Moving!

You may or may have not noticed the inactivity on this blog. As usual real life has butted in and I've been distracted. I've also had to change my email address which is proving to make things a little difficult with some of the extras that I think I can do with the blog, so I'm using this as an opportunity to move blogs and start anew.

So my new blog is http://ineptusgameus.blogspot.com/

see you there!

Oh, E, Arrgghhh, Ouchy! Plus new Eldar toys

I should be painting Lizardmen. I really should, but some how I've hurt my right elbow and it's quite painful to do anything with my right arm (I'm typing through gritted teeth). Which should be fun come Friday as I'm helping a friend move house, which will be made even more fun as I'm off to the Stourbridge Beer Feastival the night before. I'm hoping the pain of a hangover and the pain of my arm will cancel each other out.

Anyway, more interesting news to do with models that go "Pew-Pew" in the 41st Millenium. For those not in the know, GW are releasing a new 40K expansion pack called Spearhead, which is going to be a White Dwarf only add on and is basicly for fighting battles with lots of TANKS!!! Sounds like to me we will be seeing the Apocalypse tank boxes coming back (plus I'm hoping that they redo the classic WD battle report of Rogue Psyker Lord Varlak's Rebellion, which was basicly a massive Tank Battle). But what you want is pictures, so here's the new Fire Prism/Night Spinner kit which is coming out.

Both these images have been pinched off The Warhammer Forum, from this thread by Jackal God.

Some people don't like them while others do. I quite like them, especially the Fire Prism. Also more rumours about the Spearhead release is some more Guard Tanks (basicly the Manticore and Deathstrike) plus some whispering about the Dark Eldar Ravager being redone (basicly think BFG Eldar ship and spikes).The Dark Eldar Ravager sounds really interesting and hints about a possible Dark Eldar release this year!

Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi! (or The King is dead. Long live the King!)

You may have noticed that quite a few Warhammer Fantasy players are scurrying around getting all excited about an announcement Games Workshop have made this week - Warhammer 8th edition is coming out in July. Nothing else has really surfaced apart from that but the rumour mill has been cranking up. You can have a look over on Warseer in the WFB rumour section for more details. Some of the rumours sound quite interesting but again with all rumours you need to take a pinch of salt when reading them.

Above is the new logo for Warhammer which most people have dubbed the Jump Pack Hammer, due to the position of the Twin Tailed Comet. It looks alright but I'm waiting to see the whole book before I make my mind up.

In other Gaz news, I have been quite busy. I've been sent away to do some work at a Power Station and took part in a tournament. Power Station was fun as it's nice to get out of the office and see different things, although I would have prefered to stay at home with all my creature comforts. The tournament was fun as well. Tim Fisher of the Dragon Slayers, had organised a one day event at Maelstrom Games. Tim's cunning plan is to hold a one day event a few weeks before a big event, so players can come and practise and generally have fun. This one was using the South Coast GT rules. I went to the event with Chris and Luke. Chris had brought his Dwarfs and Luke had brought his High Elves as he got in as a last minute entry. He couldn't bring his usual choice of Lizardmen as he had loaned them to me.

The Lizardmen list was quite a cheeky one considering the rules and I took...

Slann with Knows all spells, wipe sixes from a enemy wizard, bane head cupped hands, and a dispel scroll
Priest on EOTG with extra spell and Wardrums
Saurus BSB on cold one with Burning Blade and Mirror Shield
Skink chief on Steg with Steg Warspear
3 units of 10 skirmishing skinks
1 unit of 10 skink cohorts.
1 unit of 11 saurus warriors with Standard and Musician.
1 unit of 6 cold one cav with Standard and Muscian
2 units of 3 terradons

Now I had a rough idea how to use the list which was to use the skinks as shields and then bunker the Saurus, Slann and Stegs together. I played zero games before going to the event and only had a brief look through the lizardman book and I wasn't expecting to do well at all. Here's a quick summary as all this happened before I went away for work.

Game 1 - Dean and Warriors of Chaos
Dean took a 'soft' Warriors list and he wasn't expecting to win this game. I believed that I deployed okay for this game but not really knowing what can do what I was a bit hesitant to commit. This gave Dean the chance he needed and he punished me. Plus my dice decided to punish me for not using them recently and I rolled quite badly all game. This lead to me popping downstairs to the Maelstrom shop and buying some more. Ulitmately, Dean outplayed me as I didn't have a clue what I was doing and I got 20 nilled.

