list. The lesson here is not to waste points on ships you expect to die.

Next up was my manuevering, I have been practicing flying in formation recently, and I really took a risk to keep my A-Wings in formation. This resulted in my front A-Wing landing on an asteroid. It suffered 1 damage immediately and was unable to perform any actions, so it couldn’t hunker up with an Evade and Focus unlike my other A-Wing behind it. To make matters worse, my opponent loosed up the ion turrets on this vulnerable A-Wing, with forced it to move 1 forward back onto the asteroid next turn with no actions.

As you would expect the A-Wing didn’t last long after this, and my other A-Wing and T-70 X-Wing were forced to pick up the slack for the whole game. The lesson here is don’t risk flying vital ships onto asteroids (you can still go through them), and try to keep your distance from them when your opponent is spamming ion turrets.

Action Economy

Now, onto the tactic that has helped me through so many games, Action Economy. Above I mentioned Push the Limit, I love this card as it gives you a free action, albiet you get stressed, but if you have plenty of green manoeuvres (hello R2 Astromech) you can mitigate this. Actions are the life source in this game, they help you modify dice rolls, move out of the way or even do something annoying, and sometimes you need more than one action to stay alive.

There are alternatives, for example Fire Control System gives you free target locks after you shoot, so if you have plently of actions to choose from, you can take this and forget about performing target lock actions for the game.

An excellent ship that I enjoy using is the following;

Green Squadron Pilot 19pts

Push the Limit 3pts

Chardaan Refit -2pts

For 20 points you get a ship that can be near unkillable with focus & evade actions, or deadly at range 1 with Focus & Target Lock. Its fast and manoeuvrable and can quickly get away from pursuing ships. For 3 points you can boost its threat level with A-Wing Test Pilot & Outmanoeuvre. This allows you to remove an enemies evade dice if you come from outside their firing arc. At 23pts, you get a speedy ship with excellent action economy, speed, manoeuvrability and decent firepower.

Hope you found this all useful

PeakWargamer Aaron.

Age of Sigmar: My Thoughts

Last year Games Workshop pushed the End Times for its Warhammer Fantasy game, giving this old game one last nod. Following this they introduced its replacement, Age of Sigmar. Initially this game came out with a total of 4 pages for the rules, and every pre-existing army received free rules, nicknamed Warscrolls.

The community is largely against Age of Sigmar for various reasons, however there are supporters out there for Age of Sigmar. I am not going to go into the argument of whether Age of Sigmar is a great thing or not, instead, I’m going to point out what I think Games Workshop got right.

1. Warscrolls

If you take a look at one of these warscrolls, for example the free ones introduced for the older armies, you’ll note that everything you need for the unit is on one page. I think this is great, every special rule is explained clearly and you do not need to open 2 separate books (Codex & Rules) and locate the rules every time you forget what something is. This is particularly great for new players, as being told to read through so many rules before you can play can be largely offputting.

2. Simple Rules

Games Workshop was listening to its newer customers when it wrote Age of Sigmar. I remember hearing people explain how much more difficult it was to get through all of the rules for Fantasy, and then getting your army build and tactics right on top of that. Granted I believe GW went overboard a little with simplifying this ruleset, another 2 pages of rules alone would clear up the most common queries and imbalances in the game. Combined with the Warscrolls, getting into the game is incredibly easy.

3. Points System

Games Workshop completely removed the points system from this game, and this is not what I’m supporting. Instead, I praise GW for reassessing the points system and not keeping to the traditional ‘count to a thousand’ system. I strongly believe they should have kept points in, as now it is much more difficult to play a balanced game with friends. Instead GW should should have looked at point systems such as SAGA.

In SAGA, your game size will vary between 4 and 8 points. All units are worth 1 point, and their unit size is dictated in the rulebook. Translating this to Age of Sigmar, let’s say you get 20 points, and your favourite infantry squad is 2 points for its minimum size of 5, and pays an extra 2 points for every 5 men. For your warlord, a small guy that doesn’t do much may only be worth 1 point, whereas a monstrous creature that spires fire everywhere may be worth 5 or more points.

