Tabletop Nation 'Eastern Edge II' Tournament

Thanks to deciding to skip Black Library's Weekender (more on how money-grabbing and unfriendly BL have been in a later post) I was able to instead go to the Eastern Edge II tournament at Tabletop Nation today.

This was a one day, 1200 points, 40k tourney. The aim was for four games to be played, hence the low points limit. It turns out however that there is some kind of hard limit of points in 40k, whereby any points cost over said limit does not really reduce playing time. Thus, even with small armies, we still only managed three games each in the time allotted.

Lets get the good news out of the way first - I came second :) I got a nice little voucher to spend in the store and a certificate to add to the trophy shelf (there isn't really a trophy shelf, I just put it on a bookshelf for now). I was actually genuinely surprised to do so well. I had thought I was in with a good chance at best painted army, to be honest. But still, a prize is a prize :)

There was a fairly good selection of armies at play. Alongside three Blood Angels armies were Orks, Daemons, Space Wolves, and Necrons. Daemons placed first with three wins out of three while the Orks came in just behind me.

A brief summary of my list and three games then.

I took a Librarian with psychic powers from the BRB, going with Prescience every time and a random TK power too that never got used. I had a Furioso with Frag Cannon and two Sanguinary Priests as Elites. Two tactical squads for troops, one with a las-cannon, one with a plasma cannon, and, finally, two Stormravens, each with plasma cannons and Typhoons, one with sponsons.

Top: difficult to budge Tactical Squad and Bottom: fleeing Grey Hunters!

First game was against Space Wolves. It was Kill Points. My opponent had Grey Hunters in Rhinos and Long Fangs with rockets and Long Fangs with plasma, which might have been problematic had we not got a) deployment at the short edges, and b) night-fighting on the first turn. So his Long Fangs were neutered on turn one, and unable to hit my flyers on turn two ( a combo of templates-can't-hit-flyers and poor dice rolling there ). My flyers and long range shooters, by contrast, were able to take out two Rhinos and suppress the third. We did end up with a couple of combats but, surprisingly, his GH packs, even when, on one occasion, being backed up by charging Thunderwolf cavalry, could not shift my tactical squads. I even got one squad to run away! Cut to Turn 5 then, and my Furioso dismounts and frags a Long Fang squad to death. The two Stormravens nuke another couple of Rhinos for more easy kill points and its a win for the boys in red.

Second game was the saddest of all things - red on red violence. My opponent this time also had Blood Angels but in a list I wish I had had. For one thing he took and Aegis. At 1200 points I didn't think anyone would want to fit that into a list, but then he also had five man assault squads taking las-preds with 35-point discounts so it all fit. Two Librarians too, one on a bike, also spelled doom for my boys, with both of them taking Divination powers to make their shooting infallible. We were playing the Relic and I combat-squadded my troops to have a better chance of grabbing the relic. But it was not to be - giving his quad-gun Ignores Cover and his assault bikes rerolls to hit made short work of my army. A Stormraven was predicatably cut to pieces by the quad on arrival and it all went downhill from there really.

Third game was a bit more fun. Fun for me, that is, because it generally went all my way. I had chosen to take BA's over my usual favourite for competitive play, Space Wolves, because the last tournament winner at TTN had taken 'Cron Air. Five flyers had apparently made easy work out all comers so I wanted some built-in Skyfire. Today's 'cron player only had one flyer though, and no other competent anti-air. Playing Big Guns Never Tire, with five objectives on the table, I started claiming two, one of which, in ruins already, improved my cover save by one. One of his was sabotaged so he had to shift off it pretty sharpish. My Stormravens were able to polish off one of his Heavy Support tank-things (sorry, I really can't remember all the silly names GW gives their toys) for First Blood and a bonus victory point. And, for me at least, it was all uphill from there. The 'crons just couldn't stand up to marine shooting or the Stormravens - Power of the Machine Spirit is the only thing GW failed to nerf on these machines. I even hit the 'cron flyer with my las-cannon in the last turn causing it to fly off the board and onto the post-game kill points column. A good win.

