Warhammer 8th - a quick spin with the new rules

So,

A trip to Warhammer World. An excuse to learn how to play Warhammer 8th or what I term "Rockethammer". Is it as good as they think it is?

(did I mention that the Purple Sun Paradox is a bad idea for magic?)

Anyway, having special access meant bringing no army to Warhammer World wasn't the worst thing. A quick word with the staff, and off we were with 2 very unequal but very pretty armies.

So, A chaos force went off, to fight a High Elf Prince, around a very abandoned Empire Town. The terrain just called for it...

and now, in all it's prettiness - the battlefield. Very very pretty. Notice all those fences? They truly get in the way later. Oh, and lots of thanks to Kevin Chin of Studio for rule discussions and clarifications during the battle!


So, With a lot of assistance from BattleChronicler, an attempt at that wonderful battlefield drawings you see in every White Dwarf was attempted. However, using a new tool for the first time lead to turn report being rewritten enough times to say - "needs more practice." So, the wonderful tool that is the Battle Chronicler was used here for the image generation.

Apparently it can save an entire battle report to HTML for quick posting online (though how that would work with the image linking... needs thought? perhaps discussions with Blogger/Picassa etc? Needs more research.)

Anyway, on to the quick report and thoughts about how 8th will affect those who already know how to play Warhammer Fantasy Battles (This does not affect those that don't and start from 8th.)

Deployment

Hmm... a pretty map. Yes. You can save your armies in Battle Chronicler. Unit sizes are all scaled to fit. Wonders of modern xml technology. Note: this version used Microsoft's .NET4.0 framework. Cutting edge stuff!

So if you click on the map on the left you should be able to see a slightly larger image. You can edit just about everything on that map, from unit descriptions to the size of the terrain, roads, buildings and all that. Wonders. How precise do you want your report? It can go down to the inch or centimeter. Go for it.

The mission was the one that dealt with break points. Your army has a break point (1 per 1000 points of units) and once the army fortitude falls to or below the break point, the game is over. Makes for sudden death? A general provides 2 fortitude, and each banner 1 more. At the start, the Chaos army started with 6 fortitude, and the High Elves with 5.

Now since I don't have TJ's point on view on his deployment, I shall try my best to see things from his view.

The High Elves set up with the Bolt Throwers holding one hill. True line of sight. How will this affect 8th? Well, it was horrible trying to shoot anything with all those pesky Empire buildings in the way. So the decision was to anchor a flank with the bolt throwers, and keep the SpearElves and Chariot as a counter-charge to deal with anything coming down that flank.

The Silver Helms held the center of the road out of (into?) town, preparing to march along the relatively wide roads to support either the left or right flanks where necessary. Swordmasters anchored the left flank, with the Shadow Warriors hiding in the forest of dodgy-ness. (it had some dangerous effect that had the Shadow Warriors wanting to leave it as soon as possible!). The elf prince sat on his enormous mount behind the Helms, preparing to support either flank's push.

On the Chaos side, Chaos Warriors dared the Bolt throwers to hurt them, whilst the Marauders decided wisely to garrison (hide?) in the building. The Chaos Knights held their right flank, with the Chaos Lord, while the warhounds provided support for the two Chaos Spawns on their left flank.

On HINDSIGHT, both generals immediately forgot about the issue of break points. A proper deployment on the battlefield proved to override any real medium term tactical considerations. (simplespeak? We completely forgot about break points during deployment and the first turn.)

The High Elf wizard brought along a single bound item. How does this work with the new magic phase?... hmmm... So he climbed to the top of the tower, giving him good True-Line-Of-Sight to many things, and fortunately, rolled two useful High Magic spells of Arrow Attraction and Fury of Khaine. The Marauder Horsemen just kep5 TLOS through the buildings as the Silver Helms watched.

Turn 1 -Boom! Boom!
That is, BOOM. With this new charge bonus, units were getting to grips with each other on turn one. Did I mention deployment was only 18" apart?

The smart wizard used his bound item, drawing out some dispel dice. He then cast Fury of Khaine, immolating the warhounds on the road. Flushed with confidence, 4 dice went into the curse of arrow attraction (foolish, since there were no more dispel dice, but hey, it's a learning game!).

