Hobby Resolutions for 2018

Arthur (my son) did almost as much hobby as I did!

This is essentially pointless at this stage but it at least gives me a vague idea of what I'd like to do in the first couple of months of the year before something new and shiny distracts me or I remember that I lack both the time and motivation to make any really hobby progress. Anyway, as ever let's assess just how badly I failed on last year's objectives:

• Scenery - hahahahahahahaha! Last year I said it was getting to be a bit of a joke but I think we're past that now. I did actually make a little bit of progress made by painting two imperial statues and a bit of work on some ruins etc. Nowhere near what I wanted to get done. My winter scenery isn't done and I haven't even started on the desert/industrial board. I have bought some of the Sector Mechanicus scenery though so I'll be building that up in the new year and trying to get enough multi-level scenery put together to play some Necromunda.
• Clear Out The Crap - last year I decided against selling my Dark Angels but they're currently up on eBay and I'm negotiating with a couple of potential buyers to try and get a decent price for them. Their sale will fund my Tyranid army and despite my reservations last year I really don't like the army so they have to go. I really want to get rid of more stuff though and have create some space.
• Painting - I did stick to my resolution here but then that was just to paint what I fancied when I fancied. I managed to make good progress on my DE/Drukhari, painted my Ta'unar, finalised my Tyranid scheme and even did a little bit of work on my Orks. 
• Blogging - as I mentioned in the review post. My blogging output is at an all time low so the only way is up I suppose
• Tournaments - again, as I said, I really haven't been to many events at all but I'm pleased I joined the BB league. Met some great guys that I can hopefully get some more games in with in the future.
• DT2 - definitely an improvement on the first DT, even if it was just because we played in the proper venue. 

I'd forgotten that I basically copped out last year and didn't set any real goals. This year I'm going to have a bit more courage and actually set some targets. Here goes:

Hobby

1. Scenery - May as well start with the least likely to happen! Anyway, I'd like to build up and paint the Sector Mechanicus kits. I'd ideally like to make them modular so we can build a variety of layouts but I'll have to see how easily the kit lends itself to that.
2. Tyranids - I'm intending to take Tyranids to DT3 in June so I've written a little 750pt list (although I haven't necessarily decided on the point limit yet). This doesn't require many models but it'll be a nice starting point. By the end of the year I'd like to have at least 2,000 points built up and at least on their way to painted. The scheme I've chosen lets me paint them reasonably quickly. Well, in theory at least, we'll soon find out if it actually does.
3. Bloodbowl - it'd be nice to finish one or two of my teams as a diversion from Tyranid painting. They might nice side projects and having fully painted teams would be great for the odd friendly game or introducing people to BB. I'd like an Elf team but that'll all depend on what happens with out league.
4. Necromunda - I've no interest in the starter set but if they do a Cawdor gang I might need to partake. I originally had an Orlock gang too though so since they're next I might be tempted.
5. Other stuff - I'll still stick to my plan for painting what I like, when I like. I'd love to get my 3rd and 4th Knights done. Particularly because the 4th is in a different scheme. It'd also be nice to get some more Orks done, my Stormsurge painted and the odd addition to my Wolves.

Gaming

1. Play some 40K events - I'd like to play at least one WHW tournament and maybe a couple elsewhere. Hopefully towards the end of the year I can use my Tyranids too.
2. Armada campaign - I picked up the Corellian conflict set a couple of months ago and I'd like to play through it at least once with Matt. Last Jedi has made me desperate to do some SW gaming and X-wing isn't really appealing at the moment.
3. Rebellion - speaking of SW I'd like to get plenty more Rebellion sessions in and make use of the expansion. Matt and I might even swap sides so I can see how it feels to play with the might of the Empire.
4. Scythe - this has to be one of the best discoveries of 2017. It's helped get some of my friends interested in gaming and I'd love to get more sessions in 2018.
5. Narrative 40K campaign - Dan and I have plans for a narrative campaign where we play through a branching story throughout the year. Hopefully it'll be a nice change of pace from competitive 40K. 
6. Blood Bowl and Necromunda - it'd be nice to get either BB league or Necromunda campaign going or at least take part in one at the Outpost
7. DT3 and TBC Singles Event - I come close to jacking in this TO lark but then I run one and remember why I do it. Look out for more info nearer to the time.

