Tome of Forgiveness

These words graced the tome of Forgiveness written by Maltheas Dormock,
Last of the Crusade Grand Masters of the Angels of Perdition

I ask for no Forgiveness for my acts.

I ask for none for opening the way in the Dark Star crusade to Kyton, a world of twenty billion souls. Nor for watching, as it fell to ruination as the entirety of Warsmith's forces fell on it like a scythe. Nor do I ask for it for buring it to ash.

I watched, as in the darkness of the long night, it's face blossomed like a second star field.

Upon my order twenty billion died, and the Dark Star Crusade has ended. Bought in blood, sacrifice and the lives of the Imperium I have sworn to protect. Some secrets must be protected, some prices must be paid, but we must all live with the consequences of our actions. For our sin we were not punished, for to the vast machine, what is twenty billion, when a sector has been saves. We were given a boon, anything we asked.

But I ask no forgiveness.

I ask for none as I watched the survivors fight for survival on Kyton. Loyal citizens, struggling for their world... and their souls against those that had turned their back on sanity. Battles for food, fuel, and life devolve into a wasteland of destruction. At any moment I could have stopped it, but I did not.

There is no worth put on that which is not payed for, and those of Kyton must earn their right for forgiveness. It is a price that must be paid in blood and lives... theirs.

I ask none for the women and children that were killed and eaten by the Cannibal of Carax as he worked the world of Kyton under his thumb. Nor do I ask for it because I gave no aid to those that opposed him.

But I ask for no forgiveness. For of all the worlds for three thousand years that we have fought on, none has been a greater sin then this, for the reasons that lead my brothers and I always into the deeper darkness. The Lion understood, sometimes decisions must be made, unforgiveable decisions.

But I ask none, for we shall make it right. We were given a boon, and I have asked. This world, this Kyton is no more, from now on, this shall be Angelus Secundus, what we wrought we shall unmake in the time ahead. This world is our worst sin, but shall be our greatest achievement.

For this world, shall be our world. We shall re-build it in our image, and from it's peoples, those that sacrifices, and bleed, shall come the new Order of ourselves, and we shall become one with this world.

For the Lion!

Last Wargames Con Post

Then I'm on to other things. The table is finished, and I had a chance to break it in. Pictures of the table were taken and should be up tomorrow.

No, I want to talk about my favorite thing that happened at Wargames con. I wasn in... game 5 I think, playing an Eldar player that had rum up and blown up my Predator with some Snakes on Plane (5x Fire Dragons in Wave Serpent), right beside my techmarine w/survoharness and thunderfire cannon.

So I had a question. The Servo-Harness says that in addition to firing any other gun he can fire one (or maybe it's both) of his Harness guns. Can he fire the Thunderfire Cannon AND the other guns? The snakes were at point blank range, and I was interested in the answer. So I asked a Judge, and the judge looked it up for a bit, and came to the conclusion that you could.

Now, why is that so great? Because apparently the question was so good, and the way my opponent and I asked (we didn't care, and were more interested, then married to if it could or not) we won the best question for the tournament, getting both ourselves $20 in battlefoam.

That was nothing but win for me. That should be part of every tournament.

Lessons from Wargames Con

I took 2009 nine off from large scale tournament play, and as the nun can tell you, it showed. I did not do as well as I liked(and have done historically). I can blame a lot of things, but the person in the mirror is the only one to really blame.

To help work on that I have about finished my tournament table, and Andy is coming down this weekend to break it in with me. However, that being said, I made (with help from my friends) a list of things to remember before going to tournaments. Here they are:




1. Do not forget the chapstick/water. I talk more at these events then I do on a normal basis, and therefore become dehidrated, and my lips crack. Both of the things above would have gone a long way in helping me think clearly.

2. Don't forget to win. Sounds silly, but a lot of the times you concerned with things in a game and missions come second, always play to the mission.

3. Do not play generalist marines. I mean this. Vulcan is fine, he is no generalist. 70% of all armies at tournament are marines, and everyone there is bringing things to kill... you guessed it kill marines. When you play marines, you are falling into that trap. If you do bring marines, bring them focused on doing one thing:

4. Make your list to kill marines: See my above post. If 70% of all armies out there are marines, why spec out to fight that one tau player that is at the tournament.

