Space marine multiplayer revealed (WARNING: NERD RAGE)

Sorry it's been a while. I just regained consciousness from turning 21. Any who, space marine multiplayer info just came out today. I've been looking forward to this since I heard about the game and man have I been excited for this game. I pushed through terrible internet to get this information although you can listen to it for yourself on their website spacemarine.com/news

The multiplayer pits space marine against chaos marine in two different game types: capture and control and death match (however if you watch the interviews they do everything they can to try and make it seem different.) Both are pretty standard and feature 8 on 8 marine on marine action. On top of that, you can customize the crap out of your marine. It's really insane the amount of detail you can go into with it but it is a bit disappointing that you only get to do it for multiplayer and not the single player game. I guess I'll be an ultramarine... If I have to...

There's also 3 classes: tactical marine, described as the swiss army knife class able to use all of the rifles in the game, devastator, heavy weapons and sniper rifles, and assault marines, who fly in and punch people. They gain experience, have perks and unlock new weapons. Also the videos show off how awesome assault marine flying is. I'm really looking forward to it and really hope it goes better then some of my halo reach jetpack adventures.

That's basically the multiplayer in a nutshell. My opinion?

I'm pretty disappointed. Really the only thing I'm impressed with is the customization which I'll admit is impressive but the game types and so average. I mean you have the awesome world of warhammer at your hands and you can't make anything that at least uses that? How about a mission where chaos needs to perform a ritual and space marines need to stop it. How about siege battles like in battle field where one side tries to hold on to objectives while the other side pushes to overwhelm them. HOW ABOUT CAPTURE THE FLAG? There are so many options and they go with death match, which I admit should be in the game, and capture and control, which should also be in the game but is usually the game type you skip over in other games.

I mean look at games like halo and call of duty. Sure there is a whole ranking and unlocking armor system and all that jazz but part of what makes those games so awesome is the bazillion different game types. I know when I play halo I get bored of swat so I play team slayer then I get bored and switch to objectives, then I try some multi team. Sure a lot of them end up being variations on death match but I like variation and I don't think I'm alone in that opinion. Look at call of duty too. So many game types and so many variations on game types. It's fantastic.

They have a ranking and leveling up system in the game to keep players coming back but I'm gonna get a little bored of 2 different types of games but after a certain point I feel like it's just gonna be like grinding for levels. Ya know, the boring repitive stuff you have to do in video games to level up. No one likes that. I look at games like counter strike and day of defeat. If you just play the standard game, you have one game type. It's fun, and yes both games are pretty popular but in my opinion you get kinda bored after a while with just the same stuff over and over. Also at least with those games you can go on to different servers that might provide variation on those game types or a new game type altogether. I'm really hoping today's info is just the beginning of info. More will come out. HOPEFULLY. but I don't think so.

I'm really hoping there's a lot of levels to play on. If there are enough levels I can maybe see it working with only a couple of game types but even then it's still kinda weak.

Last three notes: 1) No co-op mode? I can't tell you how long me and my buddies have been looking forward to mowing down orkz together. I guess we'll have to be content with getting shot at by twelve year olds in chaos armor. 2) No horde mode? I'd be fine with no multiplayer if there was some horde mode but doesn't look like it. I mean you've got a game where you've created tons of ork enemies and a game that would blend perfectly to a horde mode game type and you're gonna leave it out? Thanks relic. Honestly, co-op and horde mode possibilities were some of the main reasons I was looking forward to this game. 3) I really hope the "acquire new weapons and stuff" is like COD black ops and not like MWF2. I don't wanna be spending forever unlocking tons of stuff when really all I want is a plasma gun.

I'm hoping, probably in vain, that this is just the beginning of information and we'll get more before it's release date in september but I'm not gonna hold my breath. However, I'm totally willing to eat my own words if this stuff ends up existing. Til then, KILLA KAN MAD!!!

Weighing in on 6th edition

If you go around to various 40k blogs, you'll see that a lot of them this week have been talking about some 6th edition rumors to come out recently. That's right folks, 6th edition madness is upon us. At BOLS, you can read the rumors for yourself. I recommend checking them out. they're fairly interesting.

