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.