Too many minis...

So I've spent a little time of late moving my gaming news blog to a new server and new blogging software. Blogger wasn't the right fit for what I wanted to do and their recent automated efforts to reduce spam blogs made a decision for me that I had been prevaricating about for about a month.

Now that the move is done and I have some free-time from work I decided to start planning my painting schedule a little bit. I've been on new arthritis medication for a few months and the difference it has made has been immense. I've gone from planning on how I would afford to pay to get some armies painted to going back to planning on painting them myself.

The issue though is, as usual, that I have too much to paint.

Currently I have some Flames of War figs, a Khador army that I have to continue to paint, 6mm Ancients from Baccus and some Warmaster figs.

Why do mini gamers do this to themselves?

Ranting about ForgeWorld

Now I will be the first to say that I don't understand how ForgeWorld works. But lately I am getting the impression that they really live in their own space-time continuum and don't seem to pay any regard to what happens in the world around them.

First they published their own Epic Tau armylist in their latest campaign book. They didn't seem to care that it wasn't compatible with the official Epic list and based on comments made by the Tau Champion and designer they didn't even communicate with him about the development of the list.

Nor, after reading it, did they appear to playtest it.

Now today the fine folks at ForgeWorld have posted news of an Epic version of their Chaos Hellblade fighter. Now we, the developers of the Epic Chaos Space marine army list, spent quite some time trying to get confirmation of a possible production date for this unit as soon as the 40K version was announced. No luck. Even worse than no luck, not a single reply to any email to them.

So now that the list is basically finalized and ready to go ForgeWorld announces that they have the unit ready for production.

Now we are left in the rather unenviable position of either leaving the unit out or putting in stats and point costs that won't get enough playtesting.

Maybe dropping in stats at the last minute works for the people at ForgeWorld but I actually like to attempt to make balanced army lists. So I am currently inclined to go tell ForgeWorld to pack their Hellblsde fighter someplace dark and unpleasant and stick with the stats for the generic fighter that we currently have in the army list.

Why the company operates like this is beyond me. What does scare the hell out of me is that Fanatic is going to have to rely on a company with a proven track record of not listening to anyone to produce additional units and maybe even whole armies for Epic.

That scares the sh*t out of me. And it really makes me wonder why GW continues to approve of this sort of rogue behaviour.

Warmaster

Spent the weekend at a local two-day Warmaster tournament.

One of the highlights of the weekend was meeting Lex Van Rooy (aka Greysage and MOD_Lex) from Holland. Lex is one of the current army list developers for Warmaster so it was fairly interesting to talk to Lex about the development of the Warmaster army selectors.

Lex also had a sample of the new Araby figs that are, at some point, going to be coming out for Warmaster. Very nice figs.

The weekend was interesting since it gave me the opportunity to evaluate my own playing style and also take some time to evaluate the game itself.

While I have been playing Chaos in Warmaster for ages I don't think that the army is particularly suited to the way I actually play the game. I try to make the army play in a more loose and flexible fashion that I think it is intended. Lex suggested looking at the current Skaven list and I may do that. The tactics and strategies that Lex and I discussed certainly sound more like the type of game I attempt to play in Warmaster with my Chaos army.

As well I have been looking to the Warmaster Ancients rulebook with quite a bit on longing. Especially after playing a concentrated series of Warmaster games.

Some of the Warmaster army lists are not balanced. Now there is supposed to be a new set of army selectors coming out for Warmaster and hopefully that will change some of the more obvious problems with some of the lists.

The main issue with the game though is that it is far too random and some facets of the combat rules that make the game less that thrilling. Specifically the unlimited rounds of combat. Anyone who has had a strong enemy brigade reduce aen tire flank to nothing via a flank charge can attest to how unenjoyable that is.

CSM tweaks

The CSM army list has been sent off to Fanatic for edits and eventual publishing. There are a few minor, primarily typographic, tweaks that are going to be added to the list and sent along.

No news yet on when it will see print or what the ETA for new Chaos Epic figs are

Khador Jack

Well its not new (its been done for a few weeks) but this is the paint scheme that I will be using for my Khador Jacks.



Its the same green and red colours as the rest of the army. I wanted to keep the painting simple and since I'm still not all that experienced at blending something this size I kept the highlights very simple.

I'm currently working on another Jack and a unit of Greylords for my Khador force.