Apocalypse @ Legends

This Sunday July 20^th Legends Gaming will be kicking off its first major campaign “The Battle for Periphery” by staging a massive 14,000 point apocalypse game! The fall of hive Regrax will be a showcase battle between Tyranids and the Imperial guard (Astra Militarum) who are desperately trying to hold off the Tyranid invasion while the civilian population tries to evacuate the doomed city. This Sunday will also be the official start of the campaign, so players who have signed up or sign up at the event will be able to start playing through the first tier of kill team games (500 points) 

 It's shaping up to be a pretty epic throw down between some pretty awesome armies (Chucks nids always a visual treat when deployed en force) So if your free this Sunday, swing by the store, we'll be set up in the overflow space next to the game side, we will also have plenty of tables set up for anyone wanting to play campaign missions, or get in a pickup game or just hang out and hobby. 

One last blurb. The latest episode of “The Stuff of Legends” is up, this week we talk about the upcoming campaign (I know, shocker right) hobby progress and games played for the week and general news for the gaming group.

iTunes

Direct download

 

Cheers

-Scott

BH Senior Sauceror 

P.S.

If you want to know what the gaming group is up to on a regular basis check out the Facebook group.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Legends40k/

TSoL Episode 14 & X-Wing adventure

 

We see beyond the veil of time

 

Episode 14 of “The Stuff of Legends” gaming podcast is now live, you can check us out on iTunes here, or grab the direct download here. This we Chuck, Ian and I talk about 7^th edition and the new rules (allegedly) regarding unbound army lists and the new psychic tables and a little bit about rumors in general, we also go over our hobby progress for the week, what’s going on at the shop and the escalation league news. Give us a listen and if you like what you hear, please let us know by rating us on iTunes and you can check out the gaming group on Facebook here.

 

Everything else:

Last Sunday was mother’s day, it was an understandably slow day for gaming, but we had a few of the usual suspects show up and we kicked off the first weekend of the bitz bazaar (we finally moved the pile off of Ian’s bed) Unfortunately my camera bag has been temporarily lost in the warp (Ian’s trunk) so this week’s escalation league pics will be a little light I did however manage to grab a few quick pics of my first game of X-wing.

So on the last episode of TSoL I mentioned that I wanted to try X-wing (made by Fantasy Flight) and Bill, one of our long time regulars showed up with a massive set of toys and took the time to teach me how to play.

 

This won’t be a super long review, just my experience with one game, and I should probably clarify I am not the biggest Star Wars fan. That being said it was a fun game and I could see myself playing again, everything about the game system is fairly straight forward, and they do a good job of making all of the visual mechanics of the system fairly accessible and very well laid out. What really got me was the movement system, getting to make your movement choice in secret and running the risk of over shooting your target, or flying straight into them and having to make a quick maneuver the following turn to get out of the action, or turnabout and try and gun down your opponents ship adds a certain level of depth to the game and helps make it feel like you are actually maneuvering through a dogfight, rather than just playing with static models on a 2d game board.

As I said before, I am not the biggest Star Wars fan, but this is a game I could see myself picking up in the near future (the starter sets only $40) It plays relatively quick and I can see why the system is catching on at a lot of stores and conventions and this may be a bit of wishful thinking, but I really wish FF would give Battle Fleet Gothic this treatment, the mechanics are somewhat similar and if you scale up slightly it could be an amazing re-launch of a great classic 40k game. That aside though, if you like dogfights in space, or you like quick tabletop games that can be played on a 4x4 over a lunch break then check out x-wing, it’s not crazy expensive, it may not be 40k, but it is pretty fun.

 

Cheers

-Scott

BH Senior Veil Skimmer

New hobby video up

I woke up Sunday morning and decided that I was going to start doing a video series on the basics of getting into 40k in a no nonsense format. The end result was me hastily zip tying a video rig together and trying to get movie maker to sync properly to my camera (it didn't) But I managed to get the above video out, I do plan to re do this once I have had more time to sort out the kinks in my presenter/recording seat up, so I apologize in advance for the quality.

This video is meant more for newbie than long time hobbyists, so if you know what your doing there wont be any surprises in here.

Feedback is greatly appreciated, as I mentioned I plan to do more of these in the future, so if you have any experience doing this sort of thing, or just have a few suggestions hit me up in the comments, or shoot me an email at bayhammer@gmail.com

Cheers

Scott
-BH Senior Funk Master.

Astra Militarum: Part 1

 

THE LOST & THE CANNED

Astra Militarum: Extended review Part 1

A quick forward before we get to the good stuff. Originally this article was meant to be published as one long overview of the new Astra Militarum Codex (imperial guard) I soon realized that I did not have the time to sit and pour over every detail in one sitting, and as stated below, this is not a codex review. This is more of a collection of my personal observations and musings on the new book, which I will put out as a series of articles focusing on the individual parts of the book that I was not able (read not fully prepped) to go over on the podcast. Part one is about the units that were removed in this release.

This article is the follow up to my last appearance on the Stuff of Legends podcast where we went over the new Astra Militarum and Tempestus books. Unfortunately, we did not get to cover everything we wanted to due to the time constraints, so I wanted to do an extended version to cover some of the items we skipped during the show.