Everything Else

1. Clear Out the Crap - same as last year really. I'd like to sell some of the kits I bought but never even opened and take a look at all my armies and potentially rationalise them a bit. There's quite a bit to sell I reckon and it can all fund my Tyranid project. As I've said before I'd like the army to be cost neutral and that means selling some crap first.
2. Sort out the bits - I've got a huge amount of bits. Some of them are probably worth hanging on to but I think a lot of them could go. Again they could make me quite a bit on eBay.

Well, I'm not naive enough to think all of these things will happen but at least I'm in a bit more of an optimistic mood than I was at this point last year!

From The Fang Review of 2017

Well it's been nearly a month since I last posted and I've barely done anything hobby wise in that time. That's partly because the hobby I want to do is painting my Tyranids which means getting their basecoats done with the airbrush. Trouble is my airbrush set up isn't fixed i.e. I pack it away after each session. That means I've got to clear some space in the garage to get it set up and do a big batch of spraying. Once that's out of the way they're pretty straightforward to paint so I should be able to make some good progress. It's been a busy month at work though and with various evening activities taking up time I've just not had the motivation to get cracking.

Anyway, as ever, blogging provides a good means of procrastinating so I figured I'd get my yearly review out of the way.

The Year in Review

The most significant thing of the year happened right at the start. My Dad and I finished work on the garage conversion towards the end of February. Looking back now there are obviously a couple of things I might change but overall, nearly a year on, I'm still thrilled with the work we did and it's definitely had a positive impact on my hobby. It's also interesting that I fully intended to sort out all of my hobby gubbins and get organised but nearly a year on that hasn't happened yet. It'd be good to do this soon though to get some stuff on eBay and get some funds together for more nids. I'd like them to be a cost neutral army if possible.

The garage was christened before it was even finished with a big game of X-wing which was the first outing for my Tantive IV. Unfortunately it meant my gaming career in my new custom built gaming space started with a loss. However, it was a fantastic game that could've gone either way right to the end. I don't think I've played much X-wing since though as we've moved to Armada recently. We're hoping to start an Armada campaign in the new year too using the Corellian Conflict box.

Next up we had a big game of doubles 40K with 4.500 pts of Nurgle and Orks taking on the Imperium. The main thing I remember about the game was how bitterly cold the Sanctuary was as a venue in January and also how little my Stompa go to do before it blew up. I'd foolishly put it opposite their Knight and that quickly made the game quite one-sided.

In March I mostly focused on getting my Dark Eldar ready for the Warhammer World doubles. They'd been in need of some more love after my token effort to get them ready for Double Trouble the previous year. In between all that, we found time to start up a four man Bloodbowl league with my Dwarves starting off pretty well. We were supposed to be playing more Bloodbowl this week actually but it was cancelled last minute. We decided to have a rethink of the league anyway as the teams we'd chosen didn't make for a very fun league and the other two guys are new to the game and the teams they started with weren't great.  We might even scrap the league entirely and switch to Necromunda but I want to try out the new rules first to find out if it's as good as it was.

Anyway, the doubles proved to be a lot of fun again but despite winning 4 out of 5 games we only placed 67th! I still enjoy going to WHW events though just for the atmosphere so hopefully we'll get to at least one next year. May and June were mostly taken up with excitement about 8th edition and GW did an excellent job of building it up. If anything they perhaps set expectations too high and only now, six months or so in, are we actually starting to see something closer to what they hyped up. I also visited Warhammer Fest for the first time since the death of Games Day. It was a fun day but I'm not sure whether next year's event will be so enticing as the new edition was a big draw this time.
I closed out 7th edition with Double Trouble 2 which, to me at least, was a great success. It seemed that everyone had fun and the random nature of the event meant people weren't taking things too seriously. I'm bringing it back for DT3 in the new year so stay tuned for details of how you can get tickets. 

