A New Golden Age of Gaming

This is currently a great time to be a player of games. Not video games, mind you - tabletop games.

Indeed, while the videogames industry languishes and contracts, being increasingly dominated by a few monolithic  publishers and publications, there is an unprecedented diversification in the wargames and boardgames market.

We are, as gamers (and I shall just use that term from now on to describe all of us who play our games with dice, cards, miniatures, and friends), exiting a period of time for the industry that may in some respects be seen as a kind of dark age.

Nearly three decades ago wargaming was cool. I was a boy in the Eighties and it was an exciting time for those who, like me, loved sci-fi and fantasy. Special creature effects were being invented, as was the modern movie and the VHS player. Satellites were joining the world up (yes, this was before the internet) and the most influential roleplaying game of all time, Dungeons and Dragons, made it to the UK.

I still remember, nearly thirty years later, being invited to my first ever D&D session. The game was described to me. I couldn't believe or comprehend it. 'You can do anything you want?', I asked. 'How?'. It was an awesome experience.

From the success of D&D sprang Games Workshop. From being an importer and distributor of American games, this Nottingham company was able to become a creator. Warhammer Fantasy and then Warhammer 40,000 were born. For a while, maybe half the kids I knew collected and painted their miniatures or played pen and paper RPG's. It was never 'cool' cool, like being great at football was cool, but it was accepted and widely understood.

Things changed over the next few years.

Few other companies in the industry were able to thrive and survive through the nineties and noughties. A few tried and even made good products. Rackham Miniatures, were, I am told, great figures. But none could match GW's success. Well, I say success - really we're  talking about survival here.

Thats because I don't believe GW is the only large miniatures company to make it across two centuries solely because they made products that were so good noone could possibly compete. Its more a case of there being so little money in the industry's pool as a whole it only could sustain that one big fish.

Think of how much competition there has been for the hobby money of GW's traditional customers since the Eighties ended. The internet was invented. So was internet gaming and, really, the modern game. VHS, then DVD, then Blu-ray. And console gaming. When I was a lad, toy soldiers was all we could spend our cash on. Since then the alternatives have grown exponentially.

In the face of all these broadened horizons, gaming became a niche product.

This may all be about to change though.

Look at how much competition there is to GW today and where it has come from.

For a start, there is Privateer Press. In 2011, Warmachine overtook Warhammer Fantasy as the biggest selling wargame! They sold so well in fact, they could not match demand with product, a problem that likely cost them the chance to outsell even 40k. This, with no retail outlets of their own.

This year Mantic is getting serious. Despite having product for sale on the net and shop floors for some time now, their recent Kickstarter found more than 1500 backers willing to stump up $355,000 to support them. This massive cash injection meant Mantic's Five Year Plan for development got compressed down to about 6 months, a 'Dare to Dream' meeting had to be held to come up with new ideas for stretch goals, and nearly twenty new lines and an expansion have been added to their portfolio.

Boardgames have enjoyed similar success. Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster is now the highest funded boardgame on Kickstarter, raising just south of $1M for Studio McVey and CMON in a month. Can you imagine what that sort of backing means for a small studio like the McVeys'?

SW:BFA overtook another CMON boardgame, Zombicide - $781K, and a Steve Jackson remake, OGRE - $923.7K, on its way to the top spot, showing there is massive support for indoor games that use dice and models and require friends to play.

It doesn't stop at Kickstarter though. This year saw DUST Warfare released, building on the success of Fantasy Flight's DUST Tactics boardgame. Great models, great setting, and a simple ruleset will make for great sales. Super Dungeon Explore and Descent also scratch that itch, for lovers of Fantasy, dungeons, rolling dice and looting monsters.

Much of the success of these games is owed to the internet. Like many other lines, internet selling and fast shipping have opened up massive new markets to localised sellers. GW survived at least in part thanks to its network of retail outlets. A strong high street presence has kept them enough in the public's eye to maintain sales and a turnover of new customers. In fact, their recent profits have been driven more by 'efficiency', i.e. firing staff and opening one-man stores, than increasing sales though. While this strategy may become an increasingly burdensome millstone around GW's neck, its rivals are not so encumbered and are reaching areas and markets without having to worry about renting floorspace or sales staff.

