Planned Obsolencence In Gaming

In tech a term that is being thrown around more often is the concept of planned obsolescence, the planned life of an item before it breaks or is incompatible, which in turn spurs the consumer to want to purchase another. Over the years I have also seen this play out in the tabletop gaming world.

For those of us who can remember the transition from 40k 2nd edition to 3rd or Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition to 6th were welcome changes which simplified cumbersome rules and made for streamlined game-play. Although some of my minis were getting phased out because of the change I eventually came around to seeing that there were overall improvements being made.

Alas, my Squat army was no longer welcome in 3rd edition

For the most part from 40k 3rd to 4th edition, which was about a ten year period there were no major overhauls. Notably, if you played Chaos Space Marines you had to purchase two codices in that time frame to stay relevant. A few of the other major armies also had new codices released during 4th edition, but many of the 3rd edition supplements were usable between editions.

I am mainly focusing on 40k because it has been the most popular of GWs core games in the United States for as long as I can remember. I also recall the frequency in edition overhauls after 4th edition was phased out. With each overhaul came a whole new set of supplements that each had a limited life along with the new edition. At one point when I was very deep into the hobby and playing in lots of events I wanted to have nearly all of the supplements, but I started to grow weary of repeating this cycle every 3 or 4 years. I not only feel this way for all of Games Workshop core game lineup, but I feel this way about Flames of War, and Dungeons and Dragons. Just an aside; I found it easier to reject having to always buy a whole new set of books for D&D because as the GM I was able to find a group willing to play in a 2nd edition Greyhawk setting.

My old Dark Elf beastmaster on manticore. Still on a square

Understandably, any of these game developers need to make a profit to keep their business growing, but I think there could be a fine balance struck between making your older editions incompatible vs stagnation. With Age of Sigmar, although I felt that GW through the baby out with the bath water to solve an IP issue, they did do something right with making the core rules available for free. Not only this, they made a game that was far less cumbersome to play, albeit with some flaws that have been worked out over time. Handing off the upcoming Old World setting to Forgeworld was a smart move and I look forward to dusting off some of my old Warhammer models that I didn't want to re-base.

I believe that we as consumers of these products can exert some pressure to get what we want and not just eat what's put before us. I would encourage more gamers to be skeptical about just picking up the next edition unless you feel it's worth it. There is nobody forcing your gaming group to buy into the newest and shiniest product. A smart company will realign if enough people reject the direction they are going.

Project Horus Heresy Dark Angels

My latest project is building a 1st legion army for Warhammer 30K, aka The Horus Heresy. Right now this has been my favorite Games Workshop game for the last couple of years because I love the setting and I also think it has the most balance out of all of their current major game systems as I write this.

The group of friends that I normally play with in the Pacific Northwest are starting a tale of gamers style of campaign where we build up our army in 750 point increments every other month. In my future articles I plan to capture those increments of the progress I make and showcase what my friends are also working on.

I chose the 1st legion for two reasons. I wanted a loyalist legion that had a portion of it that turned traitor, this was also a big factor in my 3rd legion selection many years back. I also really liked the background and look of the Dark Angels. I have been a fan from the earliest days of my introduction to 40k. Their newer 30k specific units look awesome so it was an easy choice for me to make.

Test model front view

Unlike my Emperor's Children project from previous posts, this project will have more planning ahead. I didn't really know what kind of army I wanted to build at first with the 3rd legion so I ended up building and painting units that I rarely use now. This time around I have a fairly good idea which direction I want to take this project and that will hopefully save me some effort.

I decided I wanted to do a Proto-Deathwing style army that included lots of terminators, therefor my army would use the pride of the legion rite of war.

Test model rear view

There are currently a lot of 3rd party conversion bits on the market to add a bit of customization to the various legions. I wanted to include some of these impressive 3d printed pauldrons on some of my terminator sergeants and command squad. These pauldrons come from Pop Goes the Monkey.

At 750 points I only have 12 models to paint, which will be an easy to achieve goal considering all the stay at home time I have due to the current stay at home orders issued across the US.

Two five man squads of Cataphractii Terminators, a Legion Delegatus (for the rite of war), and a Primus Medicae will be my first 750 points.

Third Legion Tactica, Hard Lessons

First game using orbital assault. It felt good killing this knight on turn two after dropping in

I have been playing my Horus Heresy (30K) Emperor’s Children Army for many years now and have struggled with an army build that worked well for me and the group of people I usually play against. My win to loss ratio has been lackluster with this army. If I do win, it was definitely hard fought against armies that can outshoot me or tar pit me. I can certainly make a generic marine list and spam templates and basic marines, but that doesn’t seem to fit my style, nor does it match the finesse that I feel should be consistent with the 3^rd legion play style.