At the end of June I played my first games of 8th edition against Matt and Dan. I also revealed my plans to finally start the Tyranid army I'd been wanting for years. I've made very little progress on them in the meantime but they'll be the focus of my attention in the new year so hopefully I'll have some progress to report in the early new year. I'll talk more about this in my obligatory overly optimistic hobby resolutions post. My first 8th edition tournament saw me deploying the T'aunar for the first time but frustratingly it wasn't a well run event and I ended up with a bye for one of my games and didn't hugely enjoy the two I did get to play. The tournament soured me to competitive play in 8th edition and I haven't played in one since (NMTBW excluded).

I did, however, join a Bloodbowl league at the Outpost (my FLGS) and had a reasonable record with my Dwarves. The problem is, I really don't think I'm a dwarf player at heart. Don't get me wrong, I like smashing face as much as the next man but I enjoy the passing game too. I think if I ever play in a league again I'll probably try out an Elven Union team. The new models are lovely and having a diversion from painting Tyranids might be necessary at some point.

The other thing I did during my 40K drought was play several awesome board games. Star Wars Rebellion is a truly excellent two player game and Scythe is fantastic for larger groups. I'm hopefully getting the expansion for Rebellion for Christmas so I'm sure I'll be playing it plenty in the new year.

My year was essentially wrapped up in November when I hosted NMTBW. It was great to play some games again, particularly when I didn't have to worry too much about winning. I also enjoyed running a singles event again. It's been a couple of years now since BWX and I think it was the right time to start over. My next singles event won't feature anywhere near as much comp though as I think GW has actually done a pretty decent job of fixing some of the early Matched Play issues. The problem is that they've also added back in a lot of the complexity that plagued 7th edition. Obviously you're now paying command points for them but I can't help but feel like strategems add an extra level of depth that just wasn't necessary in such a huge system. Still, I need to play more games before I can make my mind up so hopefully 2018 will see me playing a lot more 40K.

Blog Stats

The peak in December last year was a momentary blip in a general downturn in my pageviews. I've had a paltry 160,000 views this year which is less than half of the 2015 total and about 90,000 less than last year. I've only posted about 45 times the year though which I think is probably the first time I've dropped below a one post per week average. Last month's views are only 7,000 which is the worst I've had since the same month in 2011!!

It's not really something I intend to do much about though really. My hobby time is limited and any time spent blogging is usually time I could spend painting. I have just bought myself a new laptop in the Black Friday sales though (which I'm typing on now) so maybe I'll still find some time when I'm watching crap TV.

Hobby Progress

I actually did a pretty good stint on my Dark Eldar (or Drukhari or whatever) early this year. A big chunk of the force now looks at least presentable. I'd still like to revisit them at some point but at the moment I think Tyranids will get most of my attention. There might be some BB Elves at some point and maybe a new Cawdor gang if they get models. The other thing I'm considering is giving the Orks some love. My T'au got some work in the form of the T'aunar but frankly it'll be rare for me to use him in games all that much. There's still a half painted Stormsurge that needs love.

The gaming garage didn't exactly inspire a huge upturn in hobby progress but it certainly made the meagre amount I did achieve a lot more enjoyable.

Tournaments
As I said above, I barely played any events this year aside from the BB league. If the Outpost run another league I'll probably join in. Other than that I'd like to play at WHW at least once in the new year and I'd consider other 40K events if the event pack appeals to me. I will, of course, be running both DT3 and another singles events (name TBC).

Conclusion
A bit of a strange year for the hobby. Despite my initial optimism about 8th edition, 40K has taken a back seat to Bloodbowl and board games. I haven't completely fallen out of love with 40K though and I'll obviously want to get some games in with my new Tyranids. Part of the issue is the problems at the Outpost at the moment. They simply don't have a good set up at the moment and events are few and far between. It's a shame they won't make the same kind of investment that Element did with their NWGC. I can't help but think that if Element were my FLGS I'd get a lot more gaming in. They've recognised that a good venue is essential to build a strong community and therefore a loyal customer base. The Outpost just like to do things on the cheap which I fear will ultimately lead to their demise.

Anyway, come back next week for my resolutions post. Who knows? Maybe next year I'll actually achieve some of them!

Obligatory End of Year Review Post!

