My Idea for a TV Show

For all three of you who still play Warhammer Fantasy, you know that GW just released the latest Vampire Counts book and a whole bunch of new models.  For the rest of you, consider yourselves knowledge slapped!

There's the neat-o Coven Throne, a much needed Black Knight update and even a strangely attractive Isabella Von Carstein.

But all of that is stupid and lame because Gw also released a new Krell. And he is about as bad-ass as a model can legally get.  In Canada, he comes with a government warning about eye damage in young children.  In China, he is banned as a threat to the communist party.  To be safe, you should probably only take him in an army list if you plan on playing in international waters.

Admittedly, I'm not going to be starting a Fantasy army any time soon.  Neither is most of the world's population.  Never the less, the word needs to get out and I have the perfect vehicle for that message!

Digesting WHFB 8th Edition + Bonus Topics

Thanks to a generous donation last month from the Mom and Dad Fund For People Who Are Turning 30, I was able to get my hands on my very own copy of the 8th edition Warhammer rules.

I thought it might be a fun diversion to flip through since all my 40k books have been thumbed through at least a million times - even to the point where they aren't even a good thing to read while taking a crap.

Don't kid yourself, blogoshpere - every red blooded gamer has read an army book on the crapper.

On top of that, my Eldar are coming close to being completely done.  Then it'll be time for actual games (good bye vassal!).  But the Daemons will still be lurking on the workbench.  And burnout is my greatest enemy.

Elfs, Part 4: The Darkest Dark Before Total Darkness

I'm actually, doing it, I'm finishing an article series.  Huzzah!  After this post on the Dark Elves, I've got just one more bit of writing to do and I think I can call this one done.  Not too bad, if I do say so myself.

Let me just take a second to preemptively pat myself on the back.

The Dark Elves

They may still have a huge collection of teribad names, but some of them actual manage to sounds scary.  Of course, most of those have to resort to the hackery that is looking up 'evil' in the thesaurus and then making names out of the synonyms, but still...

Have you seen the Avatars of War figures?  Spooge,

The rest of the fluff is more than makes up for this.  I'd be willing to bet money that the authors felt the needed the douchy names so that they could bring the bad-ass-itude of the Dark Elf fluff within the safety limits set by the World Health Organization.  Seriously, if it wasn't for the names, you'd have to have a hazardous materials license and keep the book in a lead case to keep it from melting people's gonads.

Elfs, Part 3: You Guys Wanna Get High?

I’ve got lots of stuff coming down the pike in terms of my hobbies, so I thought it best to try and finish my thoughts on elves before I get waylaid by any one of the three projects that are about to start.

As much as I love the Wood Elf models, they’re eliminated from contention until a new book drops. Since the internet doesn’t seem to think it’s likely in the next year or more, it’s probably best to move on. Kind of a bummer, I know, but the book is just too old and has too many leftovers from a totally different design era. I’m sure they have some good builds hiding in the book; I’m just not interested in suffering long enough to find them

Which brings me to the High Elves.

No Pants Friday: Wood Elf Motivational Seminar

3rs party profits are up this quarter at Laubersheimer Industries!* As a reward, please enjoy this mandatory motivational seminar brought to you by Matt from S/Energy Global (a wholly owned subsidiary of Amalgamated RoboDynamics, Inc). Lets all give him a big round of applause for hosting today's No Pants Friday.

Motivation made manifest.  Now, go out and sell, sell, SELL

Since most of the 40k blogosphere is losing their collective mind over the NOVA open tonight (myself included), I thought I'd post up some very cool advice I got from Matt.  Way back when, after a post on Wood Elves, Matt was kind enough to drop some science on me and was then kind enough to let me post it.  It's solid stuff that I think is worth sharing and comparing.  It also gets me out of actually writing a post so I can get to the business of obsessing over the NOVA Friday Night Exhibition Matches. 

Elfs, Part 2: Deforestation Kelly

Despite my proclivity to start articles series that I never finish and even despite blogger eating the first draft, tonight brings us to part two of my totally awesome Elf series.   Same caveats as before - it's gonna be a while before I start up some fantasy, so I'm just spinning my wheels for fun. 

