White Dwarf 392. August 2012.

I had huge expectations for this issue. As the follow up to the huge release of 6th edition 40k I had in my head a lot of designer's notes, extra fortifications, more armies from GW staff, terrain articles about how to recreate some of the awesome boards from the rulebook. I don't know why I set my expectations so high each month but I refuse to give up on this once glorious magazine. I firmly believe that it has to get better and I'll keep on hoping that it does each month. With that out of the way lets jump right in...

New Releases - Those expecting to see Chaos Space Marines or Dark Angels will be disappointed, GW have decided to spring some Chaos Daemons on us. I've never been a fan of Daemons, but some of these have started to change my opinion, slightly. The seeker chariot / Hellflayer of Slaanesh just looks weird in my eyes, the Exalted Seeker Chariot of Slaanesh is a bigger improvement on them though. The plaguebearers and nurglings actually look alright and I might be tempted into grabbing a box of each as allies to a CSM army I might start at some point. The screamers, Flamers of Tzeentch and the Blue Scribes don't really do anything for me either I'm afraid to say. Loads of old stuff has been re-released in finecast. Speaking of finecast it's the Beastmen's and LotR turn to receive the resin treatment this month.

Maybe I'm missing something with these Daemons? Please comment below with what you think of them. Do you play them? What do you like about them?

The Hobbit - A double page photo with a tiny little box that gives us almost no information at all.

Chaos Daemons - A look into the four powers of chaos in "closer" depth, along with some mini paint guides that don't show step-by-steps, just what paints to buy. I think a possible reason why the models don't do it for me is because they're inherently compromised. Having to fit in with two radically different settings probably meant that some things had to be compromised along the way, just my opinion though.

Modelling Workshop: The Warp Forge - An interesting article into how Chad Mierzwa got a lovely fucked up effect on his Soul Grinder using liquid green stuff, and Andrew Kenrick shows us his Death Guard he kit-bashed with some new plaguebearer bits along with his amazing Forgeworld Nurgle Dreadnought. This has to be my favourite page of the issue so far.

Battle Report - Eldar & DE v Daemons. The joint Eldar team took a cool looking army and thankfully didn't include any imperial fortifications in their list. The Daemon army looked like the only selection criteria was "is it new? I'll use it!". Because of this and the extremely uninspiring terrain I couldn't be bothered to read the report, sorry.

Battle Brothers - Having to wait until page 60 for some content about 6th edition is quite cheeky/fucking ridiculous depending on how polite you are. It's all about allies and showcases some more personal armies from the studio team and it's well worth the wait. Phil Kelly's IG and Wolves look incredible, Robin Cruddace's Howling Griffins brought back major 2nd edition nostalgia!

The Librarians of Tzeentch - Mat Ward gives us a little bit of background about the strange blue scribes.

Battle Report - Daemons v High Elves. The Daemon army now includes the Soul Grinder. This is a really bizarre decision, it looks completely out of place! The High Elf army looked really nice though with nothing strange going on. Once again the table didn't look great, a couple of citadel woods and an arcane fulcrum a battlefield does not make!

Arena of Death - A revisit to the versus concept from a few months back pitting brand new fantasy characters against each other. While the fact that this article takes up too much space is annoying I like the fact that they thought outside the box and did something that wasn't in the rulebook.

Blanchitsu - John shows us how various people have tackled the Warhammer Nurgle Chaos Lord, over and over and over. There are 9 photos of the whole miniature on 3 sides of paper, and that doesn't even include the multitude of close ups.

Working with Citadel Finecast - I'm not going to say anything other than I hate that this article has to even exist.

Armies on Parade - A look at Matt Spencer's great Ork army. Painted in Bad Moonz colours with tons of weathering, battle damage and even a converted Stormraven.

I can't tell if I've been so negative because I'm so tired from watching loads of Olympics or if that would be making excuses for this issue. Much of it seems plain lazy so it gets a disappointing 2/10. Those points are for the Armies on parade, Phil Kelly's allied army and Kenrick's Nurgle models. Other than that the WD team really need to pull their socks up and get back on the right track they were heading down in the past few months. Next month looks like it's going to be Dark Angels rather than CSM from the back cover.

I'll be following this review up with a video review in the next day or so. In the meantime if you want to see anything specific from the issue or the accompanying Daemons update pamphlet all you need to do is become a follower of the blog and leave a message below! Cheers for reading.

Hobby vlog episode 3 - White Dwarf 391 July 2012 review

For this episode of the vlog I thought I'd do a test of reviewing White Dwarf 391 in video format. Sorry about the length of it, turns out I can ramble quite a bit.

