First Look - Warhammer 40K 6th Ed

Well its been out a month or so now so I figured I better get a game in and throw some dice around...

I was up against Stef and his kinda painted marines (chapter name escapes me) but the bits he has got painted are superb!

So 6th Ed, if your an old fart like me you'll have seen 40K grow from 2nd Ed to its present day version and oh hows its been an interesting ride with various changes along the way.

I'll start with is it better than 5th? Simple answer Hell yes! and these are some of the reasons why....

Allies - At last you can use that "new project" that you've had kick around for ages and field it next to your main force (terms and conditions apply)

Better Missions - kill points are kinda gone, but the secondary missions are a lovely twist, I'm liking them alot!

Far better psyker rules - ok so its not going to be as good as dark millennium but the previous few versions for psykers were pants at least this way you get a lot more choice, blatantly lifted from warhammer but I like it, Finally my thousand sons sorcerer can do something useful with his spells apart from turning people into gibbering loonies!

Pre-measure - At bloody last!! its the 41st Millennium not the dark ages! you can navigate across the Galaxy but not know the range of your weapons!

Random charge distance - counter balances the pre-measure superbly, I'm sure all the hardcore torney players will be spitting feathers but I'm not a torney play so actually like it, I rolled mental last night and one unit managed a 10" charge!! Only downside is that if you don't roll high enough you stand still. Maybe the lowest number on the two dice is your movement.

Page 6 of the book has a woman playing a game! about bloody time they realised that women game too....

Shooting just got funky! - Snap shots, focused fire, overwatch fire and focused fire lovely stuff!!

Cover saves - the difference is much better only a small change but that's enough!

Challenges - Nice and fluffy, and if you've a independent with a unit champion, challenge with your unit champion and let your independent clear up the rest of the enemy unit ;)

Universal Special rules - ye gods! they've changed only when having a second look today at various rules did I discover that furious charge doesn't give you +1 int anymore! sorry Stef!! theres a lot to take in from this section so worth spending some time to suss out what your stuff can now do!

Bikes are suddenly very tasty! - ignore difficult terrain, +1 toughness, hammer of wrath, jink & relentless = ding dong!

Jump units - again they've had a boost with the hammer of wrath, and a re-roll for the assault phase but you only can use your pack once per turn, so 12" move or re-roll assault and hammer of wrath not both.

Flying monstrous creatures - enough said!!

Melee weapons now have an AP value, kinda makes sense its now worth using termis without the stormshield spam.

Hull points on vehicles - another no brainier, and finally vehicle squadrons won't blow up there own tanks etc if its immobilised they carry on and it sits there waiting for the AA to turn up.

de-bussing from your transport - bit of a double edged sword, you deploy 6" and shoot or run but no assault, makes assault or open topped transports worth there weight in gold now!

Flyers - Only been on the receiving end of them and my 4 missile launcher havoc squad is now my "mastercard" unit. I'm waiting on the chaos codex before splashing out on a hell blade though.

Terrain  - its got some funky stuff like the fantasy rules, and you can buy a bastion!

So onto the game...

The set up, landraider with kharn and his boys, the slannesh choosen waiting to be infiltrated, and the plague marines making ready to hold the right flank, with the noise marines and havocs centre stage,  

The havoc's with a cracking field of fire!

And the noise marines ready for some walking....

Kharn and the boys ready for there big day out!

So first turn the choosen jumped into the terrain that Stef's techamrine had reinforced, much to his dismay ;) the land raider chugged forward and tried to hide behind a building!

The landraider was immobilised my the vindicator and forced kharn and the boys to walk!

A couple of turns later the choosen & berzerkers had reached stef's line and partied hard! The plague marines decided that the big forgeworld dreadnought was fair game and the noise marines and the havoc's made plenty of noise but didn't do any massive damage due to the scouts save in cover with night fight!

The mayhem in stef's deployment zone! bikers came on and help clear the area and the techmarine & kharn ended up killing each other, kharn with his 7 str 7 ap2 attacks teh tech marine with his powerfist!

So there was bugger all left at the end! 

The game itself was quite brutal and the crazy mofo delivery system worked quite nicely, All I need to do is convert a khorne landraider and the jobs a good un! but with the rumours that I've been reading about the new chaos landraider can hold a few more models so I'm tempted to wait and see what they bring out kit wise, if not I'll look at a stormraven or spartan assault tank.

As we rolled night fighting that gave the scouts a 2+ cover save which in the end I bypassed them and played with the razorback instead,

The only negative point for the game was the constant referring to the rule book for various situations, sargents in a unit taking a wound and we didn't do wound allocation correctly so I'm going to have to start remembering that!

Overall yea its a good version, but it'll really start to shine once I start using fliers and defences.

KGN / BGK 20mm Germans nearly Finished!!!

Well this has to be a first with the 20mm Russians last week and a finial effort with the 20mm Germans this week I've finished another army!

So the Pak 40's well hidden with foliage... 

 Got these from Grubby tanks back in April at salute, SS crew as they only had long coat winter crew, 

and the final piece... the Tiger that I reviewed a while back, I've done the basic paint job and gonna get one of the local chaps to have a play with his air brush on it, and depending how well it comes out I'll pick up another 2 for Kursk and splash the cash for my own setup.

Modern Russains done and dusted... (maybe!)

