Eldar - Codex Summary Part II

Welcome all to the second entry in my Eldar Codex Summary series! I have elected to focus solely on the HQ section here so as to give individual unit reviews to its constituents that I feel are appropriate given their importance to standard Eldar army lists, and I must say that I am highly impressed with almost all of the characters present in the slot. I hope you enjoy this article!

Eldar - Codex Summary Part I

Greetings everyone and welcome to the beginning of my early codex summary for Craftworld Eldar, a prelude to my full review which should begin circulating in the coming weeks. I am personally very happy with the codex as a whole, even if certain elements introduced by it do serve as perhaps the worst examples of game balance design in recent memory. In any case, I hope you enjoy the first part of my Codex Summary series which should comprise roughly four or five articles.

Bloodborne Video Game Review

Bloodborne. The "gothic masterpiece". The "first next-generation title to live up to the hype". The "finest example of horror since Resident Evil 4". The "culmination of From Software's nightmarish legacy". No game has inspired such a wealth of gushing praise and cacophonic cries of joy this generation, standing tall as the spiritual successor not truly to Dark Souls, but instead to Miyazaki's tale of origin - Demons' Souls. It is equal parts action adventure, role-playing and survival horror, though is everything but a disappointment; Bloodborne stands as a testament to what the Japanese developer community is capable of even in spite of the recent American domination of the video game space. If you enjoyed any single entry in the "Souls" series or have an acquired taste of the occult, Bloodborne will captivate you like few other titles can dream of; truly, the nightmare never ends.

With Regards to Eldar

Hey guys, I wanted to put up a small post with my reaction to the various Eldar confirmed and rumoured changes and what effect that will have on the blog. Having viewed all of the major Warhammer 40,000 forums lately, it is quite obvious that many players are upset or otherwise bemused by what we have learned so far about the new codex. Massed Destroyer weapons and an over-powered Jetbike unit certainly don't paint a pretty picture for a rules update that should really be focused on toning down an already superlative army, but I do want to say that I think we should all wait up before labeling this as the "death of 7th Edition" as some have termed it. While we know Jetbikes are going to be too darned good, we have no idea what points costs will be associated with units such as Wraithguard and Wraithknights that can now bear Destroyer weapons. I hold out hope that this will be a well designed and balanced codex both internally and against the other 7th Edition books, even if early evidence does seem to speak to the contrary.

With that in mind, I'm going to wait until I have the codex in-hand before I cover it fully; I will go over all of the various changes between codices and hopefully transition into a full review, especially as my Ork review just isn't working out as I intended. I will continue to work on the Ork articles but I must impress upon those eagerly awaiting more on that army to be patient if possible as my previously documented struggles of late aren't really going away any time soon. Eldar are an easy army for me to review because I am more familiar with them than perhaps any other force I have used or otherwise covered, allowing me to develop and release content quicker for them. Aside from those two major codices, the only 7th Edition releases I have yet to cover are Blood Angels, Khorne Daemonkin, Harlequins and Skitarii; the latter three will probably be handled in one or two articles, though the first will obviously require more work due to the much greater selection of units. That being said, I'm more familiar with Blood Angels than any other Space Marine codex so that won't be too much of a "challenge" so to speak. In any case, I hope you are all enjoying yourselves and your hobby lately! I want to give a special mention to the recently released Bloodborne for occupying a lot of my time as well, and I do hope to do a review of that particular video game; I wanted to do reviews for numerous games released over the past six months but was either too sickly or never fully completed them to enable a proper overview.

Dark Eldar Unit Overview - Part IV

Happy late Easter everyone; I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and got some nice chocolate hobby to celebrate the occasion! If your eggs were nice and large then surely you should enjoy this final installment in my Dark Eldar Unit Overview series as I have elected to cover the Heavy Support section today.

Dark Eldar Unit Overview - Part III

Greetings my fellow debased kin and welcome to the third entry in my Dark Eldar Unit Overview mini-review series! I've found this codex to be much more impressive than a lot of the initial reception seemed to indicate, though obviously a lot of that may be rooted in the fact that it can and will struggle to deal with a lot of the truly top-tier builds - much like almost any 7th Edition codex, of course. In any case, I hope you enjoy my thoughts on the Elites and Fast Attack slots; the former is still nice with one greatly-improved unit, while the latter is stacked with excellent choices.

Dark Eldar Unit Overview - Part II

Greetings everyone; I bid you welcome to the second entry in my Dark Eldar Unit Overview series. I was eagerly awaiting the new Dark Eldar codex to see how Games Workshop would handle the archetypal "glass cannon" army of Warhammer 40,000 in 7th Edition, and I must admit my initial impressions weren't great. A lot of units didn't receive the buffs they required to remain competitive in the current meta, but the strong lists of the past and the play-style these hedonistic butchers are famous for did remain intact. Today, I'm reviewing the HQ section and analyzing the importance of these characters and their retinues to a successful Dark Eldar force; I hope you find this a helpful article!

A Message for Warhammer Fantasy Players

Greetings. This will not be like my other posts and will not halt progress on them. I simply felt the need to address the concerns of all Warhammer Fantasy players left confused and worried by the climax of End Times: Archaon. If you have yet to read that tome, avoid this post as it spoils the ending of the most significant background progression for a Games Workshop game system in decades.

With that said, I will make myself perfectly clear; I do not deal in rumours, hence why I hope what I am about to say should carry some measure of weight despite the fact that I am not considered a "reliable source". Here's the rub;

I have had discussions with multiple Games Workshop staff and all have universally stated that no model range in Warhammer Fantasy is being removed.

Simple logic will tell you why this is the case; plastic moulds are expensive to make and Games Workshop does not make their money back on them quickly. The armies everyone thinks will be removed, namely Dwarfs and Lizardmen, both had numerous plastic model releases in the past year and a half. It makes no business sense to suddenly pull these models before the company has had a chance to turn a profit on them.

Hell, apply that logic to the company as a whole; as a consumer-focused business, why would Games Workshop suddenly alienate a huge portion of their fan-base by invalidating their armies? The simple answer is that they will not do that, though what will most assuredly happen is that there will be new model ranges and existing ones will be updated. I don't know this for certain but I'd like to think the people I talked to are very trust-worthy and know what they are talking about.

As for those saying that the End Times series was a last-ditch cash-grab aimed at current Warhammer Fantasy players, understand that it was both a tool of change to help ease players into the new setting and also a send-off for the existing incarnation of the setting. It saw the return of some of the most important fan-favourite characters such as Nagash and Neferata, while newer entities such as the Glottkin and Skreech Verminking were given their own time to shine. This was organized and delivered as a love-letter to fans of the setting to try and provide both a fitting finale and to help ease them into the biggest shake-up to the game in ages.

If you are worried about your army being invalidated or your models becoming unusable in an official sense, don't be concerned. Games Workshop isn't as stupid as some of you believe, and while certain armies may not necessarily be updated with new rules or models, you will not have to replace them.

To the people propagating the fear-mongering and lies surrounding the rumoured destruction of the game as we know it, you disgust me. Enjoy the attention while it lasts.

Orks Tactica - Kommandos

Howdy there everyone and welcome to a massively delayed entry in my long-running Ork Tactica series, and I aim to do the sneaky Kommandos justice in this particular article! I must offer my deepest apologies to those that have been eagerly awaiting my return both to the greenskins and my more lengthy works, but I guess all I can really say on the matter is that I've been really struggling to get anything written lately due to sleep deprivation and other notable issues. Those excuses aside, let us begin!