Overpriced miniatures

My rulebook (and free battlestation) arrived recently for Firestorm Armada 2.0. I have not had the opportunity to play a game of it yet, but I've spent some quality time with the rulebook. A few things have been taken out, or at least removed as a default rule for all ships, but the majority of the changes have been for greater depth and complexity. Here are some of the more noteworthy changes. More weapon types. This is the big one, as a lot has changed. Previously, all weapons had 8 inch range bands, and they were either torpedoes or not. Now, you have Primary (no bonuses), Beam (reroll ones at close range), Scatter (no penalty for firing at small targets), Kinetic (two choices on the critical hit table), and Nuclear (damages nearby ships if a critical it is scored on the target). Range band increments are 8, 10, or 12 inches, depending on the weapon type. And that's just the direct weapons! Indirect weapons include Torpedoes (basically unchanged), Mines (can now link fi...

As usual I didn't take notes at the time, but I had a good game of 40k last Friday at Battlefront. The mission was Big Guns Never Tire on the diagonal deployment. My opponent had a fairly well-rounded list of one Maulerfiend, one ranged version of the Maulerfiend (whatever that's called), one Helldrake, a Land Raider filled with Possessed Space Marines, a champion of some kind with the Black Mace and some truly nasty close combat abilities, and a couple of squads of Noise Marines. His warlord was basically the Chaos version of the Techmarine. My list included two foot-slogging squads of fire warriors, a third one in a devilfish, my old friend Longstrike in an ionhead, a Skyray, a sniper team of one marksman and 5 drones, Aun'Shi the Ethereal, and a Sunshark bomber. Crisis suits and markerlights consisted of two squads: an HQ with missile pods, and burst cannons, and an Elite squad of plasma rifles and fusion blasters. Both of them had 4 marker drones and 2 shield drones. ...

Shortly after 6th Edition rules were released, I saw a way to fix what I saw as one of the Tau's primary weaknesses: a lack of resilient scoring units. Since they are Battle Brothers with Eldar (and, might as well admit it, I like the Eldar), I decided to try for the scoring Wraithguard blob for an ally. Since I've never been thrilled with the official Wraithguard model, and I was even less excited about what the blasted things cost, I decided to build my own. I still haven't quite finished them, but the effect is recognizable. I'll have pictures eventually, but basically I took Bloodletter legs and put the torso on them backwards (which required a fair amount of Green Stuff and cutting off the part of  it that keys into the legs) so they're standing erect rather than hunched over like a standard Bloodletter. Arms are mostly Kroot with the blades cut off the guns and the barrel shortened, then whatever cone-shaped bitz I could find attached to the end. The head is t...

Nicely run tournament this weekend at Grandiosity in Norton Shores. I particularly liked the bit where each round one extra unit from a different force org slot was made a scoring unit. Lessons learned from dusting off my green and silver Tau: Commander Longstrike is even nastier with an ion cannon than with a rail gun. I wish I could have 4 of him! The skyray markerlights are pretty underwhelming without Fast. I can park it in cover somewhere, but if it's just a seeker missile carrier I can get those elsewhere. Sniper drones have a lesser version of the skyray's problem. You have these nice jetpack gun platforms, but they have to stay in unit coherency with their heavy-weapon infantry spotters, meaning you have to put them in the right place at deployment. I almost wish there was a reliable way to kill off the spotter and pass the drones to a drone-controller commander! And yes, it IS possible to have too many markerlights! The commander-blob is very effective, but t...

After painting my Winter Argus from Privateer Press's Hordes game and being surprised at how well it turned out, I decided to duplicate the scheme on two more models, but document it this time. The models in question are Laris, the companion of Kaya the Moonhunter (Epic Kaya), and the pewter  white-metal version of the Pureblood Warpwolf. The Pureblood is now available as part of a resin kit that can make any of the Warpwolves, but it's nowhere near as distinctive as the older sculpt. For the record, this is the only known case where I prefer a metal model to a plastic or resin one! Had I realized that they are supposed to be white, I might have chosen a different primer than black, but with a lot of patience it can be done. The first step after the priming was to paint everything but the deepest shadows in Testors Model Master Gunship Gray, as shown here. According to my notes, the next thing I did was to paint white over the gray, but I don't believe them. I think...

I finally got in a full game of 40k with the new Tau codex, thanks to the patience of Jason from Battlefront Games, who was willing to stay up far later than he should have. My thanks, sir! My army consisted of 3 squads of basic fire warriors, a single squad of kroot snipers, an ethereal, a crisis team with missile pods and fusion blasters for anti-armor, a pathfinder unit, a commander with drone controller escorting 8 marker drones, one bomber, and one of each heavy tank option. Jason's force was 3 tactical squads of space marines in drop pods, an ironclad dreadnought in another drop pod, a land raider full of assault terminators, a thunderfire cannon, Vulcan, and another special character I'm not sure of: Master of the Something-Or-Other. The game was Relic, which never moved the entire game! Basically, Jason's drop pods would come down, their contents would kill some of my stuff and get to touch the relic, then I would aim most of my firepower at it and wipe them out...