Personally, I don't believe a lot of them. There are some pretty major changes to movement and shooting that seem to complicate things. Mainly shooting is the most complicated change. Your chance of hitting something changes depending on what you're shooting at. So it's harder to hit a fast moving jet bike then it is to shoot a stationary squad of guys. While I like that added realizism, hopefully the way it's used is fairly easy to remember because I can see this getting pretty complicated pretty quickly. 5th edition seemed to streamline a lot of things so I find it hard to believe that would want to further complicate things.

There are also different ranks of eternal warrior and instant death. Enternal warrior 1 protects you from instant death 1 but not instant death 2. This, however, seems needlessly complicated. I thought eternal warrior was fine the way it was.

A big one for me that I was expecting but am still bummed about is the change from a standard cover save going from a 4+ to a 5+. This is really gonna hurt my trukks with kustom force fields and I'm gonna be expecting to see a lot more "issues" as I drive up on my opponents. But maybe since the trukks are fast they'll be harder to hit? we'll see how this works out for the shootin' and lootin' list.

I also wanna take a second to show the change to deep striking rules. Mainly because this effects my not blood angels. That's right, I'm mentioning my other army.

Deep Strike: mishab table as before, place squad leader,
if in 6” of enemy: 3D6” scatter, use arrow on hit symbol, if in 12”: 2D6” hit is hit, in 18”: 1D6”, outside 18”: no scatter
may only advance on turn of arrival, even with fleet or flat out, count always as (advance) moving, charge allowed

My blood angels are an interesting army in that I send them in with melta guns, blow up my opponents vehicles and then fly away. They're all combat tactic-ed out so there aren't enough of them to do real damage in close combat. So i grab objectives with fast moving guys while my opponent is forced to foot slog it or I take out their transports for the kill point and then get where they can't get me. I really like it and I rely heavily on d6 deep strike I get so I can get right up next to my opponent with meltas. But now it looks like I'm gonna have a 2d6 scatter if I wanna get where the melta. a d6 is risky enough, trust me.
To wrap this up though it looks like I can charge afterwards. Maybe it'll be time for a more close combat, big squad blood angel army. Ya know like the actual blood angels.
The main point with all of this is to note that the list you have no probably won't work as well in 6th edition so get ready for some re-writing, which in my opinion is gonna be pretty fun.

Alright, I'm off to mexican food.

DA WAAAGH!!!: the looted wagon...

So the last few days I've been looking for deals on ebay and considering actually building the Plasmanian Devils. Switching the 3 vindicators to 2 devistator squads with a couple other changes I'm bringing 14 plasma guns against my opponent. All well and good until I remember that they are scatter weapons and you can't mention scatter weapons on an ork blog without talking about the looted wagon.

The looted wagon and I have had a bit of a love hate relationship. I loved the looted wagon but the looted wagon hates me. It's a solid vehicle with armor 11 so it can resist bolters which the more you run trukks the more you'll learn to hate armor 10. It's also got a carrying capacity which can make it a cheaper transport for your burna boys if you can't afford (points or with real money) a battlewagon. You can also give it a skorcha to add a little more flavor to your burna boys. It can take all the usual vehicle wargear so you can add a good amount of customization. The big thing you'll see looted wagons for is their boomgun. Str 8, AP 3 and a large blast template. Not too shabby a stat line on that and it'll make marines shake in their power armor.

After many, many, many loses with my orks I realized that if you're gonna run boyz forward you're gonna need a firing base behind them to harass your opponent a little bit, a tactic employed in the shootin' and lootin' list. My initial idea was to use my looted wagon I built when I started playing and use that for support. The AP 3 really makes marine players worry about it and they'll actually spend a good amount of time shooting that instead of your guys, which has it's own advantages. However, they need not spend that time because the boomgun is rubbish. There, I said it. Ok the stats are impressive but the main thing to remember that it's being fired at BS 2 so you're probably gonna scatter pretty far. Even if your opponent is clumped together, the gun is never going to hit where you want it to. Sure it's orky to just throw explosions at your opponent but there are times where you want it to hit a tactical squad out in the open and it'll instead hit a dreadnought. This actually happened to me and even though I killed the dreadnought, I still had a tactical squad blocking me. Worse yet, the gun may end up scattering onto something like a land raider and bouncing off completely or completely miss. Never forget you can just all together miss.
Take into account it scatters 2d6 which on average is a 7. Subtract the BS and you've got the template scattering 5 inches in a random direction. Now you can roll a hit on the scatter die but you'll only get that 1/3 of the time which is maybe two turns out of the game. Think about terminators for an moment, whenever they need to make that 2+ save, the player rolls a 1. I believe the same thing applies to looted wagons. Sure you might get it every once and a while but what I'm getting at is you can not rely on looted wagon.
Looted wagons can be a lot of fun and when they work, its usually spectacular. I've killed 8 marines in a single shot and had the rest run off the board. Good day! But most of the time I fire the battle wagon, roll my dice and proceed to place my palm on my forehead. So needless to say, I don't think I'll be building the Plasmanian Devils

