Dead language...not a dead blog though.

Hey everyone, (erm...anybody?)

Quick message to say this place is still going, I haven't had another false start, it may just be that this isn't updated very much.
Hopefully some Hail Caesar stuff might be put up soon, but otherwise it could just be stuff that I find cool or interesting.

Anyway its pissing it down and I've got nothing better to do, so here's a something I've been interested in as of late. I've always been a history kind of guy, and seeing as I spend an extortionate amount of time on a bus with jack all to do, I've found (I think), a productive use of my time, learning another language.
Okay, admittedly it's not what it seems, and I probably won;t make much use of it but it's something to do and quite interesting.
And yes it's only based off one website, but I'm aiming to become a native speaker...which conveniently, doesn't exist.

https://notendur.hi.is/haukurth/norse/

Would highly recommend this, even if the website has been inactive for maybe 10 years.

In a bit.

an unexpected j...discovery

well just discovered i can post on my phone, coming to you live from a bus. this could actually mean the blog is updated more regularly, as im out so much. ive not suddenly become illiterate if youve noticed, its just for some some reason blogspot wont let me use capital letters or certain punction for some reason...or paragraphs for that matter. its very hard to type when you cant actually see the flashy thing.                                                                                                                                                    anyway, we shall just have to make do. Main, my god capital, sorry, main thing i wanted to talk about was the hobbit. an annual revealed some pictures of the cast, and there seemed to be quite a lot of negative responses, mainly about the potrayal of thranduil.                                                                               now, i am not the biggest elf fan, and never will be, and initially i was slighly put off by the picture, which i will add later. however this was mainly due to reading others views on the subject. you may notice he has the crown on his head, rather unusual, you may say, but  he is stated as wearing one in the    book, and given that he is in a combative pose, i think its quite a clever idea as it seems almost fastened to his head, much more useful than a conventional crown. can you imagine aragorn fighting with his crown? a very elf like feature if you ask me, keeping glamour without sacrificing fighting ability. the robes look a lot like mithril or chainmail to me, he is the king, so why not make them quite lavish and shiny? It still keeps its woodland hues aswell.                                                                         If anyones played the mod for medieval total war two, third age total war, notice how the picture for thranduil is actually quite similar. i think lee pace fits the character very well. he has rings yes, i think these suit him aswell, this a film featuring rings...he may have a few more than celeborn and galadriel, but he a different race of elf, sylvan?                                                                         overall, looking forward to the movies even more after seeing this, and i havent even mentioned elrond...my favourite character, hes looking even grimmer than usual.                                              well thats my phone based blogging test run, i need to remember not to mess this up else i have to redo it all...must look like im writing an essay on my phone at the moment. oh and just remember before saying anything about thranduil being girly...this is legolas father we are talking about, its part of the look...and it works.              

Credit to theonering.net for the photo.

Go at 'em lads!

First of many...I hope. 

He has a metal trim on his jacket and shoulder guard to signify his (slightly) higher status, if status really is the right word to describe social standing on a Corsair ship...

Bloopers... way too many, notice how the marines are crystal clear. Thats the problem with using a phone camera, but I'll have to make do.

Its a Corsiar Bo'sun, by the way, if anyone's wondering.

Not sure whether making the pictures bigger is actually, seems to make them less attractrive but hey ho. Alse learnt (and  wasted time to find out) that you can upload stuff straight onto blogspot from your PC withotu using an image hosting site. Awesome.  

Would say the Captain's next but I'm not making any promises.

Back from the dead.

Just a note to say this blog will be updated a lot more now the busy summer is over.

Expect a more general focus, and a bloggy theme, rather than a series of articles.

Here's to the future!

The Not-So-Humble Techmarine

Not as long a post today.

After experimenting with my codex, the Techmarine has come across as a choice which I appear to have quite badly overlooked. (Note I not do value the Servitors in any way, so will not be including them here, they are cheap, but also do very little, and hinder more than help the Techmarine).

Rolling in at 5 points more than a Castellan, this guy is already toting a Power weapon, Bolter and Power Fist, at the expense of 1 less Attack and Leadership, I think that is worth the price. Pay a not-substantial 35 points and your 'Better-than-Castellan-for-a-similar-price' gains an extra Servo-Arm attack, a Twin-linked Plasma Pistol, and a Flamethrower, and gets a 2+ save to boot.

