Getting back to business and the 40k 8th ed!

WARNING! THIS HAS BEEN WRITTEN SOME TIME AGO!

Getting back to business and the 40k 8th ed!

Long time no see fellow gamers! With the 8th edition of Warhammer 40k at our doors, I couldn’t help but get back into my writer’s shoes and talk about where I am now in this wonderful tabletop gaming world!

For the last year or so, it has been 40k and Age of Sigmar mostly. A lot of painting and a lot of games. I even participated in a team tournament at Chaosludik here in Montreal, more on that later.

But first thing first, 40k 8th. A lot of spoilers from the fresh Warhammer community have been going around for a little while now. All amazing, all full of hope for 8th ed. But things couldn’t get worst than 7th cant hey? Of course not. 7th was a mess, with its invincible deathstars, the Tzeench chaos psykers and thousands of free points of summons, the Eldar low-cost, high-efficiency windriders and wraithknights, the uber-shooty Tau that you simply couldn’t reach before they shot you down and many, many more no fun combos.

But why did you keep on playing you ask? Well, it’s the grim dark. No setting so far has been as amazing as this one. It’s a complete hobby with awesome miniatures, litterature and much much more. I also found good sport opponents whom I had some great games with and that helped a lot.

 A word on Age of Sigmar

 Also, AoS got its General’s Handbook out. This definitely made the game playable and answered the need for point values, giving a sense of balance to the game, allowing us to use a matched play game type that was really missing from this game. With its top of the art miniature range, AoS deserved better and there it was, in the form of the General’s Handbook.

Don’t get me wrong, the game remains a bit simple to me and I still can’t quite make peace with shooting in melee but I had a blast playing my Sylvaneth army and I just looooove painting these guys. Pictures coming up!

Also, I recently tried the Skirmish mode for AoS. It was fun but definitely not to the level of Shadow Wars in  the 40k universe. Perfect for new players, it’s still a good challenge but it requires a bit of planning, house ruling and a lot of terrain!

40k 8th ed first game / first impression

Back to 40k, I recently played a full on8th ed  game with a fellow gamer and friend, Sylvain. We went to Zakeda in Longueuil since they were kind enough to lend the books to customers for tryouts, a bold community move that we can only salute.  We quickly build 1000pts lists, packed the minis and rolled to Zak for a game! And it was a blast. A Dark Angels vs Dark Angels showdown, well one of us was obviously a Fallen…

Gamewise first thing we notice is how the flow of the game got better; no more 20 minutes psychic phase, simplified rolls (no more charts) and much, much more. Also, stuff dies. A lot. Gone are the invincible 2+ invul/reroll 1s, gone are the superfriends, and here comes the mortal wounds. Of course on planet bowlingball whoever gets turn 1 will shoot down a lot of stuff, so one thing that is quite obvious, now more than ever, is PUT SOME TERRAIN ON YOUR TABLE! With all the great kits from GW, there’s no reason not to. Block those line of sights, place a lot of cover, make sure that the second player will also get the chance to play the game!  

Back to the game itself, I kinda neglected the objectives in favor of getting models into the action. I wanted to try the new rules and it’s kinda hard to do anything if your Deathwing terminators are stranded on an objective far away from the main battle to scrub a single point. My opponent played a full-on Ravenwing army, very mobile and was able to get the win by covering the objectives when needed. He played a Nephilim Jetfighter and we noticed that flyers are fun now! -1 to BS to hit is waaaaaaay more manageable than before.  It hits like a ton of brick but it’s not invincible now that every gun can hurt it, not just Skyfire ones.

Melee is a ton of fun too, especially now that you can shoot your pistol from point blank! Suddenly, my plasma pistols makes more sense.

All in all, 8th is very promising and should be a lot more accessible for new players. Can’t wait to get my hands on my very own Rulebook!

MEANWHILE IN THE HUMAN SPHERE

 And there’s my secret love, Infinity. A very different style of game but a very fun one nonetheless. Right now the Wotan Campaign part I is in full effect and players from around the world can participate in this interactive web-supported campaign presented by Corvus Belli and Beasts of War. As I often mentioned before, the rules really reflects the high-tech environment of the setting. This means things can feel a bit overwhelming, especially with the more advanced factions like Panoceania and Aleph, but all in all this goes perfectly along with the style of the game.

I’m back in the game now, played my first game in a while lately and was not as rusty as I thought. I played against a new Nomad player and it reminded me how steep but rewarding the learning curve can be; I took advantage of bad deployment and won the game when my opponent decided he had not enough left to compete and dropped. Not my kind of game but it helped me remind all those nifty little rules. Hopefully his Nomads will soon be able to challenge my Merovingians!

That’s it for now, more to come soon with 40k officially coming out on the 17th, the Wotan campaign raging on and AoS never too fare behind!