Plasmanian Devils

GAWD I'M CLEVER (the name of the army, not the model above. Kudos to whoever made that)

So I'm shifting a little from my usual Orkiness to present a marine list I thought up yesterday. I know, MARINE LIST after all my gripes with the imperium?! It's a cop out but if it makes you feel better this is probably one of the orkiest marine lists possible.

HQ
Pedro Kantor- 175

Troops
3 Tactical Marines w/ plasma pistol, plasma gun and plasma cannon - 600

Elite
3 dreadnoughts w/ plasma cannon and TL autocannon - 375

Heavy support
3 Vindicators - 345

comes out to 1495 I believe. I was aiming for 1500 and I'm sure there are some upgrades I can give to a tac. squad but it won't really matter too much.

So the idea with the list came out of two things: 1) is my love of plasma weapons. Incredibly powerful, good chance of hitting with marines and comes with a chance it'll take your guy out too. Sign me up for one of those guns. Well maybe sign the guy next to me up for one. Regardless, str 7 ap 2 is too awesome pass up in my humble opinion. 2) I wanna spam templates at my enemy. I want to punish them if they think for a moment they can huddle up behind cover. BLAM! AP 2 coming at you full force.

For 1500 points and no test play it's not too shabby if I do say so myself. I would like to do devistator squads with plasma cannons instead of vindicators but they cost way too much and push me over my self imposed limit. Pedro Kantor makes a little more sense. He gives everyone within 12 inches an extra attack so that makes my guys a little more threatening in the assault. He also has orbital bombardment so there's another template to bring to the battlefield. Really no HQ makes a ton of sense for the army but I'm a fan of Pedro Kantor so he'll work. Now if I could just sneak some sternguard in the list...

On a side note, I'm playing a friend tomorrow in a 2000 pt game. Earlier in the week he asked what I was running and I said I wouldn't tell. He only has one army so he argued that I knew he was gonna run dark angels (and probably deathwing.) but he's notorious for writing anti-killa kans' (me) armies so I said I wasn't telling. Then I thought about bringing this and realized this is totally an anti-deathwing army. So i think I'll be bringing something else so I don't seem like too much of a hypocrite. Or maybe I should just blow him out of the water...

Thanks Topless Robot

No matter how fuzzy this picture is, you can't tell me you're not excited right now.

found on Topless Robot

Sisters of Battle rumors (part 1?)

IT'S ARTILLERY AND AN ORGAN! HOW CAN YOU NOT BE EXCITED FOR SISTERS OF BATTLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A quick post before I begin my journey into learning spanish, I found some Sisters Of Battle rumors over at Bell of Lost Souls. Basically they have a link to a link but I like BOLS so I figured I'd send you there first.

Just some thoughts based on the rumors I read, I like the acts of faith and I hope Games workshop does a good job with it. And by good job I mean doesn't over power them but instead makes them interesting. I'm also kind of excited for SoB (<---ha) because it's not space marines. Sure it's still an imperial army and there's still a good amount of power armor but I get a vibe that it'll be a little different. Imperial Guard is definitely a different army then Space Marines and they're both imperial. Not that it doesn't mean Imperial Guard isn't insanely good but it's a nice break from the power armored super soldiers you're used to seeing on table tops. That said, I still rather see Necrons or another xeno army before SoB but it sounds like Grey Knights sold pretty well so I can't blame GW for wanting to put in another (very similar) imperial army.

I'm also glad to see there are some rumors floating around. There always are and there probably always will be but I'll admit I was a little concerned after my last post about GW tightening the marketing screws. Sure, I have absolutely no idea how accurate these rumors are but I've read stuff from BOLS before and it's at least been interesting.

