Warhammer 40K

[Slide]

The Dawn of War expansion thread got comprehensively derailed, and as it's an "other game" figured a 40K specific thread wouldn't be a bad idea.

[Slide]

Orks get some lubbin finally:

"The Ork Spearhead contains a selection of the new Ork releases and is available in hobby centres of from Games Workshop Direct before the official release date. These sets are available in strictly limited numbers, so get 'em while you can! This box set contains: 10 Ork Boyz, 5 Ork Lootas or Burna Boyz, 5 Tankbusters, 2 Bomb Squigs, 3 Ork Warbikerz, 1 Ork Trukk, 1 Ork Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun and 1 Ork Weirdboy."

Just in time for Codex: Orks

[Rhaze]

Whats more fun wh40k or fantasy battles?

[eyeoftheovermind]

40k and Fantasy are both fun and rather similar. In fact most of GW products are rather similar and use the same stat sets and d6 system.

40k tends to be a bit more troop based and by that I mean you make an army and all of your units are roughly equal in power. So a squad of space marines with 2 heavy weapons is about as tough and effective as one land raider.

Whereas in fantasy a large portion of your points tend to be spent on heroes and items for them. So your blood dragon general on a nightmare with a 100pt frostblade is going to eat up a third of the points for your army and be more powerful than the rest of your units.

All the models look great though and half the game is really about the modeling, so choose what you like to look at most because the discrepancy in game play isnt all that huge.

[Slide]

Originally Posted by eyeoftheovermind

40k and Fantasy are both fun and rather similar. In fact most of GW products are rather similar and use the same stat sets and d6 system.

A lot more people play 40K than Fantasy so it can be easier to get a 40K game. The typical starter army for 40K is some flavour of Space Marine or perhaps the Tyranids.

[Tancred]

The vehicles in that Orc Spearhead look suspiciously like the same crappy ones we've had for years with a few extra doodads attached. Bah.

I played the WH40k:Squad Commander demo on my PSP yesterday. It's very cool and I'll certainly be picking up the full version.

[gavinrad]

Originally Posted by eyeoftheovermind

Whereas in fantasy a large portion of your points tend to be spent on heroes and items for them. So your blood dragon general on a nightmare with a 100pt frostblade is going to eat up a third of the points for your army and be more powerful than the rest of your units.

Dunno when the last time you played Fantasy was, but they changed the bajesus out of this. Fantasy heroes are about the same as 40K independent characters, properly kitted out, they are wrecking balls, but they still need support or they will get punked badly.

I'm actually going to play an Apocalypse game here in about an hour, should be absolutely awesome. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[Erronius]

Originally Posted by gavinrad

Dunno when the last time you played Fantasy was, but they changed the bajesus out of this. Fantasy heroes are about the same as 40K independent characters, properly kitted out, they are wrecking balls, but they still need support or they will get punked badly.

I agree on their solo ability...the one time you roll like crap you get your arse handed to you on a platter via LD/ranks, etc. A lot of time I can eke out something close to a draw with Chaos usually due to numbers of wounds caused in CC, but thats no sure thing though.

On the points...yeah it can be bad, especially in Fantasy. I sometimes run a Tzeentch Lord on a Chaos Dragon, and IIRC it runs somewhere over 800 points. It's kind of a gamble though...thats a lot of points right there to lose, but a rampaging Lvl4 caster, on a dragon with 2 breath weapons, and the caster has the same stats iirc as a normal CC Lord...it can go either way. Now I havent played Fantasy since right before the magic pool changes, so that may have toned things down a bit with lvl 4 casters not using the entire armies generated dice pool.

Rhaze: IMO they are both fun. Fantasy does have a lot of things I do like, as does 40k. Usually my friends and I get tired of one game after so many months and segue back to the other. We've been trying to start BB/BFG/INQ games or campaigns here and there, but tbh 40k and Fantasy are really all a lot of people want to try.



