40k 8th Edition - Words for the Word God

So a few weeks ago my oldest and most regular skumgrod came for a visit and we got in some games of the new edition of Warhammer 40,000. It was, shall we say, 'interesting' for various reasons, and I'll put my thoughts about it here in some sort of review. I know the majority of peole come to blogs for pictures and inspiration, but I thought I'd try something a little different and ramble about a subject I'm fond of. Also, as a bit of a head-up, I've never written a review before. I'll probably focus more on the negative side of things as I tend to find constructive criticism is more useful and interesting than just harping on about how good everything is. Don't take this as an overly negative post but rather a means to suggest things that may be improved upon if, by any chance, Games Workshop actually read this, unlikely as that may be. So, with the foreword out of the way, let's get on with it...

Following the belated success of Age of Sigmar, it was only natural that Games Workshop would make efforts to bring 40k more in-line with that ruleset. Whether this was a positive change is up for debate, but I don't think anyone can blame the games design team for trying to simplify and unify their different games systems. 40k and Fantasy have always had fairly similar rules; but the rift between them grew exponentially when Age of Sigmar was released. And to say the release of AoS was tumultuous would be an understatement. To put it bluntly, it was very ham-fisted on Games Workshop's part, and caused a great divide in the community. With the release of Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition, its clear they did not want a repeat of that whole backlash.

The result is a game that feels like its stuck in some sort of weird limbo. 8th Edition has clear inspiration from AoS, but is still trying to be its own game; a 'natural' evolution of 40k. Let's be real for a second, Fantasy was a fairly stereotypical/cliche high fantasy setting, and it was hard for Games Workshop to create their own niche in such a scenario. That is perhaps the reason they gutted the original Fantasy background and replaced it with something different in Age of Sigmar; the fact the rules changed so drastically was probably in response to other companies' simple and approachable rules syetems, and by that point Fantasy was far too complex for its own good. But they could not do the same for 40k. The grim darkness of the far future is a truly beloved franchise, and many of its facets, although heavily inspired by various pop culture sources, are iconic in their own right. They could not simply "Age-of-Sigmarify" 40k without suffering heavy, if not company-destroying, losses. So yes, 8th Edition is a natural evolution of 40k, though in many cases it feels a bit like a step backward.

One of the chief reasons I feel 8th Ed took a step backwards was in the 'additional' rules and all the bookkeeping that entails. I don't mean supplements. I mean the core rules that feel like they have been simply added to the system to make it feel complex, but instead just make it feel bloated and frustrating.
I think my biggest bugbear with this whole 'additional rules' thing is the Stratagems and Command Points system. Firstly, why was this system introduced? Well, in previous editions it was perfectly acceptable for players to take units and models from various different armies and codex books to create uber-powerful forces of destruction. This led to the whole "deathstar" unit debacle and generally made the game unenjoyable. 8th Ed introduced a system called "battleforged armies". If your army was built of entirely of models from a single codex, and pertained rigidly to one of the many detachment tables, your army was "battleforged" and gained additional Command Points. That's all well and good, but this system was added to persuade players to build codex armies and reward players who built armies entirely from 1 book. But surely that was the whole reason they added in the keyword system as well?
The keyword system ensures that certain abilities (such as special rules belonging to a character) only affect models from the same codex or with the same keywords. And it goes even further, right down the individual chapter, regiment, legion, craftworld, clan, etc. So what's the point in adding the battleforged system? Its redundant when the keyword system has all of their bases covered anyway (or at least it should if the writers are diligent enough). It feels like having a battleforged army just adds even more benefits to an army that already has the benefits of having the same keywords. It should have been one or the other, not both.

This brings me to the Stratagems themselves. In a nutshell, if your army is battleforged it gains a few bonus command points, which can be spent during the game to use stratagems. Stratagems are special rules that can greatly impact the game in various ways. They seem like an interesting idea in theory, but they just add more bloat to a game system that was apparently supposed to be a simplification of the rules.
I'll come back to this briefly, but to illustrate my point I'd like to mention faction abilities. These include chapter tactics, which give your army bonuses depending on the Space Marine chapter you have taken, legions tactics, which are the Chaos equivalent, and so on. These rules were missing in previous editions but have been brought back, and are a very welcome addition. They are another way you can choose to customize your force for both a strategic and fluffy addition to your army. Wasn't this enough?
Now, not only do we get faction abilities but we also get Stratagems, codex-specific Stratagems, and now also faction-specific Stratagems and unit-specific Stratagems. Its just layers upon layers of extra rules and things to remember. Whatever happened to just making units good and synergistic in their own right? It feels like they are simply adding additional trump cards into each army to cover the fact each unit isn't that interesting anymore, even though that isn't the case. I'm sure the rule came from a good place, but its just clunky and wholly unnecessary.

