Space Wolves in Stormclaw - What is revealed?

I picked up my copy of Stormclaw yesterday (well two copies actually) and I'm currently deciding what to keep and what to sell on. I'm certainly keeping one of each limited edition character but the rest I'm not sure on. Anyway, what's interesting about the kit is the rules within the Stormclaw Campaign Supplement. At 33 pages it's hardly a tome but we do get a bit of glimpse of some of the Space Wolf rules. Obviously I'm making a lot of assumptions here but it would be strange for them to change things significantly and the models in these supplements are legal in regular 40K as far as I'm concerned.

Krom Dragongaze

His statline is identical to the current Wolf Lord so we can assume that hasn't changed. He comes in at 135pts. The basic wolf lord in the current codex is 100pts and with a Belt of Russ, Saga of the Warrior Born and Frost Axe (which is effectively what Krom has) he'd be 185pts. That's not including his Furious Charge and Stubborn. 

Rules-wise his Frost Axe is the same as that in the 7th edition FAQ so it looks like that will stand. The Belt of Russ still gives a 4+ invulnerable save but Saga of the Warrior Born is now a Warlord Trait. This fits with one of the recent rumours that Sagas are Traits in the upcoming book. The Saga itself has changed from an attacks bonus to a re-roll to Hit in challenges. Sounds like a nerf but when you consider Warlord Traits are free it isn't really surprising that something you paid 35pts for before has changed. I'll be disappointed if they get rid of some of the sagas though.

All of the Space Wolves have kept Counter-Attack and Acute Senses. With the way Acute Senses works now I can only assume Space Wolves will get some more ways to Outflank since otherwise there's no point the whole army having it. 

Wolf Guard Terminators

The squad shown in the campaign supplement comes in at 230pts but when you add up their wargear with the current codex prices they should be 245pts. That either means their base cost has gone down by 3 pts per model or the wargear is cheaper. I'd expect the latter really. Their rules are otherwise unchanged but they receive a Character to lead the squad. This guy is listed as Unique so this might be something that only happens in Stormclaw. I wouldn't be surprised if they can include a Character though.

The biggest news for Wolf Guard is their listing for Terminator Armour states that they can Deep Strike. This is a change from the fluff that stated they had a "deep mistrust of such arcane tactics and prefer to fight with their feet on solid ground, just as Russ intended". They must've changed their mind or no longer give a toss what Russ thinks! Whatever the reason this is a big change to Space Wolf terminators and how useful they are. In the current book you have to buy a drop pod or Land Raider to get the most from them so it'll be interesting to see how the army dynamic changes with the ability to Deep Strike. Of course someone at GW might've just copy and pasted the Terminator Armour rules into this supplement and the codex will still not allow it but who knows?

Grey Hunters

Once again these guys come out at a slightly different points value to the current codex. Their squad should be 115pts but they're listed at 125pts. Either that means a base cost of 17pts per model or perhaps the upgrades have changed. I could see the plasma gun being 15pts in line with other marine books but I can't see anything else having gone up in price so I can only assume individual hunters now cost more. Options seem the same in that you can take a plasma gun, power weapon and plasma pistol in a squad of 5. 

There's another significant change revealed here though. All of the hunters are listed as having pistol and grenades but it no longer seems like you get a bolter for free. That's a big deal for Grey Hunters and will make for a pretty different loadout. There's been recent rumours to corroborate this too so I wouldn't be surprised if they're now effectively tactical marines with Counter-Attack and Acute Senses tacked on. No indication of pack size is given though.

Blood Claws

Recent rumours have Blood Claws as being cheaper in the next book and the points cost here would seem to tie in with that. The squad listed here comes in at 110pts compared to 115pts which means unless the power fist is cheaper the individual Blood Claws would cost 14pts a piece. I can certainly see that happening but that makes Grey Hunters over costed if they've lost their extra weapon, at least in my opinion.

Berserk Charge and Headstrong seem to have gone and been replaced by Rage. That means they're no longer forced to forgo shooting and charge and therefore don't require a wolf guard/IC to keep them in check. Both the Blood Claws and Grey Hunters in this supplement have a Character with them that gains an extra attack. This might just be a Wolf Guard but the leadership 8 would make me think otherwise. 

Conclusion

Assuming these assumptions are correct, there's some interesting Space Wolf changes revealed here. If Grey Hunters are indeed more expensive and they've lost their extra weapon then Blood Claws might start to look tempting. The big deal for me with Grey Hunters will be how Mark of the Wulfen and Wolf Standard turn out but even so losing an attack for the sake of a boltgun will be a difficult call to make. Basically it'll be a toss up between having extra attacks on the charge or being able to shoot at range.

I'm pleased to see WG terminators getting deep strike whilst becoming apparently cheaper. I often struggled to fit them in to my lists with them needing a transport of some kind to be effective. Krom is an interesting character and the little formation in the book is a nice touch. I'm still struggling to get my head around army selection in 7th so I'll need to write up a post to help me figure it out. Look out for that.