This example above doesn’t require a great deal of counting and figuring out, making it equally as appealing to newer players as the lack of a point system, and more appealing to existing players who want to enjoy a games random element of not knowing who will win.

That’s all for now,

Peakwargamer Aaron.

Easter Update, SAGA and some 40K

Hey guys, Peakwargamer Aaron here and here’s an update for the blog, which admittedly I have been rather neglecting thus far. Since my last blog I have had plenty of games, entered into a painting competition and started collecting for SAGA (basically Vikings vs Saxons).

Mostly I have been playing X-Wing and Antares these last 2 months, in X-Wing I have been playing plenty of varied lists with great success, from flying 3 Aces to the Falcon with a mini swarm for support. As for Antares, I discovered a common trait that is responsible for my many losses in that any 40K, I have chosen what I consider to be the coolest army, which currently needs the most effort to win a decent sized game. If I haven’t mentioned already I am devote follower of Chaos in 40K.

A quick introduction to SAGA, I got introduced to this at my local gaming club and it is set in the times when Vikings were invading England. The starting factions are Vikings, Anglo Danish, Normans and Welsh. The ruleset is incredibly simple and still allows for a great number of tactics in the game. I’ll leave you guys to read into this further elsewhere on the internet until I have gotten some games in with this. If you need getting into the mood for the setting, I highly recommend reading/watching The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell.

I have spoken a fair bit about new games that I have recently come into, but how about the game that brought me into the hobby? That’s right, Warhammer 40K. I currently own roughly 7’000pts of Chaos Space Marines and 2’800pts of Chaos Daemons, I don’t get many games in currently, but I figured for this blog I would start posting my own tactical advice for Chaos Marines, given I have more experience here than anything else I’m currently talking about.

I’ll get started with the Chaos Sorcerer

Despite playing Chaos, a codex that is full of random tables, I prefer to know what weapons I’m taking to the battlefield. As a result, I often take a shooty Sorcerer, as you can guarantee that the Sorcerer will get 2 Witchfire powers if you choose Biomany and Telepathy, as you get to swap to Primaris if you don’t like your result. It’s up to you what happens with the third power. To add to the Sorcerers firepower, I add the Burning Brand of Skalathrax on top. Now you have a Sorcerer that burns everything around it.

So now he/she can put out some damage, what about keeping him alive? Well given that the options above work best between 12”-18”, this is a rather important factor. Usually you’ll see Terminator Armour, a Bike or even a Disc of Tzeentch. But how about the humble Rhino? This thing can move fast, shoot, transport a 9 man squad (the sorcerer is staying inside) and protect the guy that’s shooting out of the firing point. The Sorcerer will be immune to S4 weapons for 35pts, I’d say that’s quite a good deal considering everything else the Rhino does for you.

As for the other upgrades, the Spell Familiar is a must. Now regarding the Invulnerable Save, I don’t think you should bother purchasing one. Think about it, you zoom up the board alongside a couple other rhinos, start shooting, pop some smoke when you start receiving lots of fire and eventually the rhino goes BOOM! When this happens, those Lascannons & Meltas will move onwards to the other armoured targets and you’ll get shot to death by the standard firearms, e.g. Boltguns. Even when this happens, I’d expect to have a nearby squad of Chaos Marines to move and join the Sorcerer to add wounds. 

So think about it, maybe this will be different in your meta, but will you need to pour points into an invulnerable save that you may not even roll?

X-Wing: A Brief Introduction

As I probably mentioned in a previous post, I got into X-Wing last year after being introduced to the starter box at a local games club. I was immediately hooked and went on to start my own collection.

X-Wing is very easy to get into, there's only a few pages of rules to read, there's no need to assemble or paint your models (although that hasn't stopped people customising theirs) and you don't need to memorise unit profiles, weapons profiles and special abilities, its all clearly laid out on your Ship and Upgrade cards. Only minutes after buying a starter set and first expansions you will be prepared for your first game.

The gameplay has a level of unpredictability about it as its not a simple you-go I-go game. Each player secretly plots their moves on a dial and then reveals them in order of the pilots initiative. This forces you to have to predict your opponents exact movements if you want to get the upper hand.