It's that time of year again when I look back over the last twelve months and remember how little hobby progress I've made once again! This will shortly be followed by interminably optimistic new year's hobby resolutions post where I list out a load of fictitious scenarios where I actually get something done! Still, shame to break tradition. Here goes...

The Year in Review
I started off the year in fine style with a trip to WHW for GW's anniversary celebrations. We played an awesome game of Orks vs The Imperium to celebrate and my greenskins triumphed. It was an excellent way to kick off. Incidentally, we've booked some tables at the Sanctuary at the end of January for another big game between the Imperium and the Orks but this time I'll be joined by some of Nurgle's cronies.

It was around this time that I put the Double Trouble tickets on sale and started the discussion about how the event would run. I'll talk more about DT later but suffice to say DT2 tickets will be on sale very early in the new year.

Over the first quarter of the year I spent my time building/magnetising my two new Imperial Knights followed by several airbrush sessions. It wasn't until March until I declared them "finished" just in time for them to help Matt and I to victory at an Outpost doubles event. 

I then went into full time Double Trouble build up with plenty of shots of your progress getting your armies ready for the event. I'd like to do this again for DT2 but I'll let you know how you can submit your photos soon. It's a great excuse to start a new army or get a 750pt chunk of one of your existing armies painted up. My attempts to get my DE ready for the event resulted in a massive failure but at least some progress was made. I'd be very surprised if my DE get any love this coming year though. If anything I'll be culling their numbers with some eBay auctions.

Double Trouble was the mid point of the year and, venue issues aside, I thought it was a great success for the first event in a new format. I'm looking forward to DT2 and who knows, maybe I'll run two in 2017.

My blogging dropped off dramatically in the second half of the year. I posted 45 times in the first six months (mostly DT build up I'll grant you) but I've only posted 14 times since the start of July (including this post!). I didn't post in October at all!!! There were a multitude of reasons for this but hopefully my posting will be more consistent next year.

The latter half of the year also saw me playing very little 40K and instead I participated in some X-wing events. This was a nice change of pace and I'm looking forward to more X-wing in the coming year. I will say that X-wing is in danger of becoming over complex though as more and more releases hit. More on that another time.

The last major gaming of the year was Fluffaggedon for which I returned to my faithful Space Wolves. Not a stellar performance on my part but I thought Matt did an excellent job in running his first event. Hopefully he'll run more in 2017, I'll obviously keep you posted.

The year was rounded out with the start of my work on the garage conversion. The re-release of Blood Bowl was awesome and although little has changed I'm hoping the new set will boost it's popularity and hopefully I can get myself into some league play. I managed to get in a couple of games with my brother-in-law and a friend from work which certainly rekindled my love for the game.

My final gaming of the year was an X-wing session with Matt and despite losing both games I enjoyed myself and particularly liked smashing both of Matt's heroes in Gorechosen to end the night.

Blog Stats
Another dip in views this year from 340,000 last year to 250,000 this year. Doesn't sound so bad until you realise that a big chunk of those views have come from Russian bots of some description. Seems to have been an issue affecting a lot of blogs but makes it very difficult to tell how many people are actually viewing the site. I suspect a pretty large proportion of those views are coming from Russia though. I mean, assuming I've never had a view from Russia before (which isn't the case) there's 50,000 views from there in my blog's history. Still, the drop in views is hardly surprising when I've posted just under 60 times compared to 80 last year. Last month's views (16,300) were even lower than September last year which was the lowest since Feb 2013.

Like I say every year. I'd love there to be more hobby content on here next year but that obviously depends on how much I do. Maybe the new surroundings in the garage will inspire me?

Hobby Progress
Extremely little outside of my knights. I'm struggling to think of anything else I actually "finished" this year. The less said about this the better.

Tournaments
Unless I'm forgetting something I only played in three 40K events this year with a further two X-wing events. Didn't help that the WHW events didn't fall on great weekends for me but it's becoming increasingly difficult to commit to events. My hobby is so often motivated by needing to get things ready for an event so it's no surprise that I haven't achieved much.

