Warhammer - My Next Project

As any hobbiest will tell you, a wargamer’s thoughts are never far from his next project. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost interest in your current one, it’s just that Games Workshop have a tendency to keep passing shiny new models under our noses to tempt us and our wallets.

 

This is the reason I still have unpainted Eldar and Space Marines.

 

With the finish line in sight on my Space Wolves, my thoughts have turned to what’s next. Yes I want to get those Eldar and Space Marines finished and also get the last four Dreadfleet vessels done, but I can’t help thinking about something new.

The new Allies options available in the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 is a brilliant way into a new army – allowing you to paint up a couple of units and try them out with one of your existing forces.

Now, I’ve always fancied making a Sisters of Battle army. I love the whole nuns with guns thing they have going on. I do think, however, they haven’t been given the same level of care by Games Workshop as their more popular armies. This isn’t reflected in the models, of course. They have some brilliant ones, but their Codex update was just two issues of White Dwarf, not a proper book release. And their models are still metal, seemingly only available in blister packs from the GW website. No Finecast, no spanking new releases.

 

It’s because of this that I’ve changed my initial idea. Instead of building on the one unit of Battle Sisters and Saint Celestine I’ve painted, I’ve decided to use them as allies instead. Initially, I’ll be using them with my Ultramarines, but in the long term, I’d like to do a Grey Knights army with whom Celestine and co. will march into battle.

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Space Wolves aren’t finished yet and the Eldar have been pestering me to finish them for years. Keep an eye on my Geek’s Corner page for more pictures to be uploaded soon.

Taken

I was on a boat to Bruges and decided to go to the cinema. They were showing 3 films. The third escapes me, but the other two were Mama Mia and Taken.

I didn’t know anything really about Taken, except that Liam Neeson was in it. I like Liam Neeson and I hate Abba, so that was that sorted.

A couple of hours later I had a grin from ear to ear having just watched a terrific film.

Taken centres on a former CIA operative tracking down his daughter who has been kidnapped by Albanian's and fed into the human-trafficking system.

One of the joys of Taken is that that is all this film is about. His daughter is kidnapped, he heads off to get her back. That’s it. Many films would have heaped extra layers on it and twists and turns like the daughter turning out to be a Russian spy all along.

No. Taken goes from A – B, with the pedal to the floor and it is all the better for it.

Box office takings apparently stand at over $225m. I honestly didn't think it had done that well. It felt like a sleeper hit that grew through word of mouth and devleoped a cult following. But one thing is for certain, I haven't heard of anyone who's seen it and doesn't love it.

Nevertheless, I never expected a sequel. I still didn't believe it when rumours started to circulate. I began to come around when a few images were leaked onto the Internet, and then I accepted it when this grenade rolled into the room:

 

Boom! October 5th is the date when we get to see another round of Brian Mill's "particular set of skills". If it is half as good as the first one, it'll be something special.

To Infinity and Beyond?

So game "journalists" with too much time on their hands have picked up on the acquisition, by Microsoft, of various domain names and they've singled out one in particular as an indication of what the next console may be called. Xbox8.

Wait. What? Haven't we missed a few steps here? Like Xbox 4 through 7?

Here's their thinking. It was rumoured at some point that the next gen console would be called Infinity. Kick the number 8 over - Virgin Media style - and you have the symbol for infinity. 

Hmmm. Before we get all Dan Brown on this, let's consider:

Microsoft have also bought up domain names for XboxPhone, XboxTablet and XboxLiveTV and with Internet Explorer coming to the console, this may all just be a build up for SmartGlass and other new features already announced at E3.

Then again, the next generation will be the eighth.

It's nice to think the Internet would just wait and see, but expect more and more rumours and leaks as the year goes on.

There is only war.......

As I write this, Warhammer 40,000 6th Edition is just 2 days from release. My copy is ordered and I'll be picking it up on day one. 

I'll leave a full look at all the new stuff to better bloggers than I - be sure to check out @warllama40k's review of this month's White Dwarf for more here.

I figured I'd give a quick update though with my thoughts on what we've learned so far. 

Grenades are going to play more of a part. They couldn't play any less of a part at the minute, so that's good news. 

Your commander is now a Warlord and will have skills and traits to reflect this. Sounds interesting. As do the warzone traits for fighting in unusual environments and the ability to select fortifications of various types as part of your army. 

Flyers are going to play more of a part and Psykers are going to have a lot more to do. 

I'm hoping this extra element won't overcomplicate an already complicated game. But Dreadfleet is made simpler by the use of cards, so I'm hoping the new Psychic Power Cards will do the same for 40K. 

The addition I'm really excited about, is the inclusion of allies. You'll be able to ally other army's units with yours. 

This isn't exactly brand new - Apocalypse does it, as did the old Daemon Hunter and Witch Hunter books - but it's a welcome addition. It'll encourage people to try out units they've always wanted to, without having to build an entire army. 

Plenty of painting and gaming opportunities await then. Exciting times. 

Tom and Me - Part One: I can see a Rainbow

It all started in Dartmouth in 1997.

 

I’d gone down there for a week with my parents and my best mate, Chris. At the time, I was reading The Runaway Jury by John Grisham. Chris had brought with him a 3 book boxed set called Tom Clancy’s Op-Centre.

 

I read a few chapters of the first book and really got into it. Now, anyone familiar with Tom Clancy will know that while he has written the Jack Ryan series himself, there are a number of books where he has come up with the concept and other authors have done the leg-work. Op-Centre is one of these, along with Netforce and Powerplays.