Game 2 - Merlin and Wood Elves
Merlin brought his Wood Elves which for some reason included a Treeman Ancient. Back in the day these were quite hard but thanks to everybody having flaming attacks or access to such things as well as being able to bash him with other big character things (Bloodthirsters), they are generally seen as not very good.  I had learnt my mistakes from my first game and this was a lot closer and really came down to the wire ending in a 12-8 win to Merlin. It was a fun game and I made a mistake with some of my moves as things ended up in a traffic jam which meant I had problems smashing things up (this cost me my EOTG in a combat with Wardancers as I had to charge in my Skinks to allow my Cold Ones chance to get in).

Game 3 - Rupert and Daemons of Chaos
Another fun game and Rupert had brought a tough DoC list but it wasn't that flexible which is why I think he ended up on the lower tables with me. This game was ruled by luck with me having loads at the start due to being able to bounce a miscast onto his GUO (which miscast a few times on it's own) and blast things using the EOTG. All this luck was paid back as my army seemed incapable of holding against a unit of Flesh Hounds which then smashed my Cold Ones in one round, followed by the Slaan/Saurus unit. Game ended with my remaining units scurrying off to contest/capture quarters. Another fun game but ended with a 15-5 win to Rupert.

This meant that I was the lowest placed out of me, Chris, and Luke but I really enjoyed using the army. So much that I'm now collecting Lizardmen which hopefully will be ready for the next couple of events I go to. 40K wise things are quiet due to whispers of the Dark Eldar being the next book and I really like the concept of the army and can't wait to see what happens to them.

And I guess that's why they call it the Warhammer blues...

.... or something that Reg Dwight fella wrote. Like many Warhammer Fantasty players all round the world, I'm feeling down. Not down because some truck reversed into my car last week (that car is going as soon as it's fixed) or because my washing machine broke and peed water all over the kitchen (it's got one more sleep before it goes to washing machine heaven), but Games Workshop have been so tight lipped about what is happening with the 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Since the Beastman release there has been no news about anything to do with WFB. War of the Rings has a big release next month and 40K has had loads of things (Nids, Angry Angels, and a mission book) plus more things to come out over June. But nowt for WFB. While this is annoying, it should be exciting to be honest. GW must be cranking their mechanical gubbins to full, pumping out new models and this seems to be the lull before the storm. If I was a betting man (and I'm not), I would bet that July is going to be when the 8th edition comes out. Which is kind of cool, but it's not because you kind of feel like you don't want to do anything out of fear of having you buy and paint up becoming useless.

Anyway, because I'm slightly mad, I'm probably going to ignore all that due to Project: I buy that for a dollar I'm drafting up to entertain myself over the next few months. Watch this space....

Rabbits, Chocolate Eggs and Rabid Gamers

It's Easter, that time of the year where we all get excited about Easter Eggs, Bunnys and forgetting the real reason why we celebrate it. It's also when GW has chosen to release the Blood Angels and I suppose the theme of resurrection can apply, because BA players have been stuck with an old codex and then a pdf get you by for a few years now. I've had the codex a few days now and been reading through it and it's nice and captures the 'feel' of the army quite nicely. I won't do anything indepth as loads of things will be popping up on the net now (like how unit X is too hard).

More importantly, GW have made an annoucement this week about it's Grand Tournaments. You can read about it HERE but I've copied it below...

We are pleased to announce that the Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000 and the new War of The Ring Throne of Skulls Grand Tournament tickets will be available to purchase from the Games Workshop Web Store from Monday the 12th of July 2010.
The addition of War of The Ring into the Throne of Skulls family as part of our events calendar will be great news for all of you War of The Ring gamers out there! But that's not all.....
We've also taken a look at our calendar and we've decided to hold four seasonal Throne of Skulls Grand Tournaments per year for both Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, instead of three heats and a final. 
This now means that we are able to offer even more tournaments a year and by spreading them out you can enjoy the events at different times of the year too. This also gives even more opportunities for avid hobbyists to take part in great games, make new friends and enjoy the hospitality of the Warhammer World Venue.