Being Put Through the (Rumour) Mill

I may have been pretty quiet on my own blog recently but that doesn't mean I'm not keeping up with the raft of blogs on my reading list. This is mostly because I can browse through them on Feedly on my phone whereas I find using the phone too fiddly to do blogging of my own. Anyway, one of the blogs on my list is Faeit212. To be honest it's the one I read the most, which is in no small part down to the fact that Natfka posts more regularly than the rest of us.

If you aren't familiar with Faeit212 it's predominantly a rumour blog which helps to tie together the various rumours, leaks and whatnot from the forums and other blogs. Natfka does a fantastic job of compiling everything and it's been an excellent source of everything coming up in the 40K world (and a few other systems). He's helped break several big rumours and pointed us all in the direction of those leaked pictures of new units that we're all desperate to see.

Trouble is, I find I'm actually less desperate to see these things now. Don't get me wrong I'm still excited about the hobby but most of the time we're seeing these images a couple of days or a week at most before they're actually on the GW site. There was a time when I lapped it all up and wanted to read everything I could. The new Tau book was a great example of this. There were leaked pages in Spanish that I bothered to translate to find out details about the Riptide etc. Perhaps I've just learnt patience but right now I'm quite happy just to wait until concrete information is available. This is for a few reasons which I'd like to explain.

We're fed that many rumours now that it's very difficult to know who to believe. The whole 7th/6.5th edition thing is a prime case of this. Once it looked a bit more concrete that we're getting a rules update we suddenly had tons of information coming out e.g. the FOC percentages and sidebars etc. Perhaps all this is true but the cynic in me thinks that there's just some rumourmongers jumping on the bandwagon and simply making stuff up or else wishlisting. This means that when the actual releases hit I've already got preconceived notions about what they'll include. When only some of the promised things happen I'm sometimes relieved but more often disappointed. That disappointment is created by the rumours plain and simple. Obviously I have my own wishlists for new releases but the rumours just build expectation.

The other problem is the, often bilious, commenting that appears on the site despite Natfka's best efforts. This kind of thing is the reason I got into blogging in the first place. When I played EVE Online I used to spend a lot of time on various forums and quickly grew tired of the whinging and complaining about various trivial things. The blogosphere didn't seem as vulnerable to this but there are a few of the more popular sites that have an infestation. I'm sure I'm guilty of the same negativity but reading some of the petty insults and arguments really puts me off the hobby sometimes.

I actually still love 40K though. A few games recently have made me realise why I love the game so much. Reading about every little glimpse of new stuff that we may or may not ever get is actually getting in the way of enjoying the hobby. There's a sense of urgency in the hobby that GW has intentionally created. You get the feeling that everything is a limited edition. For a couple of releases I've been down at my FLGS on release day to pick up the new book and sometimes a few of the new models. They've then often taken me ages to actually get round to assembling. I've got an Astartes Stormwing that is still shrinkwrapped for example. That's absolute madness when you take a step back and look at it. The models are always still there a couple of weeks later when I pop into my FLGS to buy some paints. I've got codices for armies I don't own because I thought I might collect them e.g. Eldar and Tyranids. I could've easily waited and not bothered getting the books but I felt like I needed them straight away on release day. Obviously some stuff is limited edition but you get my point.

I think the tournament scene is partly to blame for this need it now attitude. You feel like you've got to stay on top of the latest thing to be competitive and that's getting more and more difficult. Perhaps that's because having a child has limited my free time to spend reading through codices but also the relentless pace of releases isn't helping. I'm determined to draw a line in the sand though. I've got 5 armies at the moment (SW, DE, DA, Tau and Orks) and strictly speaking not a single fully painted model. Of course a huge swathe of them are table top standard but I can still see work I want to do on them. Why the hell would I want to keep buying new stuff then? You may not like GW's policy on rumours and their blatant money grabs but for suckers like me it clearly works! I can't promise I won't be tempted by Orks, Wolves and DE when they get updates but I'm just not get caught up in the furore and buy stuff I don't need.

Coming back to Faeit212 though. I've got a lot of respect for Natfka and what he does and the site is excellent. I've been enjoying features about other game systems and looking at some of the projects from readers of the site. That Ork Sunshark was particularly nice. Anyway, that aside I'm going to stop reading the blog and see if it improves my attitude to the hobby. I'm quite happy not to read any of the rumours. It'll cause less confusion when I read the actual book as I won't be looking for rules that were supposed to be in there but aren't and I think I can wait a couple of days longer to see new models without needing to look at leaks.

Finally, I think it's interesting that the 40K community seems to think it's the only group who obsessively speculates about what may or may not materialise from a company that doesn't reveal much. It's a similar story for video games, football player transfers and even car manufacturers. As a species we seem to be obsessed with hearing snippets about what might be coming in the future. I guess none of us are that patient!

In the mean time, Matt is heading over tomorrow for a few games so expect some battle reports from those games, some more reviews of the AM book and, of course, plenty of Blog Wars build up. Let's find the love for this excellent game again.

Spanish Tau Codex Leak Translation - Yo No Hablo Espanol!

So some of you may have already seen the Spanish version of the Tau codex that has been leaked onto the interwebs. Whilst I don't have the first clue about Spanish I've been attempting to piece together some information on the various units based on the pictures and some educated guesswork. Granted the book is out in like 4 day so I don't know quite why I took the time to do this but whatever...

