NEWS AND RUMOURS: Games Day France

Games Day France was held over the weekend and with it came confirmation of a lot of Planetstrike rumours. This is a 40k expansion book, much like Cities of Death, which changes the fundamental way of playing the game by monkeying about with missions, terrain and force organisation charts.

The book itself was available to leaf through and GeekyLouis on Warseer posted photos of some of the pages here. The Ironclad Dreadnought is in there, as well as lots of pics of the new terrain kits.

These include the landing pad (which has moveable pieces), the Imperial bastion and the Dark Angels fortress.

Brusilov provided a very comprehensive write up of his experience at Games Day much of which I've reproduced below.

I had a long chat with Mr Phil Kelly (thanks for your kindness and patience Phil), here are things I can remember on top of my head:

- Planetstrike is coming to a store near you next July ;

- all the bunkers including the tower are coming in plastic and will be modular. Phil explained to me that you could easily build a tall fortress wall out of the tower ;

- there is a massive fortress somewhere in the book (don't know if there is a pic somewhere) with a Dark Angels theme. From what I understood, it's coming in plastic too! It's basically a three-part citadel...

- the FOC are indeed different : the only compulsory choice for the attacke is one HQ. He can have up to SIX (yes, six!) Elite Choices. Defender has standard compulsory choices (HQ + 2 Troops) but gets to pick SIX HS choices (Imperial Guard here I come!)

- Phil gave me a rough outline of how the game plays : equal points for each side, opponents agree on a number of stratagem points (like in Cities of Death or Apocalypse). Defender buys fortifications with these points (as well as a few tricks : like a back exit to your bunker to charge the enemy in the rear). Attacker picks nasty tricks. Weapons mounted on fortifications can obviously fire upon the enemy (cannot remember if it's only in the first turn, may be so). Defenders appear to get a free round of shooting before the game starts. Two stratagems I could remember are 1) basically throwing an asteroid at the enemy 2) Dark Eldar trick : some form of sonic attack that reduces the Ld of the enemy by -1 every turn (don't remember if it applies to the whole board)

- Speaking of Dark Eldar (nice transition is it not?), I quizzed the man about everyone's favourite pirates. Apparently Phil himself is writing the book. They're redesigning the whole thing from the bottom up : minis, background (he specifically mentioned fleshing it out, which is pretty nice). He would not give me a date (said things get shifted around as development progesses) but we might hope to see it in 2010 (don't quote me on this, it's just personal opinion and in no way endorsed by Phill Kelly) ;

- in other news, I asked him about the Guard tank variants. He said that they'll get around to making them all (couldn't get a confirmation as far as the Deathstrike goes), but the Russes seem to take priority. When I mentioned the artillery (Manticore and such like), he said FW makes very nice models for those. So kits for artillery are a thing of the far future ;

- I questioned him about plastic longcoat guards (with the cover of planetstrike and all that). He basically said they'd love to do it and might get around to do it. When I mentionned the greatcoat Cadian officer, he did admit he looked rather nice. What I get out from this, it's no longer technically infeasible (as was argued a few years back), it's more a question of opportunity ;

- There is a very nice Space Wolves versus Tau picture in Planetstrike. When I asked whether our favourite Space Puppies were coming back, Phill answered with a definitive yes, but without a date

- They're also working on the Necrons. But Phil would not give me details, as it seems he's not directly involved in the projet (and it seems less advanced than the Dark Eldar from what I could infer) and not a date, but they're working on them.

-Thinking about FW, here is some stuff I can remember from a discussion with a FW representative

-The new IA on the Siege of Vraks will include rules for the FW Brass Scorpion (dubbed Greater Brass Scorpion, it has 3 SP) and the Slaughterers (those are nasty : FA 13, fleet of foot, rage ...).

-I asked whether there were another Chaos machine in the works and there is supposed to be one (couldn't get details though) and it's not in the new IA (which makes me dubious as to its existence)

-The Lord of Change is supposed to be released for Christmas (you can thank Santa Tzeentch).

-The next IA after Vraks pt 3 will be about Orks versus Elysians (but I don't think that was news).

-There is no further plan for Krieg release in the pipeline (there may be an odd release or two in the distant future).

That's basically all I can remember ATM.

I'm really looking forward to this game expansion. It should come inbetween finishing my Blood Angels and starting my Orks so I might just be able to finish my trench board as the kits are released. This would be unheard of for me as I usually have so many projects lined up that I'm two years behind the times.

Fingers crossed.

Which is better, Daemonhunters or Chaos Space Marines? There's only one way to find out...FIGHT!
As I mentioned in yesterday's blog I was working on another pictorial battle report. I finished it off today so I thought I'd share it immediately. This was a game played a long time ago, in 3rd edition or maybe the very early days of 40k 4th edition, so long ago in fact that I can't remember who I played against. Most probably it was against Gary, but the models on both sides are from my collection so perhaps it was my sister, a friend or maybe it was one of the rare solo games I played.

Anyway, it looks pretty with all those photographs (even if some of them are quite small) and there is a lot of background fluff written into it too. It's a game including Daemonhunters and Chaos Space Marines using a mission from the Daemonhunters codex; Stop the Ritual.

Check it out here.