Age of Sigmar - Intial Thoughts

The short tumult of the Age Of Rumour is now but a memory, swept away by the all destroying tidal wave that heralded the  Age Of Rage.

As the survivors gasped for breath and strove to regain their balance in the wreckage of the Age That Was, battle lines were immediately, instinctively, and bloodily drawn. In the Age That Is patience is heresy, debate is perversion, declarations are infrangible, immediate gratification and satiation are the only acceptable outcome.

Of course, it will surprise no scholar of the modern 24-hour-news-cycle consumer, social media obsessed, attention-span deficient, social validation-seeking and intellectually moribund world to realise that all these Ages took place in a matter of maybe a fortnight.

As all but those who have accidentally ended up on this page (perhaps looking for pictures of sneezing kittens or, let’s face it, naughty pictures that get past the office’s security protocols) will know (the title is rather a giveaway, I’ll grant), these are my initial thoughts on the new game released all of two weeks ago by Games Workshop – Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

Self -evident caveat: these are early days, everything is liable to change!

 

 

Previously On…

A lot of my thoughts on the backdrop of all this has been communicated in the past.

WFB was a dying game. People like to blame some impossible-to-define “great evil” that GW did in the past decade or two that made this come to pass. Popular tropes here are: models too expensive, lack of some ethereal “community engagement”, the increase in one-man stores, 7^th edition Daemons, 8^th Edition, Elves, Dwellers and plenty of other incorrect points.

 

All these views have, of course, some justification in being ‘bad’ in the eye of the beholder. Personally I will never forgive them for a) no longer supporting Epic and b) no longer selling me products by weight like they did when I worked there. These are not, however, the reason the game was doomed.

 

A game of mass armies is a real struggle for a company like GW with its extensive retail presence. The entry cost for the game was too high in this day and age (not in the cost of the actual models, but in how many of them you would need). Other competing games, including GW’s own, quite simply need less to be playable – be it an X Wing in… X Wing, two squads and a character for 40k, some lumps of misshapen lead for warmahordes, etc. Note, this is “to be playable” – not “to play competitively with”.

Retail presences means they have to pay significant stock and associated costs just to sell this stuff. If you are an online retailer it’s easy to use kickstarter for everything and make fun on your website. Both business models are viable of course, the realities and the requirements for the two are however markedly different.

 

A good point was brought up on the Heelenhammer podcast recently (though, as with most good points, it is something I have been pointing out for months, naturally ;) ) – how much do the public face of WFB, the “tournament” regulars, *actually* spend on GW every year? Honestly, I would expect the majority of the top 20 in the rankings (to use as a random sample), have spent less than… £200? £300? £400? On actual GW models in the past year or so… This is not a good sign for the viability of a business!

 

And Now…

So – big gamble time!

How do you change everything up in the hope of driving new players to your game and future proof as much as possible?

Reboot everything and start from scratch!

It’s weird to read the (frankly rather pretty) new AoS book and see how they have really changed everything. I think, and from the majority of people I have spoken to about it who have been able to put aside the Old World, they have actually done something pretty cool here. I am biased of course – Nagash is in it, of course I like it ;)

The game though – that’s what the modern masses are actually obsessed with (though I honestly find the idea that someone whose one love in the hobby, above all else, is a highly competitive game plays anything other than Chess or Magic the Gathering (though I hear Blue is broken or something… it’s all Klingon to me) bizarre to begin with).

Ranked units don’t work when you also have to maintain your edge in model production quality. So ‘skirmish’ was, in hindsight, inevitable. Interestingly, from what I have seen the game scales up very well.

Now… there are some well publicised silliness in the rules, and some which are just bad game design. The shouting/acting up rules are meant to be harmless fun (though it is funny how some (interestingly mostly colonial – maybe it’s a mindset thing ;) ) people seemed to find these actively insulting) and silly. By and large they don’t have much of an effect, and can easily be fixed with, as they like the say in films about filmmaking (a rather specialised niche), “with one line of dialogue”. Big deal it is not.

Measuring to the model rather than the base is bad game design though. It’s just unwieldy.

By this I mean – it’s actually perfectly normal and fine, but when exposed to the rancid world of competitiveness-obsessed, RAW drooling idiocy that is the internet, the issues are obvious. Once again – one line of dialogue and no longer an issue. Big deal it is not.

