If you can't beat them join them?

Things have been a bit quite on the blog since the end of my siege campaign. I have actually been working on another project, but more about that when it's a bit further along. Today, I want to write about this...

The Warhammer: Age of Sigmar General's Handbook.

I've not played any AOS since my try out game some time back. I was naturally inclined to be hostile to it because I liked the old Warhammer rules and the old Warhammer world and didn't like it when Games Workshop threw them both out. AOS is such an overhaul of Warhammer that it is really a new game and I'm not looking to start any new games. On the other hand, my principle complaint about AOS had been the absence of points values which the Compendium addresses and, at only £15, it's pretty cheap for a GW publication.

If previous AOS books had focused on background material and lots of pictures with very little rules content, this is pretty much the exact opposite. It's basically all rules. The book attempts to introduce three different ways to play AOS. What it calls "Open play", "narrative play" and "matched play" and has sections for each.

There's actually surprisingly little of this

"Open play" isn't actually a new style, however. It's just AOS as it has been up to now, no points, scenarios, use what you like. This section of the book instead concentrates on multiplayer games with some new scenarios to suit. As Warhammer never quite ironed this out, it's good to see this. How effective the rules are, I'm not sure.

The narrative play section is focused on campaigns and story driven scenarios. It introduces some new, deliberately asymmetrical scenarios, such as one in which a whole army takes on a single monster or another which is basically a last stand. It also has a section on recreating the great battles of history.

The most interesting part of this section is the rules for campaigns. There are several differnt types described, including map-based, tree-campaigns (in which the outcome of one scenario effects the next played) and matrix (in which both players make decisions that effect the scenario to be played).

The most appealing part of this section for me, however, is the "Path to Glory" campaign. This describes a campaign based on choosing a warband lead by a champion and playing scenarios to win "glory points" which can be used to recuits new troops or improve the ones you have. It reads like a simplified version of the old "Realms of Chaos". Usefully, it also specifies that you can randomly generate your warbands or choose from any of the options on the random tables, allowing you to use the campaign either with an existing army or as the basis for building a new one.

 Good, but could we have few more unit options?

It's not all good, however. Not every faction is represented in the tables. I can understand why the newer ones would have been left out, but I'm not sure why there's no tables for the Seraphon. Also, all of the factions from the Death and Chaos compendium books are included, but for some reason Order and Destruction are not. So while I can use my old Undead and Chaos armies to build a warband, I can't do anything with my Dwarfs or Greenskins as only the Fyreslayers and Ironjaws are included. Hopefully, GW will put out some more tables online.

The final section, "Match Play" is the one that most people will be buying the book for. This includes some tournament rules and scenarios as well as a battle report. This is a nice touch and reminds me of the days when GW supplements used to repurpose White Dwarf content. Though, I believe this battle report was written solely for the book.

 So that's what a battle looks like

The tournament rules include some fun random tables of artifacts and traits giving you some ability to customise your characters, which is a nice touch. But the most important bit is the points section. This is a very comprehensive list that includes all the existing war scrolls and even the formations. It also includes all the units from the early compendium PDFs that GW put out, even for models that have been discontinued like the Bretonnians. The only thing missing is Forge World. Hopefully, they will follow suit and put out there own points list.

Finally the book includes the four page basic AOS rules, so you don't have to print them out or buy any other books to play.

The book isn't all good. One of the "historical" scenarios included is a ridculously oversized batttle between the forces of Chaos and Death. All the units in it are way over the top. To give an example, it includes a unit of 24 Varanguard which would cost £480 alone at GW prices. The battle is designed to be multi-player, but would still rely on several players each with large Chaos or Death armies to put together. If you going to include a large multi-player battle, why not one with more mixed factions so there is a chance that someone out there might actually be able to play it?

Can anyone play this?

But that's my one major complaint. Overall this is pretty good stuff, that expands the AOS rules in an interesting way without undermining the simplicity which was the essential selling point. I have a few quibbles, but nothing major. I'm not sure I'm going to be playing a lot of AOS in the future, but this book does make it a lot more likely.

Beyond the Lid of the Starter Box

Yesterday, my copy of the Beyond the Gates of Antares starter set arrived from Warlord.

This acquisition broke my rule not to start any new games, but, in my defence, I had been wanting to get into a squad-based sci-fi game for a while. Warhammer 40,000 seems like a mess these days and Mantic's new version of Warpath hasn't exactly grabbed me. What ultimately sold me on Beyond the Gates of Antares, was the Ghar, angry, aggressive little creatures that do most of their fighting from inside huge, vaguely crustacean, battle suits, putting them somewhere between goblins and Daleks.

I won't go through the contents of the box in detail. There are already two decent unboxing videos available. There's Warlord's own, which runs through everything but is a little rushed, and Beasts of War's, which is longer and more leisurely and has Warlord's John Stallard adding commentary.

 Two Sci-Fi games designed by Rick Priestly

I can't offer a comprehensive review at this stage, though I do have a few observations. The set has a lot of references to old Games Workshop games, intentional or not, which is hardly surprising given that the rules were written by Rick Priestly. The front cover art is a clear nod to the first edition Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader book. More subtle was the decoration of the interior sides of the box with other Warlord games products, something that used to be standard practice for Games Workshop. The box also included a leaflet introducing the world of Warlord games, that reminded me of the leaflet Games Workshop used to publish in the mid 1990s. It even includes a section at the front entitled "what is a wargame?" Warlord seeming to be pitching to an audience who may not be familiar with Games Workshop, rather than assuming that GW will do the job of introducing players to the hobby.

 The Antares box with my, quite bashed, Battle for Armageddon box

The quick start guide also felt very mid 1990s Games Workshop. It guides players through the very basics of the game and also, sensibly, includes decent assembly instructions for the models in the box.

