More Space Hulk?

So it appears that GW has been super active in getting licensing agreements out for their IP. Looks like we will be getting a new Space Hulk game that is a FPS type made on the Unreal 4 engine.

No pictures up yet but I wonder what we should expect from this.... A terminator is too slow moving to make this like a modern FPS like Halo,CoD, or Gears. I wonder if this will be like the old 1995 Vengence of the Blood Angels. If so that would be awesome in my opinion.


You can check out the more detailed info here at Apocalypse 40K.

Painting Night Lords Helldrake

Needed a little change of pace from my other models as I was getting a little burned out, so I decided to paint a Helldrake.

From a black primer I worked some layers of grey to almost white.

Then I covered it in the minitaire blue ghost tint ( or blue candy). 

From there I used the a very light blue to make a dissipating flash like look with my airbrush. With this you got to be careful as the PSI should be set low for close work, and there is a chance to make spiders with the brush.

I then mixed up some white with medium and a little drying retarder and used a small brush to paint the lightning  through the middle over where I sprayed previously. 

Black Legion Ascendant

So the Black Legion Supplement is here and there are some questions as to what is it worth as many were thinking that Codex: CSM was really the Black Legion book. Well, I can say that this is a big YES and NO.

When I started with reading the background story that is 64 pages long and some cool new art is in this section. I was actually disappointed as it starts out with story that has been used over and over again, but this is a story about Abaddon and his rise with the Legion and little sentences were being added that were adding more story and then it moves into new stuff all together.

There is detailed story on what Abaddon was doing directly after the fall from the Horus Heresy and how he came to be different from other warlords and daemon-primarchs alike, and some of the great victories he had there. I havn't read any of this before and think it is new to the background.

Then the story moves into the 1st Black Crusade and what Abaddon was really doing while is forces were assaulting Cadia, and what methods he used to attack the Imperium.

Then there is sections dedicated to each of the Black Crusades and what Abaddon's goal for it was. These are really cool and add a lot to the value of this book.

The last section is about the different warbands in the Black Legion the worship different gods or the Warband of Oath-breakers that have failed Abaddon.

Now for the rules. There are some minor changes to the structure of the army, but not much. This appears to be norm for these supplements.

First is you can take Chosen as troops without having to purchase Abaddon

ALL units must take Veterans of the Long War if it is their options.

If Abaddon is your Warlord of your primary detachment, then you can have one unit of terminators upgraded to Bringers of Despair that have +1WS & BS for a descent points cost.

Allies are treated like the Farsight one. This supplement uses the same allies matrix as CSM codex, but can ally itself with the CSM codex as battle brothers.

A Character that can take artifacts in Codex CSM can now instead use the ones in this codex. They are:

The Spineshiver Blade which is an AP3 deamon weapon and gives +1 initiative in close combat. I see this one getting lots of use as it is really good for its points cost, and if combined with Mark of Slannesh a Chaos Lord can be striking before almost all other SM and CSM captains/lords and can strike on par with Eldar Lords. I believe this is the #1 in this book.

The Crucible of Lies which gives the bearer a -1T and re-reoll invul saves of 1. Maybe in the right combinations this is good, but don't see it being too much.

Last Memory of Yuranthos is a psyker only item and is not bad. It increases the psyker level by one, but gives the user a new power instead of drawing one randomly.
This is a Nova power that is 6" range S4 AP5 with Assualt 2D6, blind and ignores cover and can use 2 warp charges to increase range to 12" and 3 to increase to 18". This is a nice power, and will have a nice effect against those pesky Tau!

The Eye of Night is like a Chaos version of Orbital Bombardment. it infinite range S5 AP4 Heavy 1 Haywire Maelstorm (D3 hullpoints against vehicles) Large Blast, Ignores cover, one use only. This is circumstantial item I think, but don't know if the points cost is worth it.

The Skull of Ker'ngar gives the bearer Eternal Warrior and Adamantium Will. Finally some EW love in the Chaos codex.