DISASTER! 3 6s and a 1. and a 4 on the miscast table, coupled with his foolishness in not saving himself from the predations of the warp, meant that he had to go deal with Tzeentch all on his own. Oops.

The SpearElves ran up the hill, calculating that they had at least one turn to turn around and face the enemy. The prince flew forward and sat on the crossroads, facing the threat of the Chaos Lord and knights.

The foolish shadow warriors tried to 'outflank' the chaos knights in trying to get out of their line of sight. (a shout for that new LOS arrow template. It was very useful.) They didn't succeed, and the Nurgle Knights charged in. The new rules of charging over obstacles proved to make the battle much more fluid. No more being held up by random rocks and trees. If you dared, you could. The Chaos knights lost two to broken horse legs... but charged successfully into the Shadow warriors. The Chaos Lord charged the Swordmasters, and hurt himself jumping over that stone wall.

Swordmasters. Do not engage would be the new rule. they may have been of minimal worth being charged in the past. Now, with ASF + I5, they will almost always have re-roll misses with their attacks. Even though ASF is negated by great weapon's ASL, the bonus of re-rolls does not seem to be affected. (we could be wrong, we did think about it, and it didn't feel wrong.) So, said Chaos lord, having challenged the puny champion into running to the back (no loss of attacks now!), had to face both the front and 2nd rank swordmasters. 2As each + 1 additional from the back rank meant he faced 15 attacks with reroll misses. Even with the ward saves and improved armour save from his mount, he was to take a wound, (rather magical rolls actually)... and won the combat with 3 dead.

Steadfast? sure. the swordmasters barely broke a sweat, with the prince's Ld10 telling them to stand still and fight.

On the far end, the Chaos knights, distracted by all the steeple chasing, made a mess of their attack, killing only 3 shadow warriors. Rolling a 3 for their break test meant that the warriors held. (we forgot about the fear test at the start of that combat, but now, at least, you don't break from fear anymore.)

Break Point 2: Chaos 6, High Elf 5

TURN 2 Elves
CHARGE!!!!

Here's where the new rules really made a huge difference. The silver Helms were 'blocked' from charging the Marauder horsemen by the wizard's tower(outhouse besides the well?). Well, the new rules say you can charge. You just take dangerous terrain tests for those that would go through the offending terrain piece. And, there was a debate on whether if we start in the flank, but cannot charge the flank (since it was anchored by an outhouse!), can we charge the front? We decided we could, hopefully future rule clarifications won't overrule it.

So, Bob ran into the outhouse; the rest of the 11 SilverHelms charged successfully into the Marauder Horsemen. Meanwhile, the Elf Prince thought the Chaos Lord was the bigger threat (wrong!) and charged him, almost clipping the dragon's toenails against another stone wall. (these dangerous terrain tests are proving dangerous!)

In that combat, well, with a poorly equipped elf prince, he lost his head to that one last attack from the daemonic mount. And the Dragon who then turned stupid was just smart enough to kill the Chaos Lord. On hindsight... the prince should have gone for the Chaos Knights, as another 15 S5 re-roll misses attacks from the swordmasters would have killed the Chaos Lord's last wound anyway!

So under the new rules, you can reform on winning a combat. The Silver Helms turned to face the 2 chaos spawns headed their way (a fatal mistake.) and the Chaos knights turned to face the centre of town after dispatching the last 2 foolish Shadow Warriors. The now-stupid dragon turned to face the knights.

On the right, not much happened. The Chaos Warriors decided that, curse or no curse, marching towards two elven bolt throwers wasn't the way to glory, and sought to "garrison" the other building.

Break Point 2: Chaos 3, High Elves 3

Turn 2 Chaos
Needing 10s on 3d6(highest two), the Chaos Knights successfully negotiated the dangerous terrain, and charged the SilverHelms in the rear.

What a mistake reforming to 5 wide was, as Bob's brother "Bubba" formed the 3rd rank, and was just in range for the Chaos Knights' charge to hit. Oh well. Truly.

The Chaos Marauders came out of the building, and so did the Chaos Warriors. If the Silver Helms held, they were ready to throw their weight into the combat. However, the Chaos Knights were too good, killing 5 of the knights, putting them to flight, and securing the win.

