Chaos: Or why you shouldn't bother converting

Sigh. I keep neglecting this blog. But not to worry, I'm going to keep going. So I thought it would be nice to start with a controversial one, whilst I'm still in a suitably irritated mood.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Chaos players are living in a dream world. Not that this is a bad thing, considering that if you didn't, you'd be like me, an Ex-Chaos player. Because if you work hard enough, you can convince not only yourself, but also other people that Chaos are a really cool faction in 40k.

This is what gets me, because if you read the current Codex, you'd be forgiven for wondering why.

It isn't just as the demotivator above says; the Chaos Codex isn't just outdated, it was pretty terrible when it was first released. It had a few competitive things within it, such as the Lash, Daemon Princes remain fairly nasty, and some units got much needed improved stats (Plague Marines and Berzerkers to name two). But ultimately what is missing from the Chaos Codex is the whole, umm, Chaos bit.

It was particularly obvious back then, when the new Codex came out, replacing the previous one that offered tonnes of options in the way that 4th Edition Codexes did at the time. 4th Ed Chaos may well have been the best Codex of that edition; offering tonnes of options, themes and at the same time, making a lot of the myriad legions of chaos possible and attractive as an army choice.

The previous Codex had a section devoted purely to God Specific wargear, god-specific army builds (that rewarded you for being true to your favourite god) and also legion specific rules, allowing you to build the likes of Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, etc. Considering the fluff has always stated that the Chaos Gods are supposed to hate each other, one-god forces are supposed to be fairly practical, you'd think.

The wargear was considerable and varied. They were noticeably Chaotic, setting themselves aside from other factions (such as marines) to a considerable extent. It was possibly too good, because it offered such potential, in spite of having a pretty mediocre existing miniatures range, that much like the Old Orks, it really encouraged the modelling and converting that Chaos soon became famous for.

It was also around this time that pretty much every Chaos player rocked an absolutely awesome Chaos lord, with their own character and abilities. When the new Chaos Codex rolled along, Chaos players found their options drastically reduced, the loss of Daemons (anyone telling you that page of generic "Summoned Daemons" are actually Daemons are lying) and an extreme overuse of Special Characters and gimmicks throughout the codex, and space marines.

Space Marines are to be expected, sure, but the problem is that's all the current Codex actually is. This is 5th Edition after all. We have grown to expect the gimmicks, because that's what 5th is all about, the same goes for the over-prominence of Special Characters. But you have to try very, very hard to make bland Space Marines. Which was proven when every other power armoured Codex that has rolled along since has made Chaos' "Marked Units" look so utterly quaint and pointless.

Marked Units were essentially GW's way of adding "Chaos" to the Codex, aside of the Lash and Special Characters. Take away those and you pretty much have a very generic and unimaginative Space Marines Codex. But although Chaos Space Marines are Space Marines, they used to be so much more than that. For a start, you could actually tell the difference, you could manifest the fruits of that schism on the tabletop.

Putting it simply, we had the Axes of Khorne, Kai Guns, interesting Daemon Weapons, Daemonic upgrades, special powers, and actual Chaos vehicle upgrades. What do we have now? Regular Space Marine options. Power Weapons, Lightning Claws, Power Fists. For vehicles, it's Dozer Blades, Extra Armour, Smoke Launchers etc. Fine, that's cool and everything, but if I wanted just those things I could take them very easily in a loyalist Marine force. Even the 3rd Edition Dark Angels, Black Templars and Blood Angels Codexes managed to do that whilst adding in a few unique things. The current Codex offers the Lash, and the rather disappointing Daemon Weapon.

Back in 4th Ed, pretty much every other Chaos player had a Possessed Dreadnought. I had one with the Khornate vehicle upgrade (Destroyer), and it cost me an awful lot of money to make it (see the results above, cost me about £60-70 at the time). Now you can possess tanks, but not Dreadnoughts. Why? The worst of it is that Marines followed fairly swiftly after the rules change and the loyalists got 3 different types of Dreadnought, all cooler than the Chaos version.

Independent Characters also suffered. In my time as a Chaos player, I made no fewer than 10 Chaos Lord/Lieutenant models. Of those models, a pathetic two of them remained WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) when the new Codex came out, due to awkward upgrade and options placement, and the removal of any sanity with regards to allotting wargear in any Codex in the whole of 5th Edition, and as 6th Edition rears its disgusting face it shows no signs of returning.

It highlighted a fundamental problem with the new options layout: it was far too dogmatic, making some fairly logical and popular weapon options completely impossible. Being forced to take a gun of some form has caused many 40k players who remember 40k before 5th Edition to pull their hair out and chuck their lavishly built and converted models against the walls of GW "Hobby Centres".

What made that pill so difficult to swallow was that there are a few Chaos Special Characters that have two close combat weapons, or at least weapons that were impossible to even get close to with the current options. There's Abaddon of course, but the worst offender is the new Red Corsairs character Huron Blackheart. His weapon options are incredibly cool, but in contrast to the regular Chaos Lord, he's offensively cool.

The options for building Chaos Lords is barely any different to that of any Space Marine Hero. This becomes even worse when you consider that he usually ends up being more expensive for a lot less advantages. Aside of marks, the only option of difference is the Daemon Weapon, which is a problematic, occasionally useful upgrade at best. The Khorne Variation is slightly more practical than the previous Berserker Glaive, but very likely to do absolutely nothing when you need it more than ever.

What the current codex made me realise is that Chaos just isn't Chaos without oodles of interesting rules and wargear. The Chaos Codex as it stands lacks both. It has a handful of gimmicks to make up for it, such restrictive options as to be offensive to anyone who takes the effort to model unique Chaos Models for their army, and highlights a fundamental problem that GW has only exacerbated in recent years.

Warhammer 40,000 is changing in tone. There was a time, when Loyalist Space Marines were depicted as usually on the receiving end of bitter defeat. Most of their endings were bittersweet, being pyrrhic victories at best. It was common to show Space Marines facing death, bravely, but facing a ultimately (and usually subtle) futile outcome. This vision has been slowly changing, most likely as an effort by GW to simplify 40k for their rather youthful target audience (despite the fact that this target audience has loved 40k as it was for at least a decade or so anyway), and give clear messages about good guys and bad guys.

The dark and depressing future is being replaced with one where Space Marines are ridiculously awesome. Grey Knights barely registering a shrug, before easily resisting the taint of chaos and rendering it asunder as if they're a badly scripted 80s B-Movie action hero. Now personally, I'd rather have the bleak and depressing side. It is to many 40k fans (the actual fans, not those arseholes who like winning more than getting laid) its best feature.

Chaos has suffered from this for a while, usually being utilised as the designated bad guy of choice, and doing pretty much every villain cliché in the book. Abaddon takes it to the extremes, with the Black Crusade campaign being almost as disastrous as an exercise as the Warhammer Fantasy Storm of Magic campaign, for pretty much the same reasons: bad writing.

[Side Rant: You know GW hands out a lot of bad writing, when fans of 40k talk endlessly about how awesome Dan Abnett is. He is indeed a good writer, but he is being horrendously overrated. It isn't his fault, its the rest of the company that he's being compared to. With the likes of Matt Ward writing Codex fluff, Dan Abnett could be the reincarnation of Shakespeare by comparison. As it stands, he's a fairly consistent and solid writer. GW has one. Him. That's pretty much all there is to it.]

During the campaign, Abaddon managed to fit in some pretty bad Dick Dastardly-esque cackles of villain-ness, and then manage to fail rather spectacularly, being upstaged by the Deceiver, who's force of origin (Necrons) most likely played very little part in the actual campaign.

Chaos used to be particularly deep, with lots of very interesting depth and disturbingness. Now they seem to be pretty much "We're mean because we are", and I'm sure one could be led to wonder why they worship those Chaos Gods, because it makes bugger all difference. Unless of course you're a Daemon. But you can thank Matt Ward for that. I still haven't forgiven him, but at least now, looking back at all those people who said I was over-reacting and that Ward would turn out to be a boon for the company, that I was mostly right. He's been a boon alright. Managed to doom the company in the long run though.

I would like to demonstrate this decay of Chaos with a singular example: Khorne. There is more to it, but Khorne shows it off far more easily, and as a long-suffering ex-servant of the Blood God, I happen to have noticed the change very distinctively.

