Codex Skitarii - Ironstrider Ballistarii

Greetings fellow wargamers to my analysis of the Ironstrider Ballistarii from Codex Skitarii! These war machines are to Sydonian Dragoons what Devastators are to Assault Marines; they trade close combat brutality for precise strikes from afar and are truly capable of surprising opponents. I hope you enjoy this article!

Dawn of War 3 Theories and Notes

Hey guys, I'm sure all of you have heard the news by now but for those that haven't, go check out the Dawn of War Youtube channel for the greatly anticipated announcement of Dawn of War 3! Now, it's an amazing CGI trailer that reveals a few important tidbits about what will feature in the game itself but ultimately I'm taking more interest in what the trailer doesn't display up front - what is purposefully being hidden from us. I hope you enjoy this article!

If you don't want to sift through all of this, my theory - one that I'm now all but certain in - is that the Necrons will be a secret faction in the game. 

The Iron Circle Mini-Review

Hey everyone, I've just finished writing up the unit analysis for the as-yet unreleased Iron Circle - the giant robotic retinue of Perturabo, Primarch of the Iron Warriors - and decided that the entry was large enough to justify its own breathing room rather than acting as a stealth addition to a months-old piece. I can see this unit becoming very popular based on their looks and intimidation factor alone as doubtless every Iron Warriors player will want to add them to their model collection, but be warned - they aren't quite as scary in practice as their stature would imply. I hope you enjoy this article!

Editors' Note - This is a review of a Horus Heresy unit and thus it is written mostly in the context of gaming in the Age of Darkness rather than Warhammer 40,000.

Warhammer 40,000 FAQ Main Points

Hey guys, got a quick little update; the FAQ drafts for the Warhammer 40,000 core rulebook (not the codices) are up now on their Facebook page! I made some quick impressions for these and my gut reactions, excuse the bad grammar and overuse of capitalization - I'm very tired and excitable at the time of writing! These are my biggest take-aways from the FAQ....some are truly ground-shaking. Witchfires that have no profile hit automatically - this most prominently includes Psychic Shriek. Flying Monstrous Creatures and all Gargantuan Creatures can't claim cover by simply standing in terrain. Units can only use a single Grenade in the Assault Phase just like the Shooting Phase. The debate about Gargantuan Creatures firing two or more weapons has finally been settled - they shoot all of them, not just two (the common sense ruling thankfully - no offence to those that believed otherwise but how on earth did you honestly think that the Stormsurge was given eight weapons and intended only to use two at a time?) Tau Battlesuits now benefit from their Multi-Trackers when firing Overwatch. Skyfiring Blast and Template weapons can hit Zooming Flyers and Swooping Flying Monstrous Creatures. Solo models can charge multiple units at the same time as a disordered charge. Special rules that specify "the unit" now affect attached Independent Characters. The dreaded "1+ Feel No Pain" is no more. Battle Brothers can't deploy inside of each others' transports. I think I can say this with all honesty; the landscape of 7th Edition has been irrevocably changed, and this is just the beginning as we still don't have the army-specific updates. I am very interested in reading your reactions to the FAQ and the changes/clarifications they have made, there's too much to take in right now but I'm definitely going to be debating these for a while to come. Have at it and thank you for reading my incoherent ramblings!

Editors' Note: Apologies for the text format, copy-pasting from Facebook does not work well apparently. Damned text backgrounds.

Codex Skitarii - Sydonian Dragoons

Howdy there folks and welcome to another entry in my Codex Skitarii Tactica series! While they've drawn many parallels to a particular bipedal machine from another science fiction setting, Sydonian Dragoons and Ironstrider Ballistarii are undeniably the Adeptus Mechanicus successors to the beloved Astra Militarum Sentinel cohorts, functioning as lightly armored walkers designed for scouting the battlefield and harassing enemy positions. I hope you enjoy this analysis of the first of those two Skitarii vehicles!

Codex Skitarii - Sicarian Infiltrators

In the long awaited sequel to the fourth entry in the franchise, the hero rises again to confront the same villain in a visually stunning clash of epic proportions.....oh, sorry, that's my plug for a clowny movie starring shape-shifting robots. Speaking of machines, here's a new Skitarii review for you; I hope you enjoy it!

Progress Report

Hey guys, it's been a while so I'll keep this short and sweet. The reason behind the lack of updates has mostly just been evaluating what to do with the blog as several factors beyond my control are making it difficult to achieve progress. I've had to halt my 30K Legion reviews until the updated Crusade army books are released with all their respective changes so that I don't end up drastically changing older articles (from what minor leaks we got, both my Imperial Fist and Iron Warriors reviews will need big re-writes). Age of Sigmar content was planned but is now on the back-burner with that new three ways to play system probably invalidating anything I would have been working on, meaning I'll be waiting a few months until that release before I get stuck in with army reviews and gameplay break-downs. However, my inclination is that the core rules for Age of Sigmar will not change meaning I can still do some general tips and tricks articles if you should so desire. I've been on an Age of Sigmar rush lately and I'm eager to share at least some of those experiences and give you my general (mostly positive) thoughts on the game system. Additionally, I got wound up on my 40K reviews because of one simple word; supplements. Buying codices to review them is one thing and something I am comfortable with as I tend to play the role of "rules encyclopedia" at any gaming store I visit to help settle rules disputes, but keeping up with all of the supplements, campaign books and data-slates is just not worth it from a financial perspective as I am still fundamentally a model/gaming driven hobbyist. This means that my 7th Edition reviews will always feel incomplete to me - no matter how much I exhaust the core source material - when all those extra rules are hiding away in other tomes; it is frankly maddening. I'll work around it where possible but just be aware that I likely won't be covering too many non-codex rule collections in the future; one I definitely will get to eventually is Angels of Death so don't fret on that front!

From what I can gather I just need to write a Stompa review for Orks and they'll be sorted (finally), then I've got some Tau and Adeptus Mechanicus entries to sort through but for the most part I've already got a good frame-work to go off with those as I'm overly familiar with both factions anyway. From there, Dark Angels, Wulfen, Harlequins, Imperial/Renegade (yay!) Knights and Khorne Daemonkin look to be the only groups that need to be covered before I'm up to date with main-line 40K releases (on the topic of Dark Angels, as I've clarified earlier that won't be a full codex review given the shared unit entries between the various Adeptus Astartes books but it will cover everything unique to the 1st Legion). I have considered doing a Stormcast Eternal break-down based on my now extensive experience playing both with and against them, even if it runs contrary to what I wrote above about Age of Sigmar reviews. I think I honestly could cover all of the armies if I run out of 40K content to produce because frankly I want to focus on what makes units tick and the tricks you can pull similar to my Space Marine Character articles, meaning they could stay relevant regardless of the introduction of a points system - however, it isn't the main priority at the moment. What has been irritating me for a few months now is that what I'm really into at the moment - Horus Heresy and Age of Sigmar - are topics I will struggle to give due justice given the impending changes to both looming over the horizon, and I guess that could be described as the main reason behind my absence, but I'm feeling better with the mess of releases flooding my review pile and I'll endeavor to get regular content out again soon. Cheers everyone for reading my inane ramblings and have a nice day!