Conclusion
Probably my worst year to date in terms of hobby progress, tournaments and blogging. I can't really put my finger on why. Total War: Warhammer certainly took a big chunk out of my free time but I just haven't been motivated. A lot of the problem has been the disorganisation in my gaming room. Maybe when the garage is done and everything is in a sensible place I'll feel more relaxed. Being able to watch TV shows on my PC whilst painting will make a big difference I think.

A bit of a forlorn feeling to this post for which I apologise. The solution is naive optimism for the year ahead so look forward to that in the next post!

Thoughts on the Relentless Codex Regeneration Cycle!

I can barely catch my breath from the last codex review I've written before GW announces that they're releasing the next one. August saw the release of both the Space Wolves and Grey Knights books and Dark Eldar will be hot on their heels in the first weekend of October. That's pretty insane when you compare it to how long we used to have to wait for a codex. We were lucky to get three in a year before but we've now had three in a couple of months once DE comes out. Rumours even have it that Blood Angels will be next after a brief spell of Fantasy releases.

So where does that leave us? Here's the list of current 40K armies and their release dates (shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia):

7th Edition
Dark Eldar (Oct 2014)
Grey Knights (Aug 2014)
Space Wolves (Aug 2014)

6th Edition
Astra Militarum (April 2014)
Militarum Tempestus (April 2014)
Imperial Knights (March 2014)
Legion of the Damned (March 2014)
Tyranids (January 2014)
Inquisition (November 2013)
Adepta Sororitas (October 2013)
Space Marines  (September 2013)
Eldar (June 2013)
Tau Empire (April 2013)
Chaos Daemons (March 2013)
Dark Angels (January 2013)
Chaos Space Marines (October 2012)

5th Edition 
Necrons (November 2011)

Blood Angels (April 2010)

Clearly then, if Blood Angels are next it isn't much of a leap to assume Necrons won't be far behind. That'd then put CSM next in line and could potentially mean just an 18 month lifespan for their current book. In 40K terms that doesn't seem long at all. That's assuming they continue once they've cleared the 5th edition books? At that point everything would be in a hard cover at least but wouldn't have this new datasheet format. Clearly someone at GW has realised they can give you a new book and a couple of models at a more regular interval and you'll still cave and buy it.

I have to say that, like a lot of people, it feels like GW really is rushing things with this current accelerated cycle. The Grey Knights book is certainly streamlined but doesn't half feel rushed. I have my concerns about the DE book too but I'm reserving judgement until I get my copy next week.

Vanishing Units
One thing that is clear is that if a unit has rules but no model it's going to disappear. So far we've lost Zogwort, Wazdakka, Mordrak, Valeria and Thawn. With the DE release it looks like we'll double the number with Duke, Baron, Malys, Vect and Kheradruakh all for the chop. You should know by now that I love special characters so I think it's a massive shame that these units are disappearing. Perhaps they'll reappear one day.

Some will blame Chapterhouse for the loss of these units but I think the fault lies with GW. Look at the Necron codex. It introduced several new special characters but within a couple of months of the book arriving we had models for them all. Dark Eldar didn't even manage to get the Voidraven bomber model until now. I can't pretend I'm a long time DE player but it still frustrates me hugely that they feel overlooked compared to other armies. Old school DE players waited a long time for an update of their codex and for the latest incarnation to strip so much away is likely to be gutting for them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the book will be a lot more streamlined and there'll be some good stuff in there but if nothing else it stunts the creativity of people when they don't need to convert models to represent the missing ones. I still use my Arjac "conversion" despite there being a model for him (and thankfully there is one so he wasn't removed).

Streamlining?
Well that's the term that seems to be floating around at the moment. Is it really the case though? Individual books are certainly losing a lot of what is termed "bloat" by the community but the game as a whole is becoming increasingly more complicated. I've found it incredibly difficult to come up with a solution for Blog Wars and what I have come up with has been met with a raft of complaints.

The game is more complicated than ever. I could've simply said "no Unbound" but the armies you can create within the "Battle Forged" bracket are still daft. Look back up at that list of codices and there's already a few extras there that didn't exist until recently. Inquisition and Assassins were part of the GK book of course and Legion of the Damned were in the SM dex but Imperial Knights and Militarum Tempestus are almost totally new. I just don't see the need.