Now this is frankly annoying. I finally went to a WFB Heat last year and I was hoping to go to a 40K one this year (as well as WFB if funds permitted) but I can no longer attempt to get into the Final for any system as the format doesn't exist now. While the indi tournament scene will take up the slack for this, its a bit annoying that GW have dropped their 'flagship' event and replaced it with something slightly watered down. Don't get me wrong, I imagine that the seasonal events will be just as much fun as the heats and final but that sparkle won't be there. At the moment, GW haven't said how much these new events will be, so while they will be popular it'll be interesting to see if the tournament regulars still go. Plus point is that War of the Rings gets a slot and possible more support of GW which may get more people playing it.


So do people think that GW have done a good thing here with the change or are you a chocolate powered killing machine due to the change? Whack a comment on and let me know what you think.

Happy St Patricks Day and a Blog shoutout

Well to be sure, to be sure, or something like that. Happy St Patricks day to everybody. Not much gaming done since the last update thanks to that wonderful day, Mothers Day. Basicly my wife is a florist, so I had a few days off to help her with Mothers Day (Delivery Boy and general help) and then she's moved shop and I've been helping with that! So I'm back at work tomorrow for a break!

Wargaming wise I'm going to Warrington GT again to play WFB and the event is now having a 40K tournament as well. WFB has sold out but if you want to try the 40K one, have a look HERE on The Warhammer Forum. There's also a few of us trying to get into the Open War XIII event at the end of May which should be fun. So with the Dragon Slayer Bash in April, Open War in May, Midlands Open in July and Warrington in September (plus a GW Heat), I've got plenty of events to look forwards to.

Also I want to do a Blog Shout out. As some of you may have been aware, GW held the 40K GT Final last weekend (Mothers Day weekend) and by all accounts it was a fun event. Neil Kerr (AKA Skcuzzlebumm) went and is writing a report on his PINK TYRANIDS Blog. He took 'Nurglisc' Daemons (you can see one of his models above) and did fairly well with them. Go to his blog for a read of how he got on.

Anyway, Guinness and sleep is calling now so until next time!

Soul Hunting and Reporting

Blimey, I seem to be getting more and more 40K orientated recently. It's understandable really as it was my first GW game as I got into the 2nd edition 40K just when it came out. Anyway, I popped into my local GW yesterday with the intent of looking through the Battle Missions book and I noticed Soul Hunter on the shelves.

I had quite enjoyed Lord of the Night and I had heard quite a few people have been rating this book, so I picked it up. And I couldn't put it down! I literally spent a few hours reading it once we popped round my Mother-in-Laws and it only got put down when me and my wife went out. Then it got picked up again and was read into the wee hours. It's a enjoyable book and worth getting.

Another reason I've been getting the 40K bug is seeing the Battle Reports done by the Bell of Lost Souls on Youtube. These aren't full blast battle reports but more a quick rundown about a game, and too be honest I have been enjoying them.

I ATE'NT DEAD

As Granny Weatherwax would say, "I ATE'NT DEAD". I've had a load of fun the last few weeks with my internet providers, Tiscali/Talk Talk. Now working in IT, I had a fairly good idea what the problem was (an issue at the Exchange) and was 100% sure it was nothing my end as my phone and router were working fine. I even said this when I phoned them up. Yet still they seemed to have bodged it up and spent a week raising a call with BT to check my phone line, and the engineer was very surprised when I answered the phone as he thought it wasn't working. So a few days later they've managed to fix it, but it seems only after I raised a complaint.

Anyway, Wargaming stuff now.....

I've played three games of WFB over the last few weeks. First game was against Steyvn and was a 1999 point practise game for the Open War event we both want to go to. He took his Dark Elves and I took my Daemons and the game ended with a draw in my favour. A couple of times, Steyvn was thinking about giving up, but I had to keep on telling him that it was close and it was! Second and Third games were against Chris, with my proxing up a Vampire Count army against a Daemon army he was trying out. I lost both games but that was more down to me not understanding how the vampires work.

For 40K, I've been getting more and more interested in the game again, and debating about painting somethings up. We also seem to have the new Blood Angel codex on the GW website, which is being shown as a White Dwarf cover for next month

Looks alright but I did prefer the mockup one I showed in my last entry. Currently waiting to see the codex before I make any desicions about what things I want to go for.