One thing I didn't expect was the small piece of scenery from Sarissa precision (the company that had previously produced my Japanese shrine model). Warlord had advertised this, but stated they only had a limited number and had stopped advertising by the time I put in my pre-order, so I was pleasantly surprised to get one. I'm hoping this will lead to further collaboration with Sarissa, it would be nice to get a range of custom Antares scenery.

So far, I have only had a decent flick through the rulebook. Although the rules are fairly detailed, the basics seem quite straightforward. A lot of it involves rolling under a models statistics on a D10, with much of the detail being applied in the form of modifiers. This should make it fairly easy to start with the basics and add more detailed rules with experience.

The book also includes six decent army lists and 12 scenarios, 6 standard and 6 narrative. The only slightly disappointing thing is that the box does not include scenarios designed specifically for the models you get. I like the fact the two sides are asymmetric, with 20 Concorde troops plus drones taking on only 6 Ghar battle suits, but the two sides are not an equal points match, and a few scenarios designed to compensate for that and introduce new players to the game would have been welcome.

However, Warlord have now put out a new scenario, designed to use the limited edition model you get in the set. It's designed to use the Ghar and the Algoryns, rather than the Concorde, but includes some optional rules that allow you to use the starter set models to play it. Definitely welcome.

There is still a lot included in the box and I'm going to spend plenty of time getting to grips with it.

Rise of the Kage

After many months of basically not thinking about it, my copy of GCT's ninja-themed board game Rise of the Kage arrived on Friday. I had put money into the Kickstarter months back and then done my best to forget about it.

The nice thing about Kickstarters is that you can suddenly find yourself in receipt of a huge crop of new games or models that you paid for months earlier. The downside is that in can derail your existing plans (this should have been a post about painting the Warhammer fortress).

ROTK is an "asymmetric" game in which 1 - 3 players control ninja, sneaking into some location to accomplish a mission, the details of which are not fully revealed until part way through the game, while the other player controls the guards and and a "boss" character who leads them. In some ways the game is reminiscent of dungeon crawl games, like HeroQuest or Dungeon Saga, in that several players each controlling one model can team up to take on a "GM" like player who controls a larger number of weaker opponents. But the emphasis on stealth adds an interesting new dynamic.

One of the original selling points of the game was that there would be two of each model in different colours to represent different states. So you have orange models for unalert guards and red for alert, grey for undetected ninjas and green for detected. Somewhere along the line, GCT seem to have realised that this wasn't financially smart and dropped it from the commercial release of the game, where states will be represented by counters. So only we Kickstarter backers get the two colour models.

Unfortunately, something went a bit wrong and GCT sent out the wrong ratios so most of us do not have exactly fifty percent in one colour and fifty in another. This is not exactly a disaster as we still have the counters, can easily re-paint a few models and GCT insist that we have far more than we are likely to need for the game in any case.

That said, GCT's first announcement of this screw-up was actively confusing and pissed off a lot of people who felt they were being fobbed off. GCT's later response struck a more apologetic tone. Given that anyone buying the game outside of the Kickstarter will only be getting models in one colour, I am not overly bothered.

Seguing from what we didn't get to what we did, we red alert level backers received two fairly substantial boxes, one for the base game and one for the docks of Ryu expansion.The contents of both is substantially similar, each contain three ninjas, a selection of guards, cards and a double-sided board.

GCT made the decision to package everything as if we had bought the game in the shops, which meant that each box came with a collection of models packaged inside, with the extra, alternate colour models, packaged separately in a small white box. Having pledged a little extra, I also got a third boss model and some cards to use the models in Bushido.

After a few early reports, I had been concerned that the models would be a made from very soft plastic with poor detail. This turned out not to be the case. The plastic is not quite as hard as Games Workshop's or Renedra's hard plastic models, but harder than Mantic's restic. There are some mould lines and most of the guards ended up with bent spears, but this should be fixable with a bit of hot water. The casting detail is excellent. This is particularly noticeable on Minato, the boss from the expansion, whose individual scars can be picked out. The only draw back is that the models seem a little small compared to those from Bushido, which is disappointing given I plan to use them for that game.

 Minato, scars and all

I have read through the rules but not tried them yet. As with Bushido, the rules are better laid out for reference than for learning. The manual runs through all the cards and components first, explaining what everything means, but often using terms that aren't defined until later in the rules. It only starts to make sense once you get to the end of the rule book, and you may have missed crucial information on the way. For example, it took me some time to find out the number of starting guards (its on the boss sheet).

Unusually, the expansion contains no additional rules, just extra cards and a single sheet defining the set up areas on the new boards. Everything else in included on the new cards, which suggests the game will play very differently depending on your choices of ninja, board and boss, all of which impacts the available cards.

I'm looking forward to giving the game a go, though it will probably be some time before I try painting any of the models.

First game of Age of Sigmar - a few thoughts

I actually tried out Age of Sigmar for the first time yesterday, digging out my dwarfs and Chaos Warriors.

The Dwarfs brought

1 Dwarf Lord
1 Rune Lord
10 Hammerers
10 Warriors
10 Miners
10 Thunderers
10 Quarrelers
1 cannon

While Chaos had
1 Chaos Lord
1 Chaos Sorcerer
10 Chaos Warriors
2 units of 10 Marauders
5 Chaos Knights
5 Marauder Horsemen
1 Giant

 Deployment

I had no idea if these would prove to be balanced, but they seemed roughly right at the time. Having played the game, here are some observations.

1. It plays very quickly, The whole game was done and dusted in 2 hours, not including setting everything out and packing it up again. A similar sized game of Warhammer 8th edition would probably have taken a good hour longer, and that's with me knowing the rules backwards. I had never played Age of Sigmar and had the rules down in minutes with only a bit of checking backwards and forwards.

