Damn, first time I saw the cavalry, all I could say was wow! The stats were amazing, the trollkin long riders had bison. They could slam, they could charge, they could do impact attacks. Given the current meta, they would be game breaking.
Then I went and flipped the page and the ferox made me want to play skorne. Damned heavy cavalry with 8 inch move, leap and an extra weapon in form of the bite. On a charge you get impact attacks, the spear and the bite. The spear also has permanent reach and the brutal charge makes them sure to kill anything.
The light cavalry breaks the game with movement 9, and they simply move twice. they move after they shoot! Hell, this game now will favour heavy armour. This will definitely push for more warjacks. I'm sure everyone will be happy about the changes.
But then...
I started to realize that these things can't be that great. I'm quite sure people will end up getting bitten in the arse for buying into these great models.
You know why?
Fearless? Only one, and that would be the trolls. Of all the game breaking cavalry abilities, only the trolls were most balanced, and they are the only ones fearless. The ferox are even worse off than uhlans as they have leadership 9, the light cavalry are leadership 8.
Now I know why they were so great on paper. They are likely to fail to kill the deathjack when it really counts. Warmongers will make them cry. Temple flame guard will see them run off.
In the end, only deneghra seems really happy about all these new fangled hordes cavalry.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Review: Faction Cards mkII
I got a copy of the faction cards mkII. Each pack contains 81 cards, most have enough for you to field a 1000 point list. Multiple cards are given for multi-wound models, warjacks and special models requiring marks (rockteer).
All cards are current up to remix, changes to the rules i.e. feat changes are already corrected, as well as wording on clarified feats i.e. old witch. All cards also now include rules that extend up to warbeasts i.e. snipe.
Card art is also from remix. Big problem here is that only the prime art gives a consistent feel to each faction. Superiority does lend a small amount of consistency to the color, but for some factions the change from the atmosphere in remix does make some of the older art stick out like sore thumbs.
All packs have 81 cards, all factions get their special force cards, mercs get all contacts.
The first thing you would notice with the new cards are that the new cards feel more open. The cards lost the borders that we present before. The lower left corner now contains the faction symbols. The colors are little more neutral in the title box. the text is a little bit easier to read as well.
Cryx
We get the Adriana Lima skarre art. So what would be so bad? The cartoon feel of the remix art actually looks great once it was translated into the card form. All the prime jacks look great and have the consistent feel. The problem is once you get to the seether and harrower, the consistency is lost. I wished they had consistent art for everything, or at least something close.
And yes, as no surprise to anyone, it includes 4 defiler cards. It includes 4 of the arc node bonejacks, 2 of the other jacks. What was surprising to me was that there were 4 black ogrun and 4 bloat thrall cards. The 4 pistol wraiths were fine by me, but I would have gladly traded 2 of the bloat thrall and black ogrun cards for more deathrippers and nightwretches.
Cygnar
Card art is pretty consistent throughout the entire box save for the GMCA. All jacks have a different backdrop which lends well to identification of jack cards.
I've no real gripes with the set, nor any real praise for it. Hell, I don't actually see a reason for most cygnar players to get the pack as there aren't any real changes to their set. Plus most cards are colored since most cygnar players we have are new, or the most effective jacks have colored cards already.
Khador
I like the new art. I like how vlad looks dirty in the remix, and how young sorscha actually looks in the art as well. I would recommend most players to get the pack simply due to the fact of sheer number of rules clarifications and updates affecting the khador units.
I personally like the distribution of card duplicates. There are 4 destroyer, berserker and kodiak cards, while there are only 3 of the rest. I guess they followed the need of the players here. I wished they had taken the same liberty with the cryx bonejacks.
Menoth
This pack suffers from the similar affliction of art inconsistency, but nonetheless menoth looks menoth. The art that really sticks out are from escalation. Other than that, there isn't really much change as most menoth players will be fielding stuff from other books. Plus the art of menoth from remix wasn't exactly what I'll call distinct. So it doesn't suffer as much as cryx or khador does.
Distribution for jacks are ho-hum as you are given 4 guardians and just 3 devouts and repenters. Most will be happy to know though that there are 4 revengers and seneschals. Damned solos pretty much fill out the deck, which will most likely see play.
Mercenaries
You get 5 mercenary contracts. A strange mosaic of art work. This is probably the worst pack of cards you could get as it feels like they just pumped as much as they can into duplicates to fill it out. I don't like the new Alexia card but I love the new risen and thrall cards. You get 4 of all jacks, 6 for the gunner and blaster. You also get a trencher and long gunner card. Basically you just get one of each as most are character units and 4 copies of everything else. Worst pack yet, as I cannot imagine anyone yielding close to 4 mules or nomads. I do find the 4 ogrun bokur cards a happy thing. But the majority of this pack lies in the multiple jack cards.