Sadly the army special rules are not only in Spanish but the picture is terrible (seriously, why are the people with access to codexes bad at pictures - my CSM ones weren't that bad!). This also means I can't read the Warlord Traits. Some of this stuff may well have already been rumoured but since this is almost certainly the real codex they're a lot more solid now.

If you want to have a look yourself they should still be visible here

Crisis Suits
Appear to cost 22pts each now but can still only be taken in units of 3. No longer have the option of making them a team leader but rather you now just pay 10 pts to make them a Shas'vre. Makes sense to me as hardly anyone bothered to pay the extra 5 for shas'vre status. Shas'vre now boosts them to Ld 9 but loses 1pt of WS (I think we'll cope). Otherwise the stats are the same, no toughness boost like some rumours suggested. Get army wide special rule Supporting Fire which is the ranged overwatch assistance thing. Also they're "Very Bulky" although it sounds better in Spanish (muy corpulento!). The options are what will make these good or bad though. Difficult to look at upgrades though as they're on a chart rather than in unit entry like the other new codexes.

Riptide (Cataclismo in Spanish - again sounds better)
Base cost of 180pts with a pretty impressive statline notably toughness 6 with 5 wounds. It's basic gun appears to be the heavy burst cannon which is S6 and EIGHT shots. Seems like the Nova Reactor will allow you to make this 12 shots too at the risk of Gets Hot. Not sure on the Spanish but looks like it rends too when Nova'd. Comes with an SMS which is pretty much the same as it was but can be swapped for a twin-linked fusion blaster or plasma rifle (which are again the same). The heavy burst cannon can be swapped for an ion cannon thing which starts at S7 AP2 with three shots but can be overcharged to S9 AP2 large blast.

Fire Warriors
Still have a six member minimum but are 9 pts for essentially the same stats but now get Photon Grenades for free. Their gun is stil S5, 30" rapid fire. They can all take the "Ritual of Ta'lissera" rule for 1pt each which if memory serves from the old book, relates to bonding knives so presumably is leadership related (that page is nearly impossible to read even if I understood Spanish). Can still take a devilfish which are still 80pts and pretty similar. Difficult to tell much else without translating it all.

With the addition of Fireblade they can fire an extra shot with their rifles or carbines if they stand still.

Kroot
Get 10 by default as before and can buy another 10 but they're now 6 pts each and come with 6+ armour. They're now S3 but retain their WS4 and the hounds are still I5 and are 5pts each. They can now take some sort of special precision ammo for 1pt per model which make their guns sniper rifles and hence Heavy. Hounds have Acute Senses and the whole squad can infiltrate meaning more precise Outflanking which is interesting. They've still got Stealth in forests and the kroot ox is pretty much the same but now 25pts.

Flyers
Unfortunately they appear to be AV 11/10/10 but with 3 HP. Bomber starts at 160pts and fighter at 145pts.  Aside from the Vehicle Upgrades (no sign of what they are or how much they cost) the fighter can take a missile pod instead of the burst cannon for 5pts. The quad ion cannon is S7 AP4 but can be boosted to S8 large blast which is obviously not much use against other flyers but good for ground vehicle hunting. With 6 S7 shots and two seeker missiles it doesn't look too bad for 150pts though. The bomber can twin-link it's missile pod for 5pts but otherwise will be better against ground targets as you might expect. Despite still being BS2 the fighter drones have S7 AP4 twin-linked guns which isn't bad at all when they appear to have interceptor too. They also seem to have afterburners (whatever they do).

Have to decide when I read the English book but at the moment they both look fairly viable. At least they're better than the DA ones already (which isn't hard of course).

Broadsides
They're now 65pts each and still a max squad size of 3. Their twin-linked railguns are now S8 AP1 as was rumour but the missile pods they can swap them for are S7 AP4 with 4 shots. Their SMS are now twin-linked too which is pretty cool. They're then able to take various other options from the wargear table and still seem to get one support system each. They can take a seeker missile for 8pts which seems to be the standard cost of them now.  The shas'vre is now Ld 9 which should help reduce the number of times they run off the board like they used to!

Pretty happy with these. If they do get the option of Skyfire as has been rumoured then they're going to be the goto anti-air for pretty much any army in the game. S10 would've been ridiculous so the S8 makes sense.

HQs
Ethereals are 50pts and Fireblade is 60pts. There doesn't seem to be any option to take them in multiples as squad leaders unfortunately but for dirt cheap HQ to spend your points on something else then you can't complain. Better than the minimum 100pts a lot of armies have to spend.

O'Shovah/Farsight is 165pts and is still equipped the same. He still has Preferred Enemy (Orks) and can be joined by 7 crisis suits in his bodyguard. Sadly this seems to be the only FOC swapping that can be done.

Conclusion
That's about as much as I can be bothered to translate/work out. The codex really isn't that far away but I wanted to get an idea of what this leak told us. Hopefully some people found it helpful.