Playing most at 3,000 points the Maru-skara rite of war was my go to. Having the ability to outflank with three contemptor dreds could cause a lot of pain. I would also run Fulgrim in a spartan alongside a unit of phoenix guard that would act as his body guard, not to mention my required legion champion in terminator armor. One unit of 10 volkite culverin wielding marines would give cover to Lord Commander Eidolon who would join a unit of 15 assault marines. I would also have a unit of 5 Tactical Support marines with Plasma Guns inside a multi-melta Rhino looking for juicy targets. My foot sloggers included my outflanking unit of 3 contemptors and two squads of 10 basic marines with a sergeant wearing artificer armor and phoenix spear. Occasionally I would swap out a non-compulsory unit for a xiphon interceptor, but I found that the xiphon wouldn’t often cover its point cost in units destroyed.

Orbital assault tip: Using nuncio voxes can help keep your other deep striking units on target if you need them close by

The armies that I generally played against were Ultramarines using orbital assault, Thousand Sons (without Magnus) running lots of psychic termies, Custodes, and a vehicle heavy Iron Hands army. Rarely I would play against Salamanders, Death Guard, Space Wolves, and Solar Auxilia. The usual situation was that these armies all would beat me in a fire fight so I had to try and close in for assault, which I was better at (the exception being the Custodes). Often times I could make it in assault, but would not have enough strength left in the unit to make an impact. If things worked out just right I would get my contemptors close enough to assault the following turn after outflanking on turn two. Even if they were destroyed I would hope that they soaked up enough fire power to allow the rest of my army to advance unscathed; this almost never worked out however.

One of my gaming friends suggested that I might want to go orbital assault since I was often vocal about my lack of competiveness. I gave it some thought because I would have to overhaul my army and likely shelve a lot of the units I had already built. Not to mention I had bought and built way more for this army than I originally intended to. I ended going for it making the following changes. Fulgim, ditched the Spartan for a anvillus dreadclaw, which allows him to assault out of the following turn after deep striking, he also has a unit of palatine blades (3 with phoenix spears) to assist in the assault. My two basic tactical squads have drop pods. I kept the plasma tactical support and included a melta gun tactical support since I tend to struggle against vehicles. I have a 10 man tartaros terminator unit, which halve are armed with chain fists (also to mitigate vehicles), and I bumped up my phoenix guard up to 7 strong. I have an primus medicae in terminator armor to help keep one of my terminator units around and two basic apothecaries to go along with the support units. I am using the xiphon again, but I might swap it out if I pick up a dreadnought drop pod for one of my contemptors. There is an advantage now to going second by running an orbital assault army because my opponent will lose one full round of shooting since there will be no targets. I can also deploy units where they are needed (barring bad rolling). Fulgrim also can make it into melee easier since the dreadclaw is an assault skimmer after in lands. As I play this new list more I expect it to evolve slightly and I hope to have a good showing at the 2020 Golden Boys tournament in June.

Emperor's Children Custom Transfers

I just received my order of custom waterslide transfers and they turned out awesome. The original Forge World variety that I first purchased when I started my army are long discontinued (much to my frustration) and it's hard to come by them on eBay and if you do they sell easily for over double of what they used to sell for.

Comparison of FW vs custom

The company that I used is called Bedlam Creations and they sell a variety of transfers. If you want a custom order you will pay more, mine cost $48.00 for a 6x8 sheet, but it should provide me with enough decals to complete out my army. The turn around time was decent at around 3 weeks from ordering to receiving.

I am impressed with their gold ink, which matches well compared to the existing decals I already applied. One thing that I noticed is they are more fragile than the FW variety so more care needs to be taken when applying. I also like to use Microsol to help my decals conform to their surface, which I was able to use on my Bedlam decals without an issue.

This is the sample I used when sending to the printer. The sheet sent to me contained four of these.

Emperor's Children Master of Signal

I thought I would share a project after a long absence of posts. After seeing how effective the Master of Signals is in previous games of 30K that I've played I decided that I could really use one myself. The barrage ability can be devastating to the other side and allowing one of my heavy weapon squads to hit on 2+ is the icing on the cake.

I wanted something a little different than the Forge World kit in Mk 4 armor. I am partial to Mk 2 so I used that for the body and an officer upgrade kit for the head. I prefer the slightly raised effect of etched brass for my characters so that was a must for this marine. The plasma pistol and the lightning claw come from the Mk 3 plastic marines. The finishing touch, which really makes this mini stand out as the Master of Signals is the backpack, which comes from the 40K Cadian infantry box.