In the game, we have lost a lot of distinctiveness. The Axe of Khorne has disappeared. It was essentially a power weapon, but it was different enough to be interesting. If it is more or less just a regular power weapon, then all your Chaos Champion or Lord is becomes little more than a palette swap of a loyalist marine. Likewise there is no God specific vehicle upgrade (the Destroyer) so all you can really do is paint it red and make it look nasty, but there are vehicles in loyalist marine books that have actual character to them and a uniqueness. The Chaos offering in the current Codex was never even remotely distinct as a "Chaos" vehicle.

This is the issue, Chaos are Chaos in name only.

In balance, I should add that Berserkers have a unique statline that is far more suitable to what they should be, but it came at the cost of a lot of interesting and unique (if obvious) wargear options. Berserkers are still a popular choice, but there became no reason to take more than a unit of them. To the cynically inclined, one can begin to wonder if the Chaos Codex (like the Daemon one after it) was an exercise in dissuading One-God forces and encouraging players to take multiple-god forces, which are usually a particularly bad looking colour scheme concept, and a good reason why Chaos of any kind is seldom seen on the gaming table.

But by far the worst affect on Khorne (and Chaos in general) was the degradation of the background fluff from deep, disturbing and interesting to simplified, trite and cliché. The best example of this is how Kharne the Destroyer managed to help shape the stereotypical representation of Khorne, through the deterioration of vocabulary.

Chaos used to have some particularly fine quotes and interesting arguments in the old days. Such as this quote from page 77 of the 2nd Edition Codex Imperialis:

"Though the gates that stand between the mortal world and the immortal Realm of Chaos are now closed to me, still I would rather die having glimpsed eternity than never to have stirred from the cold furrow of mortal life. I embrace death without regret as I embraced life without fear." Kargos Bloodspitter, Champion of Khorne

If we contrast this with those who follow Khorne in the newer books:

"UH DURR... BLOOD FOR BLOOD GOD!!!!11111" Kharne the Copycat, random Berzerker

Kharne used to be an exception. Granted, all Khorne followers (especially Berzerkers) are homicidal lunatics, but it was only really Kharne who was that batshit mental. He added to Chaos decay by making sure his epithet was doubly suitable by dooming his entire brethren to 1-sentence vocabularies. Whilst a blood-crazed loon sensing blood in a soon unfolding battle has a certain poetic charm, applying it entirely to every follower of Khorne (or at least every World Eater) is a little much, really.

Chaos used to be so interesting and diverse, before they all became clichés of themselves. The best story I ever read about Chaos is still the one from pages 78-80 of the 2nd Edition Wargear book entitled Dark Communion. The story is merely about a Chaos lord using a technique for storing his favourite memories, but it is a mix of good sci-fantasy writing and actually being incredibly interesting. It was written by one of GW's old writers called Bill King. Memories of his work is one of the main reasons why I wonder why everyone loves Abnett so much.

Ultimately, the state of Chaos makes me question why anyone but the most ardent of fans would actually bother with Chaos. It's doubly sad because people do, because Chaos are awesome simply by conception and basic aesthetic alone, so it truly highlights how poor GW's writing is that they can completely and utterly fail to do the merest of fan expectation justice. It isn't a question of how Chaos got screwed up, but more of how GW actually managed to. Given that lots of Chaos players still stick with their forces and continue to make amazing models shows that they totally deserve to get something resembling an amount of effort on the part of GW's writing team (I'm still both surprised and disappointed that this Codex was written by both Gav Thorpe and Alessio Cavatore. They really were phoning this in).

It depresses me to conclude, much in the way of the Orks when they finally received an update, that it will be something short of a miracle if it even comes close to justifying the hard work and continued determination of Chaos players, and even if it does manage to do some of this, it will massively fall short, much like the Ork Codex did, and that's your best case scenario, from a better time, and more talented writers. Considering that was 4th Ed, one can view Phil Kelly in much the same way as Abnett. You'll spot a rose in a dung pile easy enough.

Games and Gameplay Innovation: Part 4: To Refine or Expand

Introduction

It must be one of the biggest clichés in the Wargaming world, but change occurs on a regular, sometimes constant basis through two particular mediums. The first, which of the two is the least frequent, is refining; the taking of something which exists and tweaking of it to suit whatever needs are required of it. The second, which is far and away the most frequent, is expansion; the adding of new material to an existing work. Both of these are things we all see in many Wargames, and it is most likely the two things we keep the most track of.

There are many reasons for this, but ultimately in the gaming world, not taking notice of such change tends to have negative consequences. It is also hard to miss when a rules system changes, or a new shiny faction comes out, or is reinvented. It affects the entire gaming community, especially if you play GW games.

The contrast between the two is worth noting, as they both have a massive impact on the games we play, and most games vary as to which of the two they do best, if either of them at all. Through the course of this particular post, I'd like to discuss some of what I feel are the successes and failures of games with regards to refining and expanding.

Expansion

It is probably wise to start with expansion, as of the two it is virtually a constant. The way most games are means that you are more likely to see something new than see something existing being fiddled with. Usually, as has been discussed before, new things are often introduced as a sweetener to justify change. GW are particularly infamous for this, relying on new gimmicks to justify a rehash of a old system.

Expansion is something we are used to seeing. Privateer Press even themed whole releases and new books around the concept, with names such as "Escalation" and "Superiority", and introducing "Epic" versions of their Warcaster characters. The reason is as blatant as the naming, most companies up the ante. A lot of Wargaming is built upon tension, and if you keep that aspect building, so too should interest.

Plus, we all get bored, and we want to see our factions improve, evolve and change. Expansion is a common factor, something a wargamer expects. If you are playing a game using miniatures, you expect to see more of them. In Historical wargaming, you can have massive wars to cover, so many different regiments, types of tanks, new innovations and warmachines etc.

Besides, it isn't just miniatures that are expanded upon, but so too are rulesets. New rules come out of playing, new expanded concepts, rules to cover new issues or developments, new scenarios and battle types, new ideas, campaign rules, new unit rules, and so much more.

There was a time when the best example of this was actually Games Workshop. All of their games, WHFB, 40k, LOTR, and all the specialist games would get new rules and expanded ideas that were frequently published in magazines. Some were submitted by fans, but others were developed. This occurred to such an extent that people started actively hating White Dwarf because it no longer featured new rules, or any article that was remotely doing anything other than excusing the White Dwarf from being a catalogue that you pay for.

GW had a golden age that they no longer explore. The trouble with expansion, of course, is that it leads to imbalance within rulesets, especially if you don't develop all factions equally. Privateer Press has for a time, managed to avoid this, but trying to expand on the number of factions may bring a detriment to this.

By far the worst example of excess that I can think of is Confrontation. That was a game that swelled to the very edges with a massive excess amount of rules, which it tried to manage in an incredibly complex fashion. There was no way you could remember the 7 or so pages of abilities within the book, let alone the myriad of incredibly complex turn aspects.

Refining

Mentioning confrontation leads me to refining. A Wargaming producer's constant struggle is that of managing everything into a cohesive and balanced system (apart from GW, who just want you to know what edition it is). What keeps people playing games is the challenge, and the social interaction. The best way to facilitate both is to make sure your system runs smoothly.

Refining is what makes the difference between a good game and a great game. Some games try to bypass this with gimmicks (40k, WHFB) or polish (Confrontation, 40k, WHFB) but the mark of a really good system is the ability to make things work within a well-defined system.

Privateer Press have even being struggling with this of late, but for me, Warmachine and Hordes represents a very good example of a refined system. PP knows what works, and what their game is. Anyone who plays it can be under no illusions of what the game is about, or how it is played. I learnt more or less the entirety of how to play Warmachine the first time I played it. I am still learning about Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 every single day that goes by.

The difference is the strength of the ruleset. Warmachine and Hordes has a very well-defined system. Other rules adhere to the existing rules. So whilst a rule or unit might be new to you, how it interacts with the system is something you are most likely familiar with. In contrast, with the likes of 40k, you don't know, because so many rules contradict, or outright re-write the core rules, so you are often faced with the question of what is intended, without being able to logically determine it. Pretty much all of GW's FAQ documents are far too short, and will never be full enough for their fans. If they had refined the system into one where all rules share a unified concept, they wouldn't have to.

Even a refined system needs explaining, but the difference is one of confidence. If your system does its job, the rules are interpreted more smoothly, and people have more time to enjoy playing a game.

To Refine or Expand

Related to this is how one decides to expand or refine. In rules terms, you need to be able to decide when to add more, simplify, or to completely redefine. You also need to know when is the right time to apply either of those three (for an example of how not to do this, compare two editions of any GW game). Rules that are clunky need either to be simplified or redefined. You certainly shouldn't expand on such a concept if the original concept doesn't really work.