I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts about it please. Do you think it's a good idea? Bad idea? Is it too long? Do I go into enough detail?

Feedback would be very helpful because I'd like to keep doing them and with the issue 392 coming out this weekend I'll be doing a video to accompany the usual written review.

Thanks!

Hobby vlog episode 2

In episode 2 we take a look at my gaming display cabinet. Or as it's more commonly known, the humble ikea billy bookcase.

A couple of apologies to accompany the video- it might be shaky, not Blair witch motion sickness inducing shaky but still noticeable. Also, I seem to say 'erm' and 'um' a lot, I'll work on that for next time!

Finally, just like a ask at the end of the vlog, I'd love to hear how you guys display your miniatures or if you keep them all in storage. Cheers for watching

Battle rep: Necrons vs the new BFFs Tau and Ultramarines

Commander o'Ralai and his small but elite force of battle suits and fire warriors had been exploring the planet of Caerphillax VI for some time. They had thought it was uninhabited. They were wrong. When the first of the Necrons awoke and emerged from their underground tombs the usual first encounter protocols were followed, and torn to shreds by gauss and tesla fire. Since shaking hands wasn't turning out to be an option the order was given to retreat, regroup and figure out how to deal with the metal menace. By a strange twist of fate a small Ultramarine contingent made planetfall at around the same time as the conflict was starting. A quick vox transmission between the force commander and o'Ralai established that both armies were prepared to work together, the Ultramarines would help the Tau with the Necrons, using their past experience. The fast mobility of the Tau would assist the astartes in locating a relic they had recently learnt of.

Caerphillax VI was a relatively flat planet, some hills and rocky outcrops. Not a huge amount of vegetation but many old abandoned ruins and bunkers scattered across the landscape. Little was known to the Tau of the previous inhabitants which was exactly what had o'Ralai's interest piqued. On the plateau of land designated as Mill by the accompanying air caste, the wind was still and the nearby sun was rising high into the sky as the first of the combined Tau and Ultramarine force approached where they believed the relic to be located. The lack of wind and the tenseness brought to the foray by the possible appearance of the Necrons was putting everyone's nerves on edge so the majority hung back at a distance to provide support if the worst happened. It soon did. As soon as the battlesuits and astartes vehicles, a Predator and a landspeeder, approached the rough location of the relic some warriors, immortals and a transport ark were spotted. o'Ralai made a mental note to add these to the libraries of species encountered when he could next return to his quarters onboard his personal Manta.

As soon as hostiles were spotted Ultramarine force commander Brennan blink clicked the order for a drop strike to be launched. Two dark blue drop pods streaked through the bright clear sky towards the ruins where the immortals had camped. As they plummeted to the ground Brennan barked orders over the vox to the contents of the rapid insertion comets. Seconds after they punched into the surface the hatches sprung open on miniature charges and out emerged Dreadnought Heltaris and a squad of tactical marines. With all guns blazing the first squad of warriors went down, ably assisted by the multi melta snap firing while on the advance. Covering fire from the predator strafed towards the ghost ark which exploded. As the crew yelled their celebration over the vox Brennen reprimanded them for their lax battlefield discipline, reminding them that if they were to win this war they would need their full concentration. As much of a great opening salvo they'd fired at the crons was, the robots or whatever they really were returned fire and the tactical squad took the brunt of the strange weaponry.

While the Ultramarines were duking it out with support from a team of Broadsides, o'Ralai and his crisis team were circling around the nearby buildings, picking up as much intel as they could about the new enemy but also of their new found battle brothers fighting style. Buoyed by the brave hand to hand display between Heltaris and the overlord 1001101 he strode into the thick of the fray, shield at the ready. The crisis team jet packed back into cover after delivering their master into the assault to lay down covering fire for their blue battle brothers. The fighting between 1001101, Heltaris and o'Ralai was hard, many others joined and many died, the rate of attrition was huge with both sides taking losses. Lychguard and even what looked like a shard of the necron c'tan deity applied their weight and eventually won out with Heltaris' illustrious lifetime coming to an end and the Tau commander having to eject from his advanced XV-9 battlesuit at the very last minute to avoid destruction. Brennan, fuelled by his desire to avenge his oldest friend's death plunged headlong into the star god fragment, thunder hammer swinging and storm shield raised. In his anger all thoughts of the codex left Brennan's mind and this rage was unfortunately his downfall. While he focussed on fighting the c'tan and avoiding his gaze of death, 1001101 swung silently behind and his almighty warscythe sliced through the mark III battle plate with surprising ease.

