Sunday, July 13, 2014

40k

I dearly love Warhammer fantasy. That should be obvious by the sheer number of armies I have...I can play pretty good size games with proper, painted models with Dwarfs, High Elfs, Beastmen, Orcs & Goblins, Brettonians, and of course my favorite, the Warriors of Chaos. I even have about 1000 points of Vampire Counts, though have only ever played them maybe once?

Unfortunately, the Starving Crazed Weasels live far enough away that I cannot really get in games with them during the week and, being at different points in our lives, we no longer have the 2nd Saturday of the month reserved for games so we scarcely get in games. Hopefully at some point they will become more frequent again.

Way back in second edition we used to play 40k. I was Space Wolves and Eldar, Fixed Dice was Imperial Guard and Fullur ran Orks. I liked it even though it was a broken game at that point...the Space Marines were unstoppable back then, could not be touched.

Meanwhile, I have been practicing painting with water. First I dialed up some Tau. I tried Krylon primer/paint as a red base coat. I found it difficult to paint over. Worse, I was using quick-shades, washes, and so forth for shading.

On the one hand, I am actually not bad at it...my Orcs turned out pretty well with some very cool definition on their muscles. Same for the Beastmen. And some clothing. However, outside of those select things, I do not like the dirtied up, shadowed look. I like sharp, crisp, bright colors. I really prefer the older style of painting to the modern.

Between those issues I ended up not liking the paint job on the Tau so when I started the Space Wolves (which will be my primary 40k army) I used black primer. First up I painted up some tacticals from Assault on Black Reach.

I went with a pearlized blue and pearlized purple scheme, highlighting it with golds, coppers and bronzes. I love the result as they are a very colorful, bright looking army.

Then I started painting the actual Space Wolves. Not a huge fan of the wolf pelts. Have not really figured out a way to make them look good as they do not fit my color scheme.

Meanwhile, I have been keeping my eye out for sweet deals on figures and picked up pre-painted Ultramarines, Dark Angels, some Tau, and Chaos Space marines and some unpainted Necrons and Orks.

For those doing math, between the various means, I now can play at least 7 different Warhammer 40k armies. Not big games and not competitively as I do not have some of the heavies and super-heavies that are needed, but I can play.

So I have been reading up on the rules, had 6th edition rules and was getting ready to try a game when GW went all GW on me and changed the system to 7th.

There are several things stopping me picking up the rulebook.

1, they always come out with a set like Dark Vengeance that is scarcely more expensive than the rulebook itself but comes with a decent selection of models for 2 armies. Reading between the lines of what I have written above you might guess I pretty much always pick up a couple of them.

2, I think the fluff for both systems is ridiculous. Let me see if I can boil it down; "superhero goes on a rampage, slaying thousands of enemies at a time and stopping noted enemy x (or being stopped by "good guy" hero y".

Anyway, I am not going to pay 3 times the value for horrific writing and rules I can get basically for free by picking up models I want to pick up anyway. So I wait for the rules to come out in a box like Dark Vengeance or the forthcoming Stormclaw box which I hope to get 2-3 boxes of.

So the upshot is I have been wanting to get in a game of 40k for a while, just been waiting to finish painting up an army. I was going to use the Tau, but between the time I started painting them and the time I had them ready they got a new book and became super-powered. So I decided to wait a bit.

Now a new shop has opened just about 5 minutes from me. The Friendly Local Game Store
That is actually their name...

They are playing 7th, which I do not know all the rules for, however, I have gotten in a couple days. A little information about them coming shortly.

I would like to take this moment to welcome myself back to 40k because I love it. When I can't get together with my preferred opponents in the Starving Crazed Weasels, this will be a nice sideline.



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