The Angels of Death are coming....

 

The internet world has exploded recently with lots of rumours about the Blood Angels codex and I've been having a look with a trusty bag of salt. Two things seem to be flying around at the moment - The above cover and a PDF with all rules in it.

Firstly we have the cover. Now I've pinched this off Heresy-Online and it looks very nice but as I made a copy of it, the acutal file is called BA Cover Mock UP. While this 'may' be the offical cover (and I hope so as it's nice), I can't help but feel that this is something somebody has quickly made up.

EDIT - Dezartfox has nicely pointed out that if I looked properly at the cover I would notice that a lot of the Marines seem to be Imperial Fists sprayed Red. Shame as it would have made a nice cover!

Next we have the PDF. The PDF is basicly a hand typed copy of the actual rules from the codex (or a test version), so is full of spelling mistakes (like my blog). A general flick through reveals lots of interesting things but it's not until you come across the MIGHTY BAT RIDER CAVALRY entry where you really suspect this is a load of rubbish. The author of the list has tried to defend the rumours and is saying wait until April to see who is right, but I can't help but shield myself with my bag of salt. It's possible that the author has added the MIGHTY BAT RIDER CAVALRY unit as a joke but too be honest if you want people to take you seriously, you can't make jokes. Rumour does have it that GW have confirmed that there is a leaked copy around of the codex, which gives this PDF some creditablity. I for one am happy to wait until April, mainly as I want to read the background more that the rules!

I won't be putting any links up for the PDF as I don't want the GW legal heavy boyz kicking things in.

WAAAGGHHH!!!!

I've been trying to write a couple of interesting updates to do with the Rankings or about how GW are backing away from having all the models ready when a new army book/codex is released, but I seem to have left my muse down the pub (plus I'm not feeling too good). So instead, I'm going to get all excited about new plastic models!

The image above is the new Ork Deff Dread and I quite like it. It's out with the new Battle Missions book, along with some new plastic releases - Space Marine Venerable Dreadnought, Killa Kans, Ork Flash Git, and new re-done Guard Chimeras and Baslisks. I'm currently holding out for the Blood Angel release but I could be painting Orks up if I loose my Warhammer fetish!

Sheffield Slaughtered!

Hi folks. All back from the Sheffield Slaughter and what a fun weekend that was. Real life has been giving me some problems the last month or so, and too be honest I wasn't going to go. But my wfie said I should as I would enjoy it and was she right! I would just like to thank all of my opponents for the weekend - Paul, Rob, Chris, Bernard, and Owen. I got to fight lots of different armies and got 1 win and 4 losses.

I would also like to thank Gareth Hamilton as he is a true gent as he lent me some skaven models from his really nicely painted collection, as I was unable to finish the army I was painting up.

I'm not going to post up any reports as I'm struggling to remember them all, plus they all had the same theme - lots of misfires and the army destroying itself.

Arrgghhh!

Me again. Yet another day off in an attempt to get things finished and what happens? I spent most of today going back and forth between the Accident Repair Centre. Most of the morning was spent with them going through the details of what happened (some numpty drove into my car then drove off), and then I find out they've given me the wrong courtesy car! All sorted now but I've got to pop off again to sort out some other odd jobs. So out of the 8 hours or so I wanted to do today, I've probably done 30 minutes undercoating. Plus pointis that I'm quite impressed with using Halford Car Primer as my undercoat spray. Costs about the same as GW but you get 700ml rather than 400ml and it seems to spray better than the GW one. I wasn't expecting to be able to do much as it's quite cold and damp outside but the Halford Spray did the job!

Random Rant!

Just venting here folks, so please bear with me. Went to take my car to the garage and found out that the dozy woman at the call centre hadn't booked me in so now I've got to take it on Monday. Then the British weather returned to normal (rain with a chance of more rain), so no spray painting for me, and to top it off I went to my local GW which doesn't seem to stock anything but Battalion Boxes!