More Tau Rumour Reactions & Analysis

With White Dwarf 400 out tomorrow we're now seeing pretty much all the pages about the new Tau units. I'm intrigued to read the battle report more than anything though as that's the most likely place to find rules snippets. Very little about the new release is bad so far. The prices are somewhat ridiculous but it's GW and I think we're used to it by now. Anyway, here's a few of my reactions to the rumours so far. There's a lot of assumptions here so don't for a second think I have any insider information. Even so I hope you find it interesting to read.

Flyers
I've already talked about these briefly. The new models aren't especially pleasing on the eye but they are growing on me. What I'm hoping is that, given their size and the fact that they're clearly modelled around a devilfish hull, they'll be AV12. The only problem is that if they are then they're sure to be pretty pricey. If they're armed well enough that won't be an issue but perhaps they'd be better as AV11 and cheaper. What we're seeing about weapon loadouts is interesting so far though.

The bomber has a twin-linked missile pod, two drone fighters and the plasma bomb thingy. First off I think it's cool that the bomb thingy is the fire caste symbol. Assuming missile pods stay the same that's a two twin-linked BS3 S7 shots at enemy flyers which isn't bad actually. The fighters appear to be armed with twin-linked ion guns of some kind. I'm assuming these will be S6 since the cannon was S7 in the old book. All of the descriptions seem to talk about these as protection for the bomber. That to me means either they can shoot at enemy flyers or else act like ablative wounds for the bomber, either of which sounds good to me.

The fighter is described as being able to take on either ground or air targets. The burst cannon on the front can be replaced with a missile pod but this is presumably not twin-linked. It sports a couple of seeker missiles in hidden compartments (cool!) but we've no word yet on how they'll be fired as it doesn't appear to have markerlights. Finally, there's the quad ion thingy. Firstly it's able to rotate 360 which is a good start and will help it take on other flyers without needing to hover (assuming it can). Ion weapons can apparently overheat for more strength so maybe it'll be a decent anti-flyer gun. There's talk about thrusters (which I assume replace the drones of the bomber) which makes me suspect it will have Hover.

All in all they look promising. Hopefully Vetock won't screw them up like the DA ones. The key things really are armour values, weapon strengths and points cost. Those things in the wrong combination could cripple them before they even take off.

Riptide
There isn't much new information from what we've already heard but from a modelling point of view it seems like they'll be extremely posable. The article talks about pinned joints for ease of assembly but with the ability to snip the pins off more more poses. Seems like a pretty good system as it plays to modellers of varying ability. The model itself is fecking huge. Looking at the size comparison chart and the shots of it surrounded by crisis suits, I'd say it's easily the biggest 40K model we've seen outside of FW.

It appears to occupy the Elites FOC slot which could be a blessing and a curse. It's good that it isn't Heavy as that's always been a bit crowded for Tau. Trouble is, it'll probably have to compete with Stealth and Crisis suits (assuming these can't be made into Troops somehow). That means to include more than one you'll likely be sacrificing core units.

Seems like it can fit all the support systems and secondary weapons that a crisis suit can. Assuming it's an MC and therefore able to fire two weapons it could be pretty devastating. Again, the effectiveness of this unit will come down to cost and weapon strength (although I suppose you could say that about anything!).

Characters
An extremely poor set of characters in the last book meant very few people ever fielded them. Farsight is back with a new model and it seems he still has his splinter faction. He may still have the issue of being a combat character in a shooty army but we'll have to see. There's little other mention of Shadowsun or Aun'va. Frankly Aun'va couldn't be made any worse but with little talk of Ethereals in general it's hard to know what direction they'll be taken in, bubble effects seem to be likely. Shadowsun was just featured in a Black Library book so I'm hoping they do something interesting with her.

The new selection of mini characters are intriguing. I like the idea of a Pask style tank commander. Hopefully he'll make a hammerhead worth taking again. The firewarrior and pathfinder characters are hopefully upgrades rather than HQs to prevent the FOC from being too crowded.

Kroot and Vespid
I'm somewhat relieved to see that they're (almost) definitely in the new codex. Remains to be seen how useful they are but at least I'll have a use for my Kroot models. I had an interesting thought that perhaps they can be taken as a Tau only allied detachment but I don't see any signs of HQs so doesn't look like it.

The thing that people seem to be most upset about is the original talk of more alien allies seems to have disappeared. Personally I think it's a good thing as I didn't want the core Tau army to be diluted down to a kabal of random species. It's a shame the Vespid models haven't been redone (at least from the WD pictures) as they're a bit dated looking now. The Kroot can hold their own nicely though.

I'm a little disappointed that there don't appear to be any new alien units at all. The rumours of Kroot HQ and big monster things seem to be false at the moment unless GW is going to do a second wave at some point?

Tanks/Vehicles
Looks like the Disruption Pods have been toned down a bit which I think is reasonable. If they stay at 5pts for +1 to jink then I'll be happy enough. Pretty sure they'll increase in price though, although I wonder if they'll be included in the tank cost in a similar way to smoke launchers of SM vehicles. I'm interested to see what they do about the other vehicle upgrades but there haven't been rumours on them yet.