You could be easily led to the question of which is more important, and the answer is that they are all equally important. You should always refine and expand. You should never be afraid to add too much to a system, merely too little. People know what they want out of a game, so additional optional rules should always be welcome; the only issue is finding an appropriate place to introduce them. GW books such as Cityfight, Planetstrike, Apocalypse and the recent Storm of Magic are all very good examples of how to appropriately add more potential options to a game. GW most likely peaked with the Specialist Games website, and Fantasy's General's Compendium.

People are always looking to try new things and add more to their experience. In that situation refining becomes increasingly difficult. But ultimately if you know what requires refining, it isn't as difficult as it seems. It is the integrity of the fundamental core system, and the balance of individual factions that requires refining. Expansion beyond that will always attract the audience that wants it, and trust me, they will make such things work.

The biggest travesty to any Wargame is to take away expanded ideas, and an even bigger travesty is to not even refine what aught to be refined. If you want the best example of this, seek out your nearest Games Workshop. You'll find 3 particularly horrific examples.

TWC's Top 16 All-Time Favourite Wargaming Miniatures

Every now and then people tell you they wargame because of the game. The system, they say, is what they play for; which of course is wargaming shorthand for “I can make brutal lists and always win”. You ignore these people, if you’re not one of them, anyway. If you’re anything like me, the main reason you wargame is that you like pretty toy soldiers.

Of course, what you do with them when you get them varies, not everyone made VROOM VROOM noises when they played Krash or Dark Future, but everybody knew that the games wouldn’t be much without the toy cars to push around. Although with those games you tended to need better-looking cars. Then you needed to train your voice so that your V8 Interceptor sounded better than your riveted Cadillac...

Wargaming Miniatures (which of course is wargaming shorthand for “Toy Soldiers, pew, pew, pew! BANG! Argh!”) are a massive appeal, and over the many decades that they have existed, there have been lots of very aesthetically pleasing ones. Let’s face it; it’s the main attraction, really. The only reason I bought the board game Descent is so I could unpack and categorise all the goodies in the box.

Below is my Top 16 list (I couldn’t get it down to 15, never mind 10). It is a summarised version of my Top 25 “short-list” (that’s one thing it isn’t), which was shortened from a list of over 50 miniatures. I should note this is my list of “favourites”, or as close as I can get to it from games I have played in my time, and is limited (with a couple of exceptions) to miniatures I own or have owned. Some were eliminated from the list because I don’t own them, or because I wanted a fairly equal spread. Once I start up a few other games, the list would most likely change, so the reason it is a Top 16 is so I can at least mention Dystopian Wars and Malifaux.

On some occasions I’ve cheated, mentioning multiple models, but we’re not all perfect are we, and that’s your problem, and you’ll have to deal with it. ;)

They are of course, in descending order of preference, or audacity, I can’t remember which.

[Yes, I have been reading Cracked recently.]

16. beakie Tactical Squad [Warhammer 40,000 3rd Edition, Games Workshop]



Let’s start with something I think could actually make a place in a list of the best miniatures of all time. As a 26 year old Wargamer who has been gaming for about 17 years; I’ve had about 17 years too much exposure to beakies. But as someone who was first introduced to 40k during 2nd Edition, I had a number of beakie units, and I hated assembling them all. Every time someone complains about how annoying current GW miniatures are to assemble, I immediately think of those sodding plastic arms that you somehow had to attach bolters to, or metal heavy weapons, in such a way that they actually looked good.

I failed constantly.

Still, I was rather fond of them, but when 3rd Edition rolled along, and I saw the new plastic tactical squad, I (and probably every other gamer my age) completely forgot about every single beakie model I had seen before that. Compared to the previous ones, they were absolutely amazing, and to this day I still have no idea how GW came up with them at that time.

Ironically I only ever had one box of them. But that was the thing; I didn’t need them. My beakie army swiftly became combat orientated. The reason for that was the absolute avenue of choice that was opened up, based upon a foundation that was set by that one squad, from which all Beakies pretty much to this day originate.

I know we often blame the kiddies for beakie’s popularity, but GW really couldn’t have helped it, I don’t think. The whole of 3rd Edition made 40k a resounding success and a household name, and I think that one Tactical Squad was mostly responsible for it. It certainly killed any chance of Dark panzee doing well. Let’s face it, the Tactical Squad was selling 40k Boxed Sets single-handedly. The Landspeeder was pretty much a mess, and Dark panzee were massively unpopular (although only having the warriors in the boxed set sealed their fate).

Although the Tactical Squad box has since been refined, and added to (and had stuff removed if my friend speaks the truth), it hasn’t quite had the impact it had back then. These days we take for granted that Beakies could be put together and easily look awesome. In 2nd Ed the only thing that looked impressive was the bits of your finger stuck to the godawful “cupped hand of uselessness”. What the hell was he supposed to hold in it, a bag of frikkin’ marbles?

So there you have it, don’t blame little timmies for the popularity of the beakies – blame the beakies.


15. Aenur, Sword of Twilight [Mordheim, Games Workshop]



Aside of being the only Non-Dark Elf GW has produced that I have ever liked (without converting it first), it could be argued that Aenur is likely the most-painted wargaming miniature of all time. Those of you youths out there will wonder, “Why, were they giving it away?”

Well, yes, more or less, they were.

UK White Dwarf 228 had it as a free miniature. That’s right, a free metal miniature. Naturally, you could still buy it, although these days it is rather pricey. Not surprising actually, because it is bloody gorgeous. The Sword in particular is magnificent yet understated, and that cloak, which I don’t think GW has ever topped.

If you search the Internet, you’ll find lots of versions of it painted, as naturally it is the sort of miniature you just paint, you just do.

I think part of the reason is you can tell a whole story based upon that miniature from a single glance. I still view it as Mordheim’s swansong, as I desperately try to remove the visage of the Shadow Warriors and Carnival Chaos from my mind... with a rusty razor.


14. The Atlanteans [Dystopian Wars, Spartan Games]



I have been looking very eagerly at Dystopian Wars, ever since I heard about it. As will become obvious throughout this article, I love steampunk. I’ve been reading Victorian literature since I was in my early teens for pleasure and educational purposes, so Steampunk wasn’t a huge jump for me. I even listen to Steampunk music, because it is awesome.

I also vaguely flirted with Battlefleet Gothic, but found it flawed. I’ve been waiting for a game that actually did the whole Epic and BFG thing properly, and it looks like my prayers have been answered. At the very least those miniatures are absolutely stunning, truly showing off the power of CAD sculpting. Not only does this game have a cool aesthetic, its success likely means that Spartan Games’ other game Firestorm Armada will eventually look as nice, meaning if you did want spaceship battles, you can actually enjoy it without selling your kidneys for it, and then having to watch the panzee or tin'eads urinate on your fleet.

I’ve liked parts of most of the factions on display for Dystopian Wars, even some of the American things (they have a massive walker called the John Henry. Yeah), but up until now I’ve mostly only warmed to the Prussians (I love airships and pointy objects) and then I saw the Atlanteans…

The concept is just so damn original. I mean sure, it’s based on Verne in particular, but they look so different, yet recognisable at the same time. I truly have to thank the Podcast All Along The Watchtower for getting me even more interested in the game, and for alerting me to the incoming Atlanteans. As they said in the podcast, the drones do look a bit like penises, but if you avoid skin tones for your colour scheme you should be all right.

I could go on for ages about Dystopian Wars as a concept, but the obvious thing to discuss is the ridiculously amazing detail, in resin, at a reasonable cost. Just take a look at that GW. [i]That’s how you actually do it[/i].

13. The Red Gobbo [Gorkamorka, Games Workshop]



Well, as obvious choices go, this is right up there. If anyone actually wondered why the artwork for the Red Gobbo is in my avatar, I would have hoped it would be obvious, really.

Those who know me well know I have a bit of an affinity for Grots. It comes mostly from the fact that I loved Gorkamorka, and loved the idea of the Rebels. Any self-respecting Rebel player has that model (or at least did in the 90s) and it is, as far as I’m concerned, the single most stunning Gretchin model ever sculpted. The fact they discontinued it, the bile I could utter about that travesty wouldn’t begin to cover the sheer horrendous crime against grotdom that it is. At least they had the wit to keep it longer than the rest of the Rebel Grot range (apart from the regular Grots).

The Red Gobbo is from a past age, when the effort plunged into all of GW’s games was positively monumental. You might not have liked the results, but you knew they tried. A Specialist Games enthusiast can most likely tell you based upon miniatures (or an entire redux in Necromunda: Underhive) when GW stopped giving a crap. Unfortunately Gorkamorka never succeeded enough to reach that stage of ultimate failure, and as a result most of the range that was left behind is actually as collectable as most of the Necromunda range.