Each ship that Fantasy Flight Games release is thought through meticulously as the last thing they want is for older expansions to become completely obsolete. This means that new ship releases for a faction try to be different from the ships that came before, and not just better and more competitive versions of what they previously released. Whenever a ship does drop behind, such as the iconic X-Wing and Y-Wings, they get new upgrade cards released for them specifically in certain expansion sets. So far FFG have released a number of ships for the 3 factions; Rebels, Empire and Scum & Villiany, all set in the Galactic Civil War era and into the Force Awakens era. This includes ships from the expanded universe such as the E-Wing. However I do not believe FFG intend on releasing ships from the prequel era, however in business terms this may be a good thing for them given its reputation among Star Wars fans.

Also, possibly the most important thing for a Star Wars fan is that its X-Wings vs Tie Fighters on the tabletop. There's soooo much fun to be had with this game, whether you play it competitively or fluffy. My Advice is to grab the starter set and a willing participant and start playing the game, at around only £30 retail price it is very cheap and easy to get into compared with your other wargames.


That's all for now,


Regards,

Peak Wargamer Aaron.

Beyond the Gates of Antares; My Rules Mistakes

So, i've had another game of Antares and have started painting some Ghar that I purchased over Christmas, so here's a small update on my activities;

I now own the Ghar starter army, I have built the contents and primed them ready for painting. I converted one of the walkers with a craft knife and some spare piping to make my Commander Fartok (HQ Unit) and have started painting the drones. My plan is to finish painting this lot before the end of the month, at which time i'll have some more photos to add to the blog.

As I mentioned I have run another demo game of Antares, and I must admit, having re-read the rules since the game I really messed up the rules and tipped the balance of the game massively in the Ghars favour (who I was playing against). The biggest error I made, and anybody coming in from games like 40K where you commonly have dice pools will likely make is pooling your dice when your making a resistance test for a unit that contains a Leader.

In the rulebook you have to evenly assign hits across your unit and roll their tests individually, however if every model is identical there is no harm in just rolling them all at once. BUT!!! If you have a Leader in there who can re-roll a failed test which only has a 10% chance of failing, then you are drastically improving the units survivability. For example, lets say a Ghar Assault Squad recieves 3 hits, if you follow the rules and roll for the models individually, statistically there is ~20% chance of taking a casualty. Now if you roll all of the dice as a pool and re-roll one fail by putting it on the leader, the same casualty rate becomes ~3%, making the Ghar somewhat overpowered.

So my advice, don't take shortcuts early on like I did, it seriously tips the balance of the game, just remember that your resist tests are made individually on a per model basis.


Moving on, I have been working on my quick reference sheets, as I prefer not to have to dig through a 250 page book when playing games. Currently I have a data sheet for the Ghar and Concord that contains every unit, weapon and special rule found in the Xilos Horizon Starter Set, handy for running demo games. Further to this I have thrown one together for Orders, specifically the more advanced options you have such as retaining or reactions.


That's all for now,

Regards,

Peak Wargamer Aaron.

Beyond the Gates of Antares; First Thoughts

My thoughts so far on Beyond the Gates of Antares;

So, having played a couple of games of Beyond the Gates of Antares, I thought it may be time to give my thoughts on this rather new game by Warlord Games, which was only officially released a couple of months ago. It's a Sci-Fi game set in the distant future and has been written by Rick Priestley, the creator of Warhammer 40K if i'm not mistaken. What's in the box?

In the starter set you receive the 2 factions, Concord and Ghar. The Ghar I had lots of fun assembling and painting, and these models prompted me to learn new painting techniques to get the most out of them. These models were a great change, they were neither your standard humanoid infantry or typical tank and they had lots of character to them. They are also really fun to play also, especially given that they risk exploding when shot at.