Warhammer 40K was never the most ideal template for competitive play but I can't help but feel that GW are making things worse rather than better. Perhaps once all of the books are renewed some master plan will emerge but I'm not holding my breath.

The sad thing is I still love this game. I've dabbled in other things but I keep coming back to 40K. There's something about the imperfections that make it better somehow. Would it lose its soul if it was a truly streamlined competitive game? I think it probably would.

Leaks or should that be "leaks"

One final thing that caught my eye this week. The image on the left was one of the "leaked" pictures of this week's White Dwarf. I assumed it was someone who had a copy of both the weekly edition and Visions who had taken a shot to show the new flyer. However, this same image appeared on the GW site on Friday as part of their What's New Today blog. It's definite the same image which adds a little weight to my theory that GW starts at least some of the leaks off themselves to generate interest. Maybe I'm just a conspiracy theorist but as a marketing ploy it would actually make a lot of sense!

FTF Editorial - Campaigns, Scenery, Tau for Blog Wars & 40K Battle Brothers

In a blatant rip-off of Natfka from Faeit212 I'm going to try and write an (almost) weekly editorial post where I collect together some random thoughts I've been having over the last week or so. So often I have things I want to talk about that aren't worthy of a full post. Therefore I'll make a note of them and collect them together in posts like this and hopefully they'll be interesting.

Campaigns
You may have read yesterday's post about my campaign warm-up game against Jamie. The interesting thing for me was to play against Tau instead of using them myself. They're pretty horrific to face as there's a huge volume of fire coming your way. Add to that the relatively low-cost units and it's a difficult proposition for "elite" armies to face.

I've always been keen to make my casual 40K games more interesting. Matt and I attempted a campaign a while ago with mixed success. Since then we've never returned to the idea as we seem to be always testing out new armies or trialling things for upcoming tournaments. I think the reason our first campaign as a little lacklustre is the same reason that I've enjoyed the campaign games with Jamie. The narrative element really adds to the atmosphere of the game. I enjoy competitive play as much as the next gamer but it often ignores the rich background of the 40K universe. I wouldn't particularly consider myself to be a fluffy gamer but it certainly makes the battles feel more worthwhile if there's a story to them.

I'm currently taking part in Jamie's campaign with his friends Rob and Dan where an Imperial world is being assaulted by a Tyranid hive. It was because of this that Jamie and I have started out Tau/DA campaign and we've got plans for a Tau vs DE/Eldar for when the new Eldar book comes out. Matt and I haven't managed to get a campaign going yet but we were thinking of DA vs Chaos.

Finally, I've always wanted to play a planetary empires style campaign with multiple players all fighting battles against each other to grab territory. This could either work as an Imperium vs Xenos campaign or every man for himself. Might just be a pipe dream but who knows, I might get round to it!

Scenery
Speaking of things I don't get around to, I've still not made much progress on my scenery. However, my new plan is to start from the ground up. The first stage of this is to rebuild my gaming table to give my shelving underneath to store my scenery and for models, dice, books etc to be stored on a ledge so that they needn't been on the table top and get in the way. I'll post some pictures up when I get round to making a start.

Once the table itself has been renovated I'll be moving on to working on my modular gameboard. I was really pleased with it at the time but it's looking a little decrepit now and needs some love. I'll start off my filling all the holes in and then it'll get a few cosmetic repairs before I repaint it with a bit more variety to the colour.

Finally, I need to get my plastic scenery sorted. I made a start on this but then things ground to a half when the Dark Angels book was followed by the Tau one in quick succession.

Tau at Blog Wars
I was originally planning to take Dark Angels to Blog Wars and this plan succeeded in one thing at least, giving my pressure to get some models painted. Sadly with the new Tau book out my Dark Angels are getting neglected in favour of my rekindled love for the fish-heads. These make sense as a choice for Blog Wars as they won't need a lot of work to get them ready and will be nice and easy for me to use on the day whilst trying to run the event.

Of course, there's always the risk that I won't end up playing if there's an odd number but at least I'll have a Tau army fully painted!