The skyray will hopefully be getting a new lease of life. It's always been one of my favourite Tau models and was certainly mediocre in 5th and worse in 6th. I'd hope that it'll compete with the broadsides/hammers but I have a feeling it'll still lose out.

The most important thing for me is that Devilfish get reduced in a price a bit. With the lack of mech armies around it'd be interesting to see how the meta-game responds to what has always been a fairly mechanised force. With the prevalence of plasma these days, AV12 is stronger than it was.

I was hoping for a pathfinder tetra style vehicle to appear but again there aren't any signs of that. The piranha blurb talks about it using "stealth and speed" to act as a recon vehicle. Be interesting to see how they turn out because I own three of them and I'd love to be using them again.

Army Wide
Seems like the army wide special rule will be Supporting Fire which I believe is related to Overwatch. If so then I'm pretty happy as this, combined with photon grenades (if they still exist as defensive) should mean that there's some protection from assaults. I was wondering how they were going to address that weakness and it seems Supporting Fire is it.

One thing you can't escape from the new pictures is the sheer number of drone types that are cropping up everywhere. Whilst I hate flying bases most of the time, I'm pleased to see some new drone variants are coming out. Not much on the rules for them has surfaced yet but I expect we'll see them taken in large numbers.

Markerlights seem to have remained pretty much unchanged. I'm hoping they've removed the restriction on who can benefit from their effects so that squads can boost their own firepower. Perhaps like the auspex in the DA book? I'm pretty sure they're going to remain Heavy which is a shame but there's not really been confirmation on this. Pathfinders will almost certainly have improved though since there's a new boxed set so GW will be wanting to shift them. Hopefully their compulsory devilfish is now an option as the rumours suggest. Be interesting to see how the new weapon options e.g. the ion rifle fit in to their role. The main thing is that hopefully they can be made into troops somehow.

I'm pleased to see that there are a bigger range of weapon types. Seems like the pulse weapons are staying the same but with the ion and rail weapons getting new varieties hopefully there'll be more options in terms of loadouts.

General Release Thoughts
The prices are, as I've said, a bit ridiculous as always. The riptide is certainly a huge model but £50 is obscene for a single figure (plus drones) especially when a dreadknight is £33. Otherwise everything else is priced as you might expect. The new commander is costly though, as is Farsight, and isn't all that different to the current XV8 range.

Otherwise I'm going to have to wait until I actually see the codex myself to decide how good it will be. I never really trust the rumours this close to a release as people can say anything and it will be believed because potentially people will actually have the book. The other issue is that people don't read things properly, an example of this being that people thought Screamers hadn't changed in the new Daemons book until someone actually read it properly. It's only just over a week til I'll have it in my hands though and I'll certainly post up my first impressions of the book pretty soon afterwards.

My Tau Army
I've got a fairly solid collection of models at the moment and the vast majority are painted to table-top standard. The new book will almost certainly inspire me to revisit them and improve their paintjobs but the question is what will remain and what will have to change. I'm looking forward to tomorrow when we can study the models properly on the GW site.

Broadsides are the most obvious source of problems. I don't really fancy buying the new ones at £30 a pop but since they're significantly bigger and on a larger base I can see this causing issues. Additionally if the missile-tastic build is worthwhile I might end up getting some of the new ones. At least I can potentially convert my old ones back into crisis suits again.

On the subject of crisis suits, I really wish I'd magnetised. From past experience they're not easy to break apart once assembled and I'm almost certain to need to change their weapon loadouts. The other problem with my suits is that the first few I assembled are in terrible, boring poses. Once I've got the new kits out of my system I'm almost certainly going to want to repose them if possible.

My tanks should be alright as I've got three devilfish and a skyray/hammerhead. I can't see me needing more Devilfish unless they get a lot cheaper. I may end up buying another skyray/hammerhead kit though if they're both equally good.

My pathfinders are half the proper metal models and half just converted fire warriors. I can see me needing to get the new kit for the new weapons and drones so I may end up making them back into fire warriors again. The question for fire warriors is whether rifle or carbine will be better. All of mine have rifles so I really hope they can stay that way.

I've already got a Farsight model so I'm unlikely to be tempted by the new one but it depends on how effective he is anyway. So what will I actually be getting on release day? Well, the book of course but after that I'm not sure. I want to study the rules before I take the plunge on a Riptide or the new flyers. I'll probably stand in my FLGS and read the rules on release day and make a decision their and then. If the Riptide is even half decent I'll want one just to have a massive model on the table!! Pathfinders and the new characters are a little more difficult to decide on though.

I'm already looking forward to updating my Tau army though and just hope my supplies of the old citadel paints are sufficient to paint all the new kits!!

New Tau Stuff Coming in April!!

Well, what a welcome for me to receive when I landed back in the country and checked the usual blogs. Finally after all this time waiting the Tau are getting a new codex and some new models/units! I have to say that I'm probably more excited about this than any other release in the last couple of years. Since getting back into 40K in 2010 Tau were the second army I collected (I had some Eldar from when I stopped playing years ago). I've always loved the models since they were released when I used to play in 3rd edition so they were a natural choice as my first new army on returning to the game.