Some aspects of the game do feel weird though – I am not sure about the whole ‘being able to shoot whilst in combat’ thing – to the point I actually think it is an oversight. This may be me holding on to preconceptions from my 20+ years of gaming, I get that, but that feels weird in that it is the one thing that clearly breaks the cinematic sweep of the game. This is interesting because, love it or hate it, GW have been driving the ‘realism’ angle hard since 7^th made way for 8^th.

 

Other parts verge from the good to the simply brilliant:

The combat system seems very simple, which has caused some people to hate it.

But when you consider that a good player vs a bad player will be able to do things like pull unwary units into combat or remove powerful enemies from combat before they get to swing (amongst many other things) the levels of complexity over the system that was in existence before is self-evident (and no, putting up character walls to protect units has never been skilful).

The synergies are actually very impressive here. Just within the starter box if you look at the way the various Chaos key words interact, transforming the basic warrior into a real killing machine, it is impressive, and opens the door to a lot of potential. We have only touched on this thus far, and the signs are that GW will be able to have some real fun with this. This is a new thing for GW, and a very welcomed one.

The debate from the ‘certainty’ of 7^th to the ‘randomness’ of 8^th was never fully settled. The consensus around me (perhaps unsurprisingly so, given the ones that disagreed probably stopped playing) was that the risk mitigation of 8^th was actually far more of a ‘skill’ than the ability to guess the distance between two abstract points on a table that was 7^th. Extrapolating from this I *think* I like that the turn order is not set in stone. It gives you more variables to ponder and for me this is a Good Thing.

Other little things I like include how the magic system is at the beginning of the turn, so you have to plan accordingly, and how terrain has a *massive* impact on the game. Significantly, the scenarios also seem to be very very cool.

I should note that my thoughts on the new game are deliberately focused on using the new stuff as much as possible to try and get a view of what they are looking to do rather than focusing on the old units.

 

There is, however, a stalking walrus in the room, an enigmatic giraffe in the cupboard, and an irate dodo in the shadows….

 

Dodo be angry

 

 

Army selection…

Regardless of whether I think this is a fixable issue or not (and honestly, I think it is a very easy fix), the lack of an army selection mechanic of *some* type is perhaps the single most imbecilic, stupidly naïve and the singularly inexplicable decision Game Workshop have *ever* made.

I get the general thinking. An article from the old days currently doing the rounds by Jervis Johnson raises interesting views on ‘points’ and the pitfalls of ‘tournament style’ games that are largely in sync with my views on the subject, from a high level conceptual point of view. At some point, and for some reason that is hard to pinpoint (maybe the rise of professional MTG and computer games, maybe rise of the internet per se, maybe people are just dull now, who knows), points efficiency became the be all and end all – to the point you only normally see notably points inefficient units in specific situations: in the hands of very good players who can make anything work, in highly tailored lists to make the unusual work, in weird themed lists or in the hands of people who don’t know any better.

The point the article makes that really hits home for me is the perceived ‘need’ for balanced games. Almost all of the games I have enjoyed the most have been unbalanced for some reason – those backs-to-the-wall situations are far more memorable than the many hundred games of battleline I have played in the past four years.

All this is fundamentally true for me. If cut throat competitiveness and supposed air tight rules are the thing for you, GW was never the company for you. The cinematic (for want of a better word) aspects have to be at the core – the game just builds on that.

That being said though – the stupidity of the way GW has done this is that it makes casual games much harder.

It’s stupid.
Very very stupid.
[Add suitable metaphors for stupidity ad infinitum]
It’s bizarre.

This can be fixed with a further release of course, but they have to do it as soon as possible. Momentum is key with a new game, and I am not sure they are going to react in time…

 

The issue is not so much for the competitive scene – interesting army building systems are already around that work for the competitive scene – an hour or two of thought and its easy enough to do for anyone (so why don’t GW?!). It’s the casual person in a game shop/club/kitchen table that I worry about.

The lifeblood of a game is not the internet-totting tournament gamer (as much as we all like to tell ourselves we are important), but the casual players – and they are the ones that will walk away from this.

Timmy buys AoS. Plays with stuff in the box with his dad/brother/other. Timmy thinks its cool. Timmy then buys a couple of addon boxes. Timmy loves playing this game. Timmy pops down to the local GW store/club to play…. And the whole thing completely comes crashing to a halt.