 Chaos take heavy casualties from Dwarven missile fire

2. It is in some way like Epic 2nd edition, in that the basic rules are very simple, but just about every unit has its own special rules. In practice, a lot of these rules are fairly generic. The rules for musicians and banners tend to be shared across whole armies. These could have been summarised at the start of each army list, but the plan appears to be to make sure that all rules are included on the units war scroll. Like Epic, I could see the game getting increasingly unwieldy the bigger it gets. The rules say a game with 100 models a side should last "an evening" which is a pretty open-ended statement.

 The miners tunnel there way onto the battlefield to assist the Thunderers who are still holding their own against the Chaos Knights

3. You can't use previous editions of Warhammer to judge how units will behave in AOS. There isn't nearly as stark a difference in the combat performance of different units. Take the Chaos Warriors and Hammerers, for example. Both have the same saving through, but the Warriors have two wounds each. Both have two attacks each and hit on 3s, though the Hammerers wound on 3+ while the Chaos Warriors wound on 4+. The big difference is that the Hammerers have a rend value (saving through modifier) of -1, while the Warriors don't. In fact, the whole Chaos armies is short of rend values, which means they don't hit very hard against dwarfs who are quite well armoured.

 Having dispatched the Dwarf Lord, the badly-wounded Giant lurches towards the Dwarf lines

4. Individual heroes can be very vulnerable against units and large monsters. Because they can't join units any more, I made the mistake of treating them like units in their own right in the same way as Kings of War. If you do that, they can be swamped by larger units, especially as units can now hit and wound a Chaos Lord exactly as easily as a Goblin. The only thing that makes characters tougher is that they have more wounds, which makes them behave like an elite unit of 5 or 6 models.

 Having defeated one unit of Marauders, the Dwarf left flank finishes off the Marauder Horsemen

5. On the other hand, monsters can be lethal. The Giant was comfortably the second most dangerous unit in the game, because of the sheer number attacks he could bring to bear. He swatted the dwarf lord aside in one combat round. If he hadn't been killed by the cannon (the most dangerous unit because of the amount of damage it did), he could have rampaged through the dwarf lines.

 The Miners and the Rune Lord bring down the giant (taking some damage when it fell on them) and turn their attention to the Chaos Lord, who has summoned Marauder reinforcements.

6. Combats can become bogged down. The crucial fight between the Hammerers and the Warriors lasted for most of the game. Morale is no longer a decisive factor in combat. In now works by rolling a single D6, and adding the number of models killed this turn. If this beats the units bravery, they lose a number of models equal to the difference. This means the morale is only likely to wipe out a unit if they have already suffered significant damage. Combats last longer, but it also means that a good unit is unlikely to be wiped out by an unlucky roll.

 Despite serious wounds, the Rune Lord defeats the Chaos Lord (who also suffered damage from cannon-fire)

7. The order in which combat is fought can be crucial. There are no initiative values in AOS and no priority given to charging units. Instead, the player whose turn it is selects a unit to fight, and the other player selects one. There is no need, and usually no advantage, to choosing a unit in the same combat. This meant that the Chaos Giant was able to kill the Dwarf Lord before he had a chance to fight, but this meant giving the Hammerers the first strike against the Chaos Warriors.

With the Chaos Warriors defeated, the Hammerers turn their attention to the last unit of Marauders

8. Ranged units are a little odd. There is nothing to stop them shooting when they are in close combat and, technically, they can shoot a unit they are not in combat with, though this is difficult as enemy models block line of sight. What this means is that ranged units are not as vulnerable in close combat as they used to be. In fact, thanks to some lucky or unlucky rolling (depending on your point of view), the Thunderers were able to beat the Chaos Knights, although it took them most of the game and only one Thunderer survived.

9. There are a lot of aspects of the rules that feel quite "gamey". Which is to say, they don't seem to represent anything in the real world. Hit and wound rolls being the same, regardless of the opponents abilities, that you can shoot in and out of close combat without penalty and that the order in which combats are fought is crucial. It's hard to translate any of these into any "real world" situation.

Overall, the rules are quick and easy, albeit with a few uncertain rules that could be clarified. In theory, it would be good for quick pick up games without too much planning, but the lack of points values complicates this, because you end up having to do more work to set up a balanced game.

The rules seem to have been written with novice players in mind, keeping the basics as simple as possible and adding additional rules only as you introduce new units. On the other hand, a refusal to introduce proper points values works against this. If the idea is to produce an uncompetitive game, I don't think refusing to provide guidance for army building will do it.

Although I will probably try the rules again, if only to see how well it plays with different models, but although I like the simplicity and speed of the rules, I don't like having to spend time working out balanced games.

White Dwarf 193

It has been far too long since I wrote one of these (actually it's been even longer than that, given that I started this post and then abandoned it in order to start again). To be honest, the principle reason I have been avoiding them is that I have to go and scan a bunch of pages for pictures which drags out the publishing time of the posts.

But with White Dwarf monthly now officially dead as a concept, it feels like the right time to pursue this with an increased sense of vigour. While my collection doesn't extend to the end of the monthly magazine, I have dipped in and out frequently enough that I can pull together a representative sample of most eras of the magazine, even if I have to abandon the strictly once a year rule. And with the magazine at an end, so to do these entries.

The cover comes from Codex Angels of Death, which covered the Dark Angels and Blood Angels, neither of whom are featured prominently in this issue

To business and White Dwarf 193. We have reached a turning point in that this issue represents the first, and nearly the last, time that the magazine has consciously been re-designed.  White Dwarf has absolutely changed over time, 181 looked nothing like 121, but this is the first time someone has consciously said "That thing we used to do? We're not doing it anymore, we're doing something else." This happened with White Dwarf 191, the second issue to be edited by Jake Thornton.