The Hand of Darkness is an awesome close combat weapon that gives the user x2 S AP1 Armourbane, Fleshbane and Instant death all at initiative. This item is also very awesome, and is almost like making you own mini Abaddon. I had a hard time determining the Spineshiver blade over this as my favourite but I can see many people using this.

Warlord Traits

1. Black Crusader gives the Warlord and all friendly units in 12" preferred enemy SM.

2. Eye of the Gods lets you re-roll the Gift of Mutations.

3. Gift of Balefire gets template shooting attack at S4 AP5 assault 1, soulblaze, one use only.

4. Unholy Fortitude give the it will not die rule. This is my favorite.

5. Soul Stealer give the instant death to melee attacks on roll to wound of 6.

6. Chosen of Abaddon gives the warlord and friendly units within 12" stubborn. This is also very awesome and gives some help to the LD issues of the Chaos book.

The are 7 cities of Death Stratagems
7 Planet strike stratagems
There is also 3 new Altar of War missions and 4 Echoes of War missions to fight over.

This is the third supplement book, and there is a pattern with them on what they provide. I think we will continue to see the same things with each new book.

Read  Farsight Supplement Review

GD Germany

There have been a few pictures floating around of the GD Germany slayer sword winners winning diorama, but I think few of them top the pics that are on this blog. Check them out.

GD Germany slayer sword pics

Cant help but look at what I am working on for GD Japan and feel inadequate. Pictures of that can be found on my Facebook page.

Blood of Angels Facebook

Dark Heresy 2.0 5 of 5: Running the Game

This new book goes into much greater detail in explaining efficient ways to run a new campaign to Dark Heresy. This doesn't come as a surprise to me as FFG has years of experience under its belt now with multiple RPG games. What is interesting is that all of the improvement are just not taken from the 40k line of RPG's but also from the Warhammer Fantast RPG as well from what I can tell.

The game clearly marks all types of narrative events that are to played out.

Social Encounters
Exploration Encounters
Travel Encounters
Combat Encounters
and Down Time

These are all basic things that must be accomplished to run a game, but there is great detail that each section has dedicated to it for a GM to utilize and give basic insight on how to run them.

There is a lot of good information here for new and experienced GM's to use.

Two things that are new are Influence and Subtlety. I mentioned them breifly before, but there is a whole section dedicated to explaining how they are used.

Influence is a characteristic, but cannot be gained to using EXP to increase it, only by doing certain actions in the game like  stopping a heretic or saving a planet, etc. On the other hand you can also lose Influence. Don't fail!

This is a representation of your contacts, resources, and reputation and can be used to requisition something, intimidate someone, or help with investigation.

Subtlety is something that the GM keeps track of in secret. this is a chart of 0-100 and depends on how the characters act. Do you go in with signs of the Inquisistion tatooed on your forehead or do sneak in a cargo box Metal Gear style...

You can gain and lose subtlety over the course of a mission. Do you use false identities or do you try to openly intimidate someone and constantly start fights...

Fate, Fear, Insanity, and Corruption are explained in great detail as well.

There are some changes to to how Fear, Insanity, and corruption work, but it would take me too long to try and effectively explain it, so not going to try. Know that there are now Fear effects for differant types of Fear being caused instead of on Fear Chart, and they cause differant penalties that are very straight forward. . In the Beta book there are some issues with the explanations and references to other pages that are incorrect (like pg 127 referencing itself for more information on fear and the fear explanation in the narrative tool section references a page in the armoury that has no info on fear).. I hope this gets fixed.

Building Combat Encounters is a great new tool that has been included in this book and is very welcome as this has been one of my greatest problems with playing the 40k RPG's especially Deathwatch.

There is now a Threat Threshold and this is computed by taking the rank of the threat and multiplying it by the total number of PC's. The encounter rank that is the average rank of PC's in the group should be at equal levels and this should create a balanced encounter. There is nothing wrong with going a rank higher to pit the PC's against though.