I haven't looked at the Ork stuff yet, so I'll prob go look now. If thats all they have done or are going to do, then I am highly disappointed. I'd really like to see the points and squad options, to see how it meshes, but I dont know if I am all that willing ordering the Ork codex just to see if there are any improvements on paper, so to speak.

[Dyscord]

Nah, the ork stuff is completely new. The previews on Games-Workshop show much better pictures of the new Bikes and Trukk. (They're at the bottom of the page)

They're much nicer looking, and actually sculpted much better to scale than the old Gorkamorka trukks. The trukk is definitely hot. The only not new miniatures are the boyz, but they still look good, so no need to mess with perfection.


I really wish they'd give the orks a STR of 4. STR 3 is pretty weak in a world of space marines and necrons.

[gavinrad]

In fantasy, sorcerers no longer have the same stat line as close combat lords, so you no longer have these retarded uberheroes with lvl 4 casting on top of high weaponskill.

As far as todays apocalypse game, everyone involved was pretty rusty with the 40k rules, so we made it through one full turn before we suspended the game til thursday. It was pretty fun though, bout 9k of eldar/spacewolves vs 9k of chaos/imperial guard. Holy shit the main gun on a baneblade is brutal. 9 inch diameter ordinatus template of doom.

[Ronne]

So not having played since 2nd edition, how different is 40k now? Will my Defiler auto-cannons still rape faces?

[Dyscord]

The game is a lot different now. Depending on how you look at it, the game has either been dumbed down or streamlined. For instance, everything now moves 6 inches (with of course special rules dealing with calvary, bikes, 'fleet of foot', etc). Another prime example is remember Ork Madboyz? You had to roll a new madness every turn and consult a huge chart etc. That kind of stuff is gone. Other big changes include the way 'rapid fire' weapons work. Things like bolters and lasguns now can only shoot 12 inches if you move, or 24 inches if you don't (or twice at 12 inches).

Overall I think it was a good change. 2nd edition felt like if you wanted to learn the game, you had to learn individual rules for every single unit. 3rd and 4th now feel like you now learn the overall rules and each unit is governed under them with a few exceptions. Like if you wanted to understand jump packs in 2nd, you had to learn about space marine packs, sisters, stormboyz, etc. Everyone had their own rules. Now they're all just 'jump packs' and maybe there's a minor special ability for them in the codex.

Me? I think the changes are more conductive towards having larger scale, more fluid battles. Other people think the game lost a lot of its character. I can't blame them. I miss my Shokk attakk guns.

[...]

Originally Posted by Rhaze

Whats more fun wh40k or fantasy battles?

overall I like the setting and style of 40k more, but I think I enjoyed fantasy more for the battles. A lot of 40k games that i've played were basically shooting matches with a few melee people, all of which can move however they want.

in fantasy you had block formations of infantry that had to move as such and a LOT of the game was melee. some armies (like my favorate skaven) had very few ranged weapons.

It's all up to personal preference. Play what your friends play, and/or try a few games of each first and see what you like.

[Dyscord]

40k has gone to great strides... almost to much in my opinion, towards making melee much much more important. Orks have been buffed to be nasty CC troops with WS of 4 and 2 attacks. Tyranids are still CC kings, with Chaos close behind. The changes to rapid fire, forcing armies to stay stationary if they want to shoot the full 24 inch range really forces shooty armies to stay put. And if they have to stay put... makes it all the easier for the hordes of Gaunts or the green tide to get to them. Naturally they have to first weather the fusilade of shots from the 12 inch rapid fire, but once they get there, CC is nasty.

Close combat has also been buffed to be far more dangerous, also manuvering has been made more important too because of cross fire rules. If a formation falling back crosses an enemy unit, its automatically destroyed. So having a 50 pt unit of gargolyes can destroy a 300 pt unit of terminators if they're falling back over them.

[Rhaze]

What races has everyone placed as for either wk40k or whfb?

Curious what your take on those races are.