I'd also like to state that if any of my handpicked, elite cadre of readers wants to shout out some Elfy advice to feel free and do so.  8th edition has shaken most of the low hanging fruit of the ol' list building tree and there are many of us that have no idea of even how the rules shake out let alone what to spend 2250 points on.  So while I'm clearly fishing for some knowledge I can put in the bank, this could helpful for a lot of other people too.

Oh, also, as an elite cadre, feel free to conduct ninja training or super secret raids on my behalf. 

Elfs, Part 1: Some Assorted Nonsense and Something About Elves

For the life of me, I just could not get my head wrapped around a Sunday and Monday post.  Until right this very minute.  Amazing.  It's like you all can actually see me have ideas from the comfortable anonymity of your own bat-caves/McMansions/Hovels or what-have-you.

On Sunday, I was going to write about a pretty excellent Wargaming ASKEW article by Squire Tastytaste over on BoLS.  Oh, and the utterly irrational stupidity that you've come to expect from the comments section.  Buuuuuut... I stopped giving a fuck half way through.

Today, I was going to write up a bit on the various GW options you have for your skirmish gaming - Kill Teams, Combat Patrol and Necromunda.  A compare and contrast kind of thing.  Unfortunately, I don't have the street cred to talk about games I haven't played (Kill Teams, Combat Patrol) and its been literally over a decade since I last played Necromunda.

I think I'd rather talk about Elves instead.  Some of you may find it hard to believe that I just wrote that.

But first, A quick run down of the two almost-rans.  Turns out they don't need a whole post.

The Color of Bullshit is Devlan Mud - actually TastyTaste's article was a pretty solid piece of humor dealing with being over-reliant on a painting technique to the point that it's holding you back.  Turns out that there are a lot of militant Devlan Mud fans who totally missed the point.  Especially this guy, Muskie.  Who, in the process of clumsily transitioning from confused nerd-rage to shameless self promotion, only managed to prove that he is a very uninteresting writer.  I hadn't seen blog posts that boring since the last time I went through my own archives. HIYO!  Although Muskie wins extra bonus points for a terrible nickname and being almost the only person to ever comment on his blog.  ON HIS OWN BLOG!  I'm such a bitch. Well, I learned and I'm sure he will too.

BOOOOOOOOOO!

Necro-Combat-Teams.. munda- Kill Team (Battle Missions version) doesn't have enough limits, Combat Patrol has too many.  Necromunda is way more investment in time than is worth it sometimes.  I think there's a middle ground between all three.  But, I need to get some games in with the two 40k mods.  Oh, and bonus points for Tau being the only army that still manages to get stuck with compulsory unit choices in either game. 

Right so on to the attractive and willowy meat of the today's post that is totally, not at all made up at the last minute.


ELFS!

Hmmm, probably going to have to premtively "part one"-ify this bitch.

ELFS!  (Part 1)

8th edition Fantasy has been a real motherfucker in terms of me wanting to spend money and wanting to paint new and crazy things.  It's like the new rule book, Tommy from 3rd Rock From the Sun and that girl from Juno snuck into my dreams and planted their own ideas in my brain.  Oooh, topical.  I'm sure Dethtron and Brent were involved in some ancillary capacity.  In any case, those damn, dirty elves have gotten their hands on me.

Up until recently in my life, I wasn't much of an Elf person.  They were typically portrayed as the super douches of the fantasy landscape.  And the people who were typically drawn to them were super douches as well.  Thankfully, where D&D embraces this, Shadowrun makes fun of it a bit with the whole elf-poseur sub-culture.  And the names, oh Unholy Krondor* the names.  If it wasn't some effeminate bullshit with a bunch of L's in it, it was some effeminate bullshit combo word about animals or the dawn or magic or some such crap. Ugh. There's only so much Elmondoria Magichawk a guy can take.

See what I mean?

Pro-tip:  searching for pictures of elves with google safe search turned off is a mixed bag.

Hell there was even a time when I was still plating WoW that I began to develop a racist attitude toward the bastards.  That's right, actual racism against a fictional race.  I... had problems back then.