On the surface the really big changes amount to an increased page count and the introduction of two pages of card pull outs. The latter felt hugely valuable at the time, given how much of Games Workshops games were delivered in the form of cards of one sort or another, from board sections, to magic item cards, to vehicle datafaxes, to army cards, to counters, to wargear cards and on and on. So including a card section was adding a lot of value to the magazine. Of which more later.

Beyond the immediate, not much else appears to have changed. Visually, the magazine is much the same as White Dwarf 181 but turned up to 11. This is exemplified by the replacement of the venerable old White Dwarf logo with a bigger, more angry and cartoony version by Wayne England. Inside, the "red period" is still in full swing with everything painted in bright bold colours. Articles have huge, colour headings, expansive box outs and side bars (one article, on Warhammer 40,000 missions is more side-boxes than article) and huge coloured borders either side of the page into which content occasionally intrudes.

 How much of this is article and how much is sidebar?

So not so much a reinvention or redesign as the same thing further emphasised? Not quite, because if you take an even closer look, there is something else going on below the surface here. But to understand what that is, we have to go back to the start of our journey.

I have written about this before, but back when White Dwarf 121 was published, Games Workshop was chronically inept at the business of producing and distributing rules. They weren't necessarily bad at writing them but there was very little sense of what they were for or how to deliver them to customers. This is why Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 were published as books and everything else as boxed games; why Warhammer had a single slim volume of army lists and Warhammer 40,000 was divided into an odd mix of articles of White Dwarf compendiums; why the Space Marines shared a book with the Imperial Guard and Squats while Chaos and Orks got two thick hard back volumes each. It was a glorious mess and one from which White Dwarf benefited hugely.

White Dwarf 121 contained preview material from Realms of Chaos months before its release, alongside articles for Space Hulk and Advanced Hero Quest that had no planned home in any supplement at all. Add to that a painting guide and showcase that essentially looks at whatever the 'Eavy Metal team felt like working on without any reference to the rest of the magazine content. What's left is an Ork preview, that looks like news, but acts as an introduction to over a years worth of Ork material that would eventually, after much re-editing, find its way into the huge Ork rule books. Its probable that the books only got that big because the designers kept churning out more content.

So what we had was a design studio that seemingly did whatever it felt like, without any sense of how it would be published, and a White Dwarf magazine that simply helped itself to whatever it liked, because there wasn't anywhere better to put it. We end up with magazine articles that look like rule book extracts and rule books full of magazine articles because no-one is clear on what anything is for. Meanwhile, only a small part of White Dwarf actually consists of the sort of content you might find in a conventional magazine.

By White Dwarf 193 this has changed. Games Workshop finally has a definitive model for publishing rules, albeit one with a few rough edges. Release a large boxed game, then a supplement that covers all the bits you couldn't fit in the main game plus some cards. Some lucky games get more than one. For most games, this is enough. For Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, each army gets its own book which includes all the rules needed to play that army plus an army list. This model makes it far easier to get what you need to actually play the game, albeit at a cost, so that you can focus on actually building an army.

The downside of this for White Dwarf is much of its content dries up. Even then, it takes some time before this is accepted. Consequently the rules articles continue, although now they're re-printing content from recently or soon to be released supplements. The process is gradual, so White Dwarf 157 can still fill up half its pages with a preview army list for the Space Wolves, even while re-printing the Grand Theogonist rules for Warhammer. And the studio occasionally throw them a bone, such as the Chaos Dwarf rules, as no-one is planning to give them a proper book at this point.

Along the way, they also figure out tactics articles and battle reports are a good way of generating content that doesn't belong in a rule book most of the time. But the effects are still patchy.

What we start to see from White Dwarf 191 onwards, is a conscious attempt to restructure White Dwarf as an entity in its own right, and not just a dumping ground for leftover studio material. As a consequence, we start to see material that feels more consciously "magaziney" for want of a better term. The first big thing is the introduction of interviews, some with key members of the GW studio, such as Andy Chambers in this issue, others with "celebrity" gamers or people who have produced nicely painted models or armies. None of these are particularly in depth, but they do provide the kind of behind-the-scenes information that a magazine for GW fans, as opposed to a rules dump, should provide.

 Now we do interviews

Other subtler changes take place. There is a visible shift towards trying to provide genuinely useful content. The 'Eavy Metal article in this issue takes the form of a response to questions, there is a new modelling workshop article on game boards and we get semi-regular rules FAQ article. The article on the newly-released Imperial Guard Hellhound becomes part rules re-print and part tactics article, giving the magazine some added value. This issue battle report is a follow on from an article in the previous issue, which presented a linked campaign of Warhammer scenarios setting Orcs against Dark Elves, with instructions on how to build Orc huts. The battle report puts the final scenario to the test. The end result is a neat thematic link that demonstrates that article ideas can be put to practical use.

 The battle report shows off Orc huts made from Pringles tubes

The other way way in which White Dwarf tries to carve out an identity for itself is by creating a distinction between the White Dwarf team and the studio team. The WD team are introduced in photographs on the opening page for the first time. These photos are repeated by each article to reinforce a sense of authorship. Members of the team interview studio staff, which has the effect of placing the WD team slightly outside the GW structure and bringing them closer to the reader. Prominent GW staff, Andy Chambers, Jervis Johnson and Nigel Stillman are given semi-regular columns with names that highlight their "guest" status.

 The editorial and meet the team page. Some look happier to be here than others.