Another few tidbits I feel have removed from the experience is the lack of tactical choice. What do I mean by this? By "tactical choice", I mean those little moments in games where you have to make a decision that could change the future of the game in some small, but ultimately meaningful way. For example, your devastator squad only has a few of its lascannons in-range to fire at an enemy tank. Do you move the lascannons that aren't in range closer but forego their shooting for a turn? Or do you shoot at something else that is in range with all of your lascannons to maximize efficiency? Or do you still fire at the tank with reduced efficiency in the hopes of bringing it down? Or do you break from your entrenched position to move closer but lose the cover bonus? These are no longer tactical choices as you can overcome any of these situations.
Now, you can move and fire heavy weapons (albeit with -1 to hit) so that is no longer an issue. Or you can split your fire between enemy targets, so that is no longer an issue. Say an enemy unit are also baring down on you and will charge next turn. Do you forego shooting entirely to charge that enemy unit and rob them of their momentum? This, again, is no longer an issue as you can freely charge after firing heavy weapons now.
This is what I mean by removing tactical choice. Another example is cover: do I run through cover for a bonus armour save but risk not moving as far, or do I stick to open terrain and cover ground more quickly but risk being shot to pieces? Do I move my transport through cover and risk immobilising it? This is no longer an issue as cover doesn't slow movement anymore, so there really is no choice: free cover always wins.
I understand why they changed this - its lowers the skill ceiling and makes the game more approachable. Or does it? They tried to unify and condense the rules to a point where everything works on a very similar level to reduce the rules you are required to remember, but that is moot because you still need to remember that heavy weapons fire with -1 to hit if you move, so the rules are still there, they are just different. There are still things you need to remember, they've just removed the tactical choice. Its a reduction of the skill ceiling without streamlining the rules at all. Now there's no need to think ahead.
The removal of templates is another example. Not only did this drain the fun and flavour from a lot of the weapons in 40k, but it also removed tactical choice. Do I place this large blast on a vehicle - it'd most likely scatter but if it did land on target it would mess that tank up. Or do I place it in the middle of all this infantry so even if it does scatter it'll most likely hit something? Now, even blast weapons are basic point-and-shoot weapons with nothing to set them apart. I'm sure we've all been in a situation where we accidentally put our flamer at the back of our unit when disembarking from a transport. Before, we were punished for our mistake by being unable to place it's template to maximize its carnage (if we could place it at all), but now its no problem; it fires just like any other gun.

In general, I feel like 40k 8th Edition doesn't know what it wants to be. It feels like its arms don't know what its legs are doing. Does it was to simplify the rules? Then why bloat it with unecessary and flavourless extra rules that should be built into the units they are used for? Does it want to be more complex? Then why remove a lot of the flavour of the weapons and make tanks operate the same as infantry in an effort to 'streamline' the rules?
8th Ed is a transitionary phase. Nothing more. They clearly were inspired heavily by AoS to drastically simplify the rulesset and lower the skill ceiling, but were trying to avoid the same level of backlash AoS recieved for being so gung-ho about it. The result is a strange mishmash of ideas and concepts that seems to contradict one another. On a base level, the rules are fine and they work, but they feel like a first draft. It feels like they were toying with a lot of these ideas, but instead of refining them they simply wrote all the core concepts down in a word document so they wouldn't forget it and published that instead of a true rulebook. There is no nuance, and the flavour has been sapped from the rules in ways I don't think benefit the game in any meaningful way. The rules have potential, but so far 8th Ed has squandered that potential.
Still, on the plus side at least 9th Edition will learn from these mistakes...

So there you have it. My thoughts on 8th Edition and where I feel like it could improve. If you made it this far (and read it all) thanks, and please leave feedback in the comments. Did you agree with me? Did you not agree? Is the review in general any good? Should I do more reviews or not bother? That kinda thing.
I already have an idea for another article; one that has bugged me even more than these core rules gripes, and that is the shitshow that is the new codex format. If they change nothing else in 9th, they should change the format of each army list back to what it once was, but I'll cover that at another time.
Cheers, guys.