How big a game? Such a simple question. And it’s the simple questions that will kill you.

 

In the madness of the modern world some simple guidelines takes the initial awkwardness out the exchange with a new acquaintance….

IT JUST MAKES NO SENSE…

Hopefully they sort it out…

Hopefully...

 

On the competitive side of things – the mechanics are good, it’s fast, bloody and fun. The packs are looking good. I am hugely optimistic that if people gave it a chance they would actually like it a lot.

 

As has been mentioned elsewhere – GW not putting points on things is actually a godsend for the competitive scene – it lets the scene keep a living document of awesome gaming awesomeness.

We shall see how they work out in the long term.

It’s the short term that needs sorting to allow a long term to exist…

 

I have been called many things for taking my positive “wait and see” attitude to things (most notably being called a paedophile apologist…). I make no bones about trying to keep a positive view on most things (that are not the England cricket team), instant negativity is cheap and easy. Cheap and easy leads you to need to visit the doctor… you have been warned.

An interesting thing for me was the people that ragequit before the game came out, that was amusing (from an academic/observational point of view). Unsurprisingly I think you could have predicted with over 90% accuracy the people who turned out to absolutely hate it, and the scenes that have followed suit.

 

Generally speaking, if the pinnacle of WFB for you was 7^th, you don’t like this game. I could go on at length about the *many* aspects of 7^th (and 8^th to be fair) that were far more stupid than on-the-table issues with AoS, but people like what they like, that’s cool – I’m in the Voltaire school of such things. Other players can’t get over the list selection issues – some of these are on the ones that take pleasure in ‘breaking’ list writing mechanics, others just drew the lines there. Tack on smaller scenes around the world where a couple of loud disgruntled voices have immense sway and you could almost predict to a man those who claim to be out of the hobby now. Sad, but it happens. I just wish they had given the game a few months first.

 

The future?

Well, I don’t think there is a long term future in a community 8^th project – new blood is key to keep things going. AoS seems, to me, to be mechanically very effective as a tabletop game. I hope the community and/or GW come up with some widely accepted army selection system and this thing thrives…

If not… well we shall fall off that cliff when we get there, though spoiler: whatever happens… it won’t be Warmahordes.

 

So yeah… I remain cautiously optimistic.

The game is very good. Its simple really.

I remain worried that the ball may be fumbled though…

 

We shall see.

 

 

Until next time

 

Raf

8th Edition Memory Lane

 

So, on the back of the news that 8th edition is soon to follow the Old World and be sucked into the voidable abyss (question: is Archeon Game Workshop personified?), and inspired by Facehammer’s recent episode (believe the title was Russ talks about the events he has podiumed at (I could be wrong) – it was fun, you should listen (unless you’re Gav Thorpe, in which case you should probably give it a miss)) I got to thinking about the wild ride that was 8th edition. And though, what the hell, let’s have a look at how my rose tinted glasses look back on it:

Not many laughs, and no breaking news this time, just a gentle walk down memory lane 

 

8^th Edition: The Raf Story

8th, it is fair to say, came along at the perfect (or worse possible, really depends on your interpretation and point of view – when I check my bank balance after a night out at a Cardiff event, or when I crawl into the office having forgotten to take a post tournament Monday off I am pretty sure it is the latter) time for me. I had been on a break from the game for a good long time (better part of a decade if I had to hazards a guess). I still kept abreast of things, but didn’t really play. Before this time I was what you’d call an enthusiastic amateur (because we are such professionals now……), working in a games workshop store that had a fiercely competitive local scene, but never attending events.

 

And then podcasts happened.

 

I have no idea how I stumbled upon them, but it would be fair to say they changed my life. Bad Dice, Heelanhammer and Podhammer  became staples, and before I knew it I was sucked in. I poured over the tactical discussions, considered the combo implications and pondered the full implications of utter avoidance (all without playing any games).

One thing stopped me though – 7th edition. I get why people liked it, but I actively despised how it played, and how it looked on the table. The chances were I was going to escape unscathed!

 

And then the announcement that 8th was coming out… came out.