Then I discovered that the Eldar had grav-tanks and were pretty damn rock and roll.  Been really enjoying the Eldar codex and all the fluff since that moment.  The space elves are some pretty tough dudes as it turns out.  They make war, not poetry.  They also spend more time actively trying to screw people over and killing motherfuckers rather than simply ignoring them and ultimately agreeing to help out of some sense of honor or duty. 


Quick experiment - compare the wikipedia entry for the Tolkein elves with the entry for the High Elves in Warhammer Fantasy.  Which dudes would you rather hang out with?  The guys whose entry details naming conventions or the guys whose entry details their ass-kicking conventions?


Plus, it doesn't hurt that the models are pretty bad-ass.   

So the Eldar opened my eyes to the wonderful world of bad-ass elves that GW runs.  Non of this Tolkein bullshit and D&D jackassery I was used to. 


Now that the Fantasy bug has eaten its way to the center of my brain, I keep trying to figure out which army I'll play.  There were some early contenders in the Lizardmen**, Skaven and Beastmen, but it keeps coming back to elves. And they come in three flavors, Dark, High and Wood.  Suh-weet.


I think what attracts me to the fantasy elves are the same qualities that attracted me to the Eldar - sleek lines on the models, a range that has a pretty solid visual motif that links the models together, fast moving units and a weird tendency towards elite specializations.  All three flavors have those qualities.  Not to mention the fact that the elves can play in all three combat phases of the game rather than just one or two. 


Now, just to decide which elves I like best and then ignore them for a while. 


------[Foot Notes]--------------------------------------

*Evil be thy name.
**Had to sell the Stegadon Herd to keep the bank from repossessing the ranch.  Then the wife died of dysentery and Junior went off to fight in the war.  Its just me and the dust bowl now.

Dinosaurs: Not as Rad as Previously Thought

Science has lied to us about dinosaurs before. Between stuff like that and the realities of 8th edition fantasy, I'm a very sad Stegadon lover.

It turns out that not only are percentages a major part of army construction, but that there are a ton of other rules that make the Stegadon Herd fairly useless as well as impossible (at 2000 pts). Terror isn't as awesome as it was, template weapons will shark rape the skinks in the howdah and I can't squeeze 7 Stegadons into anything much less than 3000 points.

I've already had a bit of cry about this and I've already bitched and moaned about the percentages thing as well so I'll spare you the details.

Time to be positive.

As much as it pains me to let go of my Lizard dream, its for the better.

As far as I can tell from all the 7th edition battle reports and the opinions of some people who I go to for that sort of thing, Warhammer Fantasy was a little less fantastical than the players would like. From what I've been able to gather, the game felt too much like it did when I was still playing back in the 90's. Which was a problem.

By all accounts, 8th edition is almost an entirely new game and a fun one at that. So, I'll miss the idea of my 7 Stegadons playing in the yard and chasing down big blocks of infantry. I'll also miss the way the nuzzled me when it was feeding time and the way they didn't require me to paint 40 man units. However, I know that I can find good homes for my dino-buddies and I know that Warhammer Fantasy was a approaching teribad status before 8th.

Beyond all the begrudging respect I have for the 8th edition changes, there are further things that mitigate the kind of retro teen angst I was feeling about a month ago.

- The army is almost entirely assembled and still in original boxes, so I can still resell it at a good price and I didn't end up wasting much of my time

- I didn't spend much more than $45 bucks of my own cash on the army, so my financial loses are pretty tiny - though that means that a lot of Christmas gifts just became kind of a bummer.

- I hadn't had much time and interest to work on the army in the first place. Its freaking July and I only got as far as one test skink and a half assembled Stegadon. My Eldar and a bunch of side projects keep all of my painting time firmly rooted in 40k.

- I still have yet to buy the 8th edition rulebook. Now I'm not complaining about the price, but 75 bucks is a lot to spend in addition to all the models I'd need for a game I haven't played yet. Especially in the face of a massively overdue completed Eldar army.

- There are any number of other projects I want to work on, so the money I can raise from selling off the lizards will help out with whatever boondoggle I get involved with next.

