On my painting station..

Hey guys, todays post is going to focus on what I am currently working on as well as more comments on the state of 40K.  I havent been able to post pics in my last 2 posts and so wanted to give you guys an idea on what I have completed and what I am currently working on.  Right now the order of the day is to complete my army list for the Las Vegas open.  In the last couple of weeks I have completed building and painting a maulerfiend, Huron Bleakheart, and a couple of more troops.  I still need to paint up a melta gunner, 2 rhinos, and build 2 40mm objective counters.  In the middle of all this, I have also gone full boat with updating my Tau army.  I received several tau models for Christmas and got to building them right away.  This was the first time I actually modified the crisis suit models by repositioning legs and arms but also magnetized all of their weapons to give me flexibility in their weapon loadouts.  My new commander I also magnetized as I wanted to have the ability to run him with fusion blades and still be able to switch him out and use him with dual missile launchers, plasma rifles, etc.  I plan on focusing on finishing my farsight enclave and as crazy as it sounds finish a drop pod blood angel army. 

Why a Blood Angel army?  Why not? It also doesn't hurt that I have a lot of blood angel models just sitting around.  I have thought about selling them but dont have the heart to as i did spend a lot of time putting them together.  I especially spent a huge amount of time on my death company and 2 furioso dreads with putting them all on custom bases that i made out of broken floor tile and textured resin putty.  I also have 2 Storm ravens just sitting around and 5 drop pods that I have accumulated over the past 3 Christmas.  
Its time to go against the meta and build a terrible army... lol.  Hopefully per the rumors these guys will get a new updated book this year.  


Ok some more thoughts on the state of 40k. The nid book has definitely about as much nerd rage or even more then when the chaos space marine book hit.  
My initial thoughts of the book is that all thoughts on running your old 5th edition list should be thrown out the window.  This book needs and most be played differently then what people are used to.  
Synapse is now an important element of the game and needs to take precedent in your list building unlike before.  Unless your bringing a nid airforce, forget about just going at it with just one flying hive tyrant.  they are too expensive and very easy to kill unless you are running 3- 4 other buddies with him to fly around with.   my thoughts are that walking tyrants with tyrant guard, tyranid primes in big squads of gaunts is what you will be seeing on the tables.   gone will be the 3-4 tervigons, in will be venomthropes and biovores.  i still need to digest the book further before i say the book sucks.  hmmm, i do have a lot of nids laying around maybe now i will give them a shot as we have very little nid players in our group.  let me know your thought guys, are the nids the weakest book in 6th edition or are they the sleeper hit.  

Dataslates, Formations, and the day 40K died..to the competitive set....

Howdy guys.  40K as we know it is going through some tremendous changes at the moment.  No more are we privy to waiting long periods of time waiting for updates, army updates, etc, the advent of 6th edition brought with it updates and changes that we have never experienced before.  To some of us, 6th edition has heralded a golden age to 40K with armies getting updated with much more frequency, updates to the game in the form of codex supplements, etc.  To others, 6th edition has brought the death knell to 40K.  These vocal minority, usually from the competitive side of things are sounding the alarm that 40K is now d-e-a-d, dead, that balance has been thrown out the window in favor of profits.  Well I wont deny that GW is in the business of making money, a lot of money and from the stand point of being a publicly traded company, they do have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits.  Some of the Dataslates, GW's newest digital updates/changes definitely are guilty of this by providing special rules and updates to their holiday bundles.  Of course some of these updates/changes have been one-sided, one just needs to look at the Tau Hunter Cadre dataslate and see that by running this Tau "formation", you get tank hunters and preferred enemy space marines for free.  40K as it stands, as it always stood since my beginning of my 40K "career" has never been balanced; in one edition or another, one faction would be favored over another while another one is nerfed to unplayability.  The examples are there, CSM 3.5, Tyranids 4th edition, Grey Knights 5th edition, Eldar 4th and 6th edition, the list goes on and on. So whats my point?  The fact is GW is giving us players something great, and that is options, options to play the game we love how we want.  Last week GW dropped one of the biggest changes to their core game rules with Stronghold Assault and Escalation.  Now usually, these wouldnt be an issue, since they are after all a supplement like a Battle Missions or Planet Strike.  The difference though is that GW in black and white states that this can be used in normal games of 40K .  That alone is cause for alarm in the competitive scene.  I mean how can we crown a champion when all a person needs to do is pay their 500 bucks for their revenant to add to an already over powered book?  What if people add in their Tau formation to this.  Oh the humanity!!! How do we handle the power gaming maddness??!!  We need to ban units or comp tournaments oh no.  Now hold on there, lets take a step back, really how different is this then before?  I mean didn't we ban forgeworld from most of our tournaments?  Isn't terrain already setup for players when the BRB asks that we take turns in placing the terrain.  Do we not run different mission types then those from the book as the ones in the book are perceived as being unbalanced?  The list is of items that need consideration is a little longer now but the answer remains the same, just allow what you want.  Allow what the players want.  Offer different types of tourneys, ones that stick to just using the BRB and supplements, to anything goes gladiator type games.  In the end, play the game how you want to play it.  And this is the beauty of our hobby my friends, choice. 