 

On the day or release I bought 8 Island of Blood sets (mistakes were made…), and then proceeded to buy an army every three weeks (no, I didn’t paint them, I have never liked painting) or so as I got caught up in the fever of it all (the keen eyed reader will be unsurprised to find out this was before I was married…). I started playing games at the local GW on Oxford Street in London, and got to know the bunch of reprobates that would eventually lead to what for me is the defining aspect of 8th edition – tournaments.

 

 

The first event I ever went to was the Unseen Lerker GT at Warhammer World – what’s not to love! To think there hasn’t been an independent WFB event there since is sad. Run by the ever unique Bobo here I got my first taste of competitive uncomped 8th edition Warhammer (I was, at the time, vehemently anti-comp). I don’t remember too many of the details – I remember my first game was against a zombie dragon, and that I played Greg (from After Ulanor and a million other podcasts) in a ridiculous game that lasted all of 20 minutes, and larger than like Ol from Og Games.

Regardless, I loved it.

Not addicted, but could see the attraction.

 

My next event was the Masters Open event – this year they had decided to have a couple of  normal tournaments running alongside the WFB and 40k Masters at the old Eye of The Storm venue. This was the perfect event. The Open field was small, we all hung out and chilled nicely and met some further stalwarts of the scene. It of course helped that I won, but the real driver was the Masters event itself. Sure, I hear from the players now that it was kind of terrible – all uncomped early 8th filth, but watching it was very cool. And I saw the twenty minutes where Bobo lost the masters in spectacular style (ask him about it, he likes to relive it).

 

I decided after this weekend that, sod having all of 11 competitive games of Warhammer in my ‘career’, I was going to qualify for this Masters.

It was a nicely ambitious goal.

Unfortunately RankingsHQ no longer exists, so I can’t remember the journey fully, all I know is that I got there.

 

Not that long after that I achieved my second self-appointed goal (top Vampire Player Icon), my third (getting to number 1 in the rankings) and a couple of years later, my fourth (top Lizardmen Icon) after which and there were, quite simply, no more lands to conquer until this year when  I qualified for the England ETC team.

 

But anyway, anyone would think this blog post is all about me!

 

 

8^th Edition: The Game’s Story

 

My memory of the edition as a whole is really a series of flashes of memories.

Let’s see if we can string these along into some sort of narrative…

 

 

8th burst onto the scene.

-          Internet descends into vicious madness (I know this is normal, but seriously – RANDOM CHARGES!, striking at initiative!, STEADFAST!, BSB rerolls!, deadly spells!, terrain has no effect!, DEADLY MISCASTS! PREMEASURING!!!!)

-          Some Australian podcasters get their fans to pay for them to go on holiday to the States where they go wild and never podcast again.

-          Warmahordes makes a big splash and is the best game ever (I say this, because even on this obscure little blog they will find me and insist on saying it if I haven’t).

 

The scene is full of big units. Magic is all about the hexes and buffs, ballistic skill shooting has gone the way of the Dodo.

Combat characters are all but pointless, warmachines marginally less so.

Infantry is King (classic examples being Bloodletters, Marauders with Flails, Grave Guard and Black Guard).

 

-          Nothing is released (army wise) for the game from July 2010 when it came out to March 2011… yes, 7 MONTHS later. The game was getting *very* stale.

 

And then…. Orc & Goblins come out!  

The result, if anything, was that it made the book worse. No more Waaagh charges was a big deal. General reaction to it is *meh* and they continue to not be seen on the scene.

The scene continued to be stale…

 

A couple of months later… Tomb Kings!

Yay! Ahem… OK, so they couldn’t march, they had BS shooting (still terrible) and big tough things with lots of toughness that died to lots of attacks (available everywhere). They were, by and large, as successful as their O&G predecessors.

They *did*, however, introduce us to units of Monstrous Cavalry (proving once and for all that being first is not the same as being best).

 

 

Four months later and the big bullied babies of 7th edition were coming out. Eagerly I ordered and advance copy of the book and picked it up at an event (assume it was a Tempest (seriously, they don’t make events like that anymore), as it was in Stockport (and no, if not for WFB I would never have been to Stockport… it has a lot to answer for!)). I even bought a massive monster thing with Ogres on it!

I read the book on the train back that day, and boy was I utterly disappointed! It’s such a sparse book. Nothing about it to me reached out and seduced the imagination. I sulked (though maybe that was because I was in Stockport come to think of it…).

Now, I may have disliked the book, but damn it had an impact.

