White Dwarf 384. December 2011

Blimey! This issue was actually waiting for me in my letter box on Saturday, the day it hit the shops! I was totally blown away by this and instantly made me want to read it. I'd been fully expecting to have to wait until the Thursday after like I've had to do the past few months. Well done Games Workshop, fingers crossed this isn't a one off. Just a shame you've had so much backlash from a very unwise decision. Now onto the review...

New Releases - This section has been seriously cut down. The new Beastman monsters, Ghorgon and Cygor, look interesting if you like that kind of thing. Same goes for the Jabberwock, erm I mean Jabberslythe. Not really my bag though. The Mangler Squigs look cool but the Lord of the Rings dragon just made me laugh. It looks rubbish!

It's a sausage with wings.

It's great to see another double page Black Library spread, let's hope this section continues.

Denizens of the Forest Depths - A focus on Beastmen but nothing of interest for me.

Blood in the Badlands - This is a total surprise and very welcome! I read the whole article straight away, something which doesn't happen often. It's basically the kind of thing I wish GW would do on a more regular basis. It incorporates a bit of everything, from campaigns, to special rules to house rules and is really great value. As soon as I've got a painted fantasy army this is going to the top of my list. Way better than Storm in Magic.

Speaking of which there's some rules for the new monsters for that expansion. Fanatastic to see proper rules making a more regular appearance.

Warhammer battle report - Skimmed this but seemed like a cool battle and the Ogres are really starting to appeal to me. Oh dear must maintain self control.

Blanchitsu - As much as I love Jervis' Standard Bearer this felt like a breath of fresh air. None of the article felt like he was being goaded into what to write about and I think it was great to have someone's personal and honest thoughts about the hobby in the magazine. I wish that there were more columns in it with people writing from the heart about the hobby.

Liber Apocalyptica - More new rules, that while not applicable to me right now has to be applauded.

Double page spread on the Forge World Contemptor Dread was great and brings a great model into the mainstream.

Mat Ward's campaign was a really cool mini article, they could've quite easily just done a battle report about it but to actually put in the missions was a treat. (Hmmm this is all sounding way too positive so far, what's happened to me!)

Painting and modelling section - More please! Even though I'm not going to be painting a Thundertusk it's always good to read up on techniques.

LotR - Can't comment, except the sausage dragon shows up again!

The Augury - Seems to have been really cut down. Is still a waste of pages but a step in the right direction.

Dwarfs and Skaven are on the back page. I'm really hoping this means there's going to be either a lot of Dwarf action next month or more Badlands stuff. Overall this issue was great, not perfect but a definite move forward on some of the recent ones. I honestly hope this is how it will be for the months to come, arriving on time and packed with things I want to read without getting annoyed. 8/10.

Painting progess - Dwarfs

These are the finished units I've got so far for the army. There are plenty of mistakes and areas that need work such as edge highlighting on the helmets and the red parts but that can wait. The aim here is to try and have my whole 1000 points painted up by christmas to a tabletop standard (excluding basing).

The Slayer turned out better than I imagined. I wasn't sure how my technique for painting skin would translate to such a big area but it's turned out ok from a distance, and his hair isn't too ginger, which is always a plus!

Battle Missions - Kill Team

On Friday night my friend Ian came round for some 40k as we hadn't played in a while. I suggested playing the kill team mission out of the battle missions book as we had both previously said how much we loved Necromunda.

I text him a quick outline of the rules and after we'd had a pizza and got my terrain on the table we sat down to get our skirmish teams ready. I decided to take my Tau as they have more options for smaller squads. My team team consisted of 6 fire warriors and 2 XV-8 crisis suits. Ian took a Space Wolves team with 3 Terminators and a Landspeeder. We deployed and off we went! This first game went quite slowly as we adjusted to the rules and tried to remember the basic rules! It was quite tense with the terminators charging towards a few of the fire warriors however the sneaky tau tactics won through with the suits jumping around and popping them. Game one - win.

For the second game we both switched up our lists. Ian had got wise to the shenanigans and upped his list to 5 skyclaws and a Thunderwolf cavalry dude. I'd switched to just 3 crisis suits. The thunderwolf was a total beast and in one turn crossed almost the whole board to smash an XV-8. Needless to say the remaining 2 started jumping away but weren't quick enough. Game two - loss.

The final game we played Ian went for 5 Grey Hunters and a dreadnought. I switched to my ultramarines taking 5 Sternguard and a landspeeder. Nothing of mine could dent the dread however I only realised this after I'd deployed so was already on the back foot trying to chase down his other squad. Needless to say my team crumbled under the failing leadership of their general, me. Game three - loss.

In summary this was a fantastic take on games of 40k and ideal for me to fit in games after work with minimum effort. The small points limit means that it would be really easy to get a kill team painted and by completing a few kill teams you could quite quickly build up a whole army or try different codexes without needing to jump wholeheartedly into it. In terms of tactics I definitely think that the models you can fit in the better. When I took the 3 kitted out suits I was really on the back foot as Ian only needed 2 kills to make me start rolling for losing. I'd seriously recommend for any 40k players to give this a go and I'm already thinking up special missions for it and some custom rules to try out.

Let me know what you thought of it if you've had a game.

My first WHFB miniature, a Dwarf Warrior!

I had the day off yesterday so was really bored with painting blue so got this chap undercoated and started work!

For the most part it was seriously easy (a good thing considering how many I'll have to paint). I was really unsure wheat colour to do the cloth, all I knew is I didn't want to paint more blue!

A few things are still missing, I need to pick up some Dwarf Bronze for some of the metallics and the sleeve needs painting as if it was a lining with runes stitched on it.

Also the base is going to be something special, I've been thinking about purchasing some resin tiled bases so it looks like he's in a cobbled street to fit in with the seaside/port fluff behind my army.