So after cranking out all the armour I decided it was time to finish off the support functions for the infantry,

So the bits that I got from S&S

A couple of AT4 teams, nicely detailed models dead easy to paint and hopefully are going to be a pain in the ass for Nick & Coops ;)

 The traditional mortar, the likely hood of this ever being fielded is "slim" but its for one of those "humm" lets try try games. 

 and a couple of SAM teams, I only wanted one, but with a bit of a mispack and one email later it was sorted so well done Shaun for his ability to get it sorted, I've had harder times trying to explain stuff to the "special" people at work!

Now the joint on the at ease chap is very clever and went together with out the usual cursing that you get when trying to glue metal to metal on small models, 

Finally I've got the Hind done, the kit was lovely to stick together and the size of the model is huge! but the paint job isn't my finest and if I was to do another I'd either collar Coops for his airbrush or buy a pre-painted job and the job is a good un!

So is that the Russians finished?? Well not quite I've a couple of Trucks that I need to bang together to use as supply resources and these models are the worst things I've ever come across I might just bit the bullet and look for something else, and the other kit I've still got kicking about is a BMP BREM recovery, but again I'll see if S&S have something like this in the pipe line as there other bits are top notch!

So onto the "Pledge"

With a week to go before a very wet July disappears the scores on the doors are as follows,

Bought  18
Painted 40!

Difference 22

I've not included the tank riders for the BMP's as the difference still would be 22 and there part of the model, but with the thousand son's bits that I did the other week I'm working on some Emperors children bits that I've been promising myself that I'd finish so assuming that I don't get too distracted I'll get those done hopefully,

But I do have a few things on the "geek" calendar coming up..

Chaos Codex and general sexy stuff in the next 4-6 weeks
Drop zone commander hits the streets next week
An interest in 15mm Gruntz with I'm gonna blame all on coops nothing to do with...

Yup Russian's in space = Winner!

He will rip your arm off and beat you to a pulp, That's my kinda of Prime minister...

Mount up!! (20mm Modern Russians)

So it started with a few odds and sods for Force on Force cold war gone hot....

 And then it "happened"....

After a email chit chat with Shaun from S&S this lot landed on my door step,

so after some sticking, spraying, drybrushing, inking and weathering I was let with this lot....

So enough BMP 2d's for my infantry and rather than the usual russain APC's I decided to go whole hog and get the BMP tank riders and pimp em out!

so a close up of the tank riders, I mixed and matched the numbers so that it didn't look too uniform, 

Plastic T-55's scrubbed up really nice, 
 

Close up, I've used the techincal paint that I tried on the Thousand son's rhino and it works lovely,

A BRDM, jeep with 4 chaps, and a Shilka

dead simple kit, carn't wait to blow the crap out of Nick's & Coop's choppers with this bad boy! 

I'm sure I can get this slotted in some where... 

Long range Recce, and I've been in a 1:1 scale one and there a tad snug inside!

So the plastic T-72's 

They were a bit of a bitch to put togeather but I'm happy with how they look, 

So apart from a couple of anti-tank teams, SAM teams and a mortar team the Russains are ready to rock and roll for the test game aginst nick in a couple of weeks, so should be intresting to see how they perform.

First Look: Relics

I posted some time ago about the intro type game that myself and Coops played over at Portal Gaming, and this was the first chance that we got to actually get to grips with the rules and roll dice in anger and generally give a crack!

Gameplay:

Its an I activate a unit then you activate a unit type game (think Epic) so you do your movement and what not in one fell swoop, no rules for running but you do get a random charge distance (D3) which is quite nice, and no-premeasuring in this one, but you can measure your commanders control distance at any time you want,

The mechanics of the game work quite well with every model having attack/combat stat and a defence stat and basically you take the defence off the attack stat and that's how many dice you roll, and any doubles cause a hit/wound its that simple!!

you can gang up attacks (think combined attacks from warmachine) up to a maximum of three models to tray and get a better average to take high defence stuff down. theres other bits and bobs that give you a hardness "save" but the system is a fast paced system!!

Lastability:

For a pick up and play sure no worries, no missions/scenarios in the book but I'm sure you could lift them from malifaux and give it a crack, No campaign system either but this is being worked on so I'll be interested to see how this works.

Models:

You either like them or not! quite a few people did have a gander at the models this evening and overall seemed to go down quite well with most of them, but its horses for courses I suppose?

with there recent kick starter success Tor Gaming has previewed these...

so the range is expanding as we speak,

So the game that myself and coops played...

So the initial set up,
 

 Coops gets the first kill with one of his marksmen, 

After first turn the main force to the left and a flanking group on the right

The first assault group going in against the gun line...

The flankers getting shot at by another marksman

And the big "thingy" eyeing up some Cav

So the assault group managed to make it to the marksman and take him down only to be cut down by the other marksman!

Cooper looking happy that despite all the shooting at the big "thingy" it carried on going!

so he ploughed into the Brittina gun line and rolled really well for his combat dropping three models with his initial charge, 

and then the Company Sargent Major  joined in and between him and what was left of the unit went down in the end...

mean while the boss man with the little devils chaps bore the brunt of the Cav charge and went on a rampage! 

The Devils dispatching the last cav model and surviving around of shooting the boss man wandered into the gun line and took out some more bits and gaining the wound that he'd lost this turn back!

the company Sargent major got in the action and went down at the hands of the puppet reaper!

After some unlucky rolling from coops and some epic hardness tests the boss man was the only model standing after having a "word" with the marksman.

I was surpised how hard the boss man was and have already thought about what else I'd like to get next once I've some other bits and bobs done.

I suppose the golden question is would I play it again, yes I would the machanic of the actual system works really well the orcnar are a brutal combat force compared to the gun line British, but what would the other factions throw into the mix?

I've a feeling that the Relic's system will become quite popular with the right people talking about it!