The subtext here is that I'm selling off the Lizardmen rather than pressing on with them. It's like I said before, I'm just not interested in the Lizardmen beyond their capacity to have Stegadons. The rest of the model range just leaves me kind of cold (get it?! Because they're cold blooded! HA!!) and I'm not interested in watering down the dino-might experience with actual troops. The sheer ridiculousness of the whole army has been removed and, with it, my desire to play Lizardmen.

As it happens, I've still got the same Fantasy bug that everyone seems to have right now. I will be getting a fantasy army in the future - the question is really not a matter of if, but when and what army. Primarily, I'd like to learn how to play before I commit to a list.

With that - play me off, Ke$ha

Da Lamentation of da Vimmin: Part 2 - Goddamn Percentages

The 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy is just around the corner. Lots of rumors have been cropping up. Here are a couple of nearly identical lists with a few different takes on the main bullet points:

Collected Rumors on BoLS
Collected Rumors on Plastic Legions

Lots of stuff in there that would work to speed up the game. A bunch of possible changes that would do wonders to fix and simplify some kludgy rules that have been floating around since I first started playing back in 4th/5th edition. If true, many of these rumors will do wonders for Fantasy.

However, if true, one rumor will just be a big ol' shit in my bowl of cereal.

From BoLS:

Army construction is moving back to percentages. This is looking more like 25% max characters, 25% min core, 25% max special and 25% max rare (anonymous source, but trustworthy ) The 25% characters includes mounts. Edit. Just as I thought this part was looking certain, there have been some rumours/ sources saying 25% max characters, 25% min core, 50% max special and 15% max rare. I will edit one out as it become clear.

If this is legitimate, it may be a while before I consider playing Fantasy again. Assuming they're in, either flavor of the percentages tank my proposed Lizardmen army. An army which I own but is as of yet un-assembled and unpainted. Also my dream Wood Elf list gets kicked to the curb a bit as well.

If percentages are real, then its not so much a matter of what army I'll play or what list I want to build, but whether ebay or Bartertown will net me a better selling price on my Stegadons. This isn't a matter of chest thumping or idle threats vs. GW. It's certainly no Modern Warfare 2 boycot either. I'm simply stating that percentages will remove the impetus I have to play Fantasy.

I really like a touch of the absurd with my Fantasy armies. Not too interested in much else beyond crazy tree army or giant lizard horde, to be honest. Even if they do kinda suck now or in 8th. Wonder how the new fear and terror rules are gonna shake out...

Now I'm well aware that we're still firmly in the rumor stage, so I'm still hanging on to hope. Especially once I looked back on some of the Blood Angel's rumors and saw how laughable they were. But there's always the niggling accuracy of the 5th edition 40k rumors...

Frankly, I'm with Dethtron on this one - with all of GW's attention to simplification, why would GW complicate army design with something like percentages? Seriously, the percentage system made army design an absolute pain in the ass. I can remember many hours of fucking around with a calculator when building army lists. These are not enjoyable memories.

It was incredibly irritating to have to have all these running totals for all the different sections of your army. All the cross checking and goofy attention to wargear to ensure that the troops minimum was met. Plus, all the weird -ass unit sizes and configurations because you were trying to stay within limits on all the fun stuff. Blech.

The percentages thing smells a lot like composition scoring - a scent reminiscent of an old sock full of hangover vomit. Or the smell of rotting Ginko seeds in late fall... if you've had the displeasure of being near a female Ginko tree.

I also don't trust the average gamer to do math correctly.

Oh well. In any case, I don't know enough about the new edition than to do more than fearfully whine at the electronic-masses. I guess I'll see soon enough.

Update: Dinosaurs Are Still Super Fucking Rad

Just wanted to remind everyone that nothing has changed since you were five years old: dinosaurs are still super fuckin' rad. You may have forgotten that fact or maybe added some swear words into your dino-describing vocabulary, but it doesn't make it any less true.

Dinosaurs. Are. Super. Fucking. Rad.