All cards are current up to remix, changes to the rules i.e. feat changes are already corrected, as well as wording on clarified feats i.e. old witch. All cards also now include rules that extend up to warbeasts i.e. snipe.
Card art is also from remix. Big problem here is that only the prime art gives a consistent feel to each faction. Superiority does lend a small amount of consistency to the color, but for some factions the change from the atmosphere in remix does make some of the older art stick out like sore thumbs.
All packs have 81 cards, all factions get their special force cards, mercs get all contacts.
The first thing you would notice with the new cards are that the new cards feel more open. The cards lost the borders that we present before. The lower left corner now contains the faction symbols. The colors are little more neutral in the title box. the text is a little bit easier to read as well.
Cryx
We get the Adriana Lima skarre art. So what would be so bad? The cartoon feel of the remix art actually looks great once it was translated into the card form. All the prime jacks look great and have the consistent feel. The problem is once you get to the seether and harrower, the consistency is lost. I wished they had consistent art for everything, or at least something close.
And yes, as no surprise to anyone, it includes 4 defiler cards. It includes 4 of the arc node bonejacks, 2 of the other jacks. What was surprising to me was that there were 4 black ogrun and 4 bloat thrall cards. The 4 pistol wraiths were fine by me, but I would have gladly traded 2 of the bloat thrall and black ogrun cards for more deathrippers and nightwretches.
Cygnar
Card art is pretty consistent throughout the entire box save for the GMCA. All jacks have a different backdrop which lends well to identification of jack cards.
I've no real gripes with the set, nor any real praise for it. Hell, I don't actually see a reason for most cygnar players to get the pack as there aren't any real changes to their set. Plus most cards are colored since most cygnar players we have are new, or the most effective jacks have colored cards already.
Khador
I like the new art. I like how vlad looks dirty in the remix, and how young sorscha actually looks in the art as well. I would recommend most players to get the pack simply due to the fact of sheer number of rules clarifications and updates affecting the khador units.
I personally like the distribution of card duplicates. There are 4 destroyer, berserker and kodiak cards, while there are only 3 of the rest. I guess they followed the need of the players here. I wished they had taken the same liberty with the cryx bonejacks.
Menoth
This pack suffers from the similar affliction of art inconsistency, but nonetheless menoth looks menoth. The art that really sticks out are from escalation. Other than that, there isn't really much change as most menoth players will be fielding stuff from other books. Plus the art of menoth from remix wasn't exactly what I'll call distinct. So it doesn't suffer as much as cryx or khador does.
Distribution for jacks are ho-hum as you are given 4 guardians and just 3 devouts and repenters. Most will be happy to know though that there are 4 revengers and seneschals. Damned solos pretty much fill out the deck, which will most likely see play.
Mercenaries
You get 5 mercenary contracts. A strange mosaic of art work. This is probably the worst pack of cards you could get as it feels like they just pumped as much as they can into duplicates to fill it out. I don't like the new Alexia card but I love the new risen and thrall cards. You get 4 of all jacks, 6 for the gunner and blaster. You also get a trencher and long gunner card. Basically you just get one of each as most are character units and 4 copies of everything else. Worst pack yet, as I cannot imagine anyone yielding close to 4 mules or nomads. I do find the 4 ogrun bokur cards a happy thing. But the majority of this pack lies in the multiple jack cards.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Summer Rampage is Over
The results are in:
Dominator - Doclance
Master of Machines - Dick
Master of Beasts - Chris
Relentless - Arvin
Rampage - Doclance
The league play simply isn't ideal in our setting as there are too many players who say they are not competitive and yet do not wish to play if they are likely to lose. I liked the leauge simply because it gave me an opportunity to use casters that I normally would not try out for fear of losing. The league is there for fun games. It is a chance to experiment and push the envelop. It is a chance to tweak your next tournament list. I love it and hate it at the same time. i just wished there were more active players, more people who could actually play good games.
I am happy to see Mang back in the game as he proves to be a challenging opponent. It is simply a matter of time until he gets back into the groove. It makes me ecstatic to see Dick to turn from newbie into a seasoned veteran and trounce so many during his run with the summer rampage. Of course I am more than appreciative of Dan who had the patience and time to bother playing me with my stupid 1000 point games. It simply is not a reasonable thing to do, I cannot imagine anyone hosting a 1000 point tournament.
I think we are at least ready for 750 points, but we are not ready for hardcore. not in the least bit. 750 points will find us with a renewed tournament environment, with old players finding their old reliable warcasters ahving to adapt to the new environment and it gives new players a chance to surprise veterans with epics. The field also levels out. It gives hordes a bigger advantage.
I guess we'll see more in time.