Salamanders vs. Space Wolves. Not everyone brought Space Marines though, honest.

Just time for a couple of quick observations and thoughts on the armies I saw and played today then.

As I suspected, the Stormraven does now largely suck as a transport for anything without jump packs. In 5th you could roll halfway across the table and then charge out of its belly to assault your enemy. In 6th you can only do this if it moves 6" or less. It excels as a gunship though. The rules for flyers work really well for the Stormraven - it has so many guns, plus PotMS, and can put out massive amounts of firepower, lots of which can be twin-linked. Lots of talk has been made of melta being redundant as noone takes Armour 14 any more. the necrons have great access to Arm 13 though and, sometimes, I wish I had had las-cannons on the flyers. But even without them, the SR has loads of rockets built in, the option for more, is hard to hit when flying and can Evade, is easier to hit when hovering but can Jink. Its got everything you want from something with 'Gunship' in its name.

The Aegis line with quad-gun is just great. I highly expect to be buying one soon for use at 1750 and above. There is no reason not to take one and, particularly if you twin-link it with a psyker, has the power to ruin an enemy's day and list.

Assault marines and more Predators are pretty nifty too. They make a staple of 5th, one which is still very valid in 6th, very cost-effective. Thinking about the great value they are and how deadly my las-Pred Space Wolves are makes me drool a little.

Finally 'crons. I was not super-impressed by these guys. The units that came into range of my tactical marines were really easy to kill. Even the big hard ones with shields went down to plasma bursts and a Frag Cannon  quite quickly. The Deathmarks were probably the scariest, hitting marines very reliably and with some silly rule that allowed them to wound me on twos. But ten marines in cover, with a Priest, turn out to be very hard to shoot to death. In return they obliterated the 'marks in two turns of shooting. The flyer was a bit more worrying, largely because it is very manouverable. It also has that silly beam-down ability which could be a problem if it is filled with the right unit. I think it managed, over three turns, to take out a Stormraven, and nearly did some major damage to a tactical squad before being las-cannoned off the board. Again, Aegis line....

Overall then, a good day out. For what was billed as a 'casual' tourney, some players played remarkably aggressively and not everyone took losing in, shall we say, and 'admirable' fashion. Some were out the door as soon as the last dice settled when they had lost a game, i.e. they didn't think they could 'win' the tournament so there was no point in sticking around. But most people had a fun few games, drank a lot of coffee and rolled a lot of dice. Many many plastic men gave up their lives, often repeatedly, for our pleasure and enjoyment, and that, after all, is what its all about.

Review: Forge World's 'Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Volume Two'

I have been waiting a long time in eager anticipation for the second in Forge World's painting and modeling books -  the expansively titled 'Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Volume Two'. I even got to Salute a couple of weeks ago, expressly to have a chance of picking up a copy at the FW stand. Sadly I was still too late on the day but FW were happy to let me order a copy for home delivery :) Cue another week and a half of waiting - and it has arrived!

I loved the first volume and have used or adapted several of the techniques described therein on my models (I even got the wife to help build and paint a Baneblade with me, using the techniques FW described). I'm a big fan of learning new stuff and expanding my repertoire and the book certainly had lots of new challenges and things to try. But would the second volume in the series be as eye-opening? Would I be as inspired to hook up the airbrush and dig out the oil paints and varnishes? Most importantly, how expensive would the new toys I would feel obliged to buy be?

The answers to those questions are, it turns out, 'kind of', 'a little', and 'probably not much'.

Its not that Vol.2 is bad by any means. It contains lots of well shot photo's of gorgeously painted miniatures. There are quite a few different models shown as well. The problem really is that it doesn't feel like this book really develops the hobby. It doesn't add as much to the world of painting 40k miniatures as Vol.1 did. Many of the techniques described in Vol.2's guides have already been described in Vol.1. If you already know how to use layers of varnishes, apply decal, sponge on weathering,  you may not learn much more here.