My EC army has grown quite a bit in the years since I started on them in 2012 and I am very happy with the way they look, despite not winning very much. I plan on doing some follow up articles covering some of the challenges I've had and the solutions to those.

Warhammer 30K at 12,000 Points

Large games of 30K are a blast, but they require some planning and preparation to go smoothly. I’m going to use an example of a game I played earlier this month that was 12,000 points a side with 3 players per team. We divided up into Loyalists and Traitors (per the norm) and planned out 6 hours to play our game. So if you want to gather up all of your friends for an epic battle, here are some tips that can help.

1. If you have more than one person a side, it’s a good idea to delegate someone as the team captain. This person will help determine the mission, table setup, scenario rules in use.

In our game this helped because the team captains helped streamline the setup of the game, which can take a lot of time. Setup time reduces the amount of fun to be had so why not speed things up? We decided to do away with mysterious objectives so there wasn’t so much book keeping involved, we also choose our mission instead of rolling because we wanted to already be familiar with the objective. Our table size was 6’ x 8’ with pre-arranged terrain. We did roll random on deployment, which didn’t take away from the game and added an element of uncertainty.

2. Have prepared army lists before you arrive.

Come on. This is a no brainer here.

3. Allow for some out of sequence actions in order to keep people involved and the game moving at a good pace.

We tried to keep things moving as much as possible. If one side of the board was done moving, but the other side was still pushing models around we would allow some shooting phase actions to occur like running or shooting at units far away and unaffected by those other side of the board units. The psychic phase bogged us down a bit since we had a Thousand Sons player on our side. I couldn’t find a good way around that, but at least our efforts to speed things up elsewhere made a difference.

4. Set a reasonable time limit or a turn limit.

We originally planned for a random game length battle, but ended up calling it on turn 4 since we were approaching our 6 hour time limit. I felt we still got a good game in, but it would have been nice to at least have one more turn in. Some feedback I got after the game is to maybe scale things down a little on our next big game, 10K instead of 12K should allow us to complete a game in 6 hours.

 5. Play a practice game or two leading up to the big game.

This was helpful for me in getting familiar with the rules again. There are times where I can go months without playing a 30K game so a refresher can help me work out rules in my list that I forget about or misinterpret. I think a 1500 point or 2000 point game is ideal. They are quick enough to do even with the occasional rule lookup.

Fulgrim managed a charge on turn 1 from his Spartan and proceeded to wreck face

Early game set up

The loyalists hit our flank with a large portion of their army via deep strike and outflank

Just in case you are wondering who won, the Loyalists did. We had 5 primarchs being taken out of 6 total legions. The Emperor’s Children, Iron Warriors, and Thousand Sons on one side while the Space Wolves, Ultramarines, and Iron Hands were the Loyalists. The traitors were doing well for most of the game by leading in victory points, but suffered a few hardships like losing Magnus plus retinue to a deep strike mishap. I can also of course blame those few horrible rolls that came up at the most inopportune times!

Warhammer 30K Team Game and the Magnus Death Star

In my latest 30K game I teamed up with my brother who plays an Ultramarines drop assault army. We faced off against an Iron Warriors and Thousand Sons duo. The game size was 5000 points a side with each player running an Age of Darkness Legion Astartes detachment and each side had one super heavy. I had a knight errant and my opponents had a legion typhon.

Bottom of turn 2. Ultramarines and Emperor's Children flank attack

The game fluctuated back and forth between who was holding on to the most objectives and it looked like the Emperor’s Children/Ultramarines duo would come out ahead. We had pushed really hard on the right flank which had the most valuable objectives. I think the turning point for my team was when Magnus entered the fight with his 10 man Terminator bodyguard. With the right psychic powers they are able to turn into the toughest nut to crack in the history of 30K. Each terminator can achieve a re-rollable 2++ save. If Magnus gets a chance to shoot he can fire as a D weapon most of the time. This allowed him to smoke my Spartan and knight errant back to back. It didn’t take long for my army to fall apart after this and my Ultramarine ally wasn’t faring much better either.

Eidolon makes a last stand with the remainder of his assault squad

My marines hopelessly defend the objective marker against Magnus's onslaught

In the end my team lost the battle due to my team not being able to handle psychic powers very well. What is one to do? I think I need to bite the bullet and find a way to write in the Sisters of Silence into my army. I have wanted to go fluffy with my list, but I have been stomped by the Magnus Deathstar one too many times now. I think psychic power heavy lists in 30K don’t have many counters other than the sisters so I feel compelled to try an allied unit in my next game and see how it goes.