The overall effect of this is to give White Dwarf a clear identity of its own, one that is at least in part distinct from Games Workshop and the studio. It is also making a clear attempt to justify itself on its own terms, which means providing useful content to its readers, albeit with varying degrees of success. Say what you like about the aesthetic choices of the era, and they are certainly out of keeping with Games Workshop of today, but there is a sense that the team behind this issue were really trying to produce a good gaming magazine.

White Dwarf 169

Back in the dim and distant past when I wrote my last retrospective on White Dwarf 157, I noted that and Games Workshop was going through a period of transition. By White Dwarf 169 the transition was more or less complete. Warhammer 40,000 second edition had been released and Games Workshop had begun the cycle of five year re-releases of games and army books, little did we know it at the time.

  Bjorn actually features the minimum allowable amount of red for this period

They were also going through what has become known as the "red period" due to the excessive amount of bright red paint used on models, often in the most incongruous places. This amply demonstrated in the claws and horns of the newly released Rat Ogres, Vermin Lord and Bjorn the Fell Handed, all of which are bright red for no discernible reason. To be fair, the period wasn't so much about red as about the use of brighter primary colour generally and a lack of subtlety overall. Partly this may have been about appealing to a younger audience, though another factor may have been that White Dwarf was now in full colour, though in places the magazine struggle to find a way to use it, leading to some oddly coloured illustrations and huge logos at the tops of pages.

"Colour in the illustration, make the title red and bung on a massive logo."

One change in the magazine is the way that the news section at the start of the magazine has shifted from being about general Games Workshop news to being essentially a list of products. A few years earlier this would not have been possible as the company simply didn't have something new to show off every month. For better or worse Games Workshop was going to have to find a way to fill these pages and from then on they would be as regular a feature as the monthly battle report.

White Dwarf had now moved firmly from pioneering new rules and systems, to simply previewing or even reprinting the contents of existing books. This can be seen in the articles on Skaven special characters, and Arkhan the Black, all of which come straight from recently released army books, while the, actually useful, guide to painting Eldar Guardians is actually a preview of the new Warhammer 40,000 painting guide.

This issue is slightly atypical in that a considerable proportion of its contents was given up to White Dwarf specific material. Shortly after the release of Warhammer Fantasy Battle 4th edition, White Dwarf had included a "free gift" of a cardboard cottage you could cut out and assemble yourself. With Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition released only three months earlier Games Workshop decided to repeat the freebie, with a free cardboard bunker. However, on this occasion White Dwarf really ran with the concept. As well as the obligatory "how to assemble your bunker" modelling workshop, Jervis Johnson wrote a substantial article with rules for using the bunker in games. At the end of the article was a scenario to use for Space Marines and Orks which was a direct follow on from the booklet of starter scenarios included in the Warhammer 40,000 boxed set. From the perspective of a new player, this would have been excellent value, particularly at a time when Games Workshop produced little scenery and much of it had to be scratch built. Sadly, this sort of useful unique content was a rarity during this period.

 Free scenery in White Dwarf, what strange dream world is this?

This month's battle report is all but unique in White Dwarf history, as it covers a game of Man O' War, Games Workshop's naval game. Although fondly remembered by some now, it was somewhat overshadowed at the time being released almost exactly between Warhammer 4th edition and WH40K 2nd. It was a simple, straight-forward system with a couple of interesting innovations, including a special template that also marked out ranges and a magic system based on cards. The card-based magic system used spells based on the college of magic and had the clever idea that spell doubled up as dispel cards for spells of the opposing college of magic.

The game did, however, have some significant flaws. The first was that every single ship, flyer or monster in your fleet, as well as shore forts had to have its own template for recording damage. Although this made tracking damage simple, these templates were not small and in the games I played with my friends we often used as much space storing templates as playing the game, a significant draw back at a time when only one of us had a dedicated hobby room. Secondly, the boxed game only contained templates for the plastic models included in the box. The rest had to be photocopied from the rulebook. This was compensated for somewhat in the expansion sets Plague Fleet and Sea of Blood, though this would still only give you enough templates for one squadron of each ship. The idea of including the templates in the boxes of ships evidently had not occurred to Games Workshop at the time.

Man O' War featured in only one other White Dwarf battle report and this was more an example of play than a true battle, with no photographs and covering only one turn. In this issue, the game's designer (and now head of the Black Library) Andy Jones lead his Empire fleet (resplendent in bright red!) against Jervis Johnson's Dark Elves. The Dark Elves were actually supported by a squadron of Nurgle ships, which illustrates the extent to which the studio armies of the time were more collections of models painted to display new releases than a coherent force.

 The Bright Red fleet

Andy was normally a Bretonnian commander, whose ships didn't use oars and were dependent on the wind. Consequently, his deployment was all wrong for the Empire and he ended up getting a pasting. It probably didn't help that Jervis' allied Nurgle ships were long ranged specialists which did an excellent job of compensating for the Dark Elves only significant weakness, their lack of range. Andy did manage to sink Jervis Black Ark, but overall the outcome was pretty one-sided.

 The more effective Evil Alliance

All in all, this issue features a couple of distinctive features. The Man O' War battle report is something of a novelty while the Bunker and its rules provide a real selling point for Warhammer 40,000 players. Sadly, this issue is not really illustrative of the period, which saw White Dwarf providing less and less unique and interesting content and more reprints from army books.

Warpath - Taking the Plunge

So I have finally taken the plunge and grabbed a copy of Fate of the Forgestar. Or, more accurately, split the cost and contents with MLB with him taking the Marauders and myself the Forge Fathers. I wrote a little while back that the contents of Warpath's starter box failed to inspire me, but a 40% reduction to £30 from Dark Sphere overcame that objection rather comfortably. Whether the reduction indicates the inevitable failure of the game, Mantic as a company and possibly the entire wargaming industry or whether Dark Sphere simply picked up a few too many starter boxes remains to be seen. But for £15, I felt it was worth a punt.