Flash Gitz and Sneeky Gitz

Kommandos
Kommandos are a cool concept in theory, but in practice they were little more than overpriced ork boyz that could deploy in range of enemy guns. They often cost something insane like 15pts per model, but at the end of the day they were fairly weak 6+ save models. But with the coming of 8th edition and the introduction of 'open play' and the power levels system, I feel like kommandos are finally worth taking. At only power 6 for 10 (with no added cost for the much-needed burnas and nob) they're actually a viable choice.

I had a bunch I converted a while back, and decided they were finally worth my time to paint them. I went for purely dark colours. Having bright orange decorating these supposed sneeky gitz wouldn't make much sense, even to the orks, so their clothes are predominantly black with a bit of brown thrown in for variety. I really like my converted nob. I almost gave him the obligatory power klaw, but thought he looked much cooler without it. For some games I may even use him as Snikrot if I have a spare 4 points, but for now he's my Kommando nob.

Flash Gitz
Another unit that are cool in theory, but pants in practice, are the flash gitz. In previous iterations they were little more than over-priced nobz with subpar guns. Now with the nice buff to their snazzguns they actually seem like a half-decent choice. Plus, they are different for me. I've never used them before, always preferring to opt for the more choppy and (much) more killy nobz mob, so using the flash gitz will be a breath of fresh air.

I converted the 4 'lesser' gitz a few years ago to start off a Bad Moon army, but that never came about. So instead, I converted them a boss nob (needed as the mob was illegal with only 4 models) and painted them in my usual Big Teef orange scheme.
For the boss nob I wanted him to stand out a bit, so rather than give him another big snazzgun I gave him 2 'kustom supa-sluggas', his own invention. In game terms they function exactly the same as snazzguns, though.

Reinforcements of Lachesis - Age of Sigmar: Path to Glory

So a couple of months ago, our Age of Sigmar: Path to Glory campaign started. This was my first 'true' foray into Age of Sigmar with a proper army made specifically for the game. Path to Glory is a great way start a new force, and its really fun to see how your army evolves over time. We started out with two games, which was a nice amount to kick things off. I got a good feel of how my army works (just charge forward and hit stuff!). Because these games took place in such a short space of time, we wouldn't have time to paint up any extra units after our first game and before our second, so we instead chose to upgrade one of our units.

In all, my army can be pretty tough. The knights proved hard to shift for the most part, but I generally found my own damage output to be lacking, especially against the undead who can restore lost models to their units each turn! This means I have to hit a single unit hard and fast, wipe it out completely, and then move on to the next. I tried this in the second game, but its easier said than done. However, I did manage to scrape minor victories in both games, but unfortunately I rolled a 1 for my Glory Points for BOTH games, so despite my wins I still have the same amount of points as my opponent. Chaos can indeed be fickle!

Chosen
After our second game, we would have a few months to get some reinforcements in. I took a roll on the same, basic table and got a unit of 5 Chosen. Chosen seemed pretty beastly at first, but soon after I found out they're just Chaos Warriors with an extra attack each (and maybe slightly stronger weapons). A little disappointing, but we'll see how they go.

I opted to take the command unit, as this gives me access to a banner and a wardrum, which are both welcome additions. Honestly, there's no reason not to take them!

Arcane Ettin
Outside of Path to Glory, I wanted to expand the army with something a little different. I've always wanted a Warhammer Giant. The kit looked ace, and oozes with character. But they never really fitted in with my Lizardmen or Dryad armies. But now I decided to take one for the hell of it.

You'll notice I converted it a little. I gave it 3 arms and 2 heads just to make it look a bit more Chaotic. The creature is almost overflowing with arcane energy, which has coalesced in his extremities and around his eyes. I initially painted the dark, mottled and corrupted skin on his face to make his glowing eyes stand out a bit more, but I liked the effect so I added it to his arms and feet, too (and a rogue patch on his back).

His blue skin ties him in with the marauders, but the turquoise loincloth ties him to the knights as well, bringing everything together. This guy won't feature in my Path to Glory campaign (unless I get a lucky roll on the monster table), but I will use him in other games instead, just for a laugh.