Speaking of dinosaurs and how rad* they are, lets talk about Lizardmen. A while ago I wrote a sort of PSA on dinosaurs back in the halcyon days of November of 2009. Man, those were good times - the meatloaf was always warm, all the bras lifted & separated and we could all laugh at someone taking a shot in the balls. Now you kids have your damn pac-man video games, your rock n' roll and your crazy hairstyles. Fah!

The world fell apart because their wasn't enough talk about dinosaurs... and Lizardmen... but not Lizard Man or his stupid photanium body cells (seriously though, his photanium body cells are idiots). To help rectify the situation, I'm taking it upon myself to talk about dinosaurs and Lizardmen. I'll just give you a little taste today. Look for more later.

Ahem.

Thanks to an astronomical event, consumerism and a weird amalgam of pagan and christian traditions I usually get a bunch of presents on December 25th. This last x-mas I conspired to make my dream of spending as little of my own money as possible on a 7 stegadon army come true.

It actually worked. Just take a look at my powers of owning things:

Much to my own surprise (and my Girlfriend's as well), I only had to spend about 44 bux** on dinosaurs once the dust had settled from all the gift-giving. That's for all the models I need for the army and including the army book. I'm just going to take a second to bask in that.

Be right back.

....
....
....

Ahhhhhhh. Delightful.

Now, here's a song for this phase of the project. Its vaguely related to dinosaurs, even.***



Now, I just need to finish up the Eldar. Curses!

---Foot Notes--------------------------------------------------
*Scientifically speaking, dinosaurs are 3.456 x 10¹² rad. Or, almost totally rad. Which is pretty fuckin' rad.

** For those of you who are interested, the regular retail price of this army would be about $358. Assuming a 20 percent discount, about $287. Not too bad for a full army in the first place. Something to keep in mind.

***Also, I got to play with embedding youtube videos. I've decided its a pretty rad concept - not as rad as dinosaurs or Lizardmen, but pretty rad. Maybe like 2.999 x 10⁹ rad.

Dinosaurs Are Super Fucking Rad

Project Future Boys is coming along nicely (the end is in sight AND the time line is short) and a bunch of my distant friends are planning and building Warhammer Fantasy Armies. Due to my random reading of a YTTH post on Lizardmen, an idea clicked into place:

Build a Stegadon heavy army once the Eldar are done!

I thought about it and then asked for and got some more sagely advice from Stelek et al. Looked solid. So was the cost analysis. Hell, the septuple stegadon list shares are lot of the same units as the Razordon list that first spawned this crazy train of thought.

Overall, I'm really pumped about dinosaurs.

I had a ton of fun posting this on a forum one of my buds is starting up, so I thought I'd post it here as well. Enjoy!

Oh, and all the complaints about game abuses stem from the 5th edition rules. Herohammer can kiss my white ass.

------------====------------

I know some of you are building up fantasy armies in your secret caves, waiting for the right time to leave your hidey holes and march upon the fields of the old world.

Thought I might do some of the same.

I should have the Eldar done around X-mas or there abouts. By about that time, I'll be needin' a project to work on. Space Marines will probably be put back in the rotation, but I know I'll need something else to break it up to keep it from becoming drudgery again. And starting ANOTHER 40k army seems silly.

But first:

Sit down keeds, eets story time.

I haven't played fantasy since you could take beastmen, chaos warriors and blood letters all in the same army. Twas good times.

Kind of.

Unfortunately, the people I played with were rules lawyers and often wrong and a bit cheaty. Except Colin (also Paul), he was (and is) always fun to play against. I'm sure he has some fun horror stories about the fucked-up cat-shit some of our other buddies would pull.

My two favorite were one of our buddies pulling a dragon out and generally tailoring to beat me in a 1500 point game when I was testing some undead BEFORE I HAD EVEN BOUGHT THE ARMY. There was also the guy who managed to convince us that if the unit you were charging chose to flee as a charge reaction you didn't get to move your complete charge distance to try and catch them. He owns a game store now. Fun times.

These guys are on of the reasons I have a tendency to be a bit rules crazy in terms of accuracy and following them.