If we give the guy and Storm Shield and Terminator Honours (also swap the bolter for a bolt pistol for an extra attack) we get a pretty decent CC Monster capable of dishing it out as well as taking it. In many regards, this guy is better than our beloved Emperor's Champion. Lets take a look:

5 Power Weapon Attacks on the charge.
2 Power Fist Attacks

A Twin-linked Plasma-Pistol
A Flamer
A Bolt Pistol

2+ Armour
3+ Invul.

Looks pretty good to me, now we could add a Jump-Pack or Bike and we're good to go, and we have a souped up character that can whizz across the field taking out key targets like Devastator Squads, low rear armour Vehicles and other shooty squads.

But hold on a minute, there are just a few things we should take into account.

-He's only initiative 4, so charging HQs could be a problem, especially if they have multiple  attacks with Power Weapons.
-Same reasons as above, 2 wounds could a major problem, in the case of unlucky rolls on your part, and lucky rolls on you opponents, you just lost a 150-odd point unit.

For these reasons I think it is better that we use this guy in a support-role, but not that which he was designed for. Our Crusader squads have suffered a power drop in comparison with the newer codices such as BA and SW, but if we ditch the unessecary upgrades we can keep his costs down, and make him a very useful back-up.

We can end up with.

7 Initiates w/ BP+CCW + Melta Gun + Power Weapon
2 Neophytes

Techmarine, w/ Servo-Harness + Bolt Pistol.

This comes in a under 250 points, and notice that I have been able to swap out the usual Power Fist because of the Techmarine, who instead brings one with 2 attacks. This allows us to take a Power Weapon instead, which further increases the ability of our Crusader Squads. Our squads also benefit from a small amount of anti-TEQ (Plasma Pistol) and anti-horde (Flamer).
So in the end our Techmarine does more than just significantly boost the killing power of the squad, it is also increases our duality, which is very important.

One last thing which must be mentioned is that, for all this, our good friend does take up an Elite slot. Therefore if you insist on running Terminators and Dreadnoughts, then this may not be the best idea for you. But if you are prepared to replace them with other choices, then give it a whirl, and see the look on your opponents face when he realises that the model that he though was there to help repair your Rhino ends up causing his squads to need repair...and a serious amount of it at that. :)

The Importance of a Balanced Diet

Everyone who plays this hobby fits into a different pot, everyone will play differently. But generally people will either be casual or competitive.
The 2 extremes of this are a hyper-competitive player who attends all the tournaments in his local area, and will travel to all the bigger ones. Then there is the player who will only be part of a tight knit gaming group, they will not wish to play other people, never mind those in tournaments.
These can be seen as two ideals for certain people, you may get a close relationship with your friends and can make games very personal and a lot more fun if you are in a tight knit group. This is fine, but I think you must be willing to play people outside of your group.
The same can be said of the hyper-competitive guys, they really should play some causal games now and again.

The reason I am making these points is because I feel that being part of these two extremes can literally take all the fun out of the hobby we know and love.

I have personal experience with the extreme casual player, and although I have not played in tournaments, I'm sure someone will see this problem.

In terms of the tournament player, if you are taking this to extremes you can either
a) Army hop.
b)Focus on making one codex work.

Lets start with a), and lets says everytime a new codex comes out you buy it, and quickly either decide the best units for yourself, or find out on the internet. In this situation, as GW release new codexes on average every 6-8 months, there is no way in hell that you can get an army of around 2500 pts (sideboard included), painted to the way you wanted, without commisions, which is a massive drain on resources you are already blowing on buying a new army twice a year. Another thing is that if you are doing this you are obviously not interested in the fluff of the army, or any themes at all, and in my opinion, you are missing out on most of the hobby in this way, aswell as showing up at tournaments with a sub-par painted army. You literallly care about nothing other than winning, and all your lists and just the bests units in the codex, you leave no room for exploration as you move on so quickly. A metaphor would be buying a fast car, and then buying a new one everytime a faster one is released without even thinking about how you

In the case of b) (and I have a grudging respect for people who do this), you will stick with this army, because you love the background or the way it plays, and this is in some ways better than a), as you experience more off the hobby. However, this may be taken to extremes were someone really wants to win everything with any army that isn't competitive.  This then leads to boring and generally similar lists, as if you are usingh an old codex, you will only be able to win top-tier games with certain units included, rather than a pick-n-mix like you can with a new, more powerful codex. This can eventually lead to yourself spending literally hours just deciding how to fit a particular unit into a list, or how to shave off a couple of points to give a character an upgrade. I may be seeing in the wrong mindset due to my limited experience, but I cannot see this being any little more than dull and annoying.  And certainly not fun. This also means that after a few years you will have milked a book dry just trying to be super-competitive, and from there onward you will not use units that you have tried and found out are not hyper-competitive. You may also find yourself facing an unnessecary handicap by not moving with the times, at a hyper-competitive level, option a) will generally be more successful ,although you will spend more money and get less out of the hobby as a whole.