A honourable mention goes to the entire Rebel range, particularly the vehicles. The metal Grots were so good the new plastics were made to fit in with them. Those were all from Gorkamorka, and they still look amazing. The vehicles, the Big Lugga and the Cutta are iconic in concept, and the ship-like motif is something I’ve expanded on for that Rebel Grot Codex I’ve been writing for Blakkreaper’s Clanz Projekt.

The only downside to the Gobbo was his staff. Although great looking, it always snaps off. Although oddly enough I have found both of the ones I lost for both my Red Gobbo models. Unfortunately one of the two is converted, ones is for GoMo (on GoMo bases, not 40k ones), so I lack one for 40k. Until I buy some instant mould ;)

Viva Da Revulushun, ya Gitz!

12. Skaven Doomwheel [Warhammer, Games Workshop]



Well, I was actually on about the one from 5th Edition, but as the new one is also very pretty, and I want one (plus finding a picture of the old one was a sodding pain), so it’s not too bad of a violation of the rules I made for myself now, is it.

There are miniatures that can say a lot about you, about what kind of person, or gamer you are. Some of it is your taste, but some of it is also a little more sophisticated than that. If you played Warhammer fantasy at any point, the miniatures you had in your army was essentially a sliding scale of images that ranged from Cheddar to Stilton. Or baby-eating if you’re a Dwarf player.

If you took a Doomwheel in 5th Edition fantasy, it informed the opposing player that they should be very scared of you. Because then they instantly knew that you were above it all, that you didn’t care whether you won or lost, you had a Doomwheel, and it was going to kill things. Probably Skaven models, but your opponents always dreaded the day that the Engineer on the top wiped his goggles, because when he did, your opponent could have had all the best parts of the magic deck, the cheesy magic items, and Chaos Warriors he liked, he was still doomed.

Models like the Doomwheel represent pure insanity. They represent the exact opposite of the things I love to hate about this hobby: mathshammer, statistics, reliable/effective/viable units. The Doomwheel is the sort of thing you take when your hobby is mostly about beating your opponent to killing your own army. I’ll race you to defeatism…

You win.

There’s just something about Skaven. Their machinations, like they are in the fluff are absolutely better than everything else in the world that they exist, if only they didn’t have treacherous tendencies. I’m the kind of person who watched Wacky Races and concluded that Dick Dastardly won anyway.

Also, monowheels are cool. Crazed contraptions are better, and crazed rats riding crazed contraptions really resonates complete coolness.

11. The Orks of 2nd Edition [Warhammer 40,000, Games Workshop]



I have a confession to make. People often wonder why I have an army of Grots. It’s because I’m not really a big fan of modern Orks. I’m a 2nd Edition Ork fanboy. From then on, with the minor fluff exception of Andy Chamber’s absolutely awesome Anzion articles (although actually most of them are technically from Gorkamorka, not the 3rd Ed Codex), it has all been pretty downhill from there, really.

I still really love Orks, but I was never a big fan of the added crudity and angry-beast syndrome that overly simplified the Orks and made 40k revolve around They Shall Know No Fear and Fearless rules for about twenty billion editions. Even the models, they are still characterful, but when you contrast them with the character of the old Orks, they look positively monochrome.

My favourite model is Zodgrod Wortsnagga, the model most people know as “That cool Slaver/Runtherd model”. It is the kind of model that makes me cry inside. I look at what the Orks were, and what they have become, and know that when I come to use it, and to finally finish my Madboyz army with all the greenstuffed hair and crazed hats, expressions and demented things, I’m going to get comments in real life, and on this forum about how Orks don’t look like that and are bald, and can only have topknots.

Every time I see a RT/2nd Ed Ork army in the Mek’s Garage or Trophy Rack, I seethe with envy. I would love to have that many awesome looking Orks. Still, I have most of my favourites, Ghazghkull and Makari, the Goff Rockers, Zodgrod, the old SAG (somewhere) and recently, 2 of the 3 Tinboyz. I plan to use most of them, and I’m already working on making more Tinboyz and Rockers.

10. Wyrd Miniatures [Malifaux, Wyrd Miniatures]



I liked Wyrd Miniatures before Malifaux was out, and I am currently cursing my horrendous poverty that I can’t buy absolutely every flipping thing they’ve made. I haven’t wanted pretty much every model in an entire range since Rackham still had stuff that was actually worth buying.

As mentioned earlier, I love Steampunk, and anything a little bit off the wall, especially if it twists popular, cultural, historical or mythological images into something vaguely different. Wyrd does this, it seems, on a daily basis. They are also the only company, since GW in the 90s to realistically get the idea of what Terrain is supposed to do, and how to design it so people can realistically, you know, use it, with wargaming bloody miniatures.

The first models to grab my attention were the Witchling Stalkers, but so much of the range is actually collectable, as well as amazingly being fit into an interesting system. Characters such as Pandora, the Mad Hatter, War, and Death, are amazing, twisted, and, well, Wyrd. There is much promise in this company, if it keeps going at this rate. And, of course, it uses proppa metal. Not cheap, overpriced resin.

9. Varghar, Limited Edition Wolfen [Confrontation 3, Rackham]



The first Rackham entry, it was only really a matter of time. It should be noted in my first list of over 50 miniatures, about half of them were Rackham models, and I hadn’t even included the Rackham models I never got a chance to actually own. So if you ever wondered why every Confrontation player in the entire planet spends most of their time in a GW store going “Meh” you are about find out a small amount about why this is.

Wolves. Ah yes, now there’s an image that can resonate. I’ve seen lots of Wolfy things in popular culture over the years, not least the actual Space Wolves, but I’ve not quite seen anything as impressive as the Rackham Wolfen.

I’m sure most of us have some kind of monstrously large creatures in our collection, things from troll/ogre size to the odd dragon and such. Rackham is the only company I have ever known to devote the detail you would expect from a tiny character model into a 55mm+ figure, and still be vaguely affordable, or designed to actually use in wargames. The Wolfen are Ogre sized, and you’re not wanting for detail, not at all.

There are of course a few really nice massive ones, their Cynwall Dragon, Midnor Daemon Tower, and the absolutely massive and disgustingly beautiful Ogre Cyclops (all of which can be easily googled), which were fairly expensive, but utterly beautiful, and I would have happily bought all of them if I had the money. They are the kind of models that, after being in a GW where some Staffer is trying to hype me into loving the Storm of Magic monsters, his face rather drops a bit when I mention the lack of detail, and the typically make-or-break GW paintwork cover-up attempt to hide it. He may wonder why this is. The one-worded answer is "Rackham".

Varghar is one of many beautiful Wolfen (Onyx, the Prowler and Predators of Blood in particular) and was a limited edition model, based on the front cover artwork of the Confrontation 3 rulebook, and managed to be more beautiful than the artwork. Only the French could pull that off. They don’t always, mind you, because Rackham’s artwork also tends to be outstanding, to the point that I bought Griffin’s Garrell the Redeemer based on his artwork picture, and was deeply disappointed.

I don’t know why I wrote so much, just look at the picture.

8. VASA Viper Wings [Void 1.1, I-Kore]



I miss Void. Mostly because I don’t remember much about it, other than me and a few friends mercilessly looting a lot of their models to use in our own systems, although we did play a bit of Void from time to time.

I-kore were the first company I encountered that produced miniatures for bikes that didn’t look like they were bricks with wheels, and made me realise that bike models could actually look extremely nice. The riders were a little bland in style, and those bikes ALWAYS fell over, but they were just utterly beautiful, and the riders didn't distract you from the appealing lines of the bikes. Of all the original Void range, they still stick out to me as the most beautiful ones.

It was a shame about Void really, because there were lots of beautiful models in that range, the Syntha and VASA tended to be the main ones, but I-kore succeeded, in the 90s, in making absolutely stunning and interesting sci-fi miniatures. These days, I actually wish I’d spent my money on Void miniatures rather than all that money I wasted on GW. I’d actually be happy to still have those models. I’ve not looked at my Beakies, or my Chaos, since I shoved them in a corner to collect dust.

Gaming truly isn’t everything.

7. Legion of Everblight Carnivean [Hordes, Privateer Press]



The first time I saw Everblight, I knew I’d get them. They looked like a Dragon and Daemon had shagged for a fortnight. Nothing else could be quite as awesome as that mental image.

...

Just me? Okay then...