Any comments/criticism/advice you'd like to impart would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Tron Tau test gun drone

I'm really pleased with this drone! My initial idea was to have a white army with a few panels picked out in red and in grey with everything black-lined.

After totally messing up the black-lining I went away and had a real rethink and this was the outcome. I'm still not totally happy with it, for a start I was painting over a white undercoat and my fine detail brush is totally shot so had to do this with a GW standard brush.

I didn't do anything special with the base because I wanted it to look the same as my Ultramarines.

I've just re-undercoated my XV-88 Broadside black so hopefully sometime soon I'll be able to see how the scheme looks on a larger model.

Please let me know what you think! Any feedback and criticism is always welcome.

White Dwarf 383. November 2011

This is going to be my first review of the White Dwarf magazine after wanting to do one for a few issues.

Before I get started on the meat of the issue I feel I need to add a disclaimer! I am a subscriber, mostly so I can get the tasty Dwarf models and also because I don't want to have to go into the hobby store to get it. Being a subscriber it's been quite an awful few months with them messing with the distribution times. Before I used to get the mag around 7 days before the stores. Now I've had the last 3 on the thursday following the Saturday of release. Waddup?!

Rant out of the way, here's the main feature...

New Releases - As expected it's chock full of Necrons. The models look truly epic and it's a real struggle not to just cave in a buy them! However, showing me 3 photos of the same model does not increase this urge threefold. Give it a rest and save some space for real content.
The warhammer Skullvane Manse looks great, 'eavy metal brush set a rip off, what really caught my attention was the limited edition dice. I love limited edition!

News - The interview with Sarah Cawkwell was a really nice touch and I always read the Black Library page.

Necrons - I haven't really read this section yet so my opinions aren't totally informed but the photos look great, the amount of text is substantial (whether the content is is another matter!), it's cool they stuck in some 'eavy metal shots but where's the masterclass or even some basic steps?

Battle report - This was of real interest (although I did skim read) since I play Ultras and am really interested in both Eldar and Necrons. Again the photos look great and was good to see that it wasn't a set-up to sell the new army.

Standard Bearer - Haven't read yet but even when Jervis is just chatting randomly I still love him!
edit: Just read it and it was definitely one of his better columns. Really spoke to me as I find myself on the losing end quite a lot of the time but still have a lot of fun.

Skullvane Manse - If yuo've got this article why do you need the page photo of it at the start?

LOTR Tactica - No comment...

Tactica: Ogre Kingdoms - Again I can't really comment on the content as I've not played any Warhammer (yet) but I like that they carry on supporting recent releases with interesting articles like this.

Armies on Parade - I am hoping that this is going to become a regular feature. I really enjoy looking at other peoples armies and hearing their explanations about choices/schemes. Long may this continue.

Sisters of Battle workshop - Not a lot to digest here. Yeah it's great there's some painting guides but the actual article just feels quite flimsy.

The Augury - Totally pointless. Could do so much more with this section.

Overall I read a huge amount of this issue, including parts that I'm not really interested in! I think this was because there was an enthusiasm about the articles that carried me through it. WD always take amazing photos, and it looks like the writing is slowly coming up to meet it, time will tell. I'd rate it a 7/10. Above average but not in the top quarter. Oh and what's up with no 'next month' page? I've got to turn to forums to get me excited which just isn't how it should be.

1750 point Ultramarine army

I created this list using two primary concepts, what I already own and what I think looks cool! It's not built to be super competitive and is what I think is quite inkeeping with a standard codex army, albeit with a heavy leaning towards the elite slots.

HQ
- Sicarius.

TROOPS
- 10 man tactical squad, meltagun, plasma cannon, powersword, plasma pistol, in a drop pod.
- 10 man tactical squad, meltagun, missile launcher, power fist, chainsword, in a drop pod.

FAST ATTACK
- 10 man assault squad, lightning claws.

ELITE
- Terminator squad, assault cannon, chainfists.
- Dreadnought with lascannon.
- 7 Sternguard, power fist, combi melta, in a drop pod.

HEAVY SUPPORT
- Predator with lascannon sponsons.
- Whirlwind.

Weighs in at 43 infantry, 3 vehicles and 3 dedicated transports. Or 12 killpoints.
My initial thoughts to tactics would be to start with just the assault squad, dread and 2 tanks on the board. Sicarius would catch a ride with the Sternguard and the terminators would deepstrike.

What would your take on this army be? Where do you think it's strengths are? It's weaknesses? Answers on a postcard please!

A Thousand Sons

I started off not really enjoying this book to be honest. I had it in my head that it was going to contain a lot of very strange stuff and wouldn't really relate to things I like about 40k. I vaguely knew that at some point there would be a battle with the Space Wolves but other than that I had no idea what to expect.

The first few chapters didn't really help change my opinion. The Sons were doing some archeology and research and stuff on a planet, and I was just launched into the middle of these marines with really strange names. It was only when the remembrancers and the Wolves showed up that the Sons started to feel more 'human' and I could relate to them a lot more.

Without going into details the story really developed with a huge amount of detail and depth, from the descriptions of how the different cults fight, to the council of Nikea and by the end of the second part I was well and truly attached to Ahriman and many of the other characters., even Magnus, despite him being a total prat about stuff. Not as much of a prat as the Emperor though, crying about his broken science project.

It all climaxed with the grand battle for Prospero and by the end of it I was so sad that the Thousand Sons had been misunderstood and betrayed by Magnus I properly ended up hated Leman Russ and especially Wyrdmake.

Overall this book was a very impressive story and has made me rethink my opinions of McNeill, not that I ever disliked him, I just wasn't caught up in the hype. A very respectable 7/10 and I can't wait to read Prospero Burns. But up next is Nemesis.