My second group was people who stay in their group and refuse to play anyone except their close gaming group. I have had personal experience of this myself. This eventually leads to you tailoring you list to face your opponent's armies. For instance, if you are palying a variety of opponents in a few places, you will take a mix of anti-tank and anti-infantry. However, if everyone in your group plays Orks, Tyranids, and foot Imperial Guard, there is no way you would take anti-tank, as you are just putting yourself at a disadvantage as it would be useless. This leads to a horribly stagnant game, where people just by units to counter each other, and no-one truly sees how there army should perform against a mixture of opponents, or how to play an all-corners list. This can be especially problematic if no-one decides to change armies, and the games will boring quickly as games will be very similar and you will not be improving your skills as a general at all.
An example in my group was where a Chaos player bought a Land Raider, at this point we were playing 1000 points a side and so this was a massive shock that we had no way of dealing with. I (playing Orks at the time) immedietly went out and bought a unit of Tankbustas, whereas the Tau player went out and brought a Broadside. This lead the Chaos player to buy deep-striking Terminators and a Demon-Prince, and sometime s he just took out the Land Raider. All this leads to is a complete waste of money on units and a cold war of sorts between player, which could end up threatening the strength of the friendship in your group.

Of course there may be people who thrive in such a competetive environment and see spending weeks working out the perfect lists as very entertaining, equally there wil lbe those who like the extreme tension an unexpanding group can create. But to get the most out of this hobby, you must change you style once in a while, even if not permanently, or else the hobby will not give you back what you went into it for: Fun.

Should 5th be the final?...

Just wondering today about the game-ending element of 40k.
In particular the fact that a mission initially has a set number of turns, however these are then extended to turn 6 and 7 respectively.
Although this throws up many more increased tactical choices and situations, the question would be what is detracted from the game by this rule.
First of all, in games such as Capture and Control and Take and Hold, the fact that the game does not have a certain end point detracts from the overall tactical plan of the game, as if a player knows he has a limit to when he can take or contest objectives, he can more carefully formulate a strategy. Such as, "Unit X will be in range of this objective by turn 5", or "Unit Y will move out of cover and go flat out to contest objective Y in turn 5, after staying in cover most of the game." Both of these are 2 albeit simple ways of approaching a game such as this with a strategy. However, when the game time can be extended, Unit X has less chance of holding that objective  (and after covering the whole length of the table such an event can be pretty disappointing), and Unit Y would not even be used in such a way , as the player knows that it will probably be destroyed/ removed off the objective if the game continues.

Another point is that certain armies have distinct disadvantages if such an event occurs, not only is this unfair on said army, there is nothing they can do to prevent it, as the situation is built into the rules. An example would be Necrons, (although the new codex is now with imminent), an extra 2 turns gives the opponent an extra 2 turns to phase them out, which could effectively change a close victory into a loss. Especially if playing against an army which is particularly strong later in the game (Orks reaching combat - for example). This also particularly plays into the hands of reserve based armies, who have already denied their opponent several turns of shooting, and now have a couple more turns to reak havoc.

Finally, some may argue that another turn is not even nessecary, as especially in time constricted games, having another 2 turns unexpectedly can make the game seem like it is not finished by a long way and give an unclear result, despite the fact that on turn 5 the game may have been nearly over, especially if it was objective based as described above. This can leave both players feeling unsatisfied with the result is the game has to finish without completing the extra 2 turns, as if they were very close to wiping each other out they may not feel like a tie is a fair result. This also then prompts the system of victory points for tie-breakers, which do not reflect how the game has gone, especially if the opponent has been focussing on another victory condition, rather than eliminating the opponents forces.  

After all this however, it is important to remember, that a large amount of 40k is predominantly based on luck, and these extra turns just seek to make us improve at adapting to changing situations, and to be overall better generals. They may also add a lot to a battle, especially if two equally matched forces were just getting into the thick of the bare-knuckle fighting, and as this point ending on turn 5 may mean both player would want to carry on. Again, this is very situational.

There is no doubt that this is a big part of the game...but whether another system is needed or not is not clear, I certainly think it adds another random and interesting dimension to the game, and in the current age of net-lists, MSU and unit redundancy, that is a welcome change. :)

What do you think? Should the end-turn rules be changed?