Lemme know what you think about all the SoB stuff so post below

Gripes with gamesworkshop (markets, price increase, and hoardes)

Wargamers having issues with Games Workshop is nothing new. Don't get me wrong, GW has done a lot for table top gaming over the years and both 40k and fantasy are pretty solid games. Even so, there's a problem with the size of GW's control on the market. I don't know how much of the market share they have but it's extremely substantial from what I've heard (I've heard in the 90 percentile.)

You've probably already seen that GW raised their prices at the start of the month. GW raising their prices is nothing new, they do this more often then their fans would like but we continue to buy so they must not have raised their prices too high. However, there is something about this price hike that bothers me. I feel fed up with the constant prices going up. My biggest problem with this price hike is the cost of hoard armies. A box of 10 boyz is all the way to 30 dollars. With Assault on Black Reach costing around 100 dollars too, running a green tide is becoming a less feasible dream. It also kinda killed my dream of building a Tyranid army. I'm still gonna play 40k but it's just a bummer. Especially with the next bit of news.

Over at Bell of Lost Souls , GW is changing their marketing strategy.
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2011/06/gw-marketing-tightening-screws.html
Basically, they're going to keep everyone in the dark until right before they're gonna release something. There are some valid reasons to do this but not enough in my opinion. The one reason I can figure is because of codecies getting leaked before they come out. It seemed like all across forums everywhere people were posting their Grey Knight armies months before the models and codex were released. No company wants their stuff leaked so they don't get paid for it but I must admit that the leaked codex built a lot of hype. I spent hours talking to people about what grey knights might have at their disposal. It was fun and I actually ended up building a little inquisitor army. While I'm not a big fan of Grey Knights but I've been looking forward to what's gonna come out next. But alas, now Games Workshop is gonna keep us in the dark. We'll see how well they do it, I'm hoping not very well especially with Sisters of Battle and Necrons to come out this year.

Easy post of nerdiness

Xmen first class. Pretty good. I wouldn't turn it down you really hate blue people, which also means you won't be see the smurf movie either. Needless to say, you'll be missing out

The WAAAGH!!!: Da Boyz

So lets get the basics of ork tactics down with the basic Ork unit: Da Boyz. If you're gonna play orks, you gotta use da boyz, which may sound limiting but as far as troops go da boyz are some of the best. They're 6 points a piece and come with a stat line guardsmen can only dream of. If you can ignore some pretty low stats, like their 6+ t-shirt save, it's not too shabby. They're STR 3 but the entire ork army has furious charge so you're hitting as hard as Space Marines. Sure their inititive is lower but see if I care when I'm sending 30 dudes with 4 attacks each.

There are two ways to run squads of boyz. You either put twelve in a truck or you put them in a squad of 30. You can mix and match wargear from there but those are basically what you wanna do. One main stay, regardless of how you field them, is to ALWAYS have a Nob with a power klaw and a bosspole in the squad. It's 40 points well spent. The bosspole lets you put a wound on your unit and lets you re-roll your leadership test which is incredibly valuable since losing combat means you're aiming for at best a 6 or lower. So you need that re-roll. The power klaw comes in handy for dealing with more armored targets. You can kill rhinos, dreads, and even kill a terminator or two. On top of that, in massive squads, it's as if that Nob has an extra 30 wounds before your opponent kills him. That's a lot of attempts instant death your opponent's hero. Gotta love Str 8.

The big squads are a lot of fun. I've always enjoyed putting 4 times as many models as my opponent and watching my opponent fall asleep as I spent an hour setting up. In big squads they've got an ability called Mob rule which makes squads of 11 or more fearless, which makes getting shot easier but presents a couple of issues with the no retreat rule.
Sadly, I've been a bit of an idiot about running this list so I usually get blown off the table. I'd be more sad but the level carnage is pretty great. I'll post my new greentide list someday but what you wanna remember when taking squads like this is to at least make a line with one squad or something to give the rest behind cover saves. Meat shield tactics and that 4+ is gonna make a massive difference.