So now that you have the threat threshold (say 25). you use this number to determine the adversaries, or hazards the PC's will face. This is done by all NPC's having a threat level.

So you just add the threat level of the NPC's you want to use until you reach the threshold number. This may take some tweaking to get perfect.

The new book also has a new list of NPC's to throw against the acolytes and includes various threats.

All in all I have to say that I am very impressed with the new direction of the book and hope that many of these improvements get implemented into the other book.

Return to part 1 of 5

Dark Heresy 2.0 4 of 5: Combat

 

 

 

Combat Overview: These steps remain basically the same to 1st Ed. Steps two and three have now been combined, and there is a new step two. This is new flow for combat.

 

Step 1: Surprise - This step sees a massive change. No longer does a surprised character lose his first turn. Instead now all characters have four action points (AP) per turn. Characters that are not surprised on the first turn gain an extra two AP that can be used as reactions. This is a welcome change so that at least a surprised character can try to find cover in the first round.

 

Step 2: Set the Scene -  This is basically the GM detailing what is happening in the encounter. This should at least detail where the characters are at and describe the combatants that they are to face (if they can see them). This would also be drawing out a map and placing models if that is how you play.

 

Step 3: Determine Initiative - This is still done by rolling 1d10 and adding your agility bonus.

 

Step 4: Combatants Take Turns - These phase is actually broken down now and goes like this.

 

Condition triggers - this is any ongoing effects in place from last round are taken care of. Poison, Hallucinogenic effect, etc.

 

Clear Action Points - Remove any that you did not use in the prior turn.

 

Receive Action Points - Receive four AP that can be used this turn.

 

Perform Actions - Use your AP in anyway you want.

 

Combatants Actions - other combatants may use free actions or reactions to what you are doing.

 

End of Turn

 

Maintain Action Points - If you did not use all four AP, then you keep them to use a reaction in another character or combatant's turn.

 

Condition Timers - Count down on any timers that might be in play, once an effect has lost its last timer than remove in from the game at that time.

 

Actions: You now have the following differant action catagory types.

 

Attack Actions

Movement Actions

Utility Actions

Reactions

Extended Actions

Free Actions

 

These are basically the same as before except the use of AP instead of Half/Full Actions. This allows for you character to do many more things in a round of combat as most things are 1 AP.

 

The Attack: The attack has changed a little bit as well.

 

Step 1: Choose Attack - this is to decide your action for attack, weapon, rate of attack (RoA) and the characteristic.

 

This is a little differant as some attack actions can use another characteristic besides WS or BS I haven't noticed any outside of psychic powers at this point. The other interesting thing is that all weapons now have a RoA. This is by taking your Rate of Fire (RoF) and multiplying it by how many AP you use to attack with. Even melee weapons have a RoF now. This is usually one or by taking your Agility Bonus and subtracting a modifier. This determines how many times you can hit after the first if you have many degrees of success. Also, this is really interesting addition to combat and gives a awesome advantage to being fast in combat besides determining initiative only.

 

Step 2: Choose your Target - This is effected by range and sight/targeting.

 

Step 3: Make the Attack - This is your 1d100 test against the used characteristic. Hopefully you roll low :)

 

Evade Reactions can be used at this point by the oppponent.

 

Step 4: Determine Location - Instead of reversing the 1d100 role like before, you just use the tens digit from your attack role to dedtermine location. This also gives a bigger advantage to rolling low.

 

Step 5: Attack Results -  This is the damge from the weapon minus the defence value of the location and the targets toughness. If the damage exceeds the defence + toughness then the model takes a wound and must consult the wound chart for location and amount of wounds suffered and apply the injury to the character. If the character has been hit in the same location multiple times and taken wounds from that , there are modifiers to increase the level of injury. This is completely differant from before as these charts were only used when a character had taken damage beyond his total number of wounds... Ouch!

