I’m a big Warcry fan. It scratches that skirmish itch and does not over stay it’s welcome at the table during individual games (looking at you Mordheim and also you Necromunda!). I’ve played a lot of one-offs over the years and in early 2025 I was intro-ing the game with the intent of playing a campaign with a group of semi new players. during this time I decided to get my brother the Blackthorns for his birthday and give them a solid go with painting. This started off well, with two of the miniatures done right around his birthday last March…. then I got the Epic 40K bug and totally shifted gears for a bit there, not getting back to them until DECEMBER of last year. I finally cranked the last one out two weeks ago and it was a journey worth remembering as these are some beasts to paint, and stretched my skill-set to say the least. I am a notoriously slow painter so I feel if I had them done by late Summer, it would have been OK….January 2026? This was not ok.
Stock paint jobs, these guys are mostly painted with gold armor on the box, but I did not want to go that route as it was just TOO FRIGGIN GOLD. Looking at the othher Sigmarines for inspiration, I happened upon an article in White Dwarf issue 502 (a really good issue for paint advice/tips as it goes through their typology of notation going forward for Paint Splatter articles) and in the back it has a beautiful mix of steel and gold armor for Sigmarines. This would be my start. I did a test model of a random sigmarine I had lying around (no idea where it came from) and it turned out super solid. I was quite nervous about messing the Blacktalons up, so this was a critical step.
The Black Talon kit was pretty easy to put together, but I had to decide on helmets or not for all but the elf-lady and I went with no helmets except for Neave who I wanted to look like an emotionless Sigmarine out of the bunch. There isn’t a lot of skin on these guys, so the heads have to look great as they are big focus of the miniatures above all that metal. Rostus and Henrick (the two big dudes) were fairly easy to paint skin- wise, but Rostus is one of TWO bald members of this troop and that’s never easy. Shakana, the crossbow lady, has brown skin and that is the easiest ever to paint and make look good. I’m going to talk about Lorai (the elf) separate.
Metal wise it was Iron hands steel with a wash of nuln oil, hightlighted with ironbreaker, but with a glaze highlight (super thin layer) and when that dries you do a recess wash of drakenhof nightshade and then a final edge highlight of stormhost silver. I did a few scratches in the armor, but since these guys were super badass, I left it mostly alone. The Gold was Retributor Armor with a Reikland fleshshade wash highlighed liberator gold and then a Gore-grunta fur wash, then edged with stormhost silver. I overdid the edging a few times and had to clean it up. Overall both of these recipes worked great for the superheroic models these are, that would never let their armor get dirty.
The rest of the model was just picking out details for the armored guys, but there were two parts to these that I struggled with– the ENTIRE elf lady (Lorai) and the Shakana’s bird. Paint recipe wise I pondered these for way too long (weeks of procrastination) before diving in. The biggest issue with the elf lady is that her skin has to be perfectly smooth AND she has a bald head– no hair at all, totally bald. This along with very delicate armor and weapons and it was no wonder she took the longest by far. Shakana’s bird ended up being super easy, just selecting three different colors of blue and breaking those out into three colors (base layer, highlight, very highlight).
These models have molded bases that have a bunch of stuff on them. I’m not a huge fan of this but it suits these models. Again the base on Lorai was like painting another model though with the tree, mushrooms, water and these weird floating fish things flying around her feet. All of those things needed recipes of highlights, washes and shades and that took awhile. I pondered for several days on what to make the floating fish look like, and how to achieve the shiny water effect on the pond with what browns to use to make it look like muck. I pulled it off but it took way too long navel gazing.
There was one major modelling issue with Neave as she had a horrific gap in her fur cape that had to be filled with greenstuff. Mostly putting these together was a snap (except for Lorai… of course) but it was frustrating to have to fill that large of a gap.
Overall, highly recommended the Black Talons as a kit– these look incredible when painted and I think they redeem the silly looking original Sigmarines. They are absolute terrors on the Warcry table as well.
MAN! this game was a blast to play. 6 players, 9 hours or so of pure unadulterated 1990’s epic glory! This is the first really big epic 40k game I’ve played since college (before the 1997 rules came out, so it was the Space Marine 2 version with the unit cards) and I remembered why we loved this scale so much back in ye olden days. This is a semi battle report, semi-review of 1997 Epic 40k interlaced with a lot of pictures from this giant friggin game.
