Warhammer Magic Items - why less items in the army books might be good thing

So Bell of Lost Souls posted a review of the mere 8 magic items to found in the new Orc & Goblin army book, and much griping ensued.  Why just 8 expensive items?  Its quite obvious if you look back at 5th edition Warhammer Fantasy.  Back then magic and magic items were a separate supplement from the main game. Army books did not contain any spells or items, unless they were attached to a special character.  The magic supplement had tons of magic item that each came printed on their own nifty card.  The majority of the items could be used by any army, but there where some that restricted to a single army. Some armies did not even have their own items for certain categories.

Just as percentages for army selection has made a comeback, this appears to be the direction that GW is taking magic items for 8th edition.  The main rule book is full of items that can be used by any army and the Orc & Goblin book has just a few items unique to them.  Not much of a shock, it's just like 5th edition. The only question that remains to be answered is what will become of pseudo-magic items - dwarf runes, Chaos gifts, Brettonia vows and the like.

That unknown aside, I actually see a benefit here.  With GW's decision to print the new army books in full color hard back and jump the price up to $37.50 a book*, the centralized source of magic items in the BRB means that the frugal and crafty Warhammer player need only take mental note of the items from the new army books most likely to pop up on the battlefield, instead having to amass a stack of books in order to sift through the pages of items that have appeared in the 6th & 7th edition army books (most of those items being useless anyways).  I'm fine with the new structure of magic items in 8th Edition, as Martha Stewart would say, it's a good thing.


*I'll do the math for you: $37.50 a book multiplied by 14 armies equals $525.00 - ouch.

The Knights of Bal Timorea Winner!

Santa Cruz Warhammer announced the winner of the drawing for their Knights of Bal Timorea - yours truly!  I can assure all the participants and those who followed the project that they will go to good use.  The Brettonians were my first WFB army and have always held a special place in my heart.  I honestly intend to get some games in with this guys, so expect to see them fighting against the forces of evil across the battlefields of Southern California in the near future!  I feel really lucky to get to keep all these great looking models.  Here's all the knights together:

I would also encourage you go check out all the participant's blogs and continue to support everyone's efforts to contribute to our online hobby community: Mik's Minis, DiceRolla, My Dice Hate Me, Painting Sanctuary and From the Warp.

Battle Toads: Strange Advice about Slann Mage Priests

I don't write much on tactics, a WFB strategy savant I am not.  Go see Bringer of Victory for that department.  However, a recent BOLS article about Lord choices made me face palm.  The article was suggesting some "interesting" Lord level character combos.  One suggestion was running two Slann.  One would have Lore of Life with Focus of Mystery (giving him loremaster).  The other is packing Lore of Death with Focus of Mystery and Focused Rumination (+1 power die per casting roll).  As a Lizardmen player, I'm all for all-glory-to-the-hypno-toad, but this suggestion really stuck in my craw.

15mm Warriors - Scaling Back to Paint Flames of War Miniatures

Recently Flames of War has pried my interest away from my Lizardmen army after I picked up some Operation Market Garden intelligence briefings - my favorite WWII battle.  Before I jumped into my next FoW endeavor I'll share with you my experience during my first go around with 15mm mini's.  In 2008 I was given a British Para company for FoW. They don't see much action, much similar to the real 1st Airborne Division, aka the Stillborn Division (that's not a sick joke - read A Bridge Too Far).  Prior to getting my hands on the paras I had never painted anything besides 20-30mm figures.   Despite the rather straightforward painting guide in the D-1 book* and the solid advice of Art of War Vol. 1, painting 60+ of the buggers looked daunting. Particularly, I was concerned how difficult it would be to get effective shading and highlighting at this scale.

I painted these one platoon at time, ending up with 3 platoons, extra PIAT teams, company HQ, snipers and a blister pack's worth of machine gunners. With each platoon I modified my technique slightly, until I did the final platoon and though "dammit, why didn't I do this the whole time." Here's how I developed my  technique as I moved through the company.  Note that I used Vallejo paints for the entire company, with the exception of the bases.  If you haven't tried Vallejo, I'd highly recommend them particularly if you're setting out to paint WWII mini's as the colors are close to being 100% historically accurate.  The little eye dropper bottle are fun too.  Sorry for the poor quality pictures, they where taken before I built a light box.

Ultramarine Movie Review

The holiday movie season is well upon us.  In addition to the big theatrical releases, Codex Pictures has recently released Ultramarines: The Movie on DVD, the first ever feature length production based upon the Warhammer 40,000 universe.  The following is a review of the film by my long time friend and fellow Warhammer enthusiast Justin:

As soon as I had heard about this movies imminent arrival, I could hardly contain myself. A Warhammer 40,000 movie, finally.  I am a big fan of Games Workshop; I love the grim darkness of the far future and all the Black Library stories and background fluff associated with it. I have been playing Warhammer in both forms for close to 15 years, so I was pumped when its release drew near. I actually first heard about the movie at Games Day Los Angeles 2008 at the Black Library seminar. The Black Library representative said that it would look better than the opening for the Dawn of War computer game. At that time the movie seemed a long way off so I was intrigued but not overly excited.

I always wondered why Games Workshop had not invested in creating a cartoon to supplement their games systems.  Obviously cost is the main factor, but when I was a child animated shows and commercials always got me excited for purchasing the action figures that went along with whatever franchise I was hooked on at the time.  G.I. Joe, Ghost Busters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc.; I watched the show and purchased the figures. Now a cartoon has arrived to pump me up on Warhammer 40K and, even as an adult 20 years later, I could not be more excited.  Of course there were some exceptions.