Break Point 2: Chaos 3, High Elf 2. High Elves lose.
Conclusions:
1. We didn't have any arrow units, so were unable to test out volley fire. From mathhammer, Lothern Sea Guard might become the new favoured core unit... able to put put punishing volumes of shooting, and even more numerous attacks when charged (with ASF! and reroll misses).

2. Charging through terrain makes a big difference. Something 7th Ed players will have to learn to deal with. Protection via terrain is no longer as solid as one thinks.

3. Flying dwarves. 15" charging dwarves might now become a common sight. 2d6 + M can result in many interesting charges. Cavalry charges are not as far comparative to infantry now, with infantry's average charge range going up to 11, and Cavalry sitting at 15" even with their re-roll. A difference of 4-5" in infantry V cavalry is way significant from previous edition's 8"v14"+ (6"++)

4. Magic is truly risky. Boom. 200 points lost in one turn. Could have been worse if he was inside a unit. the large S10 blast template would have mangled that unit too. Archmages and irresistable force? ouch. Ignoring miscast magic items are now very powerful.

5. Missions - missions. missions. Remember the mission. The banner-ed units should have all climbed into garrison-able buildings for defensive sake, and left the killing to the other units (though that would have made the game fall flat, as nobody would have been able to dig anyone out at all, since monsters cannot attack buildings... though Chaos knights on foot might have still dug elven infantry out of buildings.)

All in all, the random terrain effects makes for more fun. The new 8th adage - you want fair and unrandom? go play chess. The rest of us just want to see dragons tearing into large units and making men fly.


E.o.M.

Bad Old Primer and why they should be thrown away

Things one should not scrimp cents on...

using up that last bit of primer. It's fine if one is just looking to do up some random terrain, but not when one is playing with the latest toy out of Nottingham.

Pictures below.
Click for larger blowups of a primed-wreck.





Luckily The Lazy Paintbrush has lots of paint thinners available, from plastic-meltas to plastic-caressers. The latter option from Gunze Sangyo was used. The new bada## prettyboy with bad dreams is now ready to be re-primed.




Excuse the thinner shine. Didn't wait for it to dry. But yes, narry a speck of white primer left. Wondrous things, these plastic-friendly thinners.

Ahh... some time lost. Moving on.



E.o.M.

Space Hulk - an exercise in washes

So,
after many games of 1: Suicide Mission, a few brothers were selected to be painted.

Finished Projects:
Now the LazyPaintbrush was also the LazyPhotographer, and forgot to take pictures of the completed battle brothers. This will be rectified sometime soon.

Brother Zael
Burn the unclean. Suffer not the alien to live. Brother Zael carries around the Heavy Flamer, a most useful toy, even if it has ammunition issues.

These 2 flanking pictures have Zael at the end of stage 1, with 1 yellow wash, 1 red wash, base colors for the other bits, and another red wash.

Nice and bright the red is.

After more touching up errors, and the 1 1/2 to 2 layers of Ogryn Flesh, you can see the difference.
Ctrl-click on the picture to see it in seperate tab, or Shift-Click to see it in another window.

The dark lines i-nbetween the power fist fingers are due to 2 to 3 layers of ogryn Flesh.

Wonderful thing, this washing method is. On the right, you can see the wash's effects on the armoured hood.





Brother Noctis


Here we have battle-brother Noctis.

The model was primed with GW's white primer undercoat. Due to the fact that the plastic was red, the primer layer was thicker than normal. Odd that we would want to cover all the red, and then re-wash the model with red. But, that's just the way modelers like to do things.

At this stage, Noctis has been washed in the following steps:
1. Vallejo Yellow Wash
2. Vallejo Red Wash
3. Base colors for the other parts.

• Black for the trim on the storm bolter.
• Adeptus Battlegrey for the flexible bendy parts, vents, chains, and main body of the gun.
• Iyanden Darksun for the chest eagle, crux terminatus on the left shin, at the end of the chain.
• Vallejo Model Color Dark Sand for the purity seals.