I cannot say the same for the Concord Troops, of which there are alot more of. These guys are humanoid infantry with guns, there wasn't much choice in customisation (though it is still early days) and they didn't have half as much character as the Ghar. However, you get alot more Concord both model wise and points wise, and with the options you are presented with you may have a decent starter force. I must admit, unlike the Ghar though I struggle just bringing the brush to the models. If you want simple models to paint and get into the game quickly, these guys fit the bill. The red pin markers did need a little treatment to make the numbers more visible.

The Quick start guide provided runs you through the basic rules with a small scenario. Once you have a grasp of these you can move onto the rulebook for the rest. Unlike games like 40K, there really isn't that many rules in the rulebook. The book may look really intimidating, but alot of it is fluff, pictures and run through examples of the rules. The core rules that you require to play probably fit into 20 pages. Furthermore, the rulebook contains all of the army lists and special rules, so there's no need to go out and buy codexes, once you have the rules you only need to focus on buying the models.

The Rules are evolved from Bolt Action, I say evolved because they have lost some of Bolt Actions simplicity. You still have the Order dice bag and pinning, but you get statlines for your units and weapons, more special rules and ways to manipulate the dice bag. Furthermore, you get this D10 roll under system which may seem quite alien to you at first, but it is very easy to get the hang of. Infact, the D10 system allows for so much more to happen in the game and it removes the complications that the 2D6 would bring to the table (e.g. 7 being the most common result).

Overall I am enjoying the game so far, the Ghar models are amazing and I can say i'll be buying more in the future when I have caught up on my painting. When i've played some more games i'll be talking more about how the game flows, tactics, tips etc.

With regards to the fluff, due to the amount of painting I have been doing recently, I admit that only this very weekend have I actually sat down and read more than a page of the fluff. From what i've read so far, my favourite faction to build and paint in the starter set seems the most appealing fluff wise also. The Ghar were bred for the purpose of creating war thousands of years ago, starting out with the human genetic code and modifying it to create soldiers. These soldiers were left to devolve/mutate for thousands of years to turn into unrecognisable gremlins that wear mechanical battlesuits powered by unstable reactors and only care for making war. My summary of the Ghar probably doesn't do them much justice.

So that's enough Antares for now, over the next week i'll start filling up this blog with content, after that i'll try to post on a weekly basis about my latest adventures, findings, thoughts, tutorials, paint jobs etc. Until next time,

Regards,

Peak Wargamer Aaron.

Introductions...

So hello there fellow wargamers, and welcome to my blog. 

I recently decided I may as well start writing up my experiences in wargaming (rather than talk to myself about them). My experiences in wargaming as of now isn't very diverse, so here's a little background;

Like many, I started with Warhammer 40k back when I was a mere child, I originally set out to collect space marines until I saw the cooler looking chaos marines. I collected chaos for a couple of years and painted them rather appallingly, only to drop out of the hobby. At the time I had no interests in painting and modelling, just the gaming side, and given that my friends at the time had left the hobby there was no reason for me to keep at it.

About 8 years went by, during which I had kept my original 40K chaos collection in the event that I ever returned to the hobby. At university I became friends with Ryan, who I swore was several years older than myself at the time, despite being a whole year younger than me. Anwyay, Ryan got me back into 40K, and after seeing how well painted his miniatures were compared to my khorne bezerkers from when I was 12-13, I was inspired to improve upon my painting quality.

More recently, I have joined a wargames club in the Derbyshire Dales where I have been exposed to a number of other game systems that I thoroughly enjoy, and have begun expanding into. The travel to this club is well worth it, as I today still find myself with a lack of opponents, so battle reports may be somewhat scarce for the near future on this blog.

Back to these mysterious "other game systems", I have begun collecting Bolt Action (Heer Pioneer Germans), Beyond the Gates of Antares (Ghar) and X-Wing (Rebels). My painting skills have improved greatly this past year as I have made myself more familiar with drybrushing, wash paints, priming/basing, posing etc. I have quite some way to go, but to give you an idea of where i'm at;

So, what I expect to be posting about into the future will likely be reviews of game systems I find myself buying into, basic tutorials for the hobby, tactics, painting tips etc etc etc.

Anyways, happy new year and I look forward to posting something a little more interesting for you all.

Regards,

Peak Wargamer Aaron.