Thursday, October 27, 2011

Sisters of Battle Part 3: The Good, The Great, and The Underwhelming

In my previous two sisters analyses (part 1/part 2) I have been comparing the new book to the old book and talking about how the new book functions and how some things have changed, and how some units are very bad. I feel like it's not an unfair handling of those units or that part of the book. I think the faith points/rules system is much more streamlined and easy to explain (which you'll be doing every game to your opponent.) And I even think making the Faith Points a D6 roll works very well with how the Acts of Faith are attached to units, you don't need to rely on them as much and units you need them for will be taken care of with 2-3 Faith Points a turn. And I wasn't out of line by saying Repentia and Penitent Engines suck, because they do. But, no one really took them before so you don't have to worry about them sucking. So now I'm going to give you some real good news. You've all had faith (ahaahhahahah get it?) this long and now you'll be rewarded.

The Good:
Battle Sisters: "Can't Spell Sisters of Battle without Battle Sisters."

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Cannoness and Command Squad

So here's some pictures of my in progress Sisters of Battle. I started with the command squad and Cannoness, because....they are the funnest to paint! Duh!






































































I still have to finish highlights on both, especially the cannoness herself, I'm also planning on painting a pinup or something on the back of the Cannonista's cape. More to come

Monday, October 17, 2011

My First Army: A Necrospective

There's Necron rumors about online, and they've got me thinking back to the days of my first army.  Looking at some of the leaked pictures, I fear that the game is losing its best starter army in favor of making the Necrons into a modern list.  As a Necron fan, these changes are welcome, and I'm very excited to read the new book (November 5th, if things online are real), but I also know that I would never have fallen in love with the game without last edition's Necrons.

Hobby Stress

While writing my post about Necrons, I got into a serious 'thing' writing about hobby stress, and figured it should get a quickie post of its own.


'Hobby Stress' is a term I like to use for the feeling a new player gets when he feels like he's 'doing it wrong'.  The first model I ever built was a jet plane.  Just a cheapo Wal-Mart kit, and when I got it together I immediately painted it bright, glossy red with a glossy black nose cone and tail fin.  I hadn't 'done it wrong', and it never occurred to me that I had.  I had a lot of fun building and painting a jet that would be totally unsuitable for war.  I put it on my desk, and nobody ever told me that a real f-14 would be grey and have squadron markings on it.  Or that The Angels of Absolution actually lost all their Predators on Threndar IV, so I shouldn't be allowed to field them.*

To be fair, every list has associated 'hobby stress', not just marines.  But no matter what you put on the table, somebody will walk by and snidely point out that your black-shirted orks are actually Goffs, and they wouldn't hang out with your red-shirted orks.  Or that 'real' Tau would use different deployment protocols or something.  A reasonable person might look up and say 'I don't care, my black orks are Oakland Raiders, and the red ones are Kansas City Chiefs.'**

But nerds like me who want to fit in -and are painfully aware that they almost never do- would probably just apologize and study up on how to play orks 'right' when they got home.  This is ruinous to the hobby.  I don't think it's always a matter of elitism or bullying.  I understand that a lot of it comes from loving the fluff, and wanting the game to be characterful.  You read all the books about the Dark Angels, and now some doofus is completely screwing it all up.  

Nobody wants to feel like they failed at having fun, though, and the idea that you can play 40k 'wrong' is a great way to get people to quit playing entirely.  You don't have to think my NFL Orks are cool.  I'm just asking you to back off, and let me enjoy them.  Nobody made you look at my table, man.

* I made this up, this is not true.

** Yes, the Raiders and Chiefs are division rivals, and would are also unlikely to be friendly with one another. If you wanted to point that out to me, you are exactly the problem.

Sisters of Battle Part 2: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Last time I was discussing key differnces between the new and old Sisters of Battle book. It really came down to splitting hairs. The new sisters book functions a lot less like a melee weak marine army and now functions like a highly durable and mobile guard army. The changes to the faith points system and acts of faith are tragic, but I'm way over it now after playing my sisters a lot. It's not as advantageous to constrain the types of Acts of Faith a squad can use in the new book but, it's much more of a consistent effect. So let's get away from reiteration and get to some very obnoxious aspects of the new Sisters Codex.


Thursday, October 13, 2011

The Last Stand New Characters Betas

HEROES
Heroes have a number of features that are unique to themselves that aren't in standard warhammer 40,000 aswell. The also benifiet from a number of Universal Special Rules.

Heroes Universal Special Rules
The following Rules/Equipment apply to every hero:
Fearless
Independent Character
Assault Grenades
Special Power Points: Each hero has a pool of points they can spend each turn in order to destroy their enemies or assist their allies. Some of these abilities are attacks, some are bonuses, but whatever the case, a hero may only use 1 Special Power per game turn unless they are a psyker, and then they may use 1 Psychic power per game phase: Movement, Shooting, Assault.
Special Powers use Special Points (SP) to work. Every character uses the amount listed next to the Special Power in order to use the power itself. Simply deduct the cost of the power from the total of SP the hero has and this is the total number of SP the hero has left. If you don't have enough SP to pay for the whole cost of the power then you cannot use it though the SP aren't wasted. Each turn a hero recovers a number of SP which is listed next to their total SP in their stat line as a "+X" value. X is the number of points they regenerate at the beginning of each hero turn. The number of SP a hero has can never go over the starting total listed in their stat line.