Its perhaps also telling to consider where a lot of the talent for the market's expansion is coming from. Its GW again. Alessio Calvatore is a name that crops up again (Mantic) and again (DUST) in discussion of new games. The Perry twins, Mike McVey, Rik Priestley, and Bob Naismith are all names familiar to longtime GW fans - all now work for, with, or as the competition.

None of this is meant to imply there is no talent or no successes outside GW's stable or the games mentioned in this article. What I am implying is the market is ripe for expansion. While in times past there could be only one, today there is room for many many smaller businesses to live, thrive, and survive. The exodus from GW of well established names and talents shows that these guys see this too. They no longer feel they have to put up with whatever strictures working for GW placed upon them. They don't have to make games for someone else any more - they can make them for themselves. And instead of shareholders (one in particular) raking in dividends from their hard work, they can take all the profits too.

At least where I live, this optimism is being matched by retailers. Wayland Games are now installed in their massive new warehouses in Hockley, Essex, and recently published concept art of their gaming space. I have been there and I have  to say, the visualisations they released don't do the place justice. It is huge.  A new store/game space also opened up in town this past weekend too. ROTDOG has lots of floorspace and lots of games to sell. Their range does not include GW or PP though, suggesting the owner is confident he can make money just from selling other games (DUST, SDE, etc.) and renting tables.

This means that my small town, Southend, now has three retailers and four gaming spaces currently available.

What does the future hold?

I believe it is entirely possible tabletop gaming will overtake PC and console gaming as the cool pasttime for a generation of children and young adults growing up today.

And why not?

There was a time, barely more than ten years ago, when internet and console gaming was uncool. Seriously! When I played my first online shooter (Star Trek Voyager - Elite Force!), dial-up was the standard and playing games over the net was really not a widespread activity. Multiplayer games, at least for the PC were barely even invented!  It was really only when Halo was released that local console multiplayer became popular, I couldn't tell you what game made internet gaming take off.  But we have a generation now that grew up with the net and gaming over it and considers it to be normal, natural, and cool to do.

Things change though and what is considered the norm by one generation very quickly becomes a fad to the next.

People like to play together. I suggest that what has stopped them doing so in recent times is a lack of choice, more than an ingrained aversion to tabletop games, and a cool looking new alternative - internet gaming. Price has been an issue too. But tabletop games are getting cheaper (at least if you price them by volume. And ignore GW) and consoles and PC games are getting pricier. Seriously - £50 for another COD game? That is the same/extremely close to the last one I bought? And that I will only play for four or five months before exchanging it for a clone? And that on top of my £150-200 console.... Compare that to a boardgame where every game can be different, new models or expansions can be added, and where your friends can come over to play too. It costs less, lasts longer, and is not the same game as you bought last year.

So, a new Golden Age of Gaming could well be nigh. What has been a dark time for gamers, with little choice, few places to play, and some small amount of social stigma, could well be ending. We are entering a new period, with great choice, great variety, and new places to play and opponents and teammates too. Its a good time to be a gamer - I hope you are enjoying it too :)

Nightwing Scenic Base 2: Forest Pond

Just time for a quick shot of my scenic base for the Eldar Nightwing fighter.

Although my inspiration pic features green water, I figured I would make mine blue. This is to tie it in with the blue gems on the fighter. Just like the picture though, I am going to try to use lots of oranges and reds on the rest of the scenery, again to tie in with the paint scheme on the fighter. There, I must be getting better as a painter. I'm talking about 'tying in colours' and stuff.

Just pretend that glue isn't there...

So, I painted the slates with Bestial Brown, and dry-brushed them, quite heavily, with Kommando Khaki and Bleached Bone. They look earthy, with enough of the brown showing through to get that red hit.

I have then glued on some of that rubbery foliage you can get from any model shop. Its a little stinky and, if you use too much, doesn't look great at this scale. But if you just use a little, and put some thought into where it goes (i.e. coming out of the crevasses between rocks, not just slapped down randomly on top) it looks reasonably like natural foliage.

I also used some Woodland Scenics artificial grass to make reed-like clumps of greenery around the edges of the pool. Not too much - Just enough to show there is life around the edges of the water. I also kept it away from the 'beach' - if this is a living world we're looking at, its likely animals would be coming down to the waters edge to drink. This also helps the base feel more like a portrait - the open edge draws the eye into the water, while the rocks at the far end frame it all.
I ddid add a couple of fallen logs at the near end and some rocks though. I see them as an opportunity to add more red and orange accents, probably in the form of lichen or leaves, to again help tie the base in to the model flying above.