Dominator - Doclance
Master of Machines - Dick
Master of Beasts - Chris
Relentless - Arvin
Rampage - Doclance
The league play simply isn't ideal in our setting as there are too many players who say they are not competitive and yet do not wish to play if they are likely to lose. I liked the leauge simply because it gave me an opportunity to use casters that I normally would not try out for fear of losing. The league is there for fun games. It is a chance to experiment and push the envelop. It is a chance to tweak your next tournament list. I love it and hate it at the same time. i just wished there were more active players, more people who could actually play good games.
I am happy to see Mang back in the game as he proves to be a challenging opponent. It is simply a matter of time until he gets back into the groove. It makes me ecstatic to see Dick to turn from newbie into a seasoned veteran and trounce so many during his run with the summer rampage. Of course I am more than appreciative of Dan who had the patience and time to bother playing me with my stupid 1000 point games. It simply is not a reasonable thing to do, I cannot imagine anyone hosting a 1000 point tournament.
I think we are at least ready for 750 points, but we are not ready for hardcore. not in the least bit. 750 points will find us with a renewed tournament environment, with old players finding their old reliable warcasters ahving to adapt to the new environment and it gives new players a chance to surprise veterans with epics. The field also levels out. It gives hordes a bigger advantage.
I guess we'll see more in time.
eDenny
Seeing how an epic Deneghra was able to make the finals during the first day made me think that it may actually be possible to play her and win. The list used during the gamecon was infantry heavy and had limited bonejacks.
Faction: Cryx
Army Points: 745/750
Victory Points: 23
Wraith Witch Deneghra
- Deathjack
- Deathripper
- Deathripper
- Skarlock
Pistol Wraith
Pistol Wraith
Bane Knights (8)
Bane Knights (8)
Bile Thralls (6)
Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist
Ogrun Bokur
Now on this list are things I do not use. The ogrun bokur is something I cannot really think of using effectively. And gorman is a strange option. Plus I heavily favor nightwretches over deathrippers anyday.
I'll probably try this out at some point. It fell easily to a circle list simply due to the fact of how broken druids of ourboros are.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Levi and Needles
I just love eSkarre. Her abilities are not really all that broken, nor close to being as abusable as her orginal with the skarre bomb and focus factory.
I really love the model, and it makes me glad that it actually is a playable epic. I have used her twice, one win and one loss during the summer league. I love her so much that I bought her her own leviathan. It also gives me an excuse to use my satyxis.
A lot of people will note that this is oen of the most difficult models to put together. I never had a real problem with it. I just drilled through the pelvis to insert brass rod through it. It worked well enough.
The real problem with it was the aesthetic sense of the legs. The spider legs do look great if they were spread wide apart. Problem is the base cannot accomodate the damn thing.
I'm not a big fan of making bases for my models as it often makes them taller and easier to gain LOS to during gameplay, but the fact that I would be taking the leviathan means I wasn;t playing competitively so it was fine. Surprisingly it worked well enough.
On advice of the great Paul 'pork', I had now started to figure out which needle size works best. The bane knight bendy halberd is smaller than the brass rod. the picture shows the various options I had to consider. The first would be the brass rod which was much larger than the bendy halberds. The long one is the metal needle of an IV cannula gauge 16 needle. The hypodermic needles are color coded: grey for g16 and green for g18. My problem relates to how the IV cannula needle approximates the bendy halberd almost perfectly. It would have been great if I had another way to attach it to the blades without having to drill an equally sized hole for it. The blades are as thin as the shaft.
But I think I should have enough whether I choose the hypodermic needle or the IV cannula.
I really love the model, and it makes me glad that it actually is a playable epic. I have used her twice, one win and one loss during the summer league. I love her so much that I bought her her own leviathan. It also gives me an excuse to use my satyxis.
A lot of people will note that this is oen of the most difficult models to put together. I never had a real problem with it. I just drilled through the pelvis to insert brass rod through it. It worked well enough.
The real problem with it was the aesthetic sense of the legs. The spider legs do look great if they were spread wide apart. Problem is the base cannot accomodate the damn thing.
I'm not a big fan of making bases for my models as it often makes them taller and easier to gain LOS to during gameplay, but the fact that I would be taking the leviathan means I wasn;t playing competitively so it was fine. Surprisingly it worked well enough.
On advice of the great Paul 'pork', I had now started to figure out which needle size works best. The bane knight bendy halberd is smaller than the brass rod. the picture shows the various options I had to consider. The first would be the brass rod which was much larger than the bendy halberds. The long one is the metal needle of an IV cannula gauge 16 needle. The hypodermic needles are color coded: grey for g16 and green for g18. My problem relates to how the IV cannula needle approximates the bendy halberd almost perfectly. It would have been great if I had another way to attach it to the blades without having to drill an equally sized hole for it. The blades are as thin as the shaft.
But I think I should have enough whether I choose the hypodermic needle or the IV cannula.
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