I talked to folks back in April to see if we could schedule an Epic 40K game at the end of July when Mouth was in town and told them only that it would be “very, very big‘ and plan for all day if they could. It turned out to be quite the large game, the biggest I’ve played since Space Marine 2 in about 1993 or so. We had 6 players, 2 for the Nids (thanks James), one Ork (Mouth), one Eldar (Dan), one Imperial Guard (Chris) and one for the Space Marines (Bill).
The Scenario
Epic 40k was released in a boxed set with ‘three little books’ for the rules, armies and battles. In the Epic 40K “Battles” book there are a slew of scenarios, and for what I wanted to do the Planetary Invasion was perfect. Not everything is on the board at the start of the game, so it gives players some time to come to grips with the system and just how big the game was going to be before it got really big. It uses hidden set up for the defenders as well as the objective markers and excellent morale system from Epic 40k.
The Orks, Mentor Legion, Eldar and Imperial guard would be the defenders and the Tyranids (all 5000+ points of them) would be the invaders. In the scenario, the defenders set up a portion of their forces all hidden (except titans and super heavy vehicles, which can never hide) and on the first turn ONLY flying and drop pod units can be moved onto the table by the attacker (the ‘nids in this case). Next, the attacker chooses a table edge and from turn 2 on, reinforcements from both sides come on to the table (based on rolls, but always at least one detachment). Ideally as all the rest of the stuff comes on the table, things on the table already aren’t there any more so the number of detachments doesn’t get overwhelming.
Fate Cards: we did use the fate cards from the base game as well as the army-specific ones from White Dwarf. These were great, but I would probably dole out a few more for this size of a battle.
We also used the 2D6 and choose the highest rule for firefights and close combat: recommended.
The Armies
One of the huge strengths (among many) of Epic 40k is that it has a very flexible detachment system, one that influenced many sets of 32mm 40k rules that came after it. Players can mix and match to come up with some really crazy detachment build outs as well as some that are HARD counters to tactics from other armies.
With this power comes great responsibility. Instead of the static detachment cards from Space Marine 2 with very generic (and not very effective) detachments, the player’s must create their own. From my last plays of Epic 40k, I learned the hard way that this can take a very long time indeed. If you do this all on game day, you will waste many precious hours doing that instead of blowing stuff up! Build out everything (long) before starting play. This has been made far easier with this super handy online tool.
My goal was to create a set of detachments that covered as many units from my huge Tyranid army as possible, and then create 1200 points of detachments for all four of the other races. With the exception of the Orks, I had to learn what detachments worked, what sucked and what everyone had for models. This took a LOT of research online and in old White Dwarf magazine, namely WD 211, 216 and 217. The Orks as you will see below were really simple to put an army together: it was ALL GARGANTS.
The Tyranids
This army included nearly everything I own to make up the massive invading force. This included a Dominatrix supported by three Hierophant titans, four combo gargoyle/Harridan units (flyers), an artillery detachment to lay disruption down and the obligatory genestealer, termagaunt and hermagaunt swarms supported by Carnifexes, Zoanthropes and Tyranid warriors. All in all, an absolutely monstrous army including over 40 termagant stands alone. This was the only army with air units as I felt the other players (except for the Eldar player) had no experience yet with this version of the game and the interdiction rules would have slowed the game down quite a bit. The air units were sort of just a distraction until turn 3 which showed just how badass flyers can be in the game, but I digress…
I stared from almost zero with painting my Mentor Legion in April and spent the months between then and the July game buying, assembling and painting as much of the army as I could. I meant for it to be a pure marine force and I got CLOSE but due to some unforeseen weekends out of town in July, I had to replace 500 points of a huge assault marine detachment with 2 Warhound Titans.
The main ‘hammer’ detachment was 9 bike units along with 5 Vindicators for close support. This a really good combo for a detachment as it is fast, hits really hard in close combat and can also win some firefights when needed to push back enemy detachments that are out of position. The second detachment is a more standard Marine one loaded into in Rhinos and Razorbacks. Of course, no Space Marine general is going to battle without Land raiders and there was a detachment of 5 plus 2 predators to keep enemy infantry away. I wish I had finished my massive assault force as the player playing the Marines (Bill) would have had a great time drop podding them into the middle of the Nids! I love the little dreadnought models from this version of the game but could not include any in the force unfortunately. Next time!
One of the dudes had models for the new game Legion Imperialis, so he brought a gigantic Leman Russ detachment, 8 griffons (for massive barrages) and a couple of Baneblades. It looked OK on the table with the 10mm scale difference, the Baneblades looking a lot like Ogres from the older game Ogre from Steve Jackson Games. He didn’t have a ton of infantry, which is probably good because they would just be meat for the grinder vs the ‘nids anyway.
