Review: Brisbane GW, Australia

It has been many years since I was last in Brisbane -- one of the best cities that I know.  I used to live here, in fact, so I can attest to the reason why Brisbane (and indeed, most other Australian cities) regularly rank very highly in various "livability" indices published online.

Having the afternoon free, I meandered my way to the city centre games workshop ... mostly to see some of the new Chaos Space Marine miniatures.  In the process, I thought I'd scribe a quick review like I have for other Australian city centre GWs (e.g. Perth, Melbourne).

The store itself was leased about 3 years ago, having moved from Queen Street Mall (the main shopping street) to the Queen Adelaide Building.  This location means that there are probably less random visitors than there used to be -- indeed, the current location probably necessitates a little local knowledge to get to the place.  But it is still in the heart of the city and accessible.

The dimensions of the store are long and thin, with several quality tables available for play inside.  I was greeted by one of the staffers, Blake, who had a good chat to me about chaos space marines, death guard, alpha legion and some daemons.  He seemed very enthusiastic (but not creepily so!) and friendly -- just what is needed.  Seems the staff have nearly 100% turned over from when I was last in Brisbane - they didn't recognize me and vice-versa.

I liked not only the staff, but the open, clean, and well-lit condition of the store (in contrast to where they used to be several years earlier, which was always broody and dark by comparison due to the black painted walls).  The layout was good, but perhaps too much LoTR stock in comparison to Melbourne stores which didn't seem to be shifting much.  All in all a very pleasant visit!

Wargames Gallery: Eldar Templar Fusion

An eldar fire dragons aspect squad face down a squad of terminators rapidly approaching from the open maw of a Black Templars land raider.

(neither army belongs to me, I just thought this was a good, composed shot from one of the recent rounds of our local 40k league).

Challenges and the New Chaos Marine Codex

One of the strong changes in the chaos codex is that challenges now must be accepted and given.  Granted, there's very few challenges that my chaos space marines have been backing out of, but the inability to back out of them is now a cause for thinking about change.

One of the most used load-outs for squad characters (aspiring champions and the like) is the well tried- and well tested power fist.  Sadly, the power fist will strike at Initiative=1.  So, unless we're using plague marines with Toughness=5, feel no pain, or even Nurgle bikers of doom (and wow -- aren't bikers of Nurgle much improved in the new codex!) and the like, we need to think ahead about how to optimize this.

I think many players will be looking to power weapons (power mauls in particular?) as an alternative option for squad leaders.  Striking at initiative seems to be important in these duals.  If taken with the mark of Slaanesh, this means that against most armies, the champion will be going first and hoping to wipe out the opposition before they can get a move in.  

Where is this all leading?  Well, I think we're not only going to be seeing a resurgence of all types of chaos space marine armies, but I think Emperor's Children and Noise Marines in particular are going to be seeing a fair amount of play.  If we couple striking first with lots of small units of Slaanesh marked marines, and the occasional re-roll on the dark apotheosis chart, I think there's going to be daemon princes of Slaanesh made on the battle fields of 40k with increasingly regularity.  

On the flip-side, there are plenty of HQs and squad leaders we don't want to get in to challenges.  Ahriman springs to mind -- he just isn't going to make it against many close combat orientated units (at least compared to Abbadon et al.!).  And some of the HQs seem pretty much well aligned with shooting style armies: consider even a regular lord manning a quad gun behind an Aegis defence line and you get my drift...  

Typhus and Zombie Plague Armies from the New Chaos Codex

In Apocalypse, Typhus and friends had a formation that consisted of Plague Zombies.  This has now been translated to the new Chaos Space Marine codex in a specific format.

With Typhus, the chaos cultists can be converted in to plague zombies.  This has advantages: fearless and feel no pain being chief among them.  That said, there are disadvantages: slow and purposeful and the inability to take optional upgrades that would usually be open to regular cultists.

One of the problems that has already been flagged with the wording of Typhus' rules concerns what counts as "upgrades".  Specifically, whether increasing the number of zombies in a unit counts as an optional upgrade.  I don't see that this counts as an option.  An option is usually taken as being one of the listed equipment swaps (and so forth).  Hence, huge blobs of plague zombies seem feasible!

