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.