Boyz in trukks my current favorite. Sometimes the speed of the trukk makes up for the much smaller squad. A big thing to remember though is never send a trukk full of boyz on their own. Unless you're sending them into Fire Warriors or Guardians you want every boy you can get. The only downside I have found is that in melee your squads are not fearless and that 6+ causes a lot of casualties on your side so a lot of the time is seems like you need to win combat by destroying the enemy completely other wise you're gonna have all your squads running away and getting sweeping advanced and all sorts of other badness.

Last little bit here is the wargear. I usually take slugga boyz because I'm all about the close combat. If you're more of a Dakka Dakka person, shootas are not a bad choice either. Str 4 assault 2 in a big squad can give you 60 shots at something. Sure it's all at BS 2 but 60 shots is still 60 shots. You can take either a rokkit launcha or big shoota as extra weapons but neither really comes in handy. I was hoping this was my answer to the no melta guns but alas rokkits are one shot and you're probably gonna miss. Big shootas are a little bit better but with your slugga boyz you wanna be running not shooting. So if you take shoota boyz, add big shootas. STR 5 aint too shabby and the ones on my trukks kill a model every once and a while.

The biggest tip as playing orks is to expect to take casualties. If you're looking for units that are gonna be unstoppable with you're opponent's brain melting trying to think of how to kill you then you should be reading a Grey Knights blog. You've got to adopt an ork mentality if you're gonna play orks. Go big, make a lot of noise, kill a lot of dudes and have a good fight.

GEARS OF WAAAGH!!!

Found this little tid bit of information here at Beasts of War and oh boys and boyz am I excited.

For anyone who is a big Gears fan and a wargamer, it's pretty safe to say that this has been in the back of your mind for years now. The Gears of War Board Game. I know, the name sounds lame but this ain't yo daddy's board game. It features over 30 plastic figures, 200 cards, 17 double sided map tiles and more. There's also something called locust AI cards which effect how the enemy works. I'm wondering if this means that no one is going to have to play as the bad guys. I guess we'll see as part of me does want to play as the locust.

It all reminds me of Last night on Earth, a zombie board game where survivors fought zombie players and played out various missions. They both have a card system with dice, miniatures and pretty cool maps. I really like Last Night on Earth and I'm expecting The Gears of War Board game even better. Whether I'll shell out the 80 dollar price tag for it, we'll see but I'm totally open to anyone who wants to buy it for me.

Pre ordering madness

So I'm changing the 40k gears from the table to the TV. The Space Marine game is available for pre-order. Like a lot of games nowadays, you pre-order you get cool stuff. Space Marine though I feel is taking it a little far

http://www.spacemarine.com/buy

If you check the link you'll see that each different retailer has a different option that you get from pre-ordering. Wal-mart? Get a GOLDEN BOLTER! THQ? POWER SWORD (you also get a free copy of dark siders but that games sucks. I can see why they're giving it away.) I'm pre-ordering through gamestop. 1) because I like to get my game ASAP. 2) because you get both Black Templar and space wolf armor. We can only hope the space wolf armor also gives you 15 missile launchers. There are also a ton of other options so check out the link.

It all seems rather silly to me to have each place have different stuff. I personally want it all but you can't always get what you want. I'm not gonna think about it too much. There could be no pre-order incentives and I would still be at gamestop throwin' down my 5 dollar pre-order.

The game consumes my life September 6th of this year. I'm expecting all of you to have it consumed with me.

Lootin' and Shootin'

Why not get this blog started by posting the new ork list I've been running which I have dubbed "Lootin' and Shootin'" Is the name lame? A little bit but it gets the point across.

Big Mek W/ Kustom Force Field - 85
Big Mek W/ KFF - 85
12 Ork Boyz w/ Trukk -147
12 Ork Boyz w/ Trukk -147
11 Ork Boyz w/ Trukk -141
11 Ork Boyz w/ Trukk -141
10 Lootas - 150
10 Lootas - 150
10 Kommandos w/ 2 burnas and Snikrot - 215
3 Big Guns (Kannons) w/ 6 extra Grotz - 72
3 Big Guns (Kannons) w/ 6 extra Grotz - 72
3 Big Guns (Kannons) w/ 6 extra Grotz - 72
Total : 1477

Worth noting that all the boyz squads have Nobz w/ Power klaws and Bosspoles. If you're running boyz any other way, you're runnin them foolishly

Quick Backstory, I never used to be a big fan of vehicles when I first started playing. I was an infantry man and Orkz were my army for that. I actually own 120 ork boyz along with tons of other models. I can run a half descent green tide and while I like to do that from time to time, this my list that I've been using when I need to throw down and win a game. I'm not gonna go super in depth right now into each unit but I will be talking about how they all work together. Combined with some future blogs about how awesome each of these units are, the list will make a lot of sense. Also I hope I'm not messing myself up too much posting my army and strategy for all my "friends" to see.