My first exposure to them was in the final game of Valhalla where BryanTheHobbyKiller pushed Mournfang forwards and obliterated Ghouls. All the Ghouls. If there had been more Ghouls he would have obliterated the too.

-          The scene was rocked. The very existence of such a unit was not something that anyone was ready for. The sky was literally falling (or being eaten). The simple fact was, not every army *could* deal with them without serious redesign, and that took time.

 

In many ways this, some 14 months after the editions release, was the real birthing cry of 8th.

 

 

 

Fade to a few months later and the news is that Vampires are coming! A splash release in White Dwarf brings us Banshees and Wraiths as characters, and Terrorgheists!

The vampire list of the time was Vampire Lord (with Fencers Blades and the Helm of Coolness, probably with Master of the Black Arts), Ghouls (lots of ghouls – they could be raised beyond their starting size) and lots of Grave Guard with 4+ regen, magically charging all over the place. What heady joys was the new book going to bring us?

-          Sure, we all knew that they were going to nerf some things (recasting spells was probably going to go, as were the magic charges), but they have Ogres Mournfang and Move-And-Fire-Chariot-Cannons, this was exciting! Were bloodlines coming back?!

To the eternal pain of all VC players ever since what we actually got was easily the most balanced book of the edition. Lots of cool stuff, very little (if anything) ‘broken’ and nothing undercosted. And we got no bloodlines (not really anyway)

-          One thing I will never forgive them for is making Blood Knights quite so terrible though…

 

What followed as an epic fall from grace. Vampires, one of the most successful races with their old book in this edition, were eviscerated as a top level tournament force in the UK – from the book’s release in January 2012 no max point event was won by vampires until April 2015 [you’re welcome kids ;) ]

 

 

The Empire followed. The impact of Empire took a while to be made, but boy was it made. 1+ armour save became a THING. This crushed the life out any remaining infantry as an effective fighting force, and the perpetual rise of the MSU continued.

The most notable thing in the Empire though was how they managed to find an endless supply of DemiGriffs hiding in a forest somewhere.

-          Oh, and GW FAQ’d Monstrous Cavalry to be better. So that was a thing.

-          The other notable thing is they almost singlehandedly killed the game.  From its release in April 2012 we didn’t get a book until February 2013 (TEN MONTHS LATER!).

The scene was incredibly stale. Empire, and 1+ armour saves, were everywhere.

 

These were the Dark Times of Warhammer.

 

 

2013 arrived and brought with it a tidal wave of unbearable filth… Warriors smashed onto the scene (helped by being uncomped for a good long while (unlike Vampires…. #NotOverIt)) and the bare cheeked cheapness and ease of putting an army together.

-          Daemon Princes, Chariots, Unkillable Tzeentchian BSBs, Skullcrushers, Trolls and Chimeras arrived and, to a large extent, have never really left. On the plus side, it was more fun in some ways than the old book. Unfortunately they killed a lot of options as viable. (No, I don’t feel sorry for them either).

 

A MONTH later Daemons!

I have to say, I rejoiced. The death of the Bloodletter legions was a Good Day. I also believed what all the players were saying, expecting the book to be a bit too unreliable to be a real force. I was happy, this felt properly chaotic!

Of course, we all were idiots. What had actually been released was arguably the most powerful Warhammer Army Book in 8th edition.

 

Of course TWO MONTHS later High Elves came along and killed Daemons as a competitive force* [*according to the internet]. This was actually a pretty cool book, other than that stupid banner. Quite clearly the banner was meant to be 75 points, allowing only BSBs or Dragon Princes to have it (and it would still be good), but no. 50 point stupidity spoils the taste of the book to the point where not even Phoenixes or Alith Anar can save them (and Alith Anar can save anything). Around this time we saw the noticeable rise of ballistic skill based shooting. All in all, the army ended up being quite dull, the most effective build for a long time probably being the Light Magic gunline.

 

 

OK!

-          They have introduced Monstrous Cavalry all over the place.

-          All but one book has at least one magic lore to call its own.

What would GW do to the Children of the Old Ones? Perhaps a return to spawnings – they were cool! Goes without saying there were going to be some cool monsters, and reptilian Monstrous Cavalry! Maybe a Skink Warchief, those little vicious lizards should have a Lord character. And, well, something else in Core. Maybe an option for Cold Ones in Core in the right situation (Throgg is out there after all…). IMAGINE HOW COOL CARNASAURS ARE GOING TO BE!