I've got a decent collection of Tau at the moment and they're one of my more painted armies too! I've taken them to tourmanents in the past with mixed success but I'm very much looking forward to what the new codex will bring. I think this release is going to be the most exciting so far for me since it's the first time that one of my existing armies have had a new book. Matt has had new books for all of his armies (BA, GK, Daemons) in the time he's been collecting them but Tau will be my first update. Frankly I don't think they needed much work. Sure the book is dated but I think 6th edition actually did them a lot of favours. Before I talk about the leaked pics of the new models I just want to briefly say what I hope stays the same in the new book.

Firstly, broadsides will hopefully still be potent. There's rumours of an S8 rail weapon for them but time will tell and even so they should still be good if they've been reduced in points. I'm hoping the versatility of crisis suits is still there. I love the wide array of combinations you can create so I hope the options are still there. Fire warriors are pretty good in their current form I think but more upgrades would be good. Generally I hope the army keeps it's dominance at range and that the suits are still strong. Not sure how I feel about Kroot. There's no sign of them in the pictures (or Vespid for that matter) at the moment but I think it'd be a shame for them to go from the book entirely.

Anyway, onto the pictures. There are two obvious units that stand out, the Riptide and the flyers. With this second set of leaked pictures the flyers look a lot better. My concern is that Vetock will repeat his performance with the DA flyers and write rules that make them useless. Hopefully he's learned from his mistakes though. This time around I'm going to get the codex before I get suckered into buying more models. I don't want to spend a fortune on the new flyer (or riptide for that matter) if they aren't going to be worth it. The Riptide is an interesting prospect. The GK dreadknight demonstrates what can be done with MCs but I fear that it'll be a similar cost as a dreadknight without the punch. Maybe I'm being to negative?

I'm actually warming to the flyers and the riptide model. I agree with most people that it's a shame they don't look more like the FW ones but there's nothing stopping people buying the FW ones and playing counts as (except the price of course). The riptide looks good apart from the head which I might have to convert up to be a bit more bulky.

Elsewhere I'm pleased to see some plastic pathfinders. Not sure what I'm going to do with my conversions but time will tell again. Hopefully they'll be more useful now. I'm intrigued to see what they're going to do with markerlights. I'm also glad there's a new model for Farsight although I'm unlikely to shell out for it since I have an old one. Fingers crossed he'll be worth taking now.

From the looks of the rules snippets that are coming out. Tau will have no problem dealing with flyers. This isn't particularly suprising when GW have allowed them to ally with pretty much everyone. This will mean that we'll probably see a lot of them as allies at tournaments which means more cash for GW of course. Generally the rules look pretty positive. As with any update I'm sure there'll be things that people will whine about but I'm just glad to see my Tau getting the spotlight again.

The question now is..... what do I take to Blog Wars? DA which need a lot of painting or Tau which are pretty much ready to go...

GW Design Studio Open Day

Matt, Jamie and I were at Warhammer World in Nottingham yesterday for the Open Day event run by Games Workshop. This was essentially a showcase of the process of designing both rules and miniatures taking concept art into the actual plastics that appear on the tabletop.

General Event
There were lots of different activities around the gaming hall. One massive table had what must have been about 50 fully painted flyers. There were some absolutely stunning conversions there and the idea was you picked one you liked the look of and had a dogfight with someone. Obviously this is an attempt to encourage people to buy the new flyers but from my perspective it gave me a good opportunity to see how they fair against each other. Stood at this table was none other than Phil Kelly. My first question to him was "you're not retiring then?" to which he responded "no you've got to put up with me for at least a few more years". In case you'd missed it there was a rumour going round that he was retiring that had pretty much already been quashed anyway. It gave me a chance to talk to him about the new rules and their effect on webway portals though (more on that later).

Elsewhere there were tables laid out with miniatures, a massive pile of sprues for the conversion contest (which generated some beautiful models), the game board from that massive in the rulebook where Chaos are assaulting an Imperial fortress (page 390), Forge World, Black Library, etc. There were also some of the artists and designers from behind the scenes showing off the design process. There was a team of sculptors showing how the "three-ups" are made alongside those using 3D modelling software to do a similar process. Across the way was a table with artwork (and the artists themselves) from the new rulebook and units. There were also a couple of competitions running with a "where's wally" style thing where they'd photoshopped some BA into the aforementioned battle on p.390 for people to find.

One of the highlights for me was being able to flick through Jes Goodwin's Dark Eldar sketchbook and talk with him about some of the designs in there. It's amazing how similar his sketches are to the actual models. I mean it's not a coincidence of course but I appreciate the details on the models themselves in a whole new light. We also attended some seminars on the process of creating 6th edition and the Dark Eldar and Necron revamps. There's quite a bit for each one so I'll cover them separately. I wish I'd taken notes to remember everything but here's a rough idea.

Seminar 1: 6th Edition with Matt Ward, Jervis Johnson and Jeremy Vetock

This session talked about the development of the new rulebook with Matt and Jervis talking about the rules and Jeremy talking about the fluff. Let me start by saying that there was an interesting dynamic between Matt and Jervis where you kind of got the impression that they didn't get on making me think that Jervis didn't necessarily agree with a lot of the decisions Ward has made. Maybe that's me being slight biassed against Matt Ward but whatever.

