Hola all. Massawyrm here.

I know, I know. It’s been TOO LONG. Sadly, with awards season comes piles of DVDs and with Piles of DVDs comes a surprising lack of time. Couple that with an ailing Dungeon Master and a slew of Thursday night screenings (Thursday is 40K night here in Austin), and you end up with one grumpy Wyrm who is denied any sort of gaming whatsoever. But now my schedule has cleared up, gaming has resumed and I’ve got time to go through several of the things that have been waiting patiently on my coffee table. I’ll be back shortly with my look at two of FFG’s latest updates – Talisman and Call of Cthulhu - but right now I’d like to share with you my current passion.

If you play 40K and haven’t joined or formed an honest to god local 40K community, you are missing out. I know a lot of you enjoy the competition of tournaments and cutthroat game play. But until you’ve been involved in organizing and playing in a campaign, you have not experienced the sheer fun that 40K has to offer. Right now the crew who hangs out at Battleforge Games here in Austin (conveniently located next to an Alamo Drafthouse) are putting together a Badab Campaign. Badab was a war written about decades ago but never fully fleshed out – so we’ve taken it upon ourselves to play it out and fill in the blanks. Some of the Space Marine chapters mentioned (like the one I’m playing, the Fire Angels) have no more history than a brief mention of their existence and a paint scheme.

So now we’ve got about two dozen guys all collecting, assembling and painting up Space Marine armies, each of us finding our own play style and army builds, while writing rules for our new chapter masters/captains. Then we get together every Thursday with the increasingly painted armies to playtest the rules until we’ve honed them down to the proper power level for our campaign play. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, the most fun in fact that I’ve ever had with a miniatures game. I decided to build my army as a White Scars Geneseed from the cursed founding (they’ve got White Scars colors and several of the cursed founding chapters found themselves at Badab), and I’ve been collecting and assembling bikes for weeks. The tricky part is trying to find a paint scheme that mirrors the one printed, but for vehicles, bikes and dreadnoughts. That and I was foolish enough to choose a Red and White army, which is a bitch and a half to paint. White doesn’t like to paint over red mistakes very easily.

Many of you have asked for me to take photos and share some of my armies – so I figured I’d start with that one next week. But first things first. It’s a new year, and that means it’s time to start looking at what we have to look forward to game wise. This week my good buddy Bigred from Bell of Lost Souls has dropped in with a look at what is scheduled…and what may or may not come to fruition. They get A LOT of rumors over there – but they also get passed a lot of solid intel that they’re not supposed to see. Here’s a rundown of what they’ve heard and what we have to look forward to.





Warhammer 40k Roundup –Q1-2009

Thoughts on 5th Edition
Hi everybody. Warhammer 40,000 got its big 5th Edition update mid last year. That traditionally means the Games Workshop cash cow, the Space Marines are just around the corner, and they were. October 2008 saw a massive 144 page Codex for the Emperor’s Finest hit the shelves, and with the New Year we are just now entering the launch window of other army products.

GW has recently moved to a “2-wave” release schedule for their new armies. Basically, they split up all the planned releases for an army, and release one half of them along with the army book, then release the second half many months later. This serves two purposes. First, it allows new armies to be launched with a reduced number of models needed. No more does GW have to update the entire range to get the codices out. Secondly, it gives the collectors something in the future to get excited about, and prevents folks from being swamped with an excessive amount of product for an average player’s budget. Gone are the days of getting all your armies stuff in one shot, then sitting your hands for 6 years waiting for an update.

Here is the basic rundown for 2009 based on our best sources:

January: 2nd Wave Orks
These are pretty much already on the shelves. We have seen plastic Stormboyz, Nobz, the new plastic Battlewagon, several named characters, and even an affordable little treat in the form of a plastic Gretchin set. The Ork players got nothing for almost ten years, and they have finally earned their rewards.

March: 2nd Wave Apocalypse
Apocalypse has by all accounts been a huge success for GW. This set of rules for fighting huge battles and including massive war machines in your games really struck a chord with the playerbase, and GW is committed to keeping the pump flowing. March will see 2 new Apocalypse kits: A combination Shadowsword/Storm Lord kit which will allow players to expand their Baneblade variant collection, and the first non-Imperial kit, the much rumored Ork Stompa. Both of these kits should retail for the cost of the Baneblade, and bring even further carnage to an Apocalypse game table near you.

May: Imperial Guard
The backbone of the Imperium, the Imperial Guard is coming this May. We still have a lot of sketchy info, but expect a big update to the army. There is a heavy emphasis on vehicles (with over 20 tank variants often quoted), and a much reduced cost for the basic Guardsmen. The rumored 4-pt guardsmen may come to pass, and would allow the IG to finally go toe to toe with other horde lists like the Orks with both numbers and battle cannons on their side. A big upcoming kit is the plastic Valkyrie, which will give the IG their first air transport. The kit is said to look identical to the resin Forgeworld one (shown above), and is highly anticipated.

Q3-4 2009: Anyone’s guess
We hear through the grapevine that the army next slotted past Imperial Guard is either:
Space Wolves: They have one of the most antiquated codices now, and would be big sellers (being Space Marines). They have a pretty loyal following, and would make for some fantastic updated minis.
Necrons: This would be a “stop-gap” release if the other two ran into problems. Basically you would see a tuned Codex, with some named characters added, and a couple of new units.
Dark Eldar: A 100% complete upgrade. These guys are said to be getting an entirely new range to replace the much maligned current minis, and a full-sized re-imagined codex to replace their thin and ancient one, to firmly entrench them into the 40k universe.
The jury is still out on this release slot, but the smart money says GW can’t go wrong with Marine releases around the holidays. My instincts say Wolves.
That’s it for now kids, I’ll catch up with you all later.

-bigred
Bell of lost souls
http://www.belloflostsouls.blogspot.com

I’m actually hoping Red’s instincts are wrong on this – which may or may not have something to do with my recently getting my hands on a complete Dark Eldar army. I like how they play and they rarely see ANY play around here, and I’d love to see them updated. Rumor has it their portal trick might find itself replaced by giving the whole army outflank (since their current fleet is relatively useless to them in 5th outside of witch armies.) with the special ability to choose which side they come in. Now THAT would be a fun army to play. But Necrons have really fallen by the wayside recently, with only a local 13 year old (lovably spastic) boy taking up the mantle to play them. And weakened though they are, this kid is a kind of Rain man with them, beating the crap out of seasoned opponents and wining tournaments with them. So while I’m not convinced they actually NEED an overhaul, the general consensus is that they do. So we’ll see. But here’s pulling for Dark Eldar.

Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.

Massawyrm

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