5. Do not take an all alpha strike army. You will win some games, but if things don't go correctly, your army falls apart. Darkwyn apparently get's away with this, but he also seems to roll well to go first with those guardsmen!

6. DO take enough scoring units

7. DO Relax... it's a game. Being stressed makes you play bad.

8. Do play to the tournament. Look at the tournament rules. If painting is heavily scored, bring your best, if it's about beatstick armies, bring that. If not, you really aren't playing to win.

9. Do play regularly against ALL codexes that are out. If not, when you run into that one army you don't play about, not only will you not know how to counter it, but you can't call your opponent out when they make mistakes (Dark Eldar - Wargames Con with incubi fleeting into HTH in round 1). If I had played against Dark Eldar more, I would have known this.

That's it for today folks!

New Tau Rumors

Tau, my favorite army. This is from Warseer from dante76.

Here is what he said:

Pencilled in release date of Aug 2011

New Alien allies
All metal sets to plastic (Pathfinder, Krootox, Vespids)
Possible new tank
Changes to Hammerhead Railgun rules. Essentially draws a line across table hitting everything in line. Multiple pen through vehicles, only stopped by a glancing hit.
Changes to markerlights. Point system. 1 Markerlight point = + 1BS, 2 Markerlight points = reroll to wound/hit 3 = Difficult Terrain test (blinded by the lights?). Cannot be stacked. So cant have reroll to wound and reroll to hit at 4 points.
Battle Suits. A plug and play system. Essentially streamlined. Pick two guns and a skill or two skills a gun. New models might have interchangeable arms similar to Killa Kans....


I am not going to go into if I believe them or not. It's possible, but I am taking it with some salt.

Still, potentially great new for my favorite army. You can expect this blog to go all Tau All The Time, if this comes up (next year).

On other news, the table has gone well, better story of it soon!

What Codex's Are Coming?

I think at this point even the most hardened individual would agree that Dark Eldar are coming next. Shortly after that, the consensus seems to be Grey Knights, with good reasons. The Stormraven for instance, needs to be created.

After that however, I have been under the assumption that Necrons would be next, probably some time around March/April of 2011... i.e. around the same time that Blood Angels were released this year.

I hope that is still true, and for now, I will assume that it is. I read recently they may get a Fall 2011 release, and if that is true, then there is quite a gap till this time next year.

I believe that 40K 5th edition will be released in summer of 2012. It's always released during summers, and that would be 4 years, which is about as long as a system lasts these days. Lately, GW has been releasing codex's at a rate of about 3 a year. That's rather poor IMHO actually. Let's do a track record. This is off the top of my head, so stay with me.

Summer of 2008 - 40K 5th Edition
Fall 2008 - Space Marines
Spring 2009 - Imperial Guard
Fall 2009 - Space Wolves
Winter 2010 - Tyranids
Spring 2010 - Blood Angels
Fall 2010 - Dark Eldar

Now, who does that leave for 5th edition codexes?

Necrons
Sisters of Battle
Grey Knights
Tau
Eldar
Chaos Space Marines
Chaos Demons
Orks
Dark Angels
Black Templars

Now,we are just past the 1/2 way point into 5th edition, we have a little less then two years of this edition left. Jervis has said that every codex will get a 5th edition codex. Well... I'm not saying he is wrong, but I think there may be a break between what he consideres "5th edition" and what actually was released during 5th edition. Generally codex's released toward the end of an edition have some of the new ideas integrated into them.

For 5th Edition, I think we can assume that the following Codex's are what GW considers also 5th edition, even though they were released in 4th.

Dark Angels
Orks


This leaves 9 codex's left to be released. At 3 a year, that is simply not going to happen. So who is going to be left out?

However, we do know something else, the Space Marines will be in the boxed set, and it will be a xenos they are fighting. (2nd Edition was Orks, 3rd Edition Dark Eldar, 4th Edition tyranids, 5th Edition, Orks.

Also something I think that is interesting. Black Templars are the main race in the new 40K MMO that is expected for release in 2012. It May be that the Black Templars await their release until 6th edition, so they coincide with the release of the MMO. That is what I would do if I were GW.

That leaves no more then 4 more codex's in this edition, and that is assuming a faster creation period that we have recently gotten.

Necrons - Released 2011(?)
Sisters of Battle - No idea... but I wouldn't be surprised if they got the Blood Angels PDF treatment when the Grey Knights were released.