The Children of Sekhmet

I've always been fascinated by the lizardmen in Warhammer Fantasy. They were perhaps one of the most outlandish and unique armies in the game. Plus Dinosaurs... I mean frickin' Dinosaurs! My first forays into Warhammer Fantasy (after many years of pure 40k) was with the denizens of Lustria, but it never really went anywhere. I got a bunch of saurus warriors, but little else. However with the dawn of the Age of Sigmar, my interest for them has been rekindled, albeit in a slightly different way. The lizardmen have always had an Aztec feel to them, but for this army I wanted to go down a slightly different route, and create a more desert-themed force. I'll be honest, my main motivation for this was speed and ease of painting. Its so much quicker to just drybrush all their scales instead of highlighting each one, and a scheme that suits well is that of dry bone-like scales. In addition, I've always enjoyed Egyptian history and mythology, so it was a natural fit to take the army in a more ancient Egyptian style direction. Even a lot of the iconography and patterns still work, it is a fantasy after all. I've seen other desert-themed Lizardmen armies online, so I knew it would work well. Its just a case of doing it. So I've made a start.

I couldn't help myself but focus on the two main characters first. I've got a small force here, namely the Start Collecting! box, and a few other bits I'm working on, but I always gravitate towards the characters as they're usually more interesting.

High Sun Priest Baal'halet'anephthis

My Slann Mage Priest, or in this case, High Sun Priest. The Sun Priests are the devoted servants of Sekhmet, the Goddess of Life and the Sun. Or they were until she sacrificed herself to defeat Chaos and inadvertently turned the lush jungles of Namu into a sweltering desert wasteland, but that's neither here nor there!
Baal'halet is a High Priest of the Sun. Though he cannot control the Sun, the Sun Priests worship it for it is said to be the gift Sekhmet left them for its Holy Light keeps Chaos at bay. In fact, Baal spent 500 years gazing at the sun looking for signs or portents from his Goddess, the result of which is pretty plain to see. Though he was bandaged by his aides, being a toad who would thrive in Namu in the days it was a jungle, he literally couldn't take the heat and became a husk. His consciousness still remains, and he is a great prophet and a powerful spellcaster.

General Sobak'ishtak

Sun General Sobak is the highest ranking military commander of the Kamun Karpak, the City of Golden Light. He is ancient beyond reckoning, some say as old as Sekhmet Herself, and marched at her side against Chaos when she and all she had made were undone. To this day he swears to avenge his fallen Goddess, and it is his duty to protect the Sun Temples and muster against their enemies.

He carries two ancient relics of his people, a sunspear forged in the heat of a volcano, and a mighty Sunfire Gauntlets that is imbued with some of the divine essence of the Goddess of the Sun. The Carnosaur he rides is a mighty steed he tamed in the Bloodlands, and place of feral beasts that have adapted to the new, harsh climate.

These are the two main characters in the army so far. I think I had more fun writing the lore for this army than I've had writing lore for any of my armies/characters. There's a lot more besides, I've written small pieces about Kamun Karpak, the great City of the Golden Light where the main bulk of the army resides (though its not quite a beautiful and golden as perhaps it once was), as well as Osiri'Anuk, the Grand Temple at the city's heart. More on that later, and more army pics to come!

Also, when taking these piccies, I've spotted a lot of mistakes I've made or areas I've missed. These will be fixed. Cheers, guys.

Ruins of Carpathia

Shattered Temple

The piece I'm most proud of is the shattered temple. Several years ago GW released a piece of terrain similar to this, but something about it didn't sit right with me. Perhaps it was the giant skulls all over it, or the fact it was clearly a Chaos temple which I found a bit too limiting. Either way, it was recently removed from their store, so I figured I'd make my own. In the end it sorta went in its own direction. You can see in the WIP shots that I intended it to be a Chaos temple as well, but in the end I went for something more generic. The ruins around the edges sorta just happened. Initially the piece was going to be completely surrounded by rock, but while building it I figured that wouldn't make much sense. I wanted there to be a sort of ruined chapel around it, but that would have been a LOT of extra work if I'd made the chapel from scratch. Then I had a brainwave. I've had those old plastic ruins since waaay back in 3rd Edition 40k, sitting around in my boxes doing nothing. So I dusted them off and used them here. I had more ruins than would fit on the temple, so I used the rest to make some scatter terrain ruins as you can see below.