The water itself is really simple. Its just three layers of blue, starting with a dark layer under the rocks and finishing up lighter where the water ends. I will be adding Water Effects later, but this simple paint job will help give an impression of depth and reality to the whole thing.

Overall I'm very pleased with how this thing is turning out. Just have to wait a few hours for all that PVA to dry now...

Eldar Flyers Appear Unstoppable!

A few days ago, when I mentioned to a friend I was considering adding some Corsair Flyers to my Eldar army, he suggested I wait until Forge World released their FAQ/Errata for 6th Edition to see what they could do. Well, the documents were released on the 6th, July, and a quick read shows Eldar flyers are a must have!

Lets start with the Nightwing fighter. As well as being Supersonic (duh!) and being able to Deep Strike, this thing has the Vector Dance special rule. This means you will never have to finish your movement and not be lined up to shoot at something. This is, I believe, a major drawback to the Marine and other races' flyers, particularly on small boards.

Got my gems done today too :)

 On top of that though, you get the Shrouded special rule. Granted, it does depend on your interpretation of the Jink rule (and that really does need to be FAQ'd) but it appears that if you choose to Evade shots you get a 2+ cover save!

Then we have the Phoenix bomber. This has all the above plus Strafing Run - you hit targets on the ground with an extra +1 to your BS! This thing's bombs are going to obliterate nearly every infantry unit in the game :)

Given the power and potential of these two flyers then, it seems likely they will attract a certain amount of enemy fire early in the game. It is possible, even though most players will need 6's to hit, you will spend a lot of time evading. That said, many players struggle with target prioritisation and I can see a lot of players still choosing to spend their bullets on the infantry targets that are threatening objectives.

The smart move though would seem to be to target enemy fliers early in the shooting phase with some high strength (at least 7) weapons to force the controlling player to Evade. Then forget about them if you really do need to take out ground based targets.

The removal of the 12" penalty to range when shooting at fliers will help with this.

Sun Blitz motif. Yeah, I know it looks like a flower.

Fighters and bombers could be one of the most exciting aspects of New 40k though. Its seat of the pants stuff - flying at high speed, out of the reach of most weapons, hard to hit by all others. You can do a lot of damage - if luck is on your side. Or - stray las-cannon slams into your ship, a plasma blast glances you, and its all over. Dominating your enemy from the air sounds like a gamble, sounds risky. But pull it off and you'll be slapping the X-marks all over your fliers and coming up with Ace pilot names before you know it.

I'm looking forward to seeing which way the dice fall for me :)

Nightwing Scenic Base - Forest Pond

Having spent a fair amount of time and effort on my Nightwing, I decided I had better make a decent fist of its base. As mentioned in recent posts on my Cryx army, I have been playing with water effects recently. A pond in a clearing of some sort seemed the perfect way to resolve the problem of building an attractive, interesting base - that has a massive transparent pylon sticking up out of it.

That said, here's, my guide to building a forest pond themed flying base.

To start with, you will need some inspiration. Unless you're one of those incredible artistic, creative types who can just like, you know, 'imagine' stuff and then create it, its a good idea to do a bit of photo research.

A lot of us like to just wing it. Whether its because we think that is how genuine creative geniuses work (its not) and that we too are so gifted (we're probably not), or we just don't think we have the capacity to or patience to plan out something great, there's really no excuse, what with Google image search being so easy and available, to not at least type in 'forest pond'. Doing so will give you images like this:

Alright - there we go. The idea of layered rocks forming a sort of bracket for the water on at least one side is one I probably would not have had otherwise. The sloping effect is also something cool I can try.

Using some GW textured paint and some pieces of slate I found on the road, we can get something like this:

I'm trying to build up a sort of beachy slope in the foreground. I have also made sure to seal all the gaps between the rocks at their bases so as not to let any of the water effects through when I add them later on.

The textured paint is pretty versatile stuff. As well as giving you a pre-textured and pre-basecoated base, it will dry to form a fairly strong grip on the slates I pushed into it when wet. It is not super-easy to sculpt or shape, but with a little perseverance you can get some good slopes, pits, ridges, and so on.

It takes maybe an hour to dry though, so I will leave it for a while before adding some more layers and rocks.