The first time I saw the Carnivean, my jaw was sore for about 3 months afterwards. I have two of them, and they are as awesome in the game as they look. Any doubts I may have had about Hordes at the time were put to rest with a handful of models. The Carnivean is so awesome; that the Everblight range still hasn’t topped it, and it’s the one you get in the Everblight starter set.

A name I often horrendously misspell (and probably have done so again) is to thank for this beauty. One Felix Paniagua, you know, the guy responsible for Avatars of War. Yeah, him. Now you know why it looks so damn awesome.

I play Everblight mostly to put that model on the table, and I do so with horrific amounts of glee.


6. Lanyssa Ryssyll, Nyss Sorceress [Iron Kingdoms, Privateer Press]



I’m sure we all have at least one model in our model collections that we bought just because we saw it and we wanted it so bad we simply had to have it. I get the sensation a lot, but I still get blown away by the beauty of this model. I do have a soft spot for Elves with a Darker ilk to it (especially Drow) but I must sadly report that I believe this is the only Elf model that PP has made that is any good.

You can now use the model in Hordes, if you’re an American, but I have still yet to decide if the best of Privateer Press is behind them. Even though I collect Everblight, I am quite disappointed with PP’s Elves since Lanyssa, and well, the models I feel, aren’t as good as they were, and the rules, questionable. Still, PP is worthy enough to be giving Games Workshop some serious competition, and one hopes they at least learn from [i]some[/i] of GW’s pitfalls.

5. Ira Tenebrae [Confrontation 3, Rackham]



Every now and then you find models that simply strike a chord with you, and they have potentially life-changing (or wallet emptying) consequences. The Ira Tenebrae got me into Confrontation single-handedly. Aside of the fact that I love Latin; I bought a blister of 3 of the most stunning models I have ever seen for £9. For the three. No, really. At the same time, you could buy that bloody Captain Corteaz model for the same price. [i]There’s some perspective for you[/i].

I suggest googling these models. See if you can find some pictures of the back of them, because a look at the front alone does not do them justice. At the back, they have cloaks, or wings, something like that, [i]of skulls[/i]. It’s absolute insane detail. The kind of thing that makes me laugh every time I hear the pitch for “Finecast”.

In Confrontation, they are Elementals of Darkness, which requires for them to be summoned into the game, which means using the divinity rules. They didn’t get much play, let’s put it that way. But if I had to pick a model that to me had the most lasting impression, I’d pick my favourite of the 3 Ira Tenebrae. I’ve liked one in particular the most since I first saw them. Guess which one.

4. Cryx Harrower Helljack [Warmachine, Privateer Press]



The Harrower is by far my favourite Warjack in the entirety of Warmachine. When I started Warmachine, I loved the Leviathan Helljack (Cryx call their large Warjacks Helljacks, and the Light Warjacks are Bonejacks), but found it rather understated compared to the other Helljacks. The Harrower resolutely solved my problem. It is wonderfully overstated, with a BFG and a claw that can put out your own eye, not to mention models on the table.

Never before have I actually loved a model for being a pain to transport, and being a Cryx player, it isn’t as rare a complaint as you might think. Ever since I bought it, I’ve always used it. It’s not the best Helljack out there, but it just radiates awesomeness, and cuts through troops like they’re not there, and a turn later they usually aren’t.

Cryx Warjacks tend to radiate a purely evil and unsavoury aesthetic. Honourable mentions include the Nightmare (which only just failed to get on the 25 shortlist), the Leviathan, the Slayer, and Reaper. Even the smaller “Bone Chickens” Bonejacks are cool looking, although PP ruined the Helldiver with rubbish rules, and to spite them it doesn’t rate in my Top million. Damn you PP. Your Removecontinuouseffectsdiver thing is no Helldiver.

3. Cryx Mechanithralls [Warmachine, Privateer Press]



Mechanithralls are almost my favourite unit in the entirety of wargaming. Steampunk Zombies with Power Fists. It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “You are already dead”.

I simply love the aesthetic of them, and again, with Warmachine you buy awesome models, and almost always they actually [i]are[/i] awesome. People say Warmachine is only about Warjacks and doesn’t hold a candle to 40k, but in Warmachine, units actually do something other than die. They are all good, and they can all hurt everything else. The amount of Warjacks my 20 mechanithralls have ripped through is simply hilarious.

Plus, for a gamers’ game, Warmachine and Hordes models are really quite stunning. Sure they are getting pretty damn expensive, but unlike 40k you’re not paying a premium without getting something for it. PP’s models look good, and they tend to work very well, in a system that is well written. That makes the models even more attractive. Even in Mk.2.

Warmachine is something that is very much dominated by taste. If none of the limited factions appeal to your tastes, most likely you wont pick it up, but if you do like the aesthetic, chances are you’ll love the game, and adore the models.

If I had but one complaint regarding Mechanithralls, is that there are too few poses. Still, it doesn’t make them any less awesome.

2. Hive Primus and Its Inhabitants [Necromunda, Games Workshop]




This is cheating isn’t it? I know, and I don’t care.

Top X lists need to get bigger and better, so I opted for an entire hive. Because let’s face it, Necromunda is a game of awesome models, at least until some utterly cheap and annoying twerp turns up with plastic guard, and then says something about how he wants to use them as Van Saars because they all have Lasguns, but he has ordered 50 plasma guns on ebay. Then I kill him.

Anyway, Necromunda has always been about cool models. Even before it was called Necromunda, when it was called (ironically in this context) Confrontation, there were lots of interesting models that explored a completely different style and theme within the 40k universe.

Necromunda has many beautiful models, especially the first few waves of gangs and hired guns. The later models although still usually nice enough looking, lacked the depth and scope of the original ones. Don’t get me started on the Redemption and the Ratskins, or GW’s “Sneak Peak” of the Spyrers that they never f***ing changed anyway.

Ultimately though, the best models were actually the terrain. People played Necromunda for the same reason that people played Bloodbowl over the cores. They were complete games, ones that could be set up, enjoyed, and were simple and different enough to keep the thing running to a defined outcome. And they weren’t that pretentious enough to say: “for a good game you need fancy plastic terrain that requires a second mortgage to pay for it”.

If you wanted more variation in your games, you bought more starter sets. It was that simple, and the terrain was interesting enough, and some wonderful features were chucked in by the Outlanders supplement. More to the point, Necromunda is a game you can add to, and if you had no terrain, you could play Ash Wastes instead.

Necromunda just got it right, where Inquisitor was ambitious but rubbish, and Mordheim had massive promise and a great ruleset, but the terrain just failed to live up to it. Seriously, there was better buildings in the MG “Dark Age: Village of Fear” and “Dark Age” board games, and I used them for my Mordheim games. They cost me a lot less than the 40 quid GW were charging for their boxed set at the time.

All attempts to modernise the specialist games failed and I think all non-cores these days are built to fail in the long run, as they inevitably will.

Despite this, I could write a list of favourite miniatures into the hundreds, and I’d be more likely to mention Specialist Games miniatures (mostly Necromunda ones) before 40k, LOTR or Fantasy crept in at any significant quantity.

Particular favourites of mine include the entire range of Delaques (except for the Gang leader with hair), most of the Pit Slaves, the original Scavvy range (Scalies, Karloth Valois and Plague Zombies in particular),all the Wyrd models, the creatures such as the Milliasaurs and rippa jacks, the old Redemption, both ranges of Golaiths, both ranges of Orlocks, and, well the Escher are positively iconic.

Also, did you know the Spyrers were the first introduction of fish'ead (well, their tech) into 40k? Bet ya didn’t know dat one.

1. Sentinels of Danakil [Confrontation 3, Rackham]


Yes well, put simply, I have never seen anything that comes close to these models. They blew my mind away when I saw them, and I still get blown away when I look at them. I have absolutely no criticism for these models. They are as good as gaming models get, and are closer to pure art than anything else, and yet like any fantasy gaming miniature, they are based on a purely awesome concept.

That concept is Sword Axes. That pretty much speaks for itself, doesn’t it.

It’s models like this that made pretty much the entirety of the Confrontation fanbase stop playing Confrontation when Age of Ragnarok came out, with its plastic, overpriced, boring, pre-painted miniatures. The only thing that was good about them was seeing rackham models with paint on them for a change, as I dare not, because I am to the painting fraternity of Wargaming what Matt Ward is to the fraternity of wargaming writers. In other words, I put far too much crap onto models with no particular skill, flair or ability. Just like he does.

If you want the last word on Rackham’s legacy, it can’t hurt to find it on Coolminiornot.com. Rackham metals are the painter’s miniature of choice for showing off ridiculous skill. It isn’t surprising to see why, when you look at the canvass you’re painting on. You just bought a Finecast miniature didn’t you? Kept the receipt did you?