From that point on with most of the allied command out of the picture, any hopes of halting the rise of the necrons and recovering the relic were failing fast. Squads of fire warriors, astartes and crisis suits did their utmost to stem the tide of Spiders, Wraiths, Stalkers and Destroyers but were all overpowered by the strange and alien technology. The immortals who had spent much of the battle observing and sniping from a height scrambled, as much as robots can scramble, towards the relic objective and the remaining Ultramarines located their fallen commander, voxed in an emergency thunderhawk for immediate extraction and medical attention from their apothecary while the Tau regrouped, laying low waiting for the manta to swoop out of lower orbit.

Little was said between the two circumstantial allies in the aftermath of the battle but many communicae have since passed between the recuperating Brennan and o'Ralai as they plot a return to Caerphillax VI to exact their revenge on the living metal overlord.

So there you have it, my first report written using the amazing articles and advice of a gentleman named Charging Carnifex. I apologise to those who wanted more of a commentary of how I felt 6th played (bloody awesome actually) but that might be coming along in a follow up post. So let me know what you think of the report, and perhaps more importantly please have a look at Charging Carnifex's blog, it's at http://voxdiariesoftheimperium.blogspot.co.uk/ and he is also on twitter where he tweets as @chargincarnifex. Although this is far from perfect and I've probably missed more of his advice than I've used, it was a huge amount of fun and will hopefully develop this style further in my next report, stay tuned!

Warllama hobby vlog episode 1

So this is my first video in hopefully an ongoing series about the hobby. In episode one I take a quick look at my painting area and the mess I create! Let me know what you think please folks!

Finally completed Warmongers Miniswap

A long time ago (in a galaxy far far away) someone on twitter, sorry I can't remember who **it's been brought to my attention the gentleman who came up with the idea was none other than Rob or @Peppermint_Cat on Twitter and his blog is found here http://www.themossop.com/ lots of awesome there** suggested that us #warmongers should put our names in a hat (just names, no keys) and we'd each get randomly put into a pairing. We would then need to post each other a miniature for the other person to paint.

I jumped at the chance to paint something different and was paired with a chap called James. You can find him on twitter with @chairmanasheth and on his blog here http://politicaldice.6sided.net/ , I recommend you do. I decided to send a techmarine but due to problems with the warp (well the fucking royal mail) he never made it so Chief Librarian Tigurius was sent and arrived. While all this hassle was going on I received a Wyrd Miniatures Freikorps guy. I'd never paid any attention to Malifaux so was totally unaware of this guy or how to paint him. James advised me to head in a steampunk direction so off I went and here's the result.

If you haven't been on twitter but are interested I would definitely recommend it. There's a great community of gamers there, many from the Shellcase Alliance, just look for the #warmongers tag. Also if you want to see the other #miniswap figures check that hashtag too.

Half the year down, how's it been?

On the 1st of January this year I tweeted a couple of goals that I wanted to achieve this year so here's a look to see how I'm getting on with them.

My tweet read "Goals for 2012 so far - 2500pt GK army, 2k Dwarf Army, finish SpaceMarine on hard, 100 twitter followers and 5k blog views! Do-able? maybe"

Certainly one of these I haven't done anything about in such a long time, I very rarely play videogames any more spending most of my spare time watching TV box sets or hobbying, so the Spacemarine on hard mode is still in the incomplete category.

For the two armies I mentioned I have made small progress. I increased the size of my Grey Knights from 1500 up to 1600 with the purchase of Coteaz the other week. Quite a way off my target and I really don't think I'm going to hit it. 2k might be more realistic.
The dwarfs saw an increase in points from 1k at the start of the year to 1500 with the addition of Thorek and his Anvil of Doom, other that that and some basing the short ones haven't been touched.

The areas which I though I was being unrealistic about are actually the ones that have been achieved well ahead of time! I can't remember when it happened but I've crossed the target 100 followers on twitter and am currently up to 170. At the start of the year my blog had been receiving around 300 views a month so I thought 5000 views would be a really tough target. In a very bizarre and amazing twist I got lucky with a couple of posts that people around the world seemed to enjoy and just hit the incredible heights of 7066 views in the month of June! I still can't believe that so many people would take an interest in what I write about so in a roundabout way this is a bit of a thanks for helping me with my resolutions!

I know this hasn't been much of a post but thought it was interesting enough to myself to have a look back. I'm not going to be setting any new targets at the moment but I do have a favour to ask! The number of comments my blog gets is a tiny percentage when compared to the amount of views, all I ask is that you could drop me a comment please! It doesn't have to be anything amazing, just a hi would be cool. On that note I'll sign off so I can read a bit more of 6th edition before tea.