Grey Knights - Winter - 2011 - All but confirmed.
Tau - Unknown
Eldar - Unknown
Chaos Space Marines - Unknown
Chaos Demons - Unknown
Orks - 5th Edition Codex (effectively) will wait till 6th edition.
Dark Angels - 5th Edition Codex (Stupidly) will wait till 6th edition
Black Templars - May be the first codex in 6th edition or early into it.

So we have the following open windows
Winter 2011 - Grey Knights (?)
Spring 2011 - Necrons (?)
Summer 2011 -
Fall 2011 -
Winter - 2012
Spring - 2012
Summer - 2012 - 40K 6th Edition

So four slots... here is my predictions: Eldar, Chaos Space Marine, Tau in that order, with one more codex in there somewhere before the end of the edition.... maybe (GW may not release one).

I know no more rumors then anyone else, just my thoughts.

Why GW Must Hate Tau

Often, jokingly, people suggest that GW likes the two legged, more familiar race in 40K, also known as Space Marines, above other cloven footed race, known as the Tau.

An example of this could be when Aaron Demski-Bowden(sp?) was asked when novels would be written about the xenos. The answer? "When they rock as hard." A perfectly legitimate (and funny as hell) answer, IMHO. The same reason I gave to a tyranid player when he asked why my psychic hood worked on people in vehicles, and his didn't.

"Tyranids just don't rock as hard", I said. Ok.... I didn't say that... but it does appear that way. I can't think of another reason that Shadow in the Warp doesn't effect things in vehicles, but Runes of Warding and Psychic Hood does...

But let's move on to Tau, who definitely, in the world of "rocking"... don't. Three fingered hands... isn't their point in 40K to be the target of slaughter, and having their things blown up?

Apparently, if you look at the Tau's own packaging, it is!

I've always noticed when I purchased Tau Pirahna's that in the background art OF THE BOX THEY COME IN one of the piraha's is blowing up. It's as if GW has said, "go ahead, but understand that one of their prime purposes, is to be destroyed." You don't see them selling land raiders with one in the background blowing up.

So today, for some reason I don't understand, I had the chance to go look at all the tau boxed sets. On the Crisis Suit box, and the Sniper Drone squadron, they also have the units that you are purchasing, being shot.

Food for thought... why do they put Tau Empire stuff blowing up, on the cover of the products they want us to purchase? I don't think this was done on any other GW products.

Void Dragon Corsairs

So I am seriously considering starting a Dark Eldar army when they are released in a few months. I still have at least a thousand points of marines to paint (perhaps closer to 1500) but I can do those when I need a break.

And right now, I need a break from Marines!

Anyway, I am waiting for the codex before I pull any type of trigger about it. You can't say I haven't learned my lesson from the great Dark Angels debacle of 2008. (When I dropped the money for the codex and the army in one go... then read the codex and wanted to weep bitters tears of anquish)

At any rate I hear at the moment that the new Dark Eldar will cause me to "nerdgasm" and be amazing, and I expect since Phil "Glorious Eldar" Kelly is writing it... they won't suck.

My next problem is that... I really don't get behind masocistic slavers. Sorry, maybe it's the Southern in me, but slavery = not cool at all. Now.... they also are raiders and... dare I say... pirates... and that is something that I CAN get behind.

So whatever direction I choose to go with them, I am sure that they will be more raider/pirate themed like the Eldar Pirates of Rogue Trader then the True Kin of the Dark Eldar. I was doing a little research and stumbled upon a Forgeworld Model for the Void Dragon airplane, which is used by the Void Dragon Corsairs, a group of eldar pirates that work with Craftworld and Dark Eldar. They also have a bitching scheme (red dragon scales?! Sign me up!). In addition to working with Dark Eldar, I may be able to do enough conversions so that the army could work as either Dark Eldar for now, then perhaps later switch it over and work with Craftworld Eldar... depending on who has supplied their equipment recently.

I even had this idea for a board where the soldiers are playing cards and drinking rum, and maybe my Autarch/Dark Eldar leader has an eyepatch. Argggggg! Where's the Rum!

I've also considered doing a purple army as well, as I have never painted an army that color. Whatever I end up doing, I can promise you that I will make HEAVY use of my airbrush.

On a small note, I should be able to pick up my paint to finish my game room tonight and get it painted. I'll take some photo's of that.