4. Vallejo Red Wash.
As you can still see, there are splashes of wash on the purity seals, vents, etc. Sometimes, the Lazypaintbrush is truly lazy.
That just means more touch-up work later.

After more touching up, and the wash of Ogryn Flesh (2x Red wash gave the necessary depth of red, but it was soooo bright! Ogryn flesh solved the brightness... about 1 1/2 layers, 2 layers for the areas where Lazypaintbrush really wanted to show depth (between the fingers of the power fist, darker corners of the armoured hood).

Either way, the result flanks this paragraph.

So the completed pictures to come. But, how exactly does this washing method work?




Projects-in-Progress

Lazypaintbrush will try to explain with this all in one graphic.



Here we have 4 other Battle Brothers.
Leon, Scipio, Valencio, Deino

Leon has only 1 layer of yellow wash.
Sciopio has 1 yellow and 1 OgrynFlesh.
Valencio has 1 yellow and 1 red wash.
Deino has 1 yellow and 2 red washes.

You can see the effects layering the washes one after another has had on the battle brothers. Lazypaintbrush enjoys using yellow as the base color, as it helps bring out the white.


Anyway, more of the 4 battle brothers next time.


E.o.M.

Washes on White - an experiment on Striking Scorpions

Striking Scorpions w/wash.
More interesting experiments with washes on white using the latest version of the Striking Scorpions.

Out of two boxes come 12 scorpions. Gee. Thanks. A maximum squad is 10, not 12. Perhaps that might be amended in the next codex since the Wave Serpents can carry 12 models?? ;-) one can dream.

Anyway, after the filing, cleaning (literally! scrub with soap after assembly), and basing, is the priming. Using GW's white undercoat, the LazyPaintbrush achieved an even coat with multiple light sprayings. Remember, you can top up thin layers, you can't thin down thick layers!

The basing material used was from Vallejo's range of pumices. This one in question was "black Lava". No pinning of the arms because I was very lazy. The Scorpion Exarch carries a modified Biting Blade (from the Chainsabre), and oversized shuriken pistol (from extra Dire Avenger bits!). The other Scorpions were standard poses.


So, next went on the wash. The wash used was Vallejo's Green Wash from their Game Color range. Originally, LazyPaintbrush contemplated using GW's Thrakka Green wash, but found it too dark. So, on to the test greens and yellows. The yellow wash also came from Vallejo's Game Color range.

After one coat of Green wash.


After one coat of yellow Wash.


After combining the 2 layers of wash, the level of green-ness was insufficient. A second layer of green wash was added.

We get the following Scorpion. Nice bright green he was. And still shiny from puddles of wash that had not yet dried.


And another bright Green scorpion.


On to the whole squad. Yellows all round!


Another washed Scorpion.


To create more depth, because LazyPaintbrush is really, well, lazy, additional layers of green wash was slopped liberally into the recesses. However, on certain Scorpions, this was overdone, resulting in a dark green depth-like effect. LazyPaintbrush isn't complaining, but observed that one has to be careful just how much wash-pooling he wants next time.

As of the end of July, the weapons received their first coat; Unfortunately, pictures have yet to be taken, being distracted by - planetary empires!


To be continued....

22 September 2009
These Scorpions have now been sitting on the desk for about a month. Does the Lazypaintbrush dare to paint the Scorpion Symbol on their helms, or will it be left off?




E.o.M.

40k - Planetary Empires

So,
whilst the Scorpions are pending, new distractions come along.
And having access to new stuff is nice. However, it also means
that its hard to separate hobby from work.

Anyway, here is this month's sneak preview.

Planetary Empires
By Rick Priestley and Jervis Johnson

After the success of mighty empires
last year, GW's finally completed
their campaign rule set
for the 41st millennium.

Packed tightly into a typical vehicle-sized
box, are 6 sprues that contain
a lot of plastic, and 1 rulebook.



6x One standard Sprue



Back of the plastic sprue.


Inside the box are 6 sprues of the same design. The box contains the following:

• 48 hexagonal tiles

• 12 Power Station pieces
  
  
  
• 12 Command Bastion pieces
  
  
  
• 12 Shield Generator Pieces
  
  
  
• 12 Manufactorum pieces
  
  
• and 96 banners to be painted in your army's colours!