Psyker: This character can use up to 1 Special Power per phase during the hero player's turn. They pay for abilities normally. They don't need to take Psychic tests, simply pay for the ability as normal to use them.


Hit the jump for the first two completed hero profiles!

The Last Stand: Beta!

LAST STAND BETA RULES V 1.0


40k But Different: This is a game based on the 5th edition rulebook of Warhammer 40,000. As such, all the regular game rules apply, plus some additional rules such as "Special Moves" and "Special Points." Treat this like a special encounter which puts a few flavorful characters in a "No Win" scenario. Survive against wave after wave of deadly enemies, collect points to level up, grab phat lootz from terrifying bosses, and try to survive longer than your friends. But you're going to have to work together to survive. The game pits 2 sides against each other, on one side is the "heroes". They might be from a bunch of different races across the 40k universe but right now they work together.

Monday, October 10, 2011

The "Last Stand" Rough Draft

Since I bought and Loved Space Crusade (aka Smash TV 40k style) I have been looking for a way to implement the same kind of points and heroes play-style into a tabletop version.
I also have been inspired heavily by Warhammer Quest and THQ's Last Stand Game Mode in Dawn of War 2. I've pretty much put all these in a blender and frappe'ed myself some custom game goodness. This is a rough draft of the game, a first run of the rules just to get things going, there will be much more to come.


[We've moved the content to new posts, but I wanted to leave this here so people would know where we're coming from.  Stay tuned for updates!]


Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Just a Rhino Approved #1

I hope you are all very excited. Because I'm here to unveil a new article type here at JaR:
Just A Rhino Approved!
I know! But please, hold your applause till the end. This new type of article will consist of Homegrown rules, scenarios, games, rainy-day crafts, hats, or anything else we think you need to have rules for. If you're anything like me you miss that thrill of opening a new White Dwarf magazine to find a whole new Chapter Approved rules waiting for you (I know it happened two months ago, shut up!). It's like Christmas but better because you didn't have to wade through the snow to argue with your family about who isn't a doctor at any point. And these rules were REAL, you could go and play with them like the official Codices. Oh boy! But....
After Andrew W. 40k left Games Workshop these articles dropped off completely as did sales of White Dwarf. I'm not here to talk about how pointless White Dwarf is now, maybe I'll do that later, or Monty can do it. Right now we're talking about Honest to Gosh rules for new stuff!

Though I love 40k to death, I made this blog because there are plenty of things about it that I hate. And one of those things I hate is the fact that EVERYONE plays Space Marines.
Which...sucks.
Variety is the spice of life and all I've got to play against is PISS in my Cheerios.
And THAT sucks.
The worst part is most people who play 40k are pretty into the fluff. Which means that all those Marine players (especially the Ubiquitous Ultramarines) are breaking the Codex Astartes. If you don't know what a Codex Astartes is, then let me summarize. The Codex Astartes was written after Big Bad Horus died, and all the Rebel Space Marine Legions went back to the warp. The Imperium didn't want 10s of 1000s of space marines to go all Jason Bourne on them again. So they wrote the Codex Astartes which said that each Space Marine chapter can only number 1000 doods and thus the Second Founding occurred, dividing up the space marine chapters of the First Founding into smaller bite sized increments.
Now that my little trip through Roleplay city is over, nowadays EVERYONE playing Space Marines is breaking the Codex Astartes because I bet dollars to boltguns that there are way more than 1000 Space Marine Models representing each chapter in the world. Hell, there's a guy at our local gaming store (Chris Eiemers Shout-out woot woot!) who literally owns the entire Ultramarines chapter. So assuming that he's the 1st 1000 the Ultramanndoes get, then all the rest have to be....ELIMINATED! And so the Inquisitorial Branch Mahitoius was born. Founded by Thorian Inquisitor Xanidella De Fel Crois Bow,
her sole mission is to eliminate suprlus members of the space marine chapters before whatever diabolical plans they have come to horrible fruition.











She is obviously intended to be an HQ choice for either Grey Knights, Imperial Guard or Sisters of Battle.
Try her out! Tell me how it goes!
You can look for more JaR Approved articles in the near future!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Why We Hate Chaos

Shut up. Thank you. If you don't hate Chaos, you should probably read this. And if you do hate Chaos, you probably don't know why. You think you do, but you're wrong. Ok, everybody offended? No? Jesus, a Jew, and Mel Gibson walk into a bar...

Oh, sorry. You ARE all offended, because I either just told you I hate you, or called you too stupid to understand your own mind. Great. Let's begin.

We'll start with some of the reasons you think you hate Chaos. And if you're some kind of social deviant (Chaos player), just swap out 'hate' for 'refuse to play anything but' and it'll read the same. Assuming you can read and understand the basic principles of substitution. Hey-oh!

A Sister by any other name...

Two Posts in one day? You guys must be lucky. But don't get too excited it's more Sisters of battle stuff. These are all test models from myself. Hammering out which color schemes I want to use on my Sisters.
Scheme 1: Really Red and Boney Bone
I'm not too fond of the first one, it seems a bit bright for a 40k army (Hardy har). Which is also probably why it's the least finished.










Hit the jump for three more schemes!