A big stack of semi-assembled Mantic goodies

In terms of sheer numbers, MLB has done rather better than I have. He got 40 Marauders and a Raptor, for my 20 Forge Fathers and a Heavy Hailstorm cannon. That said, five of my twenty are veterans made from plastic-resin and in points terms we are pretty close to even. I have also benefitted from a bonus five forge fathers thrown in. Actually there are six, but as you can only use squads of five and there are only enough bases for five I give Mantic props for not advertising six.

The plastic troops are rather better than I expected. Much has been made of Mantic reusing their fantasy sculpts, but it works better than might be expected. In the case of the Forge Fathers its barely noticable, with only the backs and legs and optional heads coming straight from Kings of War. The legs integrate nicely with the stylised armour and the addition of some goggles take off the fantasy edge of the bonus heads. That said, that half the squad have cloaks is a little odd. They have also inherited a problem from the Fantasy dwarves, the pieces don't quite fit together properly meaning you either have to file down the backs or put up with a small gap between pieces.

The Marauders have proven a lot better than expected. It helps to see both types of sprue, the one with two bodies and the one with three. They are clearly intended to work in combination as the two body sprue comes with a number of spare heads, weapons and accessories that help customise the rest. With a little imagination and effort you can easily put together a good variety of decent looking poses.

As for the rest, the resin plastic is solid, free of flash and mold lines and sticks comfortably with super glue. On the down side, not all pieces fit together as well as I would like; the raptor is going to need some filing work and the veterans heat cannon cables do not in any sense join up with their back packs.

We haven't had a chance to try the rules yet (we only got them last Saturday) but they seem refreshingly straight forward. There is something rather appealing about the idea of a game we can get through in an hour or so without masses or page flipping and cross referencing. I am very much in favour of Mantic's commitment to getting everything into as few pages as possible. The presence of vehicles and multiple weapon types within a squad add a little complication over Kings of War, but nothing particularly confusing.

Also in Mantic's favour is the inclusion of a double sided scenario sheet designed to use the models in the box and with summary rules for all of them. Something that Games Workshop pointedly failed to include in Isle of Blood. The sheet does call the set Fate of the StarForge on a couple of ocassions and, less forgivably, fails to include the rules for the Anti-Tank gun on the Marauder Raptor, but, overall, it is a highly welcome inclusion and ensure that the set can function as complete game. That said, any truly new players are going to need to invest in some dice pretty soon, the box comes with ten but the Heavy Hail storm cannon alone rolls 16 for each shot. This is a definitely a "buckets of dice" game.

I am certainly looking forward to getting everything assembled and painted and giving it go. Is it worth fifty quid? Based on what I've seen so far, probably. Is it worth thirty? Most certainly.

Blood in the Badlands

A week or so back I picked up Blood in the Badlands, Games Workshop's new Warhammer supplement, more on a whim than anything else, but I have been pretty distracted and it has taken me a while to gather my thoughts.

It's an unusual book, billed as a set of campaign rules, but it also covers fighting underground and provides siege rules for the first time since 6th edition. I was half expecting something like the old Generals Compendium, a mix of rules and articles none of which quite fitted into a coherent supplement. It is a bit like that but not quite.

Basically, the White Dwarf staff ran a campaign set in the eponymous Badlands region of the Warhammer World and this is an account of it, along with the rules they used. At heart its not very different than the kind of "campaign chronicle" that any gaming group might put together except for being nicely bound and illustrated with colour photographs. It's an unusual way for Games Workshop to present a set of rules, essentially introducing them with examples in the form of battle reports and accounts from the players. It's also quite a good way to stagger the rules, with certain elements only coming into play as the campaign evolves.

In a strange way this reminds me of the old Realms of Chaos books, or of Warlord's Black Powder and Hail Caesar rules, not in terms of tone and content, but more in the sense that this provides a tool box of ideas that players can dip into as it suits them, taking what they like and discarding the rest. It is certainly possible to play the campaign as written using everything and background to the Badlands is included, but equally players can simply take inspiration from it and develop their own rules using the book as a pointer as to the kind of problems they will need to solve.

The rules are also enjoyably personal, with elements that clearly only apply to the team's own campaign. For example, the siege rules include a specific over the top Skaven artillery piece clearly converted by one of the players. I don't think the intent is to give the Skaven a specific advantage so much as to inspire players to develop their own custom rules.

The only real draw back to the book is the price, which at £20 seems rather high for the amount of content. I suspect I have mostly paid for full colour pictures and hard back binding. Though, in its defence I think it benefits more from being well illustrated than from the recent Warhammer Army books as illustration is a large part of the point of the book.

Overall, I am rather fond of this. It won't be to everyone's tastes, especially if you prefer rules to be highly rigorous and complete. And I don't know how much of it I will actually use as yet, but I still think there is a fair bit here of interest. More than that though, I enjoy the concept and style of presentation. It feels like a book about gaming rather than simply one to sell games and these days, from Games Workshop, that is quite refreshing.

Tamurkhan - A Review

I managed to get my hands on a copy of Forge World's Tamurkhan book, on Wednesday. I only popped into the local Games Workshop during my lunch break for a pot of Gryphon Sepia, so this was something of an unexpected purchase.

To be fair, it wasn't entirely on a whim, I had been meaning to get the book sooner or later, I just hadn't anticipated seeing it in my local Games Workshop. As a Chaos Warrior player, the books interest is obvious, but my principle reason for forking out £45 was to get my hands on the new Chaos Dwarf rules. Back in the days of Warhammer 5th edition I had a pretty substantial army and was quite keen to dig it out again. Especially as the Forge World models so far released are not too far removed from their old aesthetic.