 

This is much more brutal, but thinks make much more sense. I really like how this has changed the injuries and makes you want to use cover and be cautious instead of running up to get into melee...

 

Vehicles: There are now vehicles to use, and you can fight combat with them. The fundamentals have not changed so Im not going into them. The main thing is that vehicles have firing arcs and are not as manoeurable as a normal man/woman.

 

 

 Part 5 of 5

 

 

 

Dark Heresy 2.0 3 of 5: Psychic Powers

 

 

 

 

The first thing to note is that the Psychic Threshold system has been removed for determining wether a power is manifested or not.

 

This has been replaced with the focus power test that started in Rogue Trader, but with some modifications.

 

Step 1 is to Determine Psy level. You decide how much of your psy rating you want to apply to the focus power test. This must be atleast one, but for everyone psy level below your psy rating that you choose the focus power test receives a +10 bonus. This will make it easier to use the power, but make the power weaker for effect.

 

You can choose to "Push" a power and allows you to make the psy level two higher than your current psy rating. This adds a -10 for each level increased. This also changes the perils of the warp by making the test on any number besides doubles instead of on doubles that you must roll on the table for psychi phenomena.

 

Step 2 is to make the test. This is usually a Willpower test and takes into consideration the modifiers from step 1.

 

Step 3 is to apply the effects of the power.

 

Second is there are now 10 psy ratings instead of six and in certain circumstances can go higher.

 

Third is there are still only five psychic disciplines. They are:

 

Biomancy

Divination

Pyromancy

Telekinesis

Telepathy

 

This list is exactly the same as what we see in the 40k 6th Edition big rule book (BRB), and I think this is intended to remain this way.  

 

There is a seperate discipline tree that works just like the talent tree and you will notice that the name of powers are the same as in the 6th edition BRB. However, there are more powers in this book.

 

You can use as many disciplines as you want, but have to purchase the top most power first.. There is a limit to how many disciplines you can use based on your psy rating. So if you are psy rating 2 you cannot purchase the top power of a discipline in a third discipline until you increase you psy rating.

 

Fourth is that each discipline has its own perils of warp table. This makes for some uniquely interesting problems for your psyker depending on what discipline he falls under.

 

Each psychic power is broken down like this

 

EXP cost:

Prerequisite:  willpower X, etc, etc.

Type: this will be normally attack or utility 

Time: number of AP required to complete.

Focus Power: This is how you will take you focus power test. This is usually a modifier or an opposed test notification.

Range: distance x Psy Level usually

Sustained: this is a yes or no and tells you if you must use the sustained power rules

Effect: What actually happens to target

 

Fifth is that the overbleed rule is gone, so no more passing focus test by a lot and having the power become really powerful.

 

Part 4 of 5

 

Dark Heresy 2.0 2 of 5: Skills, Talents, Traits and the Armoury.

Skills:

The first thing to note is that the skill list appears to be much smaller in this edition compared to the first, but looks can be deceiving.

First edition had 48 skills, 19 of which were basic that all characters could use at half their charactersistic value for the skill if they were not skilled in that skill. The remaining 29 were advanced that had to be learned before being able to use.

Second edition has 20 skills that all characters start off at rank 1 in, which means they only have a -10 to use. Hopefully this will help a lot so that gaming sessions dont have the problem of PC's never basing skill checks, which could be an issue in first edition.

Of those 20 skills they are all broken down insto subskills that can be used against the main skill and all skills now have differant characteristics that can be checked against in differant circumstances. In total there are now 55 skills to use.

Each skill is broken down into the following information:
Characteristic to be checked
Averaget time to complete
Its use
How to use if opposed
How to use if a re-check.

The re-check is new and really cool as it tells you if you can re-check at all and lists the penalty for failing and the exact page number to go to find rules concerning that penalty.