The Eldar
My buddy Dan has a huge amount of Eldar from ye olden days (and some newer stuff) so I just made up a list very close to what was used in the WD 216 battle report but with the edition of a Titan instead of an Avatar unit. This contained a core aspect warrior unit in grav tanks, the absolutely required night spinner detachment to lay down disruption all over and an Engines of Vaul unit with 2 scorpions and one cobra for the pop up MADNESS. Plus the Jes Goodwin sculpted masterpiece of an Eldar Phantom titan to round them out. Of the forces, this one is probably the most effective overall and balanced.
Last but not least we have our violent green friends. Though I have a large Ork army, none of the infantry or vehicles are painted and I made a rule for this game that everything on the table would be painted (and painted well, which is not hard for 6mm for the most part). As such the orks were by far the easiest to fill their 1200 points: two great gargants (one containing the Warlord) and one Slasher Gargant. I acquired three beautifully painted gargants earlier in the year, and they looked gorgeous on the table (which was good as they were hella expensive to buy).
The Imperial Guard, Orks, Eldar and Mentor Legion were the defenders, so they had to set up first, but other than War Machines (including Titans, Baneblades and Engines of Vaul) all units could be hidden. Each player rolled to see what started on the battlefield and what was in reserve, and all the players had at least one unit that started on the table. The centerpiece was the Ork Gargant, that sat his fat metal body on top of the central hill of the table. After set up, we Nid players got to choose a side come on from, and I made the mistake of selecting a short edge of the table, thinking I could rely on my speed and drop troops to win the day. This was a mistake from a game play perspective as tons of units on both sides never saw battle at all as they had to slog across the giant table.
Per the scenario, the Nids could only use flyers and mycetic swarms (drop troops) during the first turn, all other units rolled to come on the table in subsequent turns. Drop troops come on as small pieces of paper dropped from above the table by tipping a blast template!
This was a massive battle, so I just touched on the highpoints in the turn descriptions below.
The Battle – Turn 1
The Nids had the only flyers in the game so we just went all out on attack run orders the first turn. The Aerial assault by the Gargoyles and Harridans units (5 of them) were all trained on the great gargant, but unfortunately, they weren’t able to take down even half of it’s 12(!?) power fields! Lesson learned.. use the flyers somewhere else!
After the flyers ran their missions, I made my first tactical mistake and dropped one of my larger mycetic swarms directly onto the great gargant which turned out to be a slaughter as the it was able to snap fire at over half the unit, destroying a ton of them before they hit the ground. What’s more, Gargants have assault 30, so it would be very hard to take it down with the remaining swarm, which were shortly after blasted off the other side of the hill by the Leman Russ detachment anyway. I learned my lesson about snap fire, and landed my other detachments more judiciously as a screen for my incoming troops.
The Leman russ and Eldar moved into positions in the center and left respectively and were set up to hold both areas during the next turns. The Mentor Legion had only their fast attack detachment on the board and moved it quickly to support the Gargant on the hill.
The Battle – Turn 2
During turn 2 was when fully I realized that our choice to bring the Tyranids on the short table edge rather than the long was ANOTHER tactical mistake as it allowed the defenders to line up in a smaller area to shoot at the ‘nids as they came on, making it impossible to overwhelm any flank. To the south were the eldar, with the Eldar titan holding that side, and to the north was the onrush of the Imperial guard, but worse, the center was still held by the impenetrable great Gargant who was back up to 12 power fields after the useless aerial assault the turn before– this turned out to be the only Ork unit that got any action in the game as the other two gargants came on as reinforcements and could not stomp their way into battle.
The Nids rolled pretty well for reinforcements and all but one of their titans were now on the board along with a massive assault spawn detachment that was poised to take on everything in the center of the board.
In the shooting phase, along with the blasting from the Great Gargant, the Imperial guard griffons did a number on any exposed Nids, which caused a lot of pain and anguish, but that would be taken care of in turn 3 when the flyers were back online to fly attack missions…
The Battle – Turn 3
This turn started out with the total annihilation of the Imperial guard griffon unit (8 strong) from five attack waves from the gargoyles plus Harridans during the flyer missions phase. It was a slaughter not unlike the road of death from desert storm 1…except just plastic and metal pieces. While a moral victory, this really did not amount to much in the scheme of the battle as the Tyranids were hard pressed to get their forces in close enough without being destroyed from shooting.