I enjoyed the world in which Op-Centre existed, so I explored the Tom Clancy range a little more and I came across a massive doorstop of a book called Rainbow Six. This one, Clancy had written himself about an elite counter-terrorist unit.

 

Even though I couldn’t read it in bed for fear of me nodding off and it hitting me in the face, I loved this book. So imagine how I felt when I was wandering around HMV one day and noticed Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six playing on the PlayStation in the corner. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it had a great atmosphere to this game.

It’s sequel – Rogue Spear came next and that was followed by the brilliant Raven Shield on the PC.

After that, things started to unravel. Rainbow Six: Lockdown on the PS2 was alright, but gone were any planning stages. Team Rainbow was no longer a stealthy, efficient band of operatives – the best of the best. They were a SWAT team who booted the door in and sprayed the room with bullets. The franchise was being dumbed down for mass market appeal and this continued onto the next gen consoles with Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2. They were good games and the bright lights of Vegas were impressive, but ultimately they failed to capture what Rainbow had once been.

 

 

Rainbow Six Patriots is out next year, but we’ve had little in the way of details as yet. I still believe there’s gold to be found again at the end of this rainbow, but once a franchise has dumbed down, does it ever return to its roots?

About Me - Part Six: Warhammer

When we were growing up, my friend and I, between us, had almost everything Games Workshop had to offer. HeroQuest, BattleMasters, Space Crusade, Space Hulk, Blood Bowl and Man O’ War.

The notable exceptions were the big two – Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 – but that’s not to say I didn’t stare at the pictures of these awesome looking games and long to own them myself. I remember looking at the picture of the Blood Angel captain on the front of Warhammer 40,000 2^nd Edition and thinking “how amazing does this look?”

  

For whatever reason, I never got either of those games and life moved on. Videogames took over and years passed.

 

2008 – January. One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to get a new hobby/interest. It was while walking by Games Workshop in Meadowhall that it occurred to me. Why not pick up the hobby again, now I have a bit more than £2 a week spending money? Not being an impulsive buyer, I came away and did my research. I returned to the store a week later and walked out with a box of Eldar Guardians, some paint and a book on How to Paint Citadel Miniatures. We were off!

 

2012 – June. As of writing, I have 2000 points of Eldar, 2000 points of Ultramarines, the beginnings of a Battle Sisters army, books 1 – 9 of the Horus Heresy and two other Black Library books and two audio dramas, 10 codices, the Dark Heresy core rulebook, Dawn of War and Winter Assault for the PC and I did have Space Marine on the Xbox before trading it in on completion. Breathe.
  

And I’ve been to the last 4 Games Days. And to Warhammer World four times.
 

So I’d say I’ve gotten quite into it.

 

I’m currently working on a Space Wolves army of 1500 points. You can see some photographs of these and other models in the Geek’s Corner section of this blog. Let me know what you think.

 

I haven’t strayed into Warhammer Fantasy as yet, though I do have the rulebook. But before doing that I would like to, ideally, get everything I own painted. Fellow wargamers will read that and be laughing right now. It’s a fool’s errand, like chasing rainbows. But we can try.

The Future's Black, the Future's Treyarch

Call of Duty. The biggest gaming phenomenon of our time, selling in the millions and making more money than any other form of media, despite James Cameron’s best efforts.

When anything becomes this big, the human race seems unable to accept it. When a band that started in a garage signs the record deal, we call them sellouts. When Apple puts a phone in everyone’s hand, we need to take them down a peg or two. It’s like we fear great success. And as we know all too well – fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

Call of Duty has more haters than any other game out there, but this has never translated to the sales figures. We still queue up at midnight launches, hand over our 40 quid and go on our way. Until Modern Warfare 3 that is. The figures show that while MW3 sold in the millions, the rate of sales slowed much earlier than previous titles in the franchise. So have the haters got a point? Is Call of Duty fatigue setting in?

Modern Warfare 3’s campaign is very good, perhaps the best in the series and its multiplayer is solid, but you get the feeling that Infinity Ward may have trod the same ground one too many times. There may also be something else working against it – Treyarch.

Treyarch brought us Call of Duty 3 and World at War and have always been seen as the Call of Duty B-Team, releasing games we just pass the time on while we wait for Infinity Ward’s latest.

But with Black Ops, things changed. Not everyone liked Treyarch’s third entry, but it is difficult to argue with how much effort the developers put in. They shifted the setting to the Cold War, bringing the likes of Vietnam to the series. They brought us Combat Training, 2-player split-screen online play, 2, 3 or 4-player split-screen with AI bots, Theatre mode, the Wager matches as well as a deeper level of customisation. When Infinity Ward released Modern Warfare 3 a year later, their biggest innovation was messing around with the killstreak system. They even pinched things from Black Ops – namely the Gun Game and One in the Chamber. They brought Theatre Mode over as well, but somehow managed to mess it up. If you’ve had Theatre Mode switched on all this time, MW3 has been filling your harddrive up with a Game Replay Save for every match you’ve connected to. Since November! Have fun deleting all that lot!

It’s possible then that Modern Warfare 3’s weaker reception is less about the quality of the product, and more that we liked Black Ops far more than we realised.

Treyarch are not resting on their laurels either. Black Ops II will push the series into the near-future with all the futuristic gubbins that brings with it, such as mechs, drones and….horses.

And they’re introducing Strike Force. A game mode linked to the single player in which success or failure will affect the events in the campaign. Call of Duty, for the first time, will have a branching story.

Infinity Ward’s next Call of Duty will most-likely be next gen, so they have a great opportunity to shine once more. But for now - well and truly off the bench and no longer the B-Team – Treyarch are spearheading this franchise into the future. And it’s Black.