You may think that the chance to learn the colours used in painting some of the gorgeous FW models you've seen at shows or on the web is good enough reason to buy this book. Which brings me to second, and probably biggest, problem with Masterclass 2: it uses the old Citadel paint range. You would have to be either very lucky or strangely prescient to still have a stock of Bleached Bone, Scorched Brown, Khemri Brown, or Mechrite Red, but these and many others are used in the painting guides.

This leaves painters hoping to replicate the schemes presented therein with a dilemma - do you attempt to map those mentioned colours over to the new ones GW describes as their replacements, bearing in mind the new colours are not identical to the old ones and are in some cases, I am told, quite different? Or do you just go with Vallejo's Game Colour range, in which case you can get more or less identical shades with purposefully similar names, albeit possibly of a slightly lesser quality than the original? Given that if I were to follow FW's guides to the letter I would already be buying several Vallejo paints (as FW don't seem too squeamish about mentioning they use colours and products GW don't do), add the fact I hate and fear change and, well, the choice is clear for me.

That said, the guides are nicely laid out and photographed, if a little casual in their descriptions. At times this can be a little silly. In the guide to painting a Reaver Titan there are some lovely pictures of the upper surface of the carapace. This is a gorgeously marbled piece and FW suggests you achieve this effect by airbrushing paint 'in subtle marbled patterns'. But this is a 'Masterclass' book - you are supposed to have some experience/ability/brains before buying it and more often than not the pictures and descriptions are detailed and good enough to enable you to do something quite cool with your next big project.

The question then is, 'if I already have Masterclass Vol.1, do I need Vol.2?'. My suggestion would be this: if you are alread au fait with the techiques described in Vol.1, you probably don't need this book. That is, unless the list of models shown contains some you really like the sound of.

 If you don't have Vol.1 but are interested in discovering and trying some new painting and modeling techniques, I would suggest checking the list of contents of each book, then buying the one with the most interesting models to you in it. That is to say, if you just buy Vol.2 but not Vol.1, you won't be missing out on any secrets of the Universe guaranteed to win you power, money, and Golden Demons.

Be aware though, not all painting guides are created the same. The guide to the Brass Scorpion in Vol.2 is quite detailed and has lots of cool stuff to try out. The Phantom titan bust 'gallery' by contrast, is only a couple of pages long, the largest part of which is big big pictures. If you buy this book hoping to revolutionise your Eldar painting, you may be disappointed.

I was also a little disappointed by the choice of what models went into this book too. The weakness of Vol.1, I felt, was it was fairly traditional tank-heavy. Lots of muddy and rusty Imperial and Chaos cans that is, not so much Xenos stuff. I hoped Vol.2 would therefore switch the focus from the lumbering human technology and show us some tips and tricks for painting Eldar, Tau, and even 'nid models. But, apart from the aforementioned Phantom gallery and a few shots of the Mymeara models, there are next to no xenos in the book.

Essentially the, Vol.2 is 'more of the same'. None of the content is bad, much of it very very good and well presented. But it is also very very similar to Vol.1, uses paints that aren't being made any more, and may not feature models or races you are interested in buying or playing. Not a horrible product at all, but a missed opportunity to develop a brand and a series into new directions.

Flagpole

Just a few minutes to spare while some paint dries to put out a couple of
thoughts on the recent Salute show at the Excel.

I went with an open mind. I went with an open wallet. I went, increasingly
disillusioned and frankly bored with GW games and products, with an eye to
discovering some new games to play and models to buy. Wayland Games
will be opening their new warehouse and gaming centre near me quite soon
so I thought I might get a headstart on collecting a new system.

Over an afternoon of trailing around the Excel, talking to players and reps,
and reading rules and demoing games, a couple of big differences became
apparent between Games Workshop and the competition.