For under 1000 points, one can now form the core of an army from Typhus and hundreds (well, perhaps up to 200 and something anyway) plague zombies.  This is quite incredible really!  Even if the plague zombies are weak, the feel no pain rule will keep many alive for long enough to get in to close combat to cause headaches, and to go to ground on top of a valuable objective.  Not too many armies have the firepower to take down more than one hundred models ... and even in close combat, death star units can only take out up to tens of models in close combat per turn.  Take thunder hammer terminators: a squad of 5, at worst, would take out 10 per turn.  Against several tens of zombies, they're going to be locked up, tarpitted and whittled to death eventually (yes: even terminators roll 1's for saves, despite recent experiences!).

Depending on points limits, this leaves room for several fast attack, heavy support and elites choices (perhaps alongside some plaguemarines, or Nurgle daemon allies as well?).  Building such an army feels appealing to me -- I've not done such a "horde" army in a while.  And making it competitive seems like a neat challenge -- so I'll try to post a speculative army list once the codex is actually released.  Is this flavour of plague zombie army speaking volumes to other people as well?  Or is it simply my Nurglesque mind that has been corrupted?!

Of Helbrutes and Dreadnoughts in the New Chaos Marine Codex

It is now clear that Helbrutes are the new entry for Dreadnoughts.  Superceding, replacing and eliminating Dreadnoughts completely, the new Helbrutes have the feel of a re-boot to me.

Not withstanding the spelling of Helbrute (which I feel should have two L's in! ...probably copyrighted elsewhere perhaps?), I think that the word "dreadnought" should have been retained.  One of the main reasons for this, I feel, is because that is exactly what they are!  Indeed, the old legions that formed the core of the veterans of the "long war" were indeed around and remember their old colleagues interred in the coffins called dreadnoughts.  

Where did the dreadnoughts cease being dreadnoughts and where were helbrutes born?  The older background material certainly correlates with the idea that the interred marines were driven mad by being constantly awake in their dreadnoughts (whilst their loyalist cousins were permitted long rest periods between awakenings to preserve their sanity).  So, perhaps helbrutes are just taking this concept a little bit further: a bit more mutated than an old dreadnought -- the new background seems to be pushing this angle: a long time spent insane and inside the warp has produced fleshy and mechanical mutations in excess of even "normal" chaos space marine dreadnoughts.

I'll still be calling them dreadnoughts for a little while myself... 

 

Blight Drone Revisited for 6th

The Blight Drone of Nurgle has been with us (via Forge World) for a while now. And since 6th edition seems to be shining a light on flyers as a new meta-game, I thought I'd re-consider the utility of the Blight Drone in the new environment.

So, what use is the Blight Drone?  Well, I personally see it as a chaos alternative to the land speeder.  Thinking about it in those terms immediately highlights a number of key facets of the Blight Drone.  Firstly, it is a (hovering) flyer.  Being a flyer means that it is tough to shoot out of the skies for many armies that aren't already packing skyfire units (or flakk missiles).  And yes: there are still plenty of army lists that can be found casually or at tournaments that can't truly cope with the influx of fliers that 6th edition seems to be emphasizing.  I'm sure that'll change fairly soon, but as a chaos flyer, the Blight Drone seems to fit a mould that other entires in the codex do not.  I'm looking forward to seeing the full stats of the Heldrake in the new codex and seeing how it stack up against the Blight Drone -- I can imagine that they fulfil two different roles from the leaks that we've seen so far though, and (to be clear) daemons are not getting the Heldrake unless as allies.

In addition, the Blight Drone can act as both an anti-infantry and anti-(light)-tank, including a spot of anti-flier duty if required.  Although the BS of the Blight Drone is low, the twin-linked reaper makes up for this (somewhat), and the mawcannon still impacts a good punch at ground level.  

For Daemons and Chaos Space Marines, the Blight Drone occupies a fast attack slot.  But for the marines, a unit of plague marines must be included before a blight drone can be included.  This competes (maybe too strongly) with the Heldrake for a slot.  If purchased as part of a daemons army, it will deep-strike on to the battlefield (hopefully via an icon) and come on to the board as the rest of the daemons (i.e. daemonic assault) would. And then, if it goes off the board, it will come on (once again) via the daemonic assault rule and could therefore re-appear at a convenient icon.  This opens up some entertaining possibilities for redeployment -- particularly late in the game if some line-breaking secondaries (etc.) are required!  Therefore, I think I'll be seriously considering Blight Drones in daemon-primary armies. Coupled with the splendid new rules for flamers and screamers, daemons is once again looking interesting and competitive...

(image taken from Forge World for illustrative purposes).