Nightwing Reworked

Yesterday I put up a piece about my Eldar Nightwing conversion, focusing largely on the painting. I did some more work on it after publishing and then a little bit more this morning. Sadly, in the cold light of day, I could see there were more mistakes and problems with the paint job than good bits. So, with more than a little pain in my heart and some trepidation, I resprayed the whole thing.

The problems with the first attempt at the paint job were mostly centred on the spiral motifs. Basically I couldn't see how to make them look properly painted on. I couldn't figure out how to shade or highlight them realistically. I tried using a Baal Red wash and just made it all worse. Eventually I figured I would go back to my original plan or spraying the whole thing red, masking off the spirals, then spraying again with the Golden Yellow.

To be honest, this didn't really solve the problem. The liquid mask gives really really crisp lines, and I think that sometimes the contrast between the two colours I was using were just too stark. I still needed to solve that. BUT, my second attempt at the Golden Yellow layer was so much better than the first.

Part of this has to do with the practice factor. I'm fairly new to airbrushing and only have a basic brush. Its not really precise enough for infantry models or any real detail work so I have mostly used it only to coat a few entire models. It feels like I'm getting the hang of it now though. It feels much easier to wash and clean the thing between colours now and I have a better idea of what consistency to mix different paints too (Citadel Foundation paints needing much more thinner than layers, for example). Doing the same colours almost straight after the first attempt then was pretty straightforward and I was able to apply them much more precisely.

The other positive for redoing the same paint was I effectively had a pre-shade and pre-highlight layer on the model. That is to say, I had done a fairly poor job of shading the first time round and a reasonable enough job of edge highlighting the panels, and these paints, due to the thin nature of spray paints, are somewhat visible through the top layers. Seeing how easy this actually is to do has given me a lot of confidence to pre-shade and -highlight the next big model I paint.

I have also Forrest Gumped my way to making the spirals look just about presentable too. I need to figure out what other details I need to paint on now, before adding some decals and getting to work on the weapons and engines. Here's where we're at now though:

Bright enough for you?

Weapons will be a light brown, engines a brassy colour

Eldar Nightwing Conversion/Liquid Mask/Sun Blitz Botherhood

Every time I try to get out - they pull me back in...

One of the combinations of armies I want to try in 6th Edition 40k is Codex Eldar and Eldar Corsairs. The Corsairs army list is given in Imperial Armour Volume 11: Doom of Mymeara. It is a fast attack list. Apart from some compulsory cannon-fodder infantry, the list features lots of fast movers, from jetpack walkers and jetbikes, to fighter and bomber aircraft. Since reading the book I've had a yearning to field an army with flyers in it and, as 6th Edition features these vehicles, now's the time.

The downside of this list though is the cash cost. Both the Nightwing fighter and Phoenix bomber are Forgeworld models and quite pricey. When trying to decide if I really wanted to commit more than £100 on two models it suddenly hit me that the Edar Razorwing is very similar to the Nightwing, in shape at least. A minimal amount of kitbashing later, and we have this:

Its not a perfect match, but its good enough. The Nightwing doesn't have the central dorsal fin and does have moving wings. But my model cost half as much as Forge World's, so I'll keep the £30 and use mine, thanks very much.

It is simple enough to switch the Dark Eldar Lance's out for some surplus Eldar ones from the bits box. They require a bit more effort to secure, not having the nice little square peg the supplied parts do. The forward Shuriken Cannons are also quite simple to make from chopped down tank weapons and a couple of other spare parts.

For the paint scheme I have decided to go with the Sun Blitz Brotherhood, also found in the IA11 book.

I based the model with a black primer. On top of this I sprayed a Mechrite Red base coat, then a layer of Blood Red, and then a couple of coats of Vallejo's Game Colour Gold Yellow. I have blended up some of the more raised areas with a mix of Gold Yellow and Iyanden Darksun and edge highlighted the panels with Sunburst Yellow. Sadly, most of these paints are no longer available, but Vallejo probably do passable equivalents of the GW colours or you could just use Air colours.

The next step is to add the red spirals that marks this vehicle out as a Sun Blitz flyer.

When planning this I saw two ways to do it. Either, having sprayed the thing with the reds, mask off the spiral shapes before spraying on the yellows, or spray all the colours, mark out the spirals and then respray the reds. I went with the latter for two reasons: my airbrush is not that great (nor is my technique) and it was late at night when I started painting so there was no way to get hold of some liquid mask.