Talents:

Instead of Talents being seperated by your Career Path that you chose in 1st edition they are broken down into Talent Trees. There are now 11 talent trees that all characters have access to. They are:

Defence
Investigation
Melee
Mental Fortitude
Mobility
Pilot
Ranged
Resilience
Social
Technology
General

So each of these talent trees has path that must be followed to gain each talent that branches out to new talents after you aquire the prerequisite talent. Some of the trees have more talents than others.

Not only the trees path restrict you though. You still must meet other prerequisistes like you had to in 1st Ed. There is still an EXP cost and charactersistic prerequisite to meet.

This system helps to round out the characters instead of pigeon holing them into one set path. Now you can finally get that Tech Adept that actually is a little tough, and doesn't just get killed in the first firefight.

Traits:

There are now traits in Dark Heresy to bring it more in line with the rest of FFG 40K rolplaying games. These are not something that you can acquire with using experience points. These are all things that are granted from either a piece of equipment like a jump pack letting you have the flying trait, or from a corruption giving you extra arms or to basic things like blind or deafness.

Armoury:

Gone is the income system seen in 1st Ed. Now you only use the requisition system which bases acquiring an item on availability and craftsmanship only and can be modified by trading an item as well.

There are only modifiers to a d100 test based on you Influence characteristic for each of these things that effect the requisition test and they are really straight forward and listed on a table. The only thing is that when trading an item to assist with the test you must trade an item that has a lower availability than the one you want... (I dont reall like this that much, but guess it is the only way to make sense) but for each degree differance in availabilty you gain a degree to your test.

Also, if you fail a requisition test for an item that has a negative modifier you lose group sublety in points equal to the tens digit of the modifier (more on this later).

The Armoury is also quite expanded compared to 1st Ed. It appears that the weapons available are roughly the same, but weapon upgrades, custom ammo, armor, force fields, tools, vehicles, and the service to find a ship has been added or increased.

Part 3 of 5

Dark Heresy 2.0 1 of 5: Character Creation

So as promised I will be doing a break down of the new Dark Hersy 2.0 Beta, and give you some insight into what is changing. Now remember that this is just the Beta so some things can change from what I put out here as problems can arise and then get worked out, but I think for the most part the core of the game is remain the same.

With this just being the Beta all the great art and the background of the setting was left out of the book. The game will be moving away from the Calixis Sector and into the Askellion Sector. Atleast we all get a great new area of the 40K universe to explore with the new addition. This was great news as have played D&D for years I got tired of there always being a new book about the same areas in the Forgotten Realms every single addition.

So creating a character has changed slightly from before and in a good way I think.

The process is still broken down into five stages.

Stage 1: Choose Home World

There are two additions, Forge World and Highborn bringing the total to six this time. Each Home World type get the following rules apply to them:

Characteristic modifier
Fate threshold modifier
Home World bonus
Signature mental trauma
and recommended backgrounds

The charecteristic modifiers are more interesting this time around. Were in the 1st Ed you rolled 2d10 and added 15, 20, or 25 depending on your homeworld, now you roll 2d10 + 25 base, and if your Home World as a "+" for Strength then you would roll 3d10, pick the highest two and add 25, and if there is a "-" for Toughness then you would roll 3d10, pick the two lowest and add 25. I think this overall will build starting characters that are a little stronger this time around, and GM's will not have the problem were the PC cannot pass checks constantly.

There is also the option to allow the players to allocate points instead of rolling, like what was introduced in Deathwatch.

Also, is a tenth characteristic to roll for called Influence, but more on that later.

Fate Threshold are 1d5 -X to determine starting fate. straight forward there.

Home World bonus is one (only 1) bonus for your home world type.

Signature mental traumas is a your characters unique way in dealing with problems in the universe. When you start to obtain insanity you will forced to use the mental trauma  table, and when rolling, if you roll a double you will use your signature trauma instead of what is rolled.