The book is presented as being written by Alan Bligh, with an original story by Bligh and Rick Priestly. This is as much of a credit as Priestly gets in the book and its hard to determine how much of his original idea made it into the finished draft before his sudden departure from GW. The rumours talked about Tamurkhan being the first in a series of "alternate future" Warhammer books, chronicling a time when Chaos finally destroys the world. Apparently, Tamurkhan was to be the first of four books each dealing with a different Chaos Champion, one for each God, in a different part of the world.

There was some resistance to this idea, notably from non-Chaos Players, because it put so much focus on Chaos. I am not sure I agree. Quite apart from the fact the Chaos is now considered to be three seperate armies, thus justifying three books, this concept hearkens back to the old idea that Chaos permeates every aspect of the Warhammer world; it's great unifying theme if you like. Given that Tamurkhan manages to cover Chaos, Chaos Dwarfs and the Empire, it's easy to see how the subsequent books could have given space for an ally and an enemy army in addition to Chaos. Imagine a book about a Slaanesh Champion making common course with the Elves to assault Ulthuan, a Khorne champion recruiting greenskins before rampaging across the Dwarf strongholds or a Tzeentchian champion allying with Skaven in an underground assault on Bretonnia.

As it is, Tamurkhan presents a pretty conventional narrative, in which a Chaos Champion rampages out of the north, recruits an army of suitably unpleasant allies, destroys a few opponents to prove his bad-assness and attacks the Empire where he is defeated. We've seen it before in a few different army books, Tamurkhan just takes longer to tell the story and its hard not to see it as a missed opportunity.

That said, Tamurkhan does a good job of translating its central narrative into a Campaign system and a series of scenarios. The campaign system is nicely open-ended, allowing for multiple players and a wide range of armies. Despite its official status as the story of Tamurkhan it's easy to see it being used to tell the story of any Chaos Warlord. The scenarios are a suitably quirky bunch and, for the most part, don't demand too much of players miniature collection. Whether or not I manage to mount a whole campaign, I can see myself getting some value out of them.

Also on offer are rules for building a huge Chaos Horde containing units from the Warriors, Daemons and Beastmen army lists. Although it's fairly easy to do this without the official rules, there are, nevertheless, a few interesting ideas here. Including Antagonistic units, who may prove unreliable, and the dangerous possibility of attracting the Scorn of Chaos and having to roll on a chart to determine a negative effect. The general is declared the Paragaon with a number of different types available depending on the Champions Mark of Chaos (or not) and there own special rules.

The core of the book, and its obvious reason for existing in the first place, are the new rules for the various Forge World models. These are divided into three sections, Chaos, Empire and Chaos Dwarfs. The first two sections are simply new units and characters for the existing armies. Chaos gets eight new options:
Tamurkhan;
Sayl the Faithless (a Sorcerer accompanied by a Chaos Spawn);
Kayzk the Befouled (a champion on a rot beast who allows Chaos Knights to ride Rot Beasts);
Chaos Siege Giant;
Plague Toads;
Pox Riders (Plague Bearers riding the Plague Toads);
Bile Trolls;
and the Chaos War Mammoth, getting its own proper rules after being part of the Forge World range for years.
The Plague Ogres that Forgeworld also released don't get full rules of their own and so, presumably, should be used as regular Chaos Ogres with the mark of Nurgle.

The Empire selection is made up mostly of Special characters, including a Lord on a Demi Gryph (like a Griffin without wings), an Amethyst Wizard on a Dragon, a Mercenary captain and two hero choices that allow you to upgrade your infantry. The last option is the Marienburg land ship, a huge war machine and a nice alternative to the Steam Tank.

But the most important part of the whole book for me is the final section which presents the Chaos Dwarf army list. I was quite pleased with this overall. For a start, just about everything from my old Chaos Dwarf army has an analogue in the new, so using the list presents no problem. About the only thing left out is the old Hobgoblin bolt thrower. The new Dread Quake mortar and Shrieker rockets are just the old Earthshaker cannon and Death Rocket by new names, my Chaos Dwarf warriors can be used as Infernal Guard, which have options for Great Weapons and Blunderbusses, and the Bull Centaurs and Hobgoblins are included.

The list includes:
Sorcerer Prophets (Lord and Sorcerer Lord combined into one, they can ride a Great Taurus, a Bale Taurus or a Lammasu);
Heroes (Chaos Dwarf, Bull Centaur and Hobgoblin);
Daemonsmith (Level 1/2 Wizard);
Infernal Guard (Expensive infantry with Great Weapons, Blunderbusses or Fireglaives - a fire throwing halberd);
Hobgoblins (they can have daggers so can be represented by the old sneaky gitz models);
Bull Centaurs;
Shrieker Rockets;
Magma Cannon (a new short range cannon thing);
Iron Daemon (Steam powered, cannon covered land train that can tow the other war machines);
Dread Quake Mortar;
K'Dai (Daemonic constructs, no models as yet);
Hobgoblin Wolf Riders;
Siege Giant;
Hell Cannon (the same one from the Warriors of Chaos list).

I'm not sure I would want to build a whole army from scratch at Forge World prices, but I may pick up one or two of the newer items. I certainly think it would be possible to mix Mantic's Abyssal Dwarfs with the Forge World models comfortably. Also included is a small selection of Magic items and the Law of Hashut, which gives the Chaos Dwarf Sorcerers a distinctive quality of their own.

I'm not sure how balanced the army list will be, the Infernal Guard seem very expensive in points and some of the warmachines are more than a little extreme. Also, annoyingly, the Lammasu is allowed as a mount for a Chaos Dwarf Sorcerer Prophet, but if you want the rules you have to buy the Storm of Magic book. This feels pretty cheap given that you have to fork out £45 for the Tamurkhan book. At least the Great Taurus rules are included.