• One multi-lingual rulebook.
  The rules are simple - only 5 pages long. It includes how to set up a campaign and a random map generator, special advantages for each type of tile (with building) that you control (the points generated vary for different races)
  

Interesting notes include - battle bonus points - you can either spend them on your own army, or on mercenaries, or on allies, taking up the force-organization slot. Might allow a few broken combinations, but hey, what's another excuse to use more models or come up with a wicked story of why that Chaos Lord of Slannesh was consorting with the local Imperial Guard Lord-Commissar????

Playing the campaign

Its an open-battle system - the more battles you play against players in the campaign, the more chances you have to conquer tiles - its easier to conquer tiles adjacent to tiles already under your control, but you can conquer tiles from anywhere across the table - its just a harder roll on 2D6. Some modifiers apply to the roll, to reflect things like moral victories, presence of spaceports - to reduce the ability of a winning player to conquer multiple tiles - there is a -1 modifier to the roll for every additional tile you attempt to conquer.

As for campaign drop outs - any player that wins can try to conquer the dropped-player's tiles, using the result from one of their battles (the two players fighting over a piece of dropped pie?).

New players can be added by adding more tiles - in effect, allowing an expanding campaign. I haven't looked at the rules for the Warhammer Fantasy version, so I cannot compare them.

oh, and to make people go to their direct web store, there is an unshameless plug - the Hive city tile is only available from their direct store. (this tile combines multiple tile types, including power stations, shield generators and more!)

So happy campaigning once you get your fingers on it.



E.o.M.

Flying high - the IG Valkryie in progress

Darth Vader Reborn?

Steps taken so far... roughcoating certain armour plates (too much effort for too little impact? we'll know at the drybrush stage).

Black undercoating.

Step in progress - basecoat colors.

Difficulty - determining what color uniforms should be. Are they of the same IG regiment, of of the Imperial Navy. Decision was taken to be part of the regiment. But slightly different, since flyboys always want to well.. be different. (or not, since the regiment does NOT yet exist... the pilots' flightsuit color scheme might end up being used for the whole regiment!)

But it appears that as present, the infantry armor colors are Orkhide shade.
(so why is the Valkryie's basecoat in Battlegrey? uh oh... not enough thought here!)





Pilot from the front.












Pilot from the front. different picture. Must figure out how to focus camera onto the pilot... perhaps take canopy off first, then put it back on before hitting the take picture button? need to find tripod.











Side view of the front.




"Guns guns guns! hit the target." Rumours are that 3x twin-lascannon version is a forgeworld upgrade. Dang. Perhaps its not too late to rip off the front sensor array to magnetize the lot?


1 week to go. Can it be finished?




Body Update 10 April 2009

The Pilots cockpit/fuselage were completed. Full details on their progress to follow.


Here's the body.




this Picture link is big.







The Door Gunner. Now one would question just how much of a field of fire the gunner would have, with the gull-wing design limiting his vision.









The full Model. Pretty big. The hull is as long as a Land Raider, and the wings... well, 1 1/2 times as wide as a Land Raider. If one somehow manages to field 9 as 3x3 Fast Attack Choices, they will fill up the deployment zone. (or just put everything in reserve!)






Another view of the Valkyrie. The blueness is due to the fact that the camera's light setting was still on incandescent, and the flash triggered. Still, it is in focus.







Quick conclusions
Its been a fun model to put together, with just some complaints about the engines being a little excessive in detail (see th engine hoses right.)

The model can easily take some magnetization (the door gunner is magnetized to make it easier to fit.

The wings can be left unglued, as their mount is deep enough such that one can remove the wings for transport. The front fuselage in this model has just been attached by blu-tack rather than glued on. (It is a pretty lengthy model.)

The flying base is nice. With a cross for the horizontal strength, and a variable plate one attaches to the Valkyrie so that one can find the correct center of gravity so as not to have it fall over. I have only blu-tacked the flying base mount onto the Valkyrie and it has not yet fallen off after 2 days. This is one flying base that will not snap off at the slightest accident.

I'll look into following up how the front fuselage was painted in a following article. Time for a break.


E.o.M.