That said, taking the entire onslaught of a concentrated Tyranid force one side of the map was way too much for both the Eldar (except the Titan) and the Mentor legion vindicator/bike detachment, both of which were destroyed. The Mentor Legion drove back a detachment of tyranids in a firefight that had been blasted by the griffon’s artillery barrage already only to be counter attacked by the biggest assault detachments in the entire tyranid force. This was the only ‘very large’ close combat in the game and while the Mentors were able to do some damage, all but one vindicator was left after the Nids were done.
While the Tyranid Titans and Dominatrix cleaned up the Eldar on the flank, for all their shots at the Eldar Titan, it did not get a scratch on the damn thing the entire game! This was deja vu from dozens of games of Space Marine in my ill-spent youth.
There were so many blast markers on the table at this point that we had to search around the house for suitable markers from other games!
The Aftermath
We had to call the game after Turn 3 due to time, but it was obvious that the Tyranids were going to take the L on this one, likely after doing quite a bit of damage to the allied forces first though. The number of Titans concentrated on the left flank would have overwhelmed it until the other Ork gargants and warhounds could get into the conflict. On the force morale score card, the Tyranids were in the 60’s and the Allied forces were still at 99 (as high as those cardboard counters can go). I would have liked to have had the 4th turn to see whether or not the Gargant could be displaced from that damn hill.
Epic 40K is Incredible and should be played as much as possible!
The 1997 rules are insanely good at this size of a battle. Despite totally new players, despite running out of time, the game went smoothly with only a few checks to the rules here and there (a lot of looking at army sheets and the titan sheets could have been better). I’ve played this version three times now and I think it is better than Epic Armageddon that followed it a few years later, far better than Space Marine 2 (which just goes into far too much detail for the size of battle I want to play) and also better than the new GW 10mm games (Imperialis) which isn’t even a contender as it only has Imperials vs Imperials.
When you play these rules and really familiarize yourself with them you realize they are an iteration and improvement on the grand-daddy of this scale of miniatures games: Advanced Squad Leader. If you have played ASL or even just SL, Epic 40K in this version will feel like a faster, cleaner and fun update to those rules. The focus on firepower rather than shooting individual weapons, the charts for number of dice to roll and the way close combat is handled is all an improvement on the fundamentals from Squad Leader. I think Jervis Johnson and Andy Chambers absolutely hit dynamite with this version– GW’s marketing department at the time just couldn’t SELL the game (along with some really ugly miniatures…).
Some other reasons (not in order):
Detachments: breaking away from the cards from Space Marine 2 was wonderful, now we could tinker with detachment builds with all sorts of units for the fight at hand, while this is extra work on the player’s part, this is really excellent and a crucial part of why this is such a flexible and fun system.
Shooting phase: There are big weapons, some special stuff like barrages and pulsa rockets, but all normal shooting uses firepower and a reference table. This makes things FAST and it works out totally fine.
Assaults and Firefights: the assault phase of the game represents a 4 turn 40K battle and detachments can either charge into close combat to wipe out the enemy (at risk to themselves) or manuver into place to get into an advantageous firefight which won’t do much damage, but will displace a detachment from where they are at and force a retreat. The combination of these two means of close engagement is the key to the game, and I hate to use the word elegant for anything but a dame, but it damn sure is.
Morale system: Each detachment contributes to an overall morale for the armies, and when detachments are broken or destroyed, they reduce morale, whoever gets to zero first (in most scenarios) loses the game. Morale can be increased by getting objectives so the game can see-saw from turn to turn.
Blast Markers: these are now used in tons of different games, and for good reason as it simplifies something a bit hard to abstract as it’s not damage, it’s not breaking of morale, but rather overall disruption, fatigue and chaos of battle for a detachment.
Well, I’ve written enough about this game, gotta get in some more plays! Thanks goes out to the Epic Remastered FB group, and the guys that created the Epic 40K Remastered detachment builder which made everything super easy for me to organize for all of these armies as the flexible detachment rules is one of the huge strengths of the system, but naturally it requires a lot of prep. GO HERE to give it a go.