There was brief mention of the reasons why they didn't advance the story on but the general gist was that there's still a lot to cover in the last 10,000 years so they want to feel that most of it had been addressed before they went onto it. Jeremy did say "if we went into the 42nd millennium we'd have to change the name which is no good".

There was a discussion about the reasons for introducing random charge and they said that this came about because of the Overwatch rules. The idea being that even if your first rank of troops gets gunned down they should still be able to get into combat with the enemy. This tied into the thoughts about the removal of charging from reserve. They're basically trying to get away from the mechanic where one player can do something to another without him being able to counter it. Now personally I think there are lots of counters to units assaulting from reserve e.g. centralised deployment or bubble-wrapping units but I can see their point. They talked about the new flyer rules and mentioned that they'd originally hoped to get them out for 5th edition a bit sooner but "it didn't work out that way" making the rumours from last year about a "Summer of Flyers" seem more plausible.

They tried to avoid using the word "cinematic" too much but basically thats the aim of 6th edition. Making the game a bit more emersive so that units perfom a bit more like you'd expect them too. For example, shooting the first rank of an enemy unit down makes sense rather than allocating wounds so that the sergeant always survives etc. Toward the end they basically said that they want to make the rulebook a lot more robust so that the codexes don't need to be so complex. They want to move away from lots of special rules that are codex specific into a system where you don't need to know every codex to understand the game.

Chat with Jervis Johnson

Following the session we caught up with Jervis Johnson and had a long chat with him about various things. We started off by asking about the nerf/buff of particular units and whether it was a sales strategy. He basically said that whenever a new edition comes out there will always be nerfs/buffs to things and its impossible to avoid it completely. On the subject of pricing he said "we charge as much as we can get away with" which is pretty much what everyone thinks anyway. He talked about how the specialist games figure into the mix. Basically they focus their attention on the primary games (WFB, 40K, LOTR) and then when there's some "spare capacity" they might work on a standalone release. This was the case with Space Hulk for example. Jamie asked if Epic would ever come back to which the answer was a pretty firm "no".

We talked about the FAQ process and they said their aiming to do this a lot more regularly. Apparently a lot of the issues revolve around translating them into every language. He said that one of the guys who was working on the FAQs had left and it had taken some time for the new guy to get up to speed. Now that he has we should be seeing regular FAQs. These will be worked into the digital versions of the books (which they're looking into bringing to Android etc) but because of this they wanted to avoid updating things too regularly in order to avoid never really knowing what the rules are at a particular time. He said a lot of other stuff which I've since forgotten but I'll post it up if it comes back to me.

Flyers Games with Jeremy Vetock

After our chat with Jervis I bumped into Jeremy who asked if I wanted to try out the dogfighting. We both took a dakkajet and went against each other. I quickly blew his up but mostly thanks to some flukey rolls. We then had a 5 way battle with Matt, Jamie and another guy called Nigel where there were 3 stormtalons, a night scythe and a dakkajet. Ultimately Jamie managed to win the day with his stormtalon but the best thing was that every single other flyer actually exploded! The main thing I took away from this was how deadly flyer vs. flyer dogfighting is. They're basically designed to take each other out and they do it pretty well. The other thing is that zooming flyers really struggle to get shots on to back of things and it was only because Jamie was able to hover that he could shoot at all later on. It's going to be interesting in games where there's lots of flyers once people start to incorporate them.

Seminar 2: Dark Eldar with Phil Kelly and Jes Goodwin

For me this was the best session of the day. This was partly because by this point there were only about 20 people in the room and it felt like more of a chat in the pub than a seminar. Anyway, Jes and Phil talked us through how they'd totally revamped the DE army, models and rules. They were keen to make the models definitely Eldar but not just "craftworld with spiky bits".  The insight into the process of developing the backstory was fascinating as they talked about completely "making it up as they went along".

In terms of gameplay they wanted them to be ridiculously quick (pointing out they're even quicker in 6th) and deadly but this was countered by them being a bit flimsy. I think this comes across well in the book. When asked if there were any regrets about the process there was a mention that "Mandrakes didn't really come out as they were intended", apparently Phil originally wanted them to be able to appear right behind a unit.

Seminar 3: Necrons with Matt Ward, Dale Stringer and Tom Walton
The first question here was about the reasons for changing the Necron fluff. Matt Ward said they wanted to give them a much richer history than they had previously. They then went onto talking about how they designed the miniatures themselves. Basically they didn't want to give them too much personality as we're meant to be talking about soulless machines. Therefore they designed things with mostly geometric shapes. There are some running themes which I hadn't spotted until now such as a coffin shape. This is found on the engines of the vehicles, chests of the warriors and leg cross section of the triarch stalker. Now that he's mentioned it you can see it repeated everywhere in the range.

They also wanted to emphasise that Necrons desire to be human again therefore they actually ride on vehicles rather than being part of them like before i.e. destroyers. Then the rest of the range is their minions in the form of insectoid units like scarabs and wraiths. The idea being that it's easy to distinguish between the two but it's clear they're the same race.