New Mini dexes and Supplemental codexes

Sup everybody. Today i am here to talk about the fruition of some of the rumors that were hinted at last year and during the first months of 6th edition and that is the coming of mini dexes.  With GW pulling the curtain up on their next project, codex Inquisition the rumors that we would see mini dexes or allies dexes come out seem to have been verified.  I have to tell you this is just an exciting time to be playing 40k as this along with the codex supplements  opens up a lot of options for us gamers.  Will there be codex creep with these new books ?  Hopefully not but what I do wish for is new models to be released along side these new books.  Take in point the new sisters book.  What a golden opportunity GW lost to make more money by the release of new sisters models.  This could have been an easy release with just 2 new boxes, say one for 10 sisters and one 5 sister box with all heavy weapon options to make retributor squads, maybe a clamshell HQ model?  Im sure the new book is selling but think of how more it would have sold with just a couple of new model releases....  There have been rumors for years now that new plastic sisters have already been worked on so whats the hold up?  Which brings me to the inquisition codex.  Wow was this a surprise release, nobody in the world saw this coming.  Will this be a full army?  The codex says you can run it as one but the real strength lies with its ability to ally with any other imperial army or combination.  Of course once the book dropped and once everybody got a chance to read it all everybody will be allying  in is Coetez  or the cheap inquisitor with the 3 servo skulls.  Now making it just another ally choice would be fine.  The fact that this an additional org slot which then still allows you to ally in another army normally is a little over the top.  I am happy though that it specifically says that xenos armies are excluded from being battle brothers as this would have really been insufferable.. lol.. ok so not that bad.  What does it really mean really in the overall scheme?  Nothing just that armies that resolve around infiltrating or scouting (looking at you White Scars) might feel a little invalidated.  Here's  hoping that the next digital codex keeps bringing the options... just hope that its not that broken...

Meta in Peril.... Grey Knights again???!!!

Hey guys, today I finished listening to the latest episode of the 11th company and made the mistake of heading out to everyones`s favorite color commentary and 40k expert Stelek and oh my gosh I got the feeling that they think that the Meta is in peril due to 2 books that were released this year - Tau and Eldar.  Stelek of course chose the little kid route and  took his toys and went home and judging by his last posts over the last 3 months decided that 40k as it stands is unplayable.  I applaud TO's who have taken the steps of leveling out the playing field by adding more terrain or more line of sight blocking terrain pieces so that armies with the ability to ignore cover wont auto win if they get the first turn.  In fact, per the rules of the game, the game is designed to have some line of sight blocking terrain so games are not just shooting galleries.  I will give Stelek credit with his USG game rules for competitive 40K rules, rules to streamline the game for tournament play, I have read some of it and wish him luck with it but to be honest, dont see it going anywhere.  The 11th company in their latest podcast cast what I say a dark shadow on what they call a meta where only if you take eldar or tau will you have a shot at winning any tournament.  I might agree with this to a point but come on.. How do you explain Ben Molie getting to the final tables with a necron/Ork list?  Or the guy from the FTN podcast who took a blood angel list and did very well with it?  Is it harder for players not using Tau or Eldar?  Sure but I still believe that its the player not the list that makes the winner.  Am I blind in my assumptions?   Are we in the era of the Grey Knight, eh Tau/Eldar.  Is that all we we see in every tournament top table or final 5? Where are daemons in the middle of this?  To many of the 40k experts, this codex is part of the problem as well with its unkillable screamer star build.  No matter what, top tournament players are going to take what they perceive as a good or powerful army as they want to win and find that using lists like this will help them achieve that.  If the internet says that Tau are over powered, or Eldar wave serpent spam is the only way to win tournaments, guess what, that is all you are going to see. 

I heard a very interesting rumor/gossip on another podcast in regards to the speed that GW is doing releases.  The host stated that during his conversation with this insider person, one of the reasons that releases were coming out so quick was that GW wanted people to stick to their armies, buy some allies and units to update their armies and to create all comers armies with their armies.  The speed of the releases would make it that the meta would be constantly changing and so people wouldn't be able to keep up with the changes.  This sounds all fine and dandy but in the end, GW knows that the faster it can release product, the more money it can generate.  These top tournament players will and have been buying and playing what is perceived to be the top armies.  What my hope is that with new  releases, new codexs become the top dog.  So what could be done in the meantime?   Bring back comp?  Nah, but when even Goatboy from bols is sad and angry about the current state of the game and proposing that comp gets implemented into major Tournaments is the current state of the game that horrible?  Will maybe its the fact that 40k isnt a tourney friendly game? GW has always maintained that 40k is more a beer and pretzels game which in the end could be the issue after all...

With the new Horus Hersey book out now, I have been in full Nightlord mode and have been working on adding more models to my biker squads, rhinos, and some basic CSMs.  Pics are of my converted dark vengeance DA bikers to Nightlord bikers.  Let me know what you think.