You’ll notice there are no current 40k or fantasy non-plastic miniatures in my top 16, nor are there any in my Top 25, nor my Top 50. Because they just don’t cut it any more, Finecast doesn’t matter, and if it does, it does so for all the wrong reasons.

GW presents Finecast: Because You're Worthless!

Okay well, everyone else has had something to say on the matter, so why don't I just beat the dead horse for a bit? I was trying to avoid it, but with a blog title called "The Wargaming Cynic" if I allowed the biggest mistake in Wargaming history since Confrontation: Age of Ragnarok to pass me by without even a passing mention in this blog, any hope of ever making this blog actually worth something would be completely pointless.

I've seen many pictures on the internet, and I've seen actual ones in the flesh. Judging from what I've seen, any conclusion taken from it is that at best, Finecast has been horrifically rushed and poorly handled. At worst it is the biggest insult to miniature collectors and gamers in the history of the hobby.

The first alarm bells rang when I saw the name. "Finecast". I already knew GW were moving to resin, but it doesn't matter what you know about GW's "special recipe", resin is cheaper than metal. My first gut reaction was to think how typical it is of Games Workshop to spin their measure (along with their collective ego) out of all proportions.

The public understanding is that resin is a cheaper alternative to metal, and indeed it is. GW would have stuck with metal if this "finecast" endeavour was going to cost them more money. Unfortunately, GW clearly doesn't care if it costs the consumer more money. They like it that way, judging from the unnecessary move to hard-backed WHFB army books (which no doubt will be moved to 40k when 6th Ed comes out).

GW does seem to get off on this idea of adding aesthetic "improvements". The sad thing is, I really don't think the consumer ever asked for them. They are essentially tacked on as a "we want more money from you" tax. There has been an argument that GW just happened to increase prices alongside the move to Finecast. Whether you believe that or not just depends on whether you think GW are scheming greedy bastards or incompetent greedy bastards.

I'm not going to compare models. I really don't need to, because there are many already across the internet. I have bought one Finecast model, and it didn't make it out of the shop. Having read a number of separate cases of horrendous moulding errors and an apparent lack of any quality control, I immediately checked my Tomb Kings Liche Priest (which I was planning on converting for use in Necromunda). I found several bubbles and errors.

I immediately sought a replacement, however the staff member told me how I could easily rectify this. I responded with a question: "Why should I need to?". That had him going for a while, until the responses about how the first wave of castings is bound to run with errors that are still easily fixed. I responded by invoking the name of this abomination: "Your company should have thought about that, before it called something Finecast, and priced it accordingly." He got defensive, and I got quite vociferous, during which time my quest for a replacement became a successful quest for a refund. It had a lot to do with the new customers entering the shop at that time.

It is an important point, but the pill is just too hard to swallow. You have a gimmicky name that is so egotistical and blatantly hiding a quick cost-saving cop-out, that is also the herald of, if not part of a price hike at the same time, yet you have a record amount of "poorly cast" miniatures being marketed at a massive mark-up as "Finecast". No wonder the internet is bursting to the seams with unfavourable references to this product with the pet name of "Fail Cast".

Of course, fanboys have been rushing to defend it lately. Lots of inferences about how GW are still miles ahead of the competition in miniature quality. Hardly. Most of the other companies haven't exactly had the 30 years practice and time to establish and fund their brand, yet by comparison, I don't quite think the comparative time reflects poorly on the other companies, who to some are just as good, if not better. GW's models are certainly nice, but there's a good reason for that. They rip their customers off horrendously.

Especially now that a cheaper material is being marketed as a premium product. The trouble with offering a premium service is that people expect one. You charge more money, and they want the service that comes with it. Do companies think people will view High Definition televisions in the same way as they view other old televisions? Do you think people are going to be happy when those things break? Not on your nelly. The more sophisticated you make it, the more people take notice, and because it cost more, they expect more.

It is at this point that you may be thinking: "But what about Forge World? They produce things in resin at a massive mark-up!", but there are a few issues with that. Firstly, Finecast is mass-produced, Forge World miniatures are cast by hand. Secondly, their quality control is pretty exceptional, and needs to be at such a price range. Thirdly, they produce things that are far greater in detail and quality than what GW usually has to offer.

This is another issue. The apparent "better detail". It is utter rubbish. If there is even a slight of bit of truth to it, it seems a minute difference for such a drastic name change and horrendous price increase. From what I've seen it gives the appearance of more detail by being crisper, and that is all. Having been a Confrontation player for many years now, this claim that resin holds detail any better than resin is a load of hogwash. I've seen better detail on a rackham model than the best forgeworld has to offer. I don't think the material makes a lot of difference with regards to detail.

A greater issue is the quality of the material itself. It seems counter-productive to me, that GW would start introducing hard-backed books, boasting additional resilience, yet move something like 25-50% of their miniature range in a more brittle and less hard-wearing material and then increase prices as well. There's already a few claims about GW's "special resin" (or as the rest of the world knows it: "resin") melting, snapping, and numerous casting issues that you just don't get with metal.

Metal models chip easily when they're dropped, this is true, but resin shatters when it is dropped. Metal models are less flexible, but unlike resin, they don't snap. The difference in painting? Questionable. Certainly you're supposed to clean resin before painting on it. despite this apparently not being needed with GW's finecast range, I'm expecting issues to crop up from time to time for people who don't clean them. Not that you even needed to worry about that with metal.

Resin should offer a saving, either to allow GW to make more money at the same rate or to give their customers a saving. GW opted for neither of those, taking double profit anyway (despite the switch to a cheaper material), so quality drops and the price rises. How predictable are GW? Very. There are other companies making the switch to resin who are offering savings, or in a few cases, extra models for the same price.

What "Finecast" ultimately is, is a cheap piece of optimistic marketing. It is a massive mistake of a horrendous nature, ill-timed amidst other GW issues, such as putting trading restrictions on non-EU countries, and calling internet-based companies "freeloaders". This is from a company that sells cheap, resin miniatures as if they were the greatest advance in gaming history, when they're just cheap models with a gimmicky label, to go with their gimmicky and poorly written games.

As I said, the quality control has been appalling, or else we wouldn't have such a frequency of complaints. The fact that they insist on making ridiculous amounts of cash from countries with their own currency, don't check their new and experimental range for poor quality casts, made from a material that can bubble and melt, and has the nerve to call other companies for offering a competitive service just gives you an indication of the kind of company that GW is.

Games Workshop is a company that doesn't care. All they care about is making loads of money, and they hope their customers are gullible enough to "make do" with an inferior product sold at a premium price. Do yourself a favour. Don't buy it.

And if you absolutely must, don't "make do" with something that isn't justifiably "finely cast" make sure you send it back, for a proper replacement, or a refund. Because GW doesn't deserve your money if they don't even bother trying to earn it.

'Ere We Go! An Introduction

Well, I thought I'd begin by trumping out the Blogger cliché: Hello again, and I'm back after a brief hiatus. I'd like to continue this cliché by issuing yet another one of my already numerous thread sections. This time I'd like to centre it around my favourite gaming subject: Orks.

A recent comment in the It's a Hard Fluff Life section has caught my interest. I suppose it is fair to say that Orks are my main interest when it comes to Warhammer 40,000. I find them the most dynamic and interesting race in the entire of the 40k canon. There is just something about them, something very visceral and interesting.

Firstly, there's the over-trumped Grimdark setting in which 40k inhabits. Orks sit awkwardly to one side. I've heard arguments how Orks are a parody of themselves, but I find this is something 40k does to itself. Taking things too far, going over the top, is something that you find in 40k, and then there's the friggin' space marines. Who evidently can count to 12, which is one more than 11.

40k itself started as a parody of the Grimdark style, and at some point, both its writers and fans started playing this straight. Throughout it, the Orks have never changed their tune, and have always remained resolutely the same beast, with a crude and simplistic, but workable ethic, and a vicious, but quite affable honesty.

In a wargame, this is such a refreshing approach. In a setting of grim and twisted machinations, one can find the greatest contrast in Orks. It is actually quite funny, because for a setting that sets up not only that war is bad, but that it is also a constant, most other factions are depicted carrying out over-elaborate gambits, ploys and machinations which invariably fail.

Yet of these, the most memorable is the one the Orks created, that of the second and third Armageddon Wars. What we have discovered from this is that Ghaz is using this essentially as practice, and trying his luck against the Imperials. One can get the impression from reading the fluff that Ghazghkull hasn't quite gone all out yet. If you contrast this with Abaddon's Eye of Terror campaign, it is Ghaz who comes across as the sophisticated warlord, and Abaddon who is the redundant B-Movie super-villain.