The pictures started coming out (on this very blog) and there is an *awesome* new monster kit!

And then.

Oh dear.

What a dull book.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my Lizards and their spaceships, but WOW that is an uninspiring army book outside of characters.

Bitterly disappointing.

 

 

Ha!

I’m not saying I blame the following entirely on Ben Curry (though his name *is* in the book), but wow did Dark Elves not piss all over this game.

I think the least that is said about Dark Elves the better really…

 

 

Dwarfs followed and had a limited impact on the game. Dwarfs are cool (fluff wise) and Gyros are cool (on the table) and, come to think of it, Hammerers now hit *really* hard. But not much really changed (or at least not enough for anyone to notice).

 

Wood Elves got people down under all hot and bothered (not to be confused with hot and bothered down under… or should it?) but really, a slight deal about not all that much. They have taken them away from being hippy peace elves, which I guess is cool enough.

 

 

 

So, those are the books that *made* 8th edition what it was – though in many ways that’s doing it a disservice. Half the fun was the 7th ed books working in this edition, and the transition between them. This allowed individual armies to rise and fall in power level throughout. The meta (other than during those two insanely long release-free windows) has been a shifting tide. We have seen the infantry hordes give way to MSU, the rise of the solo characters, the fall of monsters, the emergence of Monstrous Cavalry, the rise of cavalry and, in some armies, the rise in infantry hordes all over again.

My biggest regrets is that Beastmen, Bretonnians and Skaven never got the 8th treatment.

 

 

The End of it all

 

I guess it would be a disservice to not mention the End Times party that served as a send-off to everything we have known and loved (and seriously, if you have not read the books, listen to Garagehammer’s coverage, it is truly second to none).

 

·         Nagash coming out was probably the single coolest thing I have experienced in the hobby. I have loved him as a bad guy since my first encounter  in the old army book [less the Clown of Doom, more the peerless Mark Gibbons drawing]. This statement of intent (NAGASH WAS COMING BACK!) was awesome. And no, not for one second did I think that it would end up as it did… Yes, his rules are a little bit silly, but he is a god, I was cool with that.

·         Glotkin bored me. Maybe it’s because, unlike Nagash, I am no chaos fan boy, and I find Nurgle the dullest of the pantheon. Karl Franz Ascendant was an eye opener though!

·         Khaine came along and I loved the twist in the plot. Rules wise of course this was all beyond silly by this point.

·         Thanquol… Skaven were a tad OTT here, but Lizardmen got to do a Cartmen impression and go home. The death of the Dwarfen race suitably tragic and heroic. In many ways the rules here were even worse, as Stomfiends are seeing use in normal games…

·         By the time Archeon came out it was all over bar the singing. Sort of funny that in the end it was Manfred who screwed everything over, but still.

Overall, a truly epic way to see the, well… the End Times.

 

 

So, that was the world that was.

What really sticks out in my memory?

 

 

 

8^th Edition: The Highlight Reel

 

Army Books:

I have already rambled on a bit about the books, but two of them really stick out to me over the course of 8^th.

-          First up was the Empire. No, not vastly overpowered, but the sheer length of time between their release and the next book meant that, for what felt like an eternity, we lived in a world of 1+ armour saves and cannons (and no, this is not a Good Thing).

-          Second up is the Lizardmen. I was so excited about this book, and so bored after its release, it was sort of heart-breaking. Not saying it is not good (it is), but the whole thing was just rather limp.

 

Meta:

I touched on the journey the meta has taken over the years. The crazy days of the infantry hordes are a distant memory for me, and when I think of 8^th I envisage the dearth of combat of infantry we have seen for a good while now and vague images of overly MSU and character heavy builds. I am not a fan (conceptually, it can be fun to use).

 

Units:

8^th has seen an explosion of units that never existed before… which of these stand out?

-          Most striking: Mournfang. The absolute carnage unleashed on the scene by their arrival frankly has no parallel

-          Best: Warlocks, obviously. Let’s not even talk about it.

-          Worse: Blood Dragons. Seriously, you can get two Warlocks for every Blood Dragon….