The list is called lootin' and shootin' because of how it all works together. You've got you're boyz zooming up in trukks for the lootin' and you've got other boyz in the back shootin'. And who ever said I wasn't clever?

Anyways, Let's start with the Trukks and boyz. While 12 boyz are good, if they fight anything that knows what they're doing in melee (Basically anything that makes more then one attack per round) then your boyz are gonna have trouble. I've seen 30 boyz die to the boy from khorne berzerkers so imagine what they'll do to just 12. It's bad, trust me. With that, you try to never run a truck by itself. You want the trukks together so should it become assault time, you can launch 24 boyz in as opposed to 12. There are exceptions of course though. I've run 3 together and left 1 to hold an objective which works pretty well with the gun lines to back up the one trukk. (More on that later.)
Another Big part of the Trukks are the Big Meks with Kustom Force Fields. This gives all trukks within 6'' of the Big Mek's trukk a 4+ cover save. This is massive as Trukks need all the help they can get. Armor 10 carrying troops with 6+ saves need all the help they can get. This gives you one more reason to run your Trukks in pairs. So all ready you've got some serious synergy and that's just the frontline.

Behind the boyz you've got Lootas and Big Guns. The BGs I'm still experimenting with but so far they seem rather effective. It's a 72 point ork long fang squad. You really get what you pay for with that but it's hard to beat 72 points. Most players know Lootas pretty well though. They're much more popular in Ork lists and for good reason. Lootas destroy anyone unfortunate enough not to be a Space Marine and so much more. Even firing at Space Marines, STR 7 makes wounding easy and helps make up for ork'z terrible ballistic skill.
However the purpose of the guns is less for shooting down marines (because lets face it, you're probably gonna be shooting at power armor) and more for breaking Rhinos... I mean transports. Boyz are great in the assault but the trouble is if they get to the enemy and the enemy is hiding inside of their metal boxes then you're in for some trouble. Ork shootas probably won't wreck even something with armor 10, you can't rely and getting behind rhinos, and your boyz have yet to start stealing meltas. The Guns in the back are there to break open the transports and give da boyz something a bit more exciting to assault. Thus you're lootin' and shootin'

Last are the kommandos. Now they don't exactly fit with the name of the list but they are incredibly important and not to mention incredibly awesome. Like I said orks do best in melee against enemies who don't know what they're doing and kommandos are perfect for sneaking right up on those guys. With Snikrot in the squad, you've got a 12'' bubble around the entire table where you can pop in and strike. If your opponent realizes this, they may move their units up to avoid being assaulted or even leave a strong unit behind for defense. Both are great as you've distracted your opponent or possibly moved his units in closer range to the Trukks. However, should he ignore (or forget) that snikrot can enter the table from ANY TABLE EDGE of his choosing, you've got some pretty great targets for Snikrot and his buddies. On top of all of this Snikrot is a beast. I'll post more on him later but he is quickly becoming one of my favorite parts of the Ork Codex.

So that's the list. I'll be posting more in depth thoughts on each unit as time goes on.

Killa Kan Blog

Like so many blogs that are started up, this one too will feature the first post being about the purpose of this blog. First and foremost it's a blog about Warhammer 40k. I play Orkz (hence the name) and the Not Blood Angels (which may be explained later). I try and keep up with all the 40k business that I can so this blog is essentially a place for me to show those ideas, vent my frustrations, and post some tactics that I think are so nifty.

This blog is written mostly for friends I'm gaming with but if you're a stranger, you're more then welcome to read and hell if you feel like disagreeing with me, I won't turn it away. To everyone, lets get some discussions going on this place. Lemme know what you like, don't like, and tell me what a great guy I am. All is welcome on this blog! KILLA KAN!

(Hopefully this is a more then one day thing. I saw a lot of 40k blogs that just had a one of these posts.)