The above, of course, should be pronounced with the best possible Monty Python accent. Today's blog entry is a movie review instead of anything about miniatures. My hope is that anyone reading it will be dissuaded from spending money on a bad movie and by doing so encourage Hollywood to make even more intelligence-insulting crap . The move is Olympus Has Fallen, and I agreed to see it partially out of obligation for a birthday celebration and partially because I remembered the screen presence of Morgan Freeman as the president in Deep Impact. While Freeman does a good job as the Speaker Of The House, acting as president since the president and vice president are unavailable, that alone is not enough to carry the movie on its own. It's basically Die Hard, without Bruce Willis. Spoilers below, as I list the numerous plot holes and other ridiculousness that I was unable to ignore. As the movie opens, North Korea is rattling sabers again, and the South Korean ambassador arrives t...

I've had a fair amount of time to paint recently, so the Circle Orboros force is shaping up nicely. I have all-but-completed a starter set of Kaya the Wildborn, Feral Warpwolf, and Regular and Winter Argus; plus two Warpborn Skinwalkers and four Reeves of Orboros. The Feral and the "Summer Argus" might still need some highlights, but other than that I'm happy with everything here.  Group shot: Kaya herself: I put a lot of effort into this one since she's the boss of the army, and I hope it shows. In the blow-up picture here she doesn't look so great, but with the naked eye she looks quite good. I might try to make the eyes more distinct as it's almost invisible that I actually painted them.   The Argii, or whatever the heck the plural is of Argus. I have no idea why that Winter Argus came out looking so good, and I hope I can duplicate that feat when I get to the Pureblood Warpwolf. The Feral Warpwolf: He needs a few highligh...

Just a quick update now that I got a bunch of pictures off my phone. These are my first three painted models from Hordes: Circle Orboros. That's Winter Argus and two Reeves.  There are more of them in progress, but these are the first finished ones. I think this picture was taken before I painted the Argus's eyes yellow, and they don't have base rings because I haven't decided what color to make them. I'm thinking maybe a dark orange or brown? I'm also unsure of whether I need to add any pattern to the cloaks or whether screaming yellow is just fine!

Guys, I'm worried about you. Hardly anybody plays 40k by choice anymore. Those who play it at all do so not because they want to, but because they (and by "they" I mean "we") have too much invested in the hobby to give it up. But that's not going to sustain your company forever. I thought you had come to terms with this fact when Privateer Press showed up and started taking your lunch money a few years ago, but you can't get away with treating your established customer base like an unlimited resource to be exploited. Take us for granted like this, and we will look elsewhere! Instead of attracting new players with our borderline-fanaticism over the game, we will be warning prospective players away. This is not out of vindictiveness (at least, not primarily), but about concern for our fellow hobbyists and honesty regarding how much fun the hobby is at this point. The biggest problem for me is price and game balance issues. While I realize that balancing ...

No pictures yet because I haven't remembered to take them at the time, but I had a good 1750 point game of 40k this weekend with my Tau against a new opponent's Eldar. Lists on both sides might have been sub-optimal as most of mine had Eldar allies and most of his had Tau allies, and we wanted to avoid having the same faction on both sides. Both lists had a little bit of everything. Mine had 2 squads of 10 fire warriors, 2 squads of 12 kroot, a commander with Slow and Purposeful and defensive upgrades attached to a full squad of pathfinders, a squad of plasma-rifle broadsides, one skyray, one squad of 3 plasma rifle / missile pod crisis suits, 5 bare-bones stealth suits, and 2 souped up smart-missile devilfish. All 3 vehicles had disruption pods for the super-duper cover save, and flechette launchers to defend against assault. My opponent (I'm not naming him because I didn't ask permission first) had, roughly, a variety of mechanized cavalry, anchored by Eldrad Uthw...

There are three rules in the current set for the Tau that I feel are dreadfully wrong, and I'm going to make a case for their change. I ask that you give my objections an honest hearing between now and whenever the next batch of FAQs is released. 1) Drones in challenges. Tau drones have always been a little weird as they are sort of separate models and sort of wargear, so I can understand some confusion. However, which one they are should be reasonably consistent, rather than the current ruleset which seems to be "whichever interpretation is least favorable to the Tau!" The current FAQ states that drones can not be used to strike blows or take wounds when their controller is in a challenge, and that's fine. They are treated as models in the unit in most other cases, such as drawing LOS to the unit, counting whether the unit is under-strength, whether it needs to take a morale check, etc. However, the rule also states that they can not count for moral s...

The random rants and pictures from a guy who paints miniatures. Firestorm Armada (made by Spartan Games, UK); Hordes (Privateer Press, USA); Warhammer 40k (Games Workshop, UK); and anything else I end up adding. How did I get here? Well, once upon a time in college, I saw a couple of people playing this neat custom wargame: no squares, no hex grid, and not even the same pieces on each side! They let me "drive" one of the units for a game, and I had fun with it, but I was scared away by the horror stories of what the game cost so I never picked it up myself. Years later, my son was getting into Star Wars miniatures and I realized the economics of that one were even worse than what had scared me away earlier! The boxes of figures were randomized, so you didn't know for sure which ones you had bought until the transaction was final. This economic model seems to work well for the company that makes the minis because it's a fairly constant revenue stream; there are alway...