Here is how the model looks with the Liquid Mask (also by Vallejo) painted on:

I have never used the mask before so here's a couple of things I have learnt:

• It looks like a fairly watery paint on the palette
• It can be painted on to a model pretty much like a paint, having a consistency similar to thinned PVA glue.
• It dries more quickly than a paint. Beware of using your good brushes for application - it will form a gum between the bristles really quickly, so use an older brush you don't mind writing off if you can't get all the mask off.
• It takes longer to dry on the model than an acrylic paint. I'm not sure how long you're supposed to leave it until painting over, but its been on my model for about twenty minutes now and still feels a little tacky in places. That said, I've seen videos where people sprayed over it almost immediately so I'm going to go ahead and spray it now.

Thats all there is for now. When I have sprayed on the spirals I'll take some more pictures and write about removing the mask.

First Thoughts on First Gamer of 6th Edition

After a couple of days of speed-reading, cogitating, and performing mental gymnastics to come up with interesting lists and combinations of lists, tonight I got my first game of 6th Edition 40k.

I figured the best way to learn the ropes of this latest revision of the game was to focus on one or two new aspects, picking a list that would enable me to try a couple of new rules, rather than trying to lane everything all at once.

I decided to focus on psychic powers and vehicles. My list was two squads of missile launcher-Long Fangs, three Las-canon Razorbacks, two five-man Grey Hunter squads, a dreadnought with las-cannon and missile launcher, and a Master of Runes. These were joined by a Blood Angels detachment of ten assault marines in a Land Raider Redeemer, with an Epistolary and a Sanguinary Priest. Four psychic powers then and a whole lot of shooty.

I was up against a foot-dar army. A battery of d-cannons, some Striking Scorpions, lots of guardians, some jet bikes, some Vipers, and a Fire Prism. Oh, and an Avatar.

Long story short - I won, quite comfortably. Eldar on foot are hopeless against marine missiles and even the Avatar dies quickly against massed Las-cannons. Basically it was a story I am used to seeing. My army has a lot of targets for an enemy to choose from and I have not yet faced one who could correctly prioritize targets. My opponent tonight, for example, seemed obsessed with destroying my dreadnought, despite there being two scoring units of marines, sitting on an objective in Razorbacks, closer to the Eldar.

I have to say though, at this early stage, I am not a fan of how vehicles work, specifically how they take damage. In the old system, both glancing and penetrating hits could hurt you. You could take a vehicle out with a glancing hit, but it was difficult. Penetrating hits had a greater chance of removing vehicles from play. As 6th edition stands, glancing hits seem to sort of wear vehicles out. There's no element of chance, no difference between any two glances. They are all equally damaging and as few as two will wreck your toy.  Its a simplification of the vehicle damage system - but only the one half of it.

I think GW has fixed a problem here that didn't really exist. They have exchanged a system that, due to the element of chance, could result in a vehicle heroically struggling through a multitude of hits or perhaps just suffering a catastrophic failure early in it's life, for a sort of 'lives' system wherein vehicles have a fairly predictable lifespan and may not be worth taking at all. Meh, only my first game and all. I just liked that randomness in 5th

Psychic powers are also very different. Would you believe that in six turns, I didn't get off one power? My Rune Priest fell victim to a combination of Eldar stones and the new Perils rule. He failed two psychic tests and, now, gets no saves. Bye bye. My Blood Angels psyker, on the other hand, just never had cause to use one. There were no assaults in the game so his Smite and Haemorrhage powers were never needed. The nerf to Hoods meant he wasn't even of any use to dispel the Eldar witches casts.

One positive discovery from all this was that fast skimmers get the Jink rule. So those Stormravens may be of use as transports after all.

Overall then, my first experience of 6th was positive. I wouldn't say the game as a while felt like a massive improvement over 5th. It's more of an acceptable alternative.

I'm not a fan of how vehicles are now treated but I didn't see any compelling reason to change from a list with several of them included. Small units and Long Fang spam also seen viable, but, if there had been some close combat, I might be saying otherwise.

Psychic powers are harder to judge, given that I got to use none of them. The nerf to Hoods sucks though, as does the new Perils. The fact that anyone can resist them and, more so, that everyone has an equal chance to do so, also kind of sucks. Looking at that list then, it seems I'm going to give psychic powers a thumbs-down.

Again though, it's early days and this was a first game. It was fun enough and if course winning if always good. Hopefully I'll get a few more games in in the next few weeks and find more joy from this latest edition.