The book is extremely lushly presented, with a red leather effect cover, full colour throughout and illustrated in a suitably grim and moody style. However, the book is marred by a number of simple errors. For example, the Infernal Guard Champion is called a Deathmask, but in the army list it states that "the Overseer may be equipped with a pistol..." A relic of the earlie experimental rules where the champion was called an Overseer.

The special character Drazhoath the Ashen rides Cinderbreath. In the bestiary it states that Cinderbreath is a Bale Taurus, but in the army lists notes that he has a stronger breath attack and an enhanced profile. But is you compare Cinderbreath's profile to a regular Bale Taurus there is no difference.

Then there's the repeated references to the Chaos Dwarfs being usable as part of aforementioned Great Host of Chaos, but no rules to do so. Or the odd way that the rules for Blunderbusses are listed under Chaos Dwarfs, but the rules for Fire Glaives under Infernal Guard even though only the latter can use either weapon. Or the odd repetition of the generic Chaos Dwarf rules Resolute, Relentless and Contempt under the Chaos Dwarf bestiary and the general army rules. I could go on.

Six people are credited as proof readers at the end of the book, so there is really no excuse for this kind of sloppiness, especially given the price you have to pay for the book.

In summary a very lushly produced book that is let down by silly mistakes and a lack of ambition. What we have is a fairly standard Warhammer saga with the rules for a few nice models and some extra bits and bobs. Would I recommend it? I'm not sure it matters. If you want to play Chaos Dwarfs or use any of the associated Forge World models than these are the only rules you are going to get. I will probably get some value out of it and probably more than I would have from a standard army book. But, for the price I paid, I can't help feeling this was a wasted opportunity.

Bushido - A Review

I've mentioned Bushido, from GCT studios before. It's one of the most recent of the 'Boutique games', a rather nice term I picked up from RobH at the Miniature Page, for the recent trend for small scale skirmish games with comparatively expensive but characterful models. Bushido is based in a fantasy version of Medieval Japan and its four factions take their inspiration from Japanese History and Mythology, but with a somewhat Manga/Anime inspired aesthetic.

I always planned to write a review of the game once I had a chance to paint some models and play a game. Yesterday my little brother and I tried out the game with my Temple of Rokan taking on his Cult of Yurei.

Master Ekusa

I have already written with approval at the GCT approach of producing starter sets complete with rules and dice. Each miniature also has a card summarising their stats and special abilities.

The rules don't really present any truly original elements, but combine a number of features I have seen in previous games. The basic activation sequence is reminiscent of Malifaux. Players alternate activating models and each one has two action points to spend. Actions can be simple or complex using one or two action points respectively. A slightly unusual rule is that models only carry out one action at a time, potentially acting twice in each turn.

Yumi

In addition to the standard actions, which include the usual attacks, movement, charging and few special ones such as aim, is the Ki mechanism. This is somewhat similar to Anima Tactic's action point system. Characters recover a number of Ki points each turn and they can be held from turn to turn, though each character has a maximum reserve. Ki points can be spent on special Ki feats, which can be anything from special attacks, buffs or debuffs or healing effects. Ki feats can be simple, complex or free. The simple and complex feats require the spending of actions, but free feats can be used at any time, even when the model isn't active.

The combat system is based on a series of opposed dice rolls. Players roll a number of dice equal to a stat such as Ki, Combat or Ranged combat and compare their highest roll. In the event of a draw additional dice are taken into account. In combat an element familiar to players of Confrontation 2nd or 3rd edition comes into play. Players can assign dice to attack or defence. All dice are rolled together, but opposing attack and defence dice are compared. This adds a small tactical element to the combat phase.

Kenko

In addition to stats and feats, each character has a number of key words corresponding to general special rules. These can be quite numerous and keeping track can be quite difficult, though Bushido is by no means the worst offender here (*cough*Malifaux*cough*) and, fortunately, most rules are only a sentence or two long.

For our first game, MLB and myself used only the contents of the starter sets, my temple of Rokan and MLB's Cult of Yurei. Rokan are martial artist monks, supported by peasants and lead by Master Ekusa riding on a turtle. In contrast the Cult is made up of Zombies and spirits and lead by the Necromancer/Puppet Master Kato. The match up ended up not being very fair. The Cult seems to be quite a fiddly faction to play, relying on fear rules and Kato's ability to raise new zombies and keep the others from dying. The Temple proved to be quite straight forward with two very strong combatants in the Martial artists Kenko and Yumi. The peasants are weak fighters, but use their bodyguard rule to protect the other monks, while Master Ekusa is a hugely effective disruptor able to prevent all hostile actions within a particular radius and having a nasty Ki-based attack that can prevent an enemy from acting.

One odd element is that are no stats for strength or toughness. Weapons can provide strength bonuses and number of wounds provides a kind of resilience, but these are, in practice, not as important as the number of combat dice rolled. The key determinant of damage is success level, the difference between the attackers die and the defenders. What this means, is that a character with a high combat stat will be generally good at fighting across the board and it is not easy to differentiate between a skilled but weak fighter and a clumsy but strong one.

Ichiro and Atsuko, Peasants of Rokan

There are a lot of distinct processes and rules to keep track of, particularly the keywords and MLB forgot about fear several times. However, most of the processes are quite straightforward and there are some clever mechanisms, such as turning the character cards to keep track of whether a character has activated. We will play again, but I suspect the Cult will prove more effective as MLB gets a better handle on their special rules.

One thing that is definite is that the miniatures are well sculpted and distinctive and the game world suitably different from other Boutique games. Definitely worth further investment of time and energy.