Recommended backgroungs are just that. There are some ideal backgrounds for you to choose based on your Home World because of the characteristic modifiers and such, but you are not limited to these. 1st Ed had a limited amount of career paths to choose from. 2nd Ed removes that limitation.

Stage 2: Choose Background

This determines what you did in the past before being an acolyte. There are seven backgrounds to choose from. There is about 2 pages worth of info on what the background would have involved your character doing.

Adeptus Administraum
Adeptus Arbites
Adeptus Astra Telepathica
Adeptus Mechanicus
Adeptus Ministorum
Imperial Guard
Outcast

Each Background has a set of rules that applies to them. They are:
Starting Skills
Starting Talents
Starting Equipment
Background Bonus
Signature malignancy
Recommended roles

Starting skills are all at rank 1 for the characters which is a -10 modifier. The skills on this list bring the skills to rank 2 instead which is a+0 modifier.

Starting talents, equipment  and background bonuses, recommended roles are self explanatory at this point.

The signature malignancyworks just like the signature trauma but is used after obtaining too many corruption points.

Stage 3: Choose Role

This is what you are currently doing as your position as an acolye. There are eight roles, and some great information on what the role entails.

Assassin
Chirurgeon
Desperado
Hierophant
Mystic
Sage
Seeker
Warrior

Each role has a special rule that applies to them  and then there are two charts one for characeristic advencement costs, and skill advancement costs. This will effect the next stage.

Stage 4: Spend Experience Points, Buy Equipment

Each character will start off with 500 EXP to use at his/her discretion.

Characteristic advancements are bought by paying in EXP the modifier number on the chart for your role by the characteristic bonus for that characterisic (this is a # 50-150). For example. my strength is 38 for my warrior I would use 50 from the chart and times by 3 (3 for the strength bonus) giving me +5 stength for 150 EXP. Now each characteristic advancement is limited by the current overall rank of the character. So rank 1 characters can do 1 advancement, and rank 2 can do 2 per characteristic.

Skill advancements are done similar to characteristics by using the number for the skill you wish to advance on your role chart (this is a # 100-200). However you multiply it by the rank you are currently in. For example. I want to increase the deceive skill on my warrior to rank 2, I would take the 200 from the chart and times by 1( my current rank) for a total of 200. No skill can be increased higher than rank 5.

This format removes the need for pages upon pages of charts for skill increase costs. Great job FFG!

To get extra gear as part of starting out you get to use your new characteristic of influence for the first time by taking the influence bonus of your character to pick out highly available items (items with an availability of -10 or higher... 0, +10, +20. This comes into play when using normal requisitioning). so if your influence was 38 you could pick out 3 items extra to start off with.

Stage 5: Give the Character Life

This is the picking out the details section. You can make this as detailed as you want to go with you character, but these are highlights of what you need.

Name is what you need. Something like Smokin Aces

Divination: this is like your destiny. There are all kinds of weird things here that play with how your character develops under certain curcumstances or adds to your characteristics and takes awy from others.

Nature: This is where you answer all those deep dark question about why you are doing what you do. Just to flesh out your persona some.

The last thing here is that it starts to delve into elite advances and how to gain them and how they work. They each have an unique talent tree to use in addition to some specail abilities. There are three elite advances

Inquisitor
Psyker
Untouchable

There are prerequisites for becoming each of these. The Psyker and Untouchable prerequisites are low enough that a starting character can become one, but the book explains that because of rarity not everyone in the group should be one :)

Part 2 of 5

Wargamers In Japan Event

 

 

As some of you might know already I am part of the Wargamers In Japan gaming group and we have been making great strides in joining all of the groups around the country to increase our player base and to make the hobby prosper here in Japan. I am proud to put out that we will hold our first gaming convention on September 21st.

 

If you live in Japan and dont know where to find a gaming group or on your way to Japan permanently and looking for a gaming group to join, fear not we have what you are looking for.

 

For those that wish to join the event please follow this link and join the group on Facebook. We look forward to all that wish to join!