Battle Brothers
Finally, Matt and I are heading to Warhammer World this weekend to take part in the 40K Battle Brothers event again. For those who don't know, Battle Brothers replaced GW's old doubles events. Two players take a 1500pt army between them using the standard allies system. We've been to several of these events now and despite the high ticket cost I've always found them worthwhile. There's been controvesy over the years but they've never failed to be a great way to spend a weekend.

We've been taking out Titanic Fenrisians (GK/SW) for the last few events now but were determined this time to use the Tau codex to add some much needed anti-air firepower to our list. However, when we tested against Andy and Graham (Claws & Fists) we found that our proposed list wasn't anywhere near as good as we thought. As such we're returned to our beloved SW/GK combo which is total shite against flyers but a lot of fun against pretty much everything else. Here's hoping the prevalence of Broadsides means people are put off from taking flyers or at least that we don't meet 2+ Heldrakes!!

FTF Editorial - Flexibility for the Greater Good & Chaos Daemons

In a blatant rip-off of Natfka from Faeit212 I'm going to try and write an almost weekly editorial post where I collect together some random thoughts I've been having over the last week or so. So often I have things I want to talk about that aren't worthy of a full post. Therefore I'll make a note of them and collect them together in posts like this and hopefully they'll be interesting.

The Tau Codex
I may have alienated some of my audience by this incessant talk about the Tau codex but I can only hope people will bear with my as my enthusiasm for the book doesn't show any signs of letting up. This post will at least be a break from my relentless Unit Review posts. One of the things that keeps coming out of the comments sections of my posts are the sheer number of interesting and effective combinations that can be created.

At the centre of most of these is the ultimate in 41st millennium Swiss army knives - the crisis suit. The commander has such a bewildering array of options that I think it'll probably be the year 40,000 before we've worked out all of the possible uses for him. The most obvious route, the one I went for initially, was simply to stick him with a crisis team and use him as a tank. I now feel pretty daft for my naivety! For starters I hadn't twigged that the puretide chip can give him Tank Hunter/Monster Hunter which can be shared with his unit. This opens up a huge array of options and its probably an auto choice for 15pts. More on this guy when I cover HQs but my mind is racing with ideas of what he can be used for.

What's clear is that this codex is far from a monobuild book. For me the thing that ruins a codex is units which are pretty much automatic choices. This leads to boring armies and that feeling of "oh I'm playing Necrons in my next tournament game oh well that'll mean plenty of flyers and wraiths!". The beauty of 40K for me is that no two armies need be exactly the same. Of course as more people play games and write lists we all gravitate towards an "optimum" build but it's nice when that isn't obvious and overnight.

My problem with the Dark Angels codex was that vast chunks of it were simply never going to be used. Sure you can field a pile of greenwing but why would you when there's more fun to be had with the black and cream portions of the book? I'm struggling to write an interesting and competitive mixed wing list which leads me to the pure Ravenwing style army. The issue here is that whilst the bikes look awesome, they're reduced to a gunline by the bolter-banner. Not taking it feels like a missed opportunity though.

The Tau cadre doesn't have this problem. They're supposed to be a gunline and in actual fact, whilst you can build a gunline, you can also make a devastating dynamic force. I'm excited to play against some Tau armies in tournaments and learn more about my own army in doing so.

Chaos Daemons
With all of the hype surrounding the Tau release the Daemons book may as well have been released years ago. There were a lot of detractors who said that there was far too much randomness in the book to make it competitive but personally I disagree. Sure you have a chance of ending up with a ludicrously strong force or a pathetically weak one but most of the time you'll get something decent.

One thing is for sure. Flying monstrous creatures in numbers is nasty. Most of the greater daemons are good with probably the best being the Lord of Change. Couple him with some more FMCs and there aren't many armies than can deal with them. Even if they crash (which isn't all that likely - especially when Matt is rolling for it), they're still able to fly again next turn and will probably have covered enough ground turn 1 to be in combat turn 2.

I have little or no interest in the Daemons but the thing that might pique my interest is the randomness. Sure it's gutting if you don't get the rolls you want but the thrill of knowing how good something could be is worth it I reckon. Granted some of the randomness seems a bit excessive but otherwise it makes them more interesting. Are they still competitive? Only time will tell. Certainly they benefit from some CSM allies or being taken as allies themselves.