When it comes to low barriers to entry, pretty much every major alternative to
GW games are streets ahead. Warmachines and Hordes, Infinity and
Mantic's offerings all offer free rule sets and cheap miniatures. It can't have
escaped anyone's notice Mantic are practically trying to give their mini's
away - barely a week passes without some mega-bundle deal arriving in my
Inbox, imploring me to buy a thousand Warpath mini's for £10.50 (or a
figuratively similar price). These boxes all come with free rules and there
were indeed several bundle deals at Salute giving free leader blisters, bags,
and the like with purchases of new armies. Warmahordes also come with the
stat cards you need to field the models and free rules are readily available to
download. Infinity has slightly more complex rules, meaning a rulebook
seems a must, but, like Privateer's games, you need very few miniatures to
start playing the game. Compare these startup costs with 40k or WFB,
where you are likely to have to spend around £100 just to get started, then
another £100 to get competitive, on models that aren't cheap to begin with
and increase in price with chilling regularity.

But, and this is important, GW is in turn streets ahead of all its competitors in
a key area - sales training.

Take my experience at the Privateer Press stand for starters.

I turned up, nice and early in the day, big smile on my face and asked a member of the
'street team' for a demo of Warmachine. 'Ah,' he said, 'can I show you
Hordes instead - its pretty much the same as Warmachine?'. Not a great
start, not showing the customer the product he has asked for, but I was in a
cooperative mood so I said 'OK' and off we went. Twenty or so minutes later we wrapped things up and I told my guide and another member of the team that had wandered over to help explain some
rules that I would really like to play the Retribution of Scyrah but didn't know
what models I should buy as there was no starter set for that faction.
'Hmmm,' they said, 'there is a recommended starter list though.'. When it
became apparent they weren't going to tell me what it was, I asked them for
some names and they rattled off half a dozen. I figured I could memorize
the list as it seemed to be largely the names of significant monsters from
Greek mythology. Then there was another awkward silence which I broke by
walking away to look for some of these beasties on the display racks along
the back wall of the stand. It turned out they didn't have most of the names I
was looking for in stock (perhaps explaining the crew's reluctance to help me
find them). They didn't have them at Wayland's stand either, although at least
the store staff there were friendly and helpfully suggested popping in to the
warehouse after the show wrapped up.

Turns out PP were actually the best customer experience I had that day. At
the Infinity table I got a game with a very friendly guy who unfortunately was
new to the system and didn't know all the rules. At the Mantic area I watched
a game of Warpath for a bit before asking one of the company reps if I
could look at the rules on the table in front of her. She said 'yes', then walked
away. Well, if you're not that interested in potential customers, I'm not that
interested in playing your game.

Its a shame really. I get why it happens - noone in the industry does retail
except GW so there's not an abundance of sales staff working for anyone
else. But seriously, why go to the trouble and expense of setting up stands
at the biggest sales opportunity in the UK and man them with people who
don't know the games, don't have an interest in bringing in new players, and
can't be bothered to even deal with people who come and ask them
questions? The marketing managers who come set these things up should
be just a little bit ashamed that the people they put in place were so
unprepared or unable to do the job they needed too. The creatives who work so hard and do such a good job at making entertaining games with gorgeous miniatures should be quite angry they are not being marketed in any way close to effectively.

So, I came away empty handed. The games I wanted to play didn't want me.
The mini's I wanted to buy weren't for sale. And so I shall probably end up
just pumping more money into GW - a company that scorns me, but still
works hard to pull me ever closer (yeah, I'm aware thats pretty close to
definitions of abusive relationships or, perhaps more aptly, those between
crack addicts and their dealers). They want to rip me off, but at least they
want me.

Freeloaders of the World, Unite!

There cannot be many industries in the world where the dominant manufacturer can call its principle customers 'freeloaders' and get away with it - toy soldiers is one though. Because that is how Games Workshop's CEO, Mark Wells, referred to internet retailers of GW products in May, this year. Well, here is the response of at least some of those freeloaders.

Yes, Tabletop Nation, an inclusive initiative, bringing together manufacturers, retailers, and, crucially, customers, all under one friendly banner designed to - well, thats the question, isn't it? What is Tabletop Nation for? What is supposed to do? Frankly, the blurb on the web page is not all that clear, but let me explain what I think Wayland and BoW are proposing.