The Ruins

These are some fairly basic scatter pieces to block line of sight and movement, and so on. The pieces on the left of the picture are the rest of the 40k ruins. Initially, all of these plastic ruins had the walls at right angles. But here you'll notice I changed them slightly. I simply sawed one of the walls off each piece and shifted it around the pillar by 45 degrees. I much prefer them this way. One of the ruins has a tree on it. That tree had its base cut off as it was going to be used as part of terrain piece I made years ago, but it never got finished, so I added it here.

The pieces on the right came from another set of ruins GW produced years ago. They were made of a sort of hard foam, mounted on a base and sprayed grey. They looked VERY production line, so I hacked them off the base, rebased them and repainted them. They've had a very previous iterations. First they were part of a jungle board I worked on, but when that went by the wayside they've sorta sat on my shelf doing nothing, so it was time to fix them up.

The Hills

What set of gaming terrain would be complete without some hills? These I made a few months ago as an experiment to see what I could make out of what I had to hand. It was the middle of the night, and suddenly I had the sur to make some terrain; something new, and this is really what started me on the road to making an entirely new board's worth of terrain. As you can see in the temple pictures above, I made the rock faces out of polystyrene. I'm sure many avid terrain-makers dry-heaved when they saw that in my WIP shots, but honestly I like the result. Most of the styrene isn't even visible in the finished pieces because I only use it as a sort of skeleton for the cliffs to give them their shape, and covered them with exterior filler. Its very easy and cheap to achieve, and the beauty of it is I didn't need to order anything new. When I order something, it usually arrives a few days later when my enthusiasm has waned, but by just using what I already had I was able to keep the momentum going. 

Another piece of advice I'd give to someone making things like this: don't over-plan things. Sometimes you spend ages planning something and by the time you start the actual project your gusto has gone, or maybe things don't work out as you had planned and that can be very disappointing. That's half the reason it took me so long to finish my current desert cliffs (they're still not all finished, though). With these new hills, I just sat at my table and cut up the polystyrene into cool-looking shapes. No measuring, no planning, just cutting and gluing down, using cocktail stick to pin the pieces together. I used models to check out the rough size each piece would be compared to the miniatures, but that's about all the planning I did. 

Followers of Lachesis

My Tzeentch warband is fully mustered and almost fully painted, but I thought I'd share my progress so far for anyone interested. I've been in full hobby swing the past 2-3 weeks in preparation for our Age of Sigmar: Path to Glory campaign. As well as my warband, I've been working on a whole bunch of new terrain for our games, just to break away from the monotony of fighting on my desert boards all the time. But for now, the warband:

Lachesis the Beholder

My army's General, though he uses the Gaunt Summoner model and rules, actually has a different background. I won't go into it too much here, but in life he was a great scholar and explorer, uncovering Chaotic artifacts to keep the world safe from their thrall, but naturally his line of work slowly corrupted him. As the End Times happened, he vanished without a trace, only to materialize some years later, now more daemon than man, bearing the name Lachesis.

Honestly, this is probably the best model I've painted for a very long time. I'm not the best painter in the world, and I often find it a chore to paint my models, but I spent a good several hours on this guy, and even tried my hand at wet blending which I'd never done before, and I'm quite pleased with the result.


Chaos Marauders

The Marauders are human barbarians bent to the will of Lachesis, and imbued with his magical energy. They are just basic marauders in the rules, but I really dislike the GW models so instead I used some Bloodreavers. I just removed the khornate imagery, like I did for my barbarian Lord in the last update, and painted them blue!

There's a lot of naff stuff on these guys, particularly the standard bearer's shield on the right, as my brushes are old and I found a lot of the detail hard going (harder than normal, I mean), but I will endeavour to clean them up at a later date.

Chaos Knights

My 2 units of knights. Like the marauders, they too have been imbued with powerful magic. Nobody has seen the Knights of Lachesis without their armour, which has led to much speculation as to whether they are even men at all, anymore.

Again, there's a few naff spots on these models, and a few areas unpainted at all yet, but they are very much paint-in-progress, so they should improve a little. But they are pretty much done at this point (aside from the base rims).

Next up I have 2 units of 2 Chaos spawn to add. I have 1 unit already complete from my Word Bearers army. I have the models for the second unit, largely painted, but I've not taken piccies of them yet. That will come soonish, I hope.

I'm actually quite looking forward to our campaign. I've done a lot of poring over the warscrolls for each of our units, and things seem pretty even, so it should prove interesting.