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