Orks are an army one cannot completely take seriously, which is both a boon and a bust for Ork players. Generally speaking it means that Orks are often dismissed, or deeply disliked, as not fitting into the grand scale of things, and dismissed as stupid, random and crude. Yet at the same time, your average 40k player even now, despite how powerful the current codex is, deeply underestimate and dislike Orks. Which helps a lot when they think their fancy power armour can do all that much against simple brute force and sheer force of numbers.

The true irony of this as far as the background goes, is that Orks actually work in a dysfunctional universe by nature of their simplistic view. All the other factions are deeply divided by in-fighting or internal politics, yet the Orks just get those out of the way and get on with it. This idea that Orks are too silly for the setting is ridiculous, when you realise the situation IS already silly, and that the situation is a unhealthy setting, and what sets Orks apart is that they alone have the healthy attitude to the setting.

Orks are a hard race to champion. There's always some group who hate them, but then that is true of most 40k races, as invariably, a poor balanced game has an insecure fanbase. However Orks get it just for being stupid. I find this hard to swallow, because there is a big difference between crude, and stupid. You'll find the primary difference is that crude can still work. If you haven't been tabled by an Ork player yet, most likely there's no Ork player where you game. Lucky you.

I love the Orks. In a game that doesn't know what it is any more, that is consumed by power-gaming, poor balancing, horrendously overpriced models, and some of the worst reputations for poor sportsmanship, painting and modelling abilities in a vastly wide-ranging hobby, with a system so bad even the FAQs need FAQing, sometimes you just want everything to shut up for 30 minutes so you can roll some dice, and have fun.

I am yet to find a faction in any wargaming system that does that as well as Orks. Skaven used to, but then 8th Edition arrived. GW obviously don't like it when you have fun. They'll have to try very hard to drill that into Ork players. Orks makes 40k better. We give it more rivets, paint it red and say job's a gud un, and generally you'll find a lot of begrudging GW "fans" who can only endure their crap because they love their greenskins.

Over the course of the next month or so, I'm going to try and write some articles about Orks, greenskins and such. I might even put up some pictures of my models! First however, I'd like to discuss a issue close to my heart, Orks in Fluff. At the same time, I'll unveil my most recent Ork Fluff project: Wurrgitz!

Games and Gameplay Innovation: Part 3: The Issue of Change

I first started gaming in 1994; the year that D:Ream had topped the UK charts with the song "Things Can only Get Better". As always with the UK, it was an optimistic symbol of hope, that ended up standing for the exact opposite. It ended its short, but increasingly festering career as the theme song for Tony Blair's New Labour election campaign; with a unique performance of the song during their election victory party. So that went well, didn't it? One day I would like to meet the members of D:Ream so I can shout at them for getting my sodding hopes up. I suppose I could clip Howard Jones around the lug at the same time.

The point is, not all change is good. Change is the reserve of the optimist. Now, those who follow this blog regularly will know a particular fact about me. I'm not an optimist.

Change to me invokes several emotions, and one of them is always deep concern. It is something I learnt in part from playing Games Workshop games (whose rules change more often than a schizophrenic leopard in an abattoir), but also because any gamer has emotional and financial concerns with any gaming system.

For the computer gamer, change is annoying, and expensive if you want to change immediately. But the expense generally encountered by a wargamer is significantly larger than this, and can be something of a constant for some gamers.

Especially with GW games, such as 40k and WHFB, where there is an edition change about every 5 years, bringing out a new rulebook (of increasingly significant expense), and at some point during the run of a new edition, every single faction will be treat to a new Army Book or Codex, throughout the run, with a significant amount of new shiny models that most likely you'll want to buy, and in many cases, usually have to.

Change is realistic for any game. You need to keep people buying if you want to further support, but each change runs the risk of undermining your fanbase, their interests, and the whole ethos of the game you wish to promote.

The main problem is, that if you are releasing a new rulebook, it needs to be noticeably different to justify the gamer's expense. If you just change the artwork in it, gamers are going to feel cheated. Every single change you make will impact on the nature of the game that your fans have been buying.

As we have seen in my previous article in this series, this often lends itself to gimmicks. If you are going to change the ruleset, you need to attract attention to some particular mechanic or aspect that you are inevitably going to deem as "ground breaking" or "innovative".

This runs a number of risks, most prominently, breaking the game away from what it originally was, and risking a fan-revolt. Rackham managed to achieve this quite spectacularly on several levels with Confrontation: Age of Ragnarok, which rebooted the old Confrontation Skirmish system into a regiment based wargame with pre-painted miniatures mounted on different bases. This forced gamers to challenge a lot of their ideas and perceptions they had about the game they loved, and it made most of them noticeably furious.

This is something that generally gets rather understated when it comes to gaming. The integrity of games is always put in question when a change looms along the horizon. Whilst most will put up and shut up, or immediately drop the game and seek other entertainment, an increasing number of gamers and hobbyists are getting increasingly insecure about their gaming environment.

This situation is so pronounced, that with GW games, generally more discussion is dedicated to speculation and debate about change (no matter how far off it is) than the existing merits of the product as it stands. It seems the gamer's coping mechanism (and can you blame them) is to have as fluid a concept of the game so that they never find themselves in such an existential crisis as some gamers who get attached to a particular way of playing end up facing.

Games Workshop's change is virtually constant, bringing out a new faction every 3 months, and with two cores where this occurs regularly, it can seem like every other month, there is something else to buy. The worst of it is that despite this constant change, the product support to keep the game more or less intact is positively non-existant.

There is no way to directly contact the writers, and despite some customer support existing to address some rules and gaming issues, only this week I encountered one email from a customer service representative of Games Workshop that simply had to be wrong. The "answer" provided was with reference to whether Zzap Guns (an Ork Big Gun) hits automatically. The Ork Codex says nothing of the sort, but a summary in the 40k rulebook says it does. The responding email to this question confirmed it did, because the rulebook said so. But it said so in a summary, clearly labelled with a disclaimer that any discrepancies in the summary are overwritten by the Codex.

It doesn't help that GW's writing is poor and inconsistent (but more on that in another article), but it is a prime example of the fact that too much change can constrict a gaming system. Warmachine has changed recently, and this has provoked a lot of controversy (as I said earlier, gamers, quite rightly, hate change). But the difference, to my eyes at least, is consistency.

If you are changing a system, you need to keep it fairly consistent. The game may need improvement, you may also want to encourage sales, but you also have to spare a thought for the gamers who already support you, because they already like what you have produced, or else they wouldn't front you any money.

You need to consider the integrity of the game, what it stands for. If you change that completely, you are going to undermine your own fanbase considerably. It is of even more importance if you have several inter-playable systems. Rackham had 4 it managed to undermine. Privateer Press has technically 3 (although Iron Kingdoms merely shares models, not a ruleset with Warmachine and Hordes). Games Workshop has a number, but the most notable is LOTR and WOTR. The important point to bear in mind that if you are going to change a system, it impacts on the others it is connected to. So, Hordes players will react to change in Warmachine (and vice versa), so had better make sure that you don't undermine the ethos or style of either game.

Change is often necessary, but it is not without risk. The other companies should take note to notice what happens when change starts occurring to a ruleset merely for the sake of it...

Games and Gameplay Innovation: Part 2: Gimmickhammer

What makes a good game?

I'm sure we all have some inclination as to the answer. A lot of it is taste. The favourable internet expression for this is your mileage may vary (or YMMV). Throughout my wargaming "career" (the one I've paid other people for), I've striven to get to grips with this subject. Not least, because I actually write my own gaming systems, and fiddle with existing ones. The concept is something I think all rules writers consciously think about, in the same vein that a writer of fiction considers narrative devices, and the film maker considers myriad cinematic approaches: camera angles, soundtracks, lighting, casting etc.

Anything produced for any medium has a sense of style and theories surrounding it. The Critic in particular looks into these, as a critic does of any other work. You generally have to form an opinion of what works and what doesn't in order to discuss it. This can run the risk of being too interpretive of something (like a film critic going on about the "innovative" and "brave" switch to black and white, or less CG in a film, when in all likelihood they simply ran out of money).

One can also be a tad too elitist, or dismissive of something that doesn't really bother other people. The trouble is, that is what the critic is for. If you endeavour to understand any medium, you inevitably find its foibles. It comes with the territory, especially when your quest is to determine the best concepts to work with, you are inevitably going to find issue with solutions people use.