-          Most impressed by: the humble skink cohort. 5 points a model of epic win. They have done so much for me, far prefer them to their skirmishing cousins

-          Least impressed by: Ghouls. Seriously. 10 points a model or incredibly situational pseudo usefulness.

 

 

Tournaments:

For me, 8^th edition *was* tournaments, so plenty of memories here! There are so many related aspects too…

 

Venue: Well, I’m not going to go an embarrass anyone with pointing out which is the worse, everyone in the UK knows that. The best, for me, had to be either the old Eye of the Storm venue before Maelstrom games collapsed (seriously, it was 5 minutes from the in-laws. *Gaining* Mrs points for going to events cannot be underestimated). The best venue though has to be the new Firestorm Games venue in Cardiff. That place is very impressive.

 

Food gets discussed a lot in tournament feedback (more so when someone drops the ball than when they do something well). The worse meal I had was probably at the unfortunate event at the venue not named above, but the best is tougher. Firestorm Fours was impressive, with Pizza Hut for everyone, but the stand out winner has to be the food at Call to War at the BIG Bristol venue. Seriously, I would have paid the entrance fee for the food alone (I’m now hungry just thinking about it…)

 

The social side of things is easy. Almost all events have a great social side, from chats at the bar/in the local pub at SCGT to watching people going for a swim in a canal. It’s all about who you are with, and meeting up with people with the same passions (though too many wargammers seen to love heavy metal for some reason… I’ve never understood the link). I hear great things about Mersey, but *the* place to go and have fun at an event is Cardiff. Everything happens in Cardiff (they can have that slogan for free (though I will take a cut of merchandising rights…).

 

You see everything in Cardiff...

Touching on the social side of things, Team Events burst onto the scene as a real force during this edition and I LOVE them. It’s actually impossible to put a finger on the “best” one. I would highly recommend anyone that can to take part in the Bjorn Teams and Firestorm Fours events, and am sure the team event at BIG will be equally great. It’s impossible to really describe why, though Byron put it well in the latest Facehammer Podcast when he mentioned that all the things you would say to describe to someone that didn’t know the hobby why it was so fun is embodied in it.

If I *had* to (and I do, I have decided and am the boss) pick a favourite it would have to be the Bjorn Teams though. I like the added complications and implications of the Swedish system… and we won it. So there.

 

The past years have been so full of memorable games that I have forgotten most of them (…)

The emotional swing of my game at London Burning when a Hellheart made ALL of my wizards cascade, only for them all to survive and the game to swing irresistibly to victory is fresh on the mind. That said, in all honesty, only two games really stand a chance:

The first was at my Midlands Open. To say the comp pack had some holes would be, well, fair… My opponent, Jon, had an Ogre army (I was running classic 7^th edition infantry VC). This was a win/loss/draw event with 301+ points for the win. Jon had more than 2100 points in one unit of Ironguts, and he had been having all the luck pushing forwards at people and taking them off. To make matter worse, this was the last game of the event, and I had a real chance at my first big podium. Not overly sure on a plan, things went bad when I immediately miscast and lost all my spells. Channelling the powers of a certain podcast, I proceeded to catch him with a ghoul conga, engineering a flank charge with Grave Guard and eventually managed to take him off. That was fun.

 

The second was a much better game. It was a masters game two years ago vs #FatCraig and his Skaven. The scenario was watchtower. To say this was a bloodthirsty game was to understate it. I think by the end of the game there were maybe 5 models on the table. I won’t go into too much detail – suffice to say I won the game when my Slann, the last surviving member of the tower’s garrison, was turned into a Slannrat. Thinking the game was lost, my scarvet ripped off the Grey Seer’s head and the ensuing panic check had the clanrat running for the hills, leaving me closest to the tower.

Good times.

You probably had to be there for that…

 

Placings are not something I care too much about most of the time, fully appreciating that the one event winner in the room will have, most of the time, had the additional bit of luck needed to elevate them over the rest of the top ten. That being said, finally breaking the 8^th edition Vampire Counts drought and winning London’s Burning is something I will remember for a long time.

 

Some people get worked up about trophies. I don’t particularly mind (I find them rather annoying most of the time as I run out of space to store them ;) ). My favourite trophy was easily the one at Valhalla (think that was the name…) for finishing second. It’s this cool metal Viking helmet on a stand, about the size of a mug. I like things like that.