Our Matt had managed to catch up with Matt Ward separately to ask him why they'd made the warscythe AP1 when very few other things are. He didn't exactly give a convincing response which makes you wonder if they really thought it through at all!

Conclusion
Overall I had a great time at this event. There were some really inspiring things on display. Some of the conversions on the flyers made me ashamed that I'd just assembled the dakkajet without doing something cooler. Similarly I was inspired to create something special with our scenery to really immerse myself into games more.

The cynic in me says that it was all just a PR exercise to sell more plastic crack and to be fair it was. However, the chance to speak to the guys who actually write the rules and design the miniatures was pretty impressive. I'm definitely insipired to make my armies look great and actually play some more fun games rather than focussing on competitive tournament games/practice all the time. I think it's easy to forget that it's meant to be a game sometimes!

Tau Rumours and Thoughts (courtesy of Faeit 212)

Whilst browsing around my usual reading list of blogs I stumbled across Faeit 212's collection of tau rumours. When I came back into 40K a couple of years ago I invested in a Tau force because I always liked the models even when I left back in 3rd edition. It didn't take me many games against Matt's Blood Angels to figure out that they struggled to be competitive in the modern game. That doesn't mean it's impossible to do well with them in tournament play but it takes a brave and skilled man to do so plus a decent helping of luck wouldn't hurt. There was actually a Tau army in 3rd place at the original Blog Wars which I was pleased to see.

In these days of shooting dominated 40K I think a new book for Tau will help in bringing them right into the forefront of the game again. Having seen what's happened to Dark Eldar, and more recently the Necrons, I'm filled with anticipation about what will become of my beloved Tau. In a similar way to Adam from the SW blog and Warhammer Tau I feel that Tau are the army I love to play with. Don't get me wrong I love Space Wolves and thanks to reading a few of the Black Library books I've fully immersed myself in their backstory. They're by far the most interesting of the SM chapters. However, there's something about Tau that keeps pulling me back. For all the games I play with SW I'm always up for trying the Tau again. I recently had some success with them in drawing a game against Jamie's Blood Angels (which I'd have won if we'd got another turn).

For me there isn't really much that needs doing for the Tau but here's my wishlist:

• Everyting metal should be plastic - I really don't think the army needs any finecast but knowing GW they'll make some of the kroot stuff in it. The metal tau kits now are a nightmare to assemble at times.
• Battlesuits need a revamp - I love the old kits but the Forge World ones are gorgeous so it'd be great if the regular ones were more in line with them
• More chance in combat - I don't think they should suddenly become better at it but maybe the Kroot should be and I think the fire warriors should have a better defence against it, maybe defensive grenades included in base costs?
• More vehicle options - it'd be nice to have some smaller vehicles with a lower capacity but at the same time I don't want yet another MSU army
• Flyers - the Forge World ones are awesome and some scaled down versions of them would be a great addition
• Improved Fire Warriors - they really should be BS4 in line with some of the other races, I don't mind them staying I2 but they should be better shooting

Anyway, I know I'm wishlisting but I'm sure the other Tau players are too. Once I've got more of my Dark Eldar finished I'm gonna start up painting my Tau again. I've got a cool colour scheme in mind and I'm sure that most of the models I have will still have a role when the new codex lands. 

Off Topic: Rumours - Dark Eldar Second Wave

Unlike my previous April Fool's post about the mythical Space Wolves second wave this one is actually factual.

Headed over to GW last night to pick up an Imperial Sector boxset partly because I was inspired by What's New Today and also because we're pretty sick of the scenery we've got and wanted to make things a little more interesting. I got talking to one of the guys who works in there and he said he'd recently been on a trip to GW headquarters to see how the miniatures were designed and made. Seems that GW do it as some sort of staff morale thing i.e. if you know how they're made you'll be more excited about selling them. Anyway, I was asking him if he knew what was coming in the second wave for DE and he said that it was definitely a voidraven bomber (possibly combined with fighter) and venom. Now I know there's probably going to be more than that and that it's pretty much what everyone had guessed but suffice to say he's seen the actual models being pressed so it's almost certain that those two kits will be involved in June.

I've been considering starting a DE force ever since I first saw the shots of the new miniatures when they went up for advance order. Had a great game against them at the doubles and fancied something a bit different to paint. I'm thinking of flogging my old Eldar to pay for them but there are some models I can't bear to part with so I'll have to find another way of raising the cash. I'd very much like to reinvigorate my Tau army too if we get a new codex in the next year but I want something to do in the meantime.

My other option therefore, is Necrons. I've always liked the current range of miniatures but I wasn't really inspired by the codex. Not only is it very dated now but it's also very limiting from an army selection point of view. I think what I'll do is see if DE get a battleforce, buy one of those and then figure out if I can see myself using them as an army. If they don't really get me going then I'll consider Necrons if they get released this year as the current rumours suggest.

Suffice to say I'm sticking with Space Wolves for now and it'll be a long time before I'm anywhere near starting a DE or Necron force. Sorry for going off topic but thought I'd share the confirmation of the DE 2nd wave with anyone who's interested.

PS. I'm going to throw some posts up soon of mine and Scott's progress towards painting the city buildings.