On top of that, I was playing Chaos and, as I found out, the rules for the Warriors of Chaos were (and still are) kind of sucky. Something to do with rank bonuses being very important and Chaos warriors costing so very much. Oh, and a complete lack of meaningful shooting.

Fast forward to today. The main rules are better and magic item abuse isn't as rampant as it once was.

50% of your army on characters with no limit to the number you could take or how much you could tool them up. Bah!

Vlad von Carstien (and his damn ring) with a hydra blade, the stupid amulet of reflect wounds and possibly some str increasing bullshit was the worst. Not too much fun to run into a hero (over and over again.) who can deliver 6 x D6 high strength hits a turn and is basically unkillable.

Oh and 25% of your force as allies, don't get me started. Hmm, the undead don't have any shooting worht a damn, so I'll just take nothing but dark elf crossbowmen as allies. FUCK. YOU.

BRB, gotta pop some prozac with a beer back.

Moving on, the other problem I've had with fantasy is the sheer size of your army. 100ish dudes is a lot of dudes to paint. ...and then move around and keep in perfect formations.

With the general improvement of the fantasy rules & models and a little luck, I think I've found the army I'm going to try my hand at.

I've decided to build some lizardmans.* But not in the traditional block-hammer way. I've already run this by Colin, so some of the fun has already been had.

Here goes:

Skink Priest Riding an Ancient Stegadon

3x units of 10 Skinks

4x Regular Stegadons

2x Ancient Stegadons

YES! That's 7 freaking Stegadons in a 2000 point list. In your face, world!

This little gem was burried in some throwaway lizardmen post on YTTH. No surprise that I got a list from Stelek, I guess.

I'm totally stoked about 7 damn dinosaurs. It almost totally solves my problem of having to paint a ton of dudes - though there still are like 60 plus skinks including crew. But who cares, skinks are small! It does completely solve the problem of having to move a bunch of large blocks of troops around. One triceratops is way easier to move than 20 dudes with spears. Again, in you face, world!

Stubborn, terror causing toughness 6 monsters is sweeeeeeeet! Throw in d6+1 impact hits, skink palanquins, ranged weapons and a rockin' model and the icing on the cake just got jizzed on. BAM!

I cannot be more pumped about this than I already am. Wait! Okay NOW I'm the most pumped. It's CRAZY!

As a super duper double secret bonus, this army can be built for dirt cheap. With 20 percent discounts and including the army book its just about 300 wing-wangs to buy it. Ungh! With X-mas coming up, I can load up on Stegadons FOR FREE thanks to Jesus. He does indeed save.

OK, you know when I said things we're crazy before? I was wrong. NOW its crazy.

This is me RIGHT NOW, if I was a cartoon Dinosaur, and a girl:



I had also considered Skaven at one point. But the only thing I would have wanted to build was a Skaven SAD army. But lets face it, Skaven = lots of dudes and SAD (shooty army of death) isn't too fun to play against. So, paying a lot of money to be a dick to people was out. For the time being.

7 Stegadons is too awesome to pass up anyway.

Now, I'm sure there are some flaws here. I imagine that once people get wise to my dino-herd ways, list tailoring can be a problem. Being outmaneuvered by fast armies is probably also something to worry about... IF YOU WEREN'T RIDING A DINOSAUR!** Well, are you!?

I'm sure there are other things too. Here's a pre-emptive 'fuck you' to cannons:

FUCK YOU CANNONS!

Also, can Dinosaurs fight Steam tanks and win? What about lots of shooting? What about movement denial spells? What about the Stegadons changing gender because of frog DNA and reproducing out of control and trying to kill Jeff Goldblum?! What about Nagash, LORD OF THE FREAKING UNDEAD!!?

I DON'T KNOW! STOP ASKING ME! JEEZ!!!!

Confession time, I was lying when I said things were crazy that second time. Its really, really the craziest its been....

NOW.

Anyway, that's the plan. Lets share and compare here.


-Foot Notes-------------------------------------

*Not to be confused with Lizardmen. Or Eddie Izzard. [not to self]:, name a Skink Hero Eddie.
**I don't know if that's actually true. Its probably just the dino-buzz talking