In a nutshell, what I think we are looking at here is a sort of merger - in a strictly non-legally binding sense - to form a corporation with a size to rival Games Workshop. And I do believe it is intended to rival Games Workshop. Its a big assumption, I know, but I believe a fair one. Also, we are only talking about the UK - for now.

As things stand, every game system or manufacturer has their own little piece of the pie, their own little sub-niche within the tabletop gaming marketplace. Wayland has their customers, totalwargamer theirs. Privateer Press has its list of customers, as does Mantic. Each little group of customers is fairly isolated from the others due to the way this hobby is run - there are very few (if any) publications covering more than one war gaming system and not a lot brand-name websites covering them either (yeah, there are some, but compare how many sites deal with more than one tabletop gaming system with the number that cover, say sports or fashion - its a small field). And of course, no manufacturer puts links to their competitors on their site. New customers are usually found through word of mouth recommendations - someone you know says game X is cool because they know you like game Y. Even then you need a critical mass, in this case enough people to play against each other for it to be interesting, of new customers to really get established in any one place.

So, every product is trying to sell itself in isolation and cannot piggyback on related products to drive acquisition of new customers. Plus, you need to get several new customers all at the same time in order for any of them to keep buying your products and thus grow your foothold in an area.

Enter BoW and Wayland.

Beasts of War has expanded from being essentially a youtube channel to a well-established and regarded tabletop news and articles website with (presumably) high traffic rates. They run text news articles but are fairly unique in their range of video series. As well as painting guides, they also put out unboxing videos of wargaming products, tips and tactics videos, and reviews. They also put together series of videos to coincide with the release of new ranges or armies for established brands including Games Workshops. They have forums for all the major gaming systems and have been trying to position themselves as a social hub for tabletop gamers for some time. All of this makes them a recognised brand with access to a large number of registered users.

Wayland, similarly, has a large database of wargames customers and a lot of experience retailing to them.

Here is what in essence I reckon they are saying to prospective partners in Tabletop Nation: get on board with our new brand and get access to all our customers and all your competitors' customers. In other words, advertise with us, feed us with access to your products (news, behind the scenes, freebies for competitions, whatever) and be viewed by our massive numbers of loyal fans, who may currently only be playing other games, so they can discover your game as well. Sure, some of your customers might end up buying their products - but some of their customers will end up buying yours too. And after all, in a capitalist marketplace, we all believe our product has strengths above our competitors so what do you have to lose by being seen alongside them?

This is in contrast to, say, Games Workshop's current promotional strategy, which seems to run something along the lines of keep saying our stuff is the best in the world and pretend no other games system exists and it will be alright.

There is a slightly different proposition for customers and retailers.

One of GW's greatest strengths right now is its geographical reach. With around 150 stores worldwide and counting, I don't know how many of which are in the UK, each of which runs at least one club night per week, plus all the Games Club Network clubs that are advertised in White Dwarf every month, there are a lot of places you can easily find a game of Warhammer or 40k each week. There are many more clubs and stores running gaming nights than these though - but none have such ready access to national press advertising as GW. This could change with Tabletop Nation. So your store that runs a gaming night that, as before, struggles to find new members because they struggle to find you, can now be listed on the central hub site for UK gamers. And wherever you live you could search for clubs or players near you, or find new clubs or friends in places you are visiting.

Which brings me on to what, for me, is perhaps the most exciting part of the Tabletop Nation blurb - the gaming hall 'east of London'. I currently live in the same town Wayland operates from and I know the new hall is also going to be very close to me. I love everything about Warhammer World - except its location and the fact you can only play GW games there. Tabletop Nation's headquarters could be the answer to both those problems.

None of this is guaranteed, of course. Its all just my guess at what's going on and what is being offered. Some of it is perhaps wishful thinking too, or just what I would do if I were trying to build the Tabletop Nation brand.

I doubt we'll hear much more of this until the New Year but, hopefully, agreements are being drawn up and ink signed even over the Christmas holiday. Tabletop Nation could be a great step forward for all wargamers and is certainly full of potential to revolutionise how the hobby works. I look forward to learning more about it son.