 

Raf’s prize for best overall event:

Sorry, but this is actually an easy one (and there are a lot of good events out there). Clash Of Swords wins this easily.

The event build up (even if he uses writers with dubious reputations), the attention to detail, the atmosphere, the social side… quite simply, it’s the fact you know that Mo has just gone all out to make it as good as he can. Bravo mate!

 

 

Hobby:

Well, this may be a secret to y’all, but I have no patience for the painting side of the hobby. That being said even I can appreciate pretty things… The armies that really stand out to me are a Night Goblin army I played against on the Friday before an event (sorry, can’t remember the gentleman’s name :( ), Steve Wren’s Empire army at SCGT with the very cool movement trays/unit fillers and, my favourite amongst them all, Ben Johnson’s Daemon army (believe it’s been in White Dwarf if you want to check it out).

I should say, being colour-blind I have a real preference for bright colours and overall army effect on the table means more to me than technical brilliance.

 

Pet Peeves:

I try not to get too worked up about stuff (any stuff, not just Warhammer). I do have a couple of pet peeves though:

-          Over-celebrating skill-less victory. You see this all the time. A cannon goes off (“ten from the back”), opponent roles a 1, general/lvl4/whatever killed. Immediate celebration, fine, getting that luck is all good. Fondly remembering it as some sort of Alexandrian triumph, not so cool.

-          This ties into a broader point of people misremembering games, forgetting the outrageous fortune that handed them victory and recalling it as all “part of the plan”… not so cool.

-          The one I do find most annoying is when people don’t appreciate when their opponent is taking a joke list. Crowing about beating someone who is taking a deliberately bad list for a laugh… not so cool.

 

 

Podcasts:

This was the golden age of media interaction in the hobby, and it is impossible to really outline favourites without it seeming to be dissing other good podcasts. Personally I like my content focused more on the game than on ‘exploits’, but there are options out there for all pallets. That said, big shout outs to:

·         Bad Dice Daily – that incredible run of 5 podcasts a week was probably really the pinnacle in WFB audio entertainment.

·         Heelanhammer – production quality has remained top notch throughout, a highly professional and entertaining product.

·         Garagehammer – I love almost everything about this show, and their story coverage is really second to none.

·         Dwellers Below/Watchtower – yup, putting them both together because they are colonials. Something great about getting a view onto the Australian scene again.

And many, many others whose runs have either been epic or short. The amount of time, effort and commitment that podcasters put in is really awe-inspiring.

 

Twitter:

I literally wouldn’t use it if it wasn’t for this. Not sure my life would be any worse come to think of it… but still, it’s cool.

 

 

 

How to finish this rambling… ramble?

Well, that seems pretty obvious. One thing has stood over all others during 8^th… We all love them, even if we pretend we hate them. I am, of course, talking about #Gates.

These are so cool I was going to do a whole blog on them, but alas time and life can be rather demanding.

 

These gates range from the big and serious to the silly and funny…

Which ones come to mind?

 

#BrothersGate[description redacted due to threat of legal action]

#GatewayGate – The Gateway King brought low by rogue dice.

#Extrea1Gate – I’ll just leave that one there…

#PodhammerGate – lads get people to pay for their holidays, are never seen again

#ToiletGate – the straw that broke the camels’ back in relation to a venue I am not naming for some reason

#SelfVoteGate – this is also known as “Doing a Steve Wren”

#SlowPlayGate – the inability of someone to push daemons at someone in under two and a half hours… Ends with best outburst ever seen at a masters event

#ShardGate – naughty Will

#MaelstromGate – the whole collapse of that business and the months leading up to it was ugly ugly ugly

#HristoBreaksACompPackGate – the very first time a Folding Fortress is not banned…

#ExtraFuryGate – One of several the normal unimpeachable Jack got himself into, along with such exciting episodes as: #RailroadGate and #DrawGate

#WeeBoyGate – a child travels the country bullying David Sweeting

#KillingBlowGate – still too soon….

 

Yup, some of the above are definitely only #Gates with an effort of will, but that’s half the fun :)

 

 

 

 

So there we have it, my recollections of 8^th edition, or at least as many of them as I can recall (that being, by and large, the definition of recollections) in the time it took to throw these words on a screen.

 

I know the news ahead of Age of Sigmar is scaring people, but I for one am very excited about the future!

 

 

 

 

 

Until next time….

 

 

Raf