Wrapped C.V Wedgwood’s Thirty Years War up this week– my god what a monstrosity. You have to take notes while reading this to keep track of the people with the same names. That said, Wedgwood does an excellent job threading a narrative through this huge mess and her core argument is that the Electors (Saxony, Bavarian, the Palatinate) could have curbed the power of the Hapsburg enough to avoid Spain, France and Sweden helping Germany/Austria destroy itself over 30 horrific years, but did the opposite. I do not recommend this book to anyone unless you are ready for something very heavy and quite sad really. A lot of you familiar with this period at all will have gotten it from Dan Carlin — he focuses on interesting but ultimately meaningless parts of the conflict which is ironic as it seems like he was searching for meaning through all this, which there is none. Part of the counter-reformation? eh.. not really. Hapsburg vs Bourbon proxy war? maybe.. but did that at all matter? War of Swedish aggression? For what? None of it made any sense other than let’s see how bad we can fuck up Germany and Austria.
With all that, I like this period as it’s the historical basis for the Warhammer Old World and all the core adventures from Mordheim to the Enemy Within are shadows of the actual real world conflict that occurred over this period, except there were very few heroes and the only result was to set Europe up for it’s next set of wars.
Interested in the period but don’t want to wade into something this beastly? Watch The Last Valley.
Gaming in this period, beyond the tie to Warhammer is pretty rich ground, but there isn’t anything that captures the conflict like say Virgin Queen or Here I Stand, which is surprising. Pike and Shotte is a solid rendition of the period in miniature rules, and even Pax Renaissance covers this period in broad, banker-focused strokes. As for this author’s thesis– there isn’t anything I could find in a board game where the true conflict between the Electors, the Emperor and the foreign meddlers was truly represented. The closest thing from the destruction and senseless conflict side would certainly be Root or something like Warrior Knights.
I was waiting for the Dark Elves to come out before picking up Warhammer Total War and… they aren’t ever coming to that game; instead they are doing a Warhammer 2 in order to add the new races that are flagrantly missing (High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizard Men). While called “2” this is in effect a stand alone add on in as you can have WTW 1 and WTW 2 and play on a huge campaign map with all races.
I’m still addicted to Attila Total War which is right now my favorite of the series by far, and haven’t purchased the older Warhammer game to even try it out. While it’s sort of odd that it’s already Warhammer 2: I’m really glad the Dark Elves are finally coming out and will likely wait until 2 comes out to pick up 1 and 2 together.
I got to play Star Wars: Edge of Empire Saturday with Matt and run by Dan at this benefit thing. We could pay $$ for rerolls or the game’s version of bennies so it was good.
Thoughts:
I have a fucking sore spot for Fantasy Flights ‘special dice and cards’ style of RPG/board game after they fucked up Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Edition with one of the most complicated RPG’s that it could have only come out in 2009. I wanted to like it, bought a bunch of stuff in the fire sale but it was VERY difficult to learn, VERY difficult to play/GM and covered the table in crap. The core dice mechanic wasn’t terrible though, it was everything else surrounding that which had the suck.
Secondly, while I like the new film a lot, I’m not a big star wars GAME fan. Yes Xwing vs Tie fighter was awesome but I pretty much stick to the movies and that’s it. There’s just not much there that’s gameable to me. Two factions, one is on the run, the other one is cool for the movies, but otherwise boring.
Naturally when Edge of Empire came out I scoffed at it since it was a version of WFRP3. However, having played, it’s not that bad. Gone are all the stupid cards for attacks, and though the character sheet is about 4 pages of crap long, it played fast.
What’s more, while it uses some elements of those lame-ass story games like FATE and Dungeon World, it can be played entirely ignoring that type of stuff on the dice, and use those sides for entirely mechanical effect. It has some blammo sides to the dice (triumphs) but their effect is completely dictated by the GM, it’s basically a reason for GM fiat to hurt or help the players. This is without any mechanics if you want, unlike FATE which piles every fucking thing about everything in the game world into ‘aspects’ that are really just wholly mechanical +2’s. So if your group has realized that the FATE-style games are a total waste of time like ours has, you can roll and not care about that stuff.
We played with minis, but it was very abstract, like Numenera, 13th Age, etc. That is very good. No nurpling around with goddamn squares and five foot steps and all that 3.5 bullshit.
So, I have a plan, that may or may not happen. I want to run a 1 v 1 JEDI fight using Edge of Empire, the Star Wars West End D6 game from the 90’s and … Design Mechanism’s free Mod for Runequest 6 and see which is the most fun. I know where my hypothesis would tell me, but let’s see what happens. Volunteers?
This is an excellent interview with Rick Priestley on the inception of Warhammer and 40K and those two big beautiful books from the 80’s that I still pour over from time to time (3rd edition Warhammer and 1st edition 40K that is).
With the release of Gates of Antares, which does not have the amazing aesthetic that 40K does (what with Jes Goodwin and John Blanche), we have Priestley’s seminal rule set for sci-fi gaming.