Not the worst day ever but mildly annoying when I had taken the day off to paint skaven up. I've vented the frustration on my PS3 and been watching videos about Red Dead Redemption (cowboy version of GTA) which I'm quite excited about. I've also got on my to do list, to find time to read Salamander by Nick Kyme. I've got a soft spot for the Black Skinned, Red Eyed, Nice Marines and I quite enjoyed the short story in the Heros of Space Marines book which came out last year. I nearly picked up James Swallows Blood Angel Series but I've heard lots of bad things about it and I don't really want to ruin anything for when I get my hands on the Codex (which I'm looking forwards to how they are fleshing out the background). I've also discovered that I can't seem to finish a WFB book while I can read the 40k ones over and over again. No idea why.

Anyway, I'll get back to moaning about the weather and call centres! :(

It's oh so quiet or something like that

So a fair few days since my last update as real life has been butting in. Work is starting to get busy, which is interesting when the team I'm in has shrunk and now has more inexperianced members than experianced members. Well it's interesting in a watching Mr Bean kind of way - Mildly amusing the first time and then quite dull and annoying afterwards. I've also had somebody done a hit and run on my car during the 'big freeze' (for those Johnny Foreigner folks, the UK was hit by lots of cold white stuff that we don't see very often and the whole country went silly). Thankfully me and my wife were okay but it made me say a few choice words about the person who did it. My car is going to the garage tomorrow and I'll be having some random car in exchange while mine is being tinkered with. Funny thing is that I can see me having a Smart Car (ickle car) to drive up to Sheffield in next weekend.

Speaking of next weekend, Sheffield is almost upon me! Painting wise I've been slacking and got a lot of grey models looking back at me while I type this. Cunning plan is to have a couple of last minute days off, starting with tomorrow to start the monsterous task of painting 160 off models in a week. Then I need to sort out some terrain! Even though the panic of not having things finished is starting to set in, I think I must really like it as I seem to do it a lot.

Meanwhile during all this real life stuff and none painting, I've signed myself up to another couple of events. First one is the Dragon Slayer Bash being run at Maelstrom Games, and this is a one day event to be a warm up for the South Coast GT which I missed out on. Tickets have sold out now but I'm looking forwards to this as Maelstrom Games is not too far away and the guys who run it really like gaming. Second event is a local affair known as The Midlands Open. It's being run by one of my regular opponents Luke and it should be fun as well as local! There's still tickets left which you can find HERE.

I think that's it for the moment apart from waiting for my Tyranid Codex. Due to the delays with the weather, Maelstrom Games couldn't send any out for the Codex release date (last Saturday) but I should have mine for the weekend. I had a peek at it last week when I popped into my local GW for a nose and it looks nice. Not ground breaking (or even game breaking) but should keep fans happy.

2010 is going to be a good year....

Wow, it's 2010 now and I thought it would be a good time to post something on my blog, especially seeing how lazy I've become.

When I was a little boy, 2010 seemed such a long way away and here it is! It's quite a big year for me and my family as there are quite a few big birthdays (I'm 30, my mom is 60, my sister-in-law is 18, and my Grandfather-in-law is 80, plus there are quite a few other big birthdays as well!!!). I also looks like 2010 is going to be a good year for GW as we seem to be having some really cool releases coming up soon.

Firtsly we have the new Tyranids next week and they sound quite cool (plus the Trygon looks a cool model) and then we have Beastmen coming out in Feb. I got to see the army book today and it looks like it's going to be a sneaky top tier list as a lot of people have been poo-pooing them (mainly due to the models) as they have lost a lot of the things in the 'current' book. Personally I like all the new models as well as some of the new rules (Core Chariots, Big Monsters, Hatred if you pass a Ld Test, Bestigor who can nick standards) but I can see some players being annoyed due to Ungor now being on 20mm bases. I think I would be annoyed but move on six months and I can see people not even worrying about it.

Also I had a email this morning off GW, stating that we will be seeing Blood Angels in April. I'm quite excited about this as ever since the 2nd editon of 40K, I've always wanted to collect a company of Blood Angels and seeing how I'm thinking I want to go to a 40K heat this year (as well as a WFB one!), I'm taking that as a sign. Add into the mix that we should be seeing the Relic/GW Space Marine game at some point this year as well as more info about the Ultramarine Movie, (and rumours about 8th editon of WFB and new plastic technology where you have models with no moldlines!) you can see why I'm thinking 2010 is going to be good year!