This is not going to be an in depth codex overview, there are plenty of other people covering that, and honestly I am not really that much into the meta aspect of the game, rather this article will focus mostly on a few key details about some of the unit changes/removals and changes to the background fluff. This is all basic stuff with my own personal spin on a few areas of interest.

Starting off, let have a brief moment of silence for those units who are no longer with us:

-Sly Marbo.

-Lukas Bastonne.

-Mogul Kaimr.

-Kubrik Chenkov.

-Al'rahem.

-Solar Macharius.

-Every piece of artillery except the basilisk.

 

A quick breakdown for why I believe some of these characters are absent from the latest iteration of the codex starting from the top.

Sly Marbo:

This one actually seems kinda obvious, first off he was a pretty OP character, now that’s not to Say that there are not plenty of those still hanging about in other books (elder cough cough) but he was less a man and more of a strength 8 blast with unlimited range. But I don’t think that’s the reason he got pulled. The word of the day in 6^th edition is ‘supplement’ as in there is a good chance Marbo will be returning to us in one of them. It has long been rumored that Catachans will be getting their own book/data sheet after the release of the main guard codex and I still believe this to be the case, so keep an eye out in the near future as I am sure he will be popping back up at some point.

Side note: His model is still available for purchase on the new GW site, so either selling off the remaining stock, or waiting for an update.

 

 

Bastonne:

This guy never really saw a lot of play as an HQ in 5^th ed, sure he had some interesting fluff but for the most part he was just another upgrade with a few special perks that were not really worth the points, he also suffers from ‘lack of model” syndrome, so yeah poof!

Mogul Kamir:

Real shame about this one, I can’t say for sure why he’s gone, I mean you could technically gussiy up any odd rough rider and call him Kamir, and I will have to check, but I do believe he had a model at one point. Rough riders are still in the main book so a supplement seems unlikely (maybe a data sheet with expanded rules) as far as I can tell though he was just one of those units that fell out of favor, I was actually surprised to see rough riders at all in this edition, but they do still have that unique flavor about them, and allow all kinds of fun kitbashes with bikes, so yeah, not sure where he’s gotten off to.

Chenkov:

I was really bummed he got the axe, though like Marbo I have a sneaking suspicion he may be coming back in a future supplement and in a plastic/finecast kit (he was metal and not called Chenkov on the site prior to the great metal purge) With the new points drop on conscripts he would still be a solid choice regardless of what faction you were playing, he was a tad broken, and may have been even more so in 6^th, but I also did not see him on the table that often, so maybe he was shelved due to lack of demand. While I’ll miss being able to flood the table with an endless tide of bodies, its not much harder to accomplish the same task with regular conscripts in any 750+ game.

Al'rahem:

The legend is gone, but the rules live on. Old model, old rules. The new order (order here) essentially gives any unit a similar ability to his “like the wind” perk. After handing off that ability to move troops around quickly to any random command squad/HQ choice there was not much reason  to keep him in the main codex. Still though, there’s hope for a supplement, or possibly a new sculpt/model (fingers crossed)

Solar Macharius:

He was dead and gone by 5^th, so he only makes the list on a technicality but still he got a whole page (no stats just a big piece of fluffly filler) He had a model and rules prior to 5^th though, but I am guessing he got the rough customer treatment like all the other old fluffy HQs (sans Yarrick and Strayken) Macharius seems like he would be the one least likely to see a datasheet/re-release though just based on his recent exclusion from two consecutive codex’s, who knows, maybe FW will step in on this one.

Update: He does have page in the Astra book, they just decided to hide it under a heavy dose of dark printing and pseudo latin that I didn’t catch of the first read through.

 

Artillery:

Let’s make this section quick.

Medusa:

Short range, ok damage, Forgeworld model only.

Griffon:

Replaced by the Wyvern which is arguably better than its predecessor/cheaper.

Colossus:

Forgeworld only, small load considering the cost, just take a nova cannon costly.

There is one thing I want to get out of the way before wrapping up, all these models are still produced by Forgeworld, and still have current rules to support their use and inclusion in regular 40k lists. Imperial Armor has been doing a good job of filling the gaps left by GW’s clumsy economizing over the years. Overall not a total loss as it is an expensive alternative. There’s a lot of FW friendly rulings/gamebooks being put out by GW lately, so it would not be to hard to keep your old models in regular play despite not having an entry in the main book. 

Closing thoughts on the old and the lost, it happens with every release/update, GW phases out the older less popular specific characters and units in favor of whatever the new hotness is that go round I think we’ll see some of these guys back on the table in the not so distant future, and while a little disheartening to see some old favorites disappear into the warp, there will always be new hero’s to captivate the next generation of war gamers who are just coming into the hobby and will never know the loss of squats, or look longingly at beastmen regiments in back issues of white dwarf. This is the new school, and we are all now custodians of the lore prior to this release, so remember to share some of that wisdom with our newer players whenever possible, you just might be the one who inspires the next Dave Taylor, or (insert famous mini painter here)

 

Cheers

-Scott

BH Senior Taste Maker

And now for something completely different

Our panel of subtext experts have yet to discern any true meaning behind this, yet all found it oddly captivating.

Cheers

-Scott
BH Senior Good Humor Man.