Good Quotes:
“The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they’re brutal, but they’re also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There’s no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft.
“It’s got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten.”
And this:
“When you’re doing something something as wacky as a huge toy soldier game with goblins, it can be a bit of a tough sell. But when people can see how glorious it is, see the beautifully painted armies and all these people hooting and hollering and rolling dice, it gives you an instant idea of how much fun it is.”
And finally:
“The studio, the creative part of Games Workshop, had always been kept apart from the sales part of it. One thing Bryan said was that if the sales people got to be in charge of the studio, it would destroy the studio, and that’s exactly what happened.”
Last Saturday, Mouth was in town and we dragged Dan and Amie into a 4-square of the old-school Chaos Warbands using 8th Edition rules and a mish mash of stuff from the two wonderful and awesome Realm of Chaos books.
For those that don’t know about these, they are absolutely essential to any gaming library, whether you play Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Warhammer 40K or none of them. You simply must own them both even if you have to pirate the PDF’s. Inside each are rules for the four major demons of the Warhammer world, plus rules to make your own, plus a kitchen sink of rules for all three of the systems listed above. These are both a MEGA supplement, one that these days would have had content split across 16-20 separate books.
What’s more, there’s a fucking GAME in these books that’s separate from all three games they supplement where you roll up a character and his warband and fight it out to get favor from the dark gods. I played this in college a bunch, probably 50 or so battles with multiple warbands and only one guy “won” the game with his champion becoming a minor daemon. The rest of us either got turned into spawn, or died in pools of blood and urea. And that was fun as shit.
My champion was one MAGROK ROCKSLIDE a chaos dwarf with FITS and a flail. Pretty weak to start except he was accompanied by a Dragon Ogre! After four battles, I ended up with a chaos weapon, four chaos spawn who gave people the evil eye, and eight beastmen. My spawn had 6 chaos attributes a piece and here is where the old Chaos warbands rules start to fray a bit. You can end up generating demon weapons, attributes, spawn inside other spawn that transform into other types of spawn longer than you end up playing out the fights! Now a bit of this is a ton of fun, and the randomness is one of the fantastic elements, but based on the recent play, there would need to be a cap on the amount of chaos attributes at least.
In addition to the chaos attributes, all entities in your warbands that get wounds have them applied individually. What this means is when you have a unit of beastmen or humans, you need to know which one has -1 toughness and which has a busted leg. This gets tedious as hell. More modern designs like Mordheim (which had it’s own terrible problems*) and Legends of the Old West, solve this issue by differentiating between Champions and minions. Minions are treated as a group and have less complex rolls associated with them.
Overall, it was a fun day of gaming. I only got four games in, and probably could have had a bunch more if I had just an hour or so more. I worked on an updated set for Mordheim ages ago (here is the PDF) and I think based on rumors of 9th Edition WFB being skirmish based, it may be a good time to rewrite them for 9th Edition in the coming year. Note, statements in the PDF are contradicted below. We learn stuff over the span of time…
Dragon Ogre vs Minotaur!
*Mordheim is a fantasy game with swords and stuff should have a focus on close combat, naturally , and yet, it’s sci fi brother with lasguns and bolters and stuff, Necromunda, has much, much better close combat rules. I wouldn’t say Mordheim’s close combat rules are bad, I’d say they are terrible.
Good, but unsurprising news, TW and WFB are slapping together! This had been rumored for a long while and then leaked in some magazine a few months back so not a shock . GW tried back in the day with Blizzard (which later became Warcraft), then later with Shadow of the Horned Rat, to get Warhammer on the computer successfully. Frankly one couldn’t ask for a better mash up of brands and companies. Unless, of course, you were waiting for Total War: Medieval 3 which following their M.O., should follow Attila closely.
There are no gameplay bits in the following video, but if you’ve played any recent Total War games, you know what to expect minus the MAGIC and big monsters. I’m pretty pumped for it, but then again I get a fucking giant boner every time any Total War stuff is announced or released and then have to untuck my shirt for like a whole day or look like BUSDRIVER.
Animation wise, awesome. Not so great with the voice acting. The Greater Daemon of Tzeentch at the end is wicked looking. We have to remember that GW is in the process of destroying the Old World we grew up with– so we have to see how this leaks into the computer game. It may be that the TW game will coincide with the story of the destruction of the Old World, which would be fun to see rather than buying all the crazy expensive END TIMES books.
This reminds me I have not put hours into Attila nor played a game of 8th Edition in a looong time…