This brings me quite well into the realm of Games Workshop. They have their fair share of critics, and as the "most popular" out there, they have a nice selection of examples. It also makes them an easy target, but then, I don't think a medium attracting a larger crowd makes it any less worth criticising. If anything, it probably warrants it more. If it improves, it benefits more people.

The worst thing a Wargame can do, is much the same as a computer game can do. That of offering up some kind of gimmick, whose purpose is ultimately designed merely to pull in the audience. The word "innovation" or in particular the adjective "innovative" is thrown around by fans and popularisers about various incarnations of GW's big three: Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000 and Lord of the Rings (or the pointless War of the Ring).

A good approach to the psychology of wargaming is to make a wargaming feature easy to use, and/or intuitive, so that the gamer relies more on their perception and instincts, and less of the actual rulebooks. Good system concepts can be ruined by far too much "lawyerese" language that tries to avoid exploitation. 40k in particular suffers from this tendency to reword subjects and concepts to fit new situations, rather than trying to make a system that fundamentally stays consistent (like Warmachine to some extent).

Also, just because you feel you've "involved" the player in the system directly, does not remove the need for you to make sure the system itself is well-handled, or even if it works at all for the system you are using it for. A good example of how this doesn't work, is Warhammer 40,000 5th Edition's True Line of Sight (or TLOS).

True Line of Sight is used in many systems, although only Games Workshop could be so cocky as calling it "getting down to the model's eye view to observe the battlefield, bring you directly into the games you play". It basically entails that what the miniature can see, can be targeted. Cover may be considered if the model is in any way obscured. In some games (such as Necromunda and Warmachine) you also have to observe the degree of obscurity with usually two or three (sometimes more) defined terms that have an additional affect on gameplay.

Although the original system was quite clunky and prone to causing arguments, it worked on a consistent set of definitions, and suited the style of the game. What do I mean by this? Well, terrain was judged on an estimated basis; forest terrain would be impossible to see through at a certain depth. As 40k has never really been particularly appropriately scaled, reverting to a system of seeing things as they are presented, causes a number of problems. In particular, those floating around in the air, or elevated by scenic bases become discouraged, which is one concept that Games Workshop has consistently promoted, and until 5th Edition, never affected gameplay.

In particular, Wargaming terrain is also generally designed for ease of use in games. "Forests" comprise of three or four trees, often ones that can be lifted away if movement becomes a problem. Things have been estimated around ease of use, rather than to provide adequate cover. When you use TLOS with typical Games Workshop scenery, you very rarely block visibility at all, which is a poor consideration.

Even without these aesthetic issues, it isn't really a concept particularly suitable for the 40k system. Cover provides "cover saves", which can be taken instead of a regular save, or prevent vehicles from being damaged if the save is passed. This itself is a particularly muddy subject, and has caused a number of issues, especially for countries where English is not the main language, such as a particularly unfavourable ruling on the effects of a Kustom Force Field upon vehicles in Poland.

Now, as 40k goes, the easiest tactic is to roll lots of dice, and make your opponent roll lots of dice. It is actually possible to come close to breaking the game quite easily by simply being able to see lots of units with long or medium range firepower and spamming them ad infinitum. Your opponent will get cover saves for those that go through cover, even other units (but as we've seen, it is very difficult to outright block visibility), but you can let them have that, knowing that often, any dice rolled on the lower scales (1 and 2 in particular, sometimes 3) are going to result in casualties, whether AP or any other issue comes into it or not.

Sure there is the Go To Ground rule that sacrifices the unit's turn in order to improve the cover save, but no matter how good a concept this is to slightly improve the TLOS system, you still have the same likelihood of casualties. Weapons that normally ignore armour will suffer, but weights of fire will not.

This is the problem with TLOS in 40k, because it places the main drawback of firing through difficult circumstances upon your opponent, when it should be the other way around. Given the propensity for 40k players to have some version of Power Armoured Space Marines (who really need very little aid to survivability anyway), most often this facility will simply not get used. When it does, it will provide a very minor defence against an attack that should have been greatly reduced in effectiveness, but works essentially, more or less the same as it would in the open.

It benefits those with poor armour saves, but those forces are typically fast, or have means of distracting enemy fire. Plus, one really wonders if the original system would not have worked just as well, if not better, by simply integrating the units providing cover to other units concept into the existing system in 3rd/4th Edition. It would have been easy, as the rule already existed for Gretchin in the 3rd Edition Ork Codex.

Places where TLOS have worked well is the likes of smaller scale skirmishes, such as Necromunda, Hordes and Warmachine, where cover has impacted on the accuracy and likelihood (or lack thereof) of hitting, rather than the propensity for a seldom-used defensive gimmick. Funnily older versions of 40k used this system, and Warhammer Fantasy (no less capable of large scale battles) still uses it.

This whole concept does play to the idea that certain Wargames market themselves to particular consumers, or particular groups of intellect (or both). Privateer Press' Warmachine and Hordes market themselves to power gamers, pushing forth the gimmick of playing to tear your opponent's liver out (with a small hint to the effect that this should extend merely to the gaming table, with some mention of those weird concepts called manners and sportsmanship); LOTR in particular plays to the aesthetic of the films (a sparkle doomed to diminish as the films disappeared - perhaps GW is holding out in hope of being able to represent The Hobbit too?); Warhammer very much markets the historic style of wargaming, with modern powergaming thrown in; and 40k markets itself as a fun system, with space marines.

40k itself seems to make very little assumptions about the age (or intellect) of its audience, and assumes it hates maths, English, critical thinking, or game theory. GW really don't read forums much, do they? Do they assume that players can't be bothered to subtract or do any amount of numeric considerations? They certainly squandered a wonderful and adaptable Wargear section in order to make it "easier" and "quicker" to write army lists. Funnily, you have all the time in the world to write army lists. It's playing games without needing to check the rules every two minutes and arguing about them for hours on end that I'd rather avoid.

It leads me to the conclusion, in a roundabout way. Always be wary of concepts in rules that are designed mostly around a "pull" to attract you to play. In the same way that you should be wary about those bullet points on the back of a computer game box (which more often than not are merely gimmicks that comprise of your entire gaming experience - such as a gimmicky gun that only has one particular use).



In much the same way, Wargames can do this to attract new interest. The trouble is, if not well-handled, this becomes yet another bugbear to deal with for anything other than the casual gamer. Unfortunately, most money is often spent by casual gamers and children (in most gaming industries) who often have little conception for the overall quality of a work. Until those interest areas start to dry up, many companies will avoid cleaning up their act. GW especially.

It can really make you feel for the dedicated fans of a system, who have to endure change. Most of these companies have more or less forgotten about you. You've spent your money, so they need fresh people. This can be particularly jarring when a game takes a radically new direction, and virtually undermines the fanbase. You're expecting a GW reference, but fear not. There has been one company to pull a bigger dick-move than anything GW has ever done. Step forward Rackham, for their reset button action of Confrontation, spawning the infinitely poor replacement Confrontation: Age of Ragnarok (which incidentally undermined 4 games, of which only two - Confrontation (but so many factions have been reset to virtually nil, and old models - that are infinitely collectible - essentially need rebasing(!) to play) and Cadwallon (which from the looks of it, is ridiculously expensive to play) have made much of a comeback. Did I mention the models aren't as nice looking?



Age of Ragnarok also lets us round off with one more gimmick. Pre-painted miniatures. This is a particularly large bugbear for anyone who views Wargaming as a hobby, and not just a game. For gamers, it is rather pick up and play, but for this convenience, all gamers/hobbyists are paying a massive premium for them to be pre-painted (not only the painting costs, but the elaborate packaging that is necessary so you can see them before you buy) and anyone who wants to customise or improve the appearance of those miniatures are going to put paint to them anyway, rendering the entire process redundant. Plus, At43 demonstrated already quite well that the gimmick alone does not a gaming system make. The system itself actually needs to be decent as well.

It is rather telling when all you read about on forums is discussion of how to modify the models for use in other games.

Now, not all gimmicks are bad, but always be wary of ones designed to integrate the gamer into the system. This kind of concept needs to be handled extremely well to satisfy gamers, and with a lot of gamers being insecure and temperamental, you really have to make sure that your changes stand up to scrutiny. Step up 40k. Step up Fantasy. Step up War of the Ring. Step up Warmachine Mk2. Step up Age of Ragnarok. Step up Necromunda: Underhive (an old gripe, that) and finally, step up Inquisitor, for always being a gimmick. Maybe that's why we love you. Well, why those people love you.