2012 - Year in Review and Looking ahead

A bit late for this, but another year has come and gone and while there's been a decrease in the number of blog posts, in my opinion the posts were more substantial. I almost managed getting a post a week, so for this year I'm aiming for about 54 blog posts.

Unfortunately it's my GCSE year so blogging time will be hard to get, not to mention hobby time, so having set the above aim, realistically I'm probably not going to have much content on here till march/april and then after that till the summer. If I do post, it may have to become filler content, but I'll try to keep things interesting. With the help of some of the people who are meant to be my co-authors... this year could become more productive for the blog as a whole.

Having said that I'm still going to set myself the following goals:

- Attend at least 3 tournaments this year (got a head start cos I've already been to one!)
- Build 1500 pts of Dark Eldar - hopefully this will be a nicely converted army. I've essentially now had 2 or 2 1/2 armies to practice so I want this to be up to a good standard. I've also persuaded myself that this will probably be my last army that I'm going to buy, despite the temptation of all the other good things out there now
- Paint 1000 points of Dark Eldar, this may be quite hard but then I might have time later this year
- Paint some of the terrain which still hasn't been painted
- Finish the game board with flock and skulls/any missed details - shouldn't be too hard
- Work on my SM/Tau army
- Learn how to play doubles better/attend a doubles tournament

Now, let's take a look at the goals from last year and how I did (I actually haven't looked at them for the whole year until now lol):

6th ed. SM digital codex review part 2

Ok, so now for one of two posts which should have been posted ages ago...

I've been reading through my Space Marine codex and thought that I'd discuss some more of the things that I've noticed. First of all, as I said before old mistakes have been corrected, which is great, but there are still plenty of typos (well yeah, not plenty but still quite a few), ok maybe it's nothing major but for such an expensive product which is mostly made up of lifting text from other sources this in my opinion is simply not good enough.

However it's not all negative. There is a significant amount of new artwork in COLOUR and also some older images which used to be black and white have also been given to us in colour. Examples of this are the tech,arise entry and the stormtalon.

We are also given some new space marine colour schemes and given some more information about existing chapters (its not a lot but at least its something that gives them a little character), which is nice especially if GW continue to add to these, one or two examples below.

Updated SM digital codex review

Just a quick post here to say that I downloaded the new version of the SM codex, and all the mistakes have been ironed out. Also for those that don't know, all the new 6th ed rules are in there and hull points have been integrated into the statlines. Finally I'm begin to see where my 25 quid has gone and if they do keep updating it as rule changes are made I'll be very happy.

Pics of the new entries which used to have mistakes and examples of new profiling system (for old review click here):

iBooks Space marine codex review

6th Ed version update: click here

Since I needed to get rules for my ultramarines (left my codex in Russia) and also because I support the move to digital overall, I bought the electronic version.

As you can see it is highly probable that these special rules have been duplicated from the page before which states Sicarius' rules

Now the problem is that for such an expensive product I would expect it to be perfect but there are occasional glitches as my iPad gets overloaded with information (or at least I think that's why it quits iBooks randomly)

The bigger problem is that there are many typos and when you click on the description of some rules it comes up with the description for another unit (see pictures).

GW goes digital (!!!)

(Sorry about sideways pics they're screenshots from my ipad and so I can't really turn them around when uploading from it).

First of all, when I first started blogging there were many complaints about how GW kept a very poorly updated website and barely offered anything online. Because there was no specialist information from the actual people who make the game on how to do hobby-related things online, was the reason why I discovered blogs in the first place. Personally, I think this is a big step in the right direction.

New Paints: Review

With the new paints having come out I decided to see if they were any good and straight away ordered some of the textures, some of the ardcoat and medium, primer and some flesh coloured paints cos I really needed some.

At first as you can see it just looks like muck, but it gets better

My initial thoughts are that the lids on the NEW NEW paints (if that makes sense :/) are new (wow thats a lot of repetition) and they are good. They do have a seal that snaps firmly shut although it is more difficult to open a paint pot the first time around. The paints seem to dry a lot quicker than before which is both good and bad because when you're painting fine details (such as faces -_-) with small brushes it can get annoying. However they do work, and despite gw saying that no watering down is needed I would suggest at least a small dap in water rather than straight from the pot.

New lids do stay open - above is what I mean

The drybrushing paints I did not even bother ordering because just by looking at pictures I felt that gw was trying to sell me some crap in a pot (seriously it looks like dust?). I tried using a shade and it was a little different to the old washes and went more into the recesses rather than clinging to the model at my first opinion, but a second time over and all was well.

Here's what the textures look like: above fresh pot^^ below after first use. \/\/

Ultramarines: Movie REVIEW

So I picked it up, not because everyone else had great comments about it and I was expecting something amazing - but because I wanted to see what they could come up with.

I'll start with the story. It was not bad, if a little dull. I disagree that the Space Marines say "And they shall know no fear" TOO many times, but it was borderline on that. The graphics were basically crap - something you'd see on Cod 6/7 , rather than a movie. Too many ash-waste colours throughout as well and definitely too much time walking through desert.

The parts with action were generally unimaginative, mostly with chaos space marines charging at the ultramarines who stood and shot them... Towards the end, the daemon was animated in a very strange way imo, but I guess my idea of daemons and how they move is different to the guys who made the movie. However I completely disagree in making the daemon prince connected to Balrog, with the pillars, falling from height while locked in combat with the captain, etc...

Necron Tomb Stalker

THE SHARKALATOR'S REVIEW

Recently, forgeworld came out with the new necron tomb stalker model. as a necron collector I decided to buy one, but thought twice after looking at the price. OK, compared to forgeworld's other models, it doesn't really compare, but im running low on cash recently. so before buying the model i decided to play a couple of practice games against my dark angels.

Pros
Awesome design. seriously. this is one of the most detailed models that forgeworld has come out with in a while. if i did buy this, i would spend hours painting it.
Fairly good stats. in fact, for its price, (195) its f!@£ing amazing. usually enough to take out one unit of ravenwing bikers. still, it pales in comparison to a titan, or an ork stompa.

Cons
While the stats are good, they're not great. as i said before a titan can take it out. i also found that a heavy weapons squad, or a dreadnought can beat it an average of three out of five times. if you got lucky, getting a couple of squads of average space marines led by a commander to gang up on one,  would get it down.
Weapons. gauss flayers. really? REALLY? the mighty tomb stalker that has been spoken of on blogs for aeons, is equipped with the same weaponry as an average necron warrior? what's up with that?
Ressurection. this to me is the killing blow. no we'll be back rule. this is another reason that i dislike the monolith, but at least that gets living metal. the tomb stalker? nothing. not even a regeneration special rule.

Summary

the tomb stalker is an awesome model, but that's as far as it goes. as a gamepiece, it's nothing special. if you're a collector, you'll be better with a monolith.