Warhammer Chronicles RPG coming out this year

After running the post about the Mutant Chronicles Warzone Kickstarter, I got an email from Chris Birch of Modiphius Entertainment informing me that his company will be launching a reboot of the Mutant Chronicles RPG (YESSSS!!!). Now, I know Troll Tales has always dealt almost exclusively in WHFB and O&G in particular - and it will continue to do so in the future - but as I'm a huge Mutant Chronicles fan, after playing both the RPG, the wargame and the card game,  I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight this fact.

You can go to the site for the Mutant Chronicles 3rd edition RPG and sign up for news and to show your support. Apparently, the game will be coming out in December of this year and while it won't have a Kickstarter campaign to get going (as it's already in production) they might consider doing something for fans to gain some additional exclusive content, according to their Facebook page.

Mutant Chronicles Kickstarter is live!

I don't know about the rest of you, but I grew up playing a lot of tabletop RPG's. Looking back though, there's one particular game that stands out to me - Mutant Chronicles and its massive corporation sci-fi adventures. Back then, the setting also featured a skirmish miniature wargame called Warzone. I remember it being a blast and funnily enough as I went home to my father for Christmas I dug through some of my old boxes and uncovered my old Capitol squad for that very game. Ever since, I've been thinking I should find a new skirmish game to play on the side.

As luck would have it, Prodos Games in the UK in collaboration with Paradox Entertainment have launched the Warzone: Resurrection kickstarter project to fund their current production line of the squads for the Brotherhood, the Dark Legion and Cybertronic, as well as their stretch goals of the Bauhaus and the Capitol Mega Corporations.

 After only 24 hours, they've already reached 25k of their pledged 35k stretch goal, and with 2 months still to go, I have high hopes for them to even reach the Capitol tier and allow me to get some new miniatures to my collection. Therefore, I am pledging my support and I hope that you will do the same.

New ETC 2013 rules draft released

The ETC team has released an early draft of the next ETC army rules. You can read them here. Although I'm no ETC player, this will impact my tournament experience as many of the organizers trust in the ETC rules for their own tournament rules.

Newsworthy for Orcs & Goblins is that we're awarded an additional 200 points to our army total, while still having to calculate our losses similar to other 2400 point armies. Although I'm not fully familiar with how much more competitive the ETC tournament is, looking at it from a local and national level, I don't feel we need those extra points - I'd happily face any other army on the same point level and will expect to do decently against them.

That being said, as any Greenskin worth his name, I will take advantage of these added bonus points. At 2600 points, it is possible to comfortably field your Orc Great Shaman as well as an Orc Warboss on a Wyvern, with both bringing a sufficient amount of magic items. The new ETC changes might just tempt me enough to bring out the flying beasty once more.

New Warriors of Chaos - what will it mean?

As many of you have probably heard, Warriors of Chaos is the next army book to be released for Warhammer Fantasy. I won't be posting any leaked pictures of units or a compiled list of expected rule changes, as I'm quite convinced that those of you interested in such can find that quite easily if you haven't stayed up to date (my blog list is a good place to start, for example).

Rather, I wanted to look at some of these rumored rule changes and new units through the green lens of an Orc (or Goblin) player and ask the question: what will the new Warriors of Chaos mean for the Waaagh?!

TOTAL WARhammer?

For those of you who haven't caught on to this bit of gaming news, UK-based The Creative Assembly (makers of the Total War series) has partnered up with Games Workshop to develop Warhammer video games. Even if you're only mildly interested in PC gaming, this should still make your hands clap frantically. CA is arguably one of the top-3 strategy games developers in the world and easily the most accomplished one to give the Warhammer universe a go.

Tim Heaton, the Studio Director at Creative Assembly, had this to say: “We’ll be doing the Warhammer universe justice in a way that has never been attempted before. We’re bringing those 25 years of experience and expertise in extremely high-scoring games to bear, delivering a Warhammer experience that videogamers will absolutely love.”

It is unclear at this time if the game will feature Fantasy or 40k, but either way I am extremely excited about for the finished product. And so should you be!

1st try at Storm of Magic

I shall be trying out my first Storm of Magic game this afternoon, by going up against my buddy Benjamin's Ogre Kingdom at 3000 points. Bear in mind, I haven't read through the new rulebook yet nor am I familiar with all the new magic items. I have, however, read a few battle reports in White Dwarf so I'll basically just be bringing a Giant and an Arachnarok Spider with Slinger for those 25% additional points.

The list I'm bringing looks more or less like this one back here, although I've replaced my Black Orcs with the Trolls and a Mangler Squig with a third Shaman, seeing as how that new magic phase seems to be quite important to compete in.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Early thoughts on the Storm of Magic

The Warhammer world has been buzzing with words on the Storm of Magic expansion, and most of it has been quite negative from what I've heard. Yes, there are some seemingly extreme and ridicolous spells out there, that can bring back units from the dead or switch places with half of the terrain board, making the expansion quite unlikely to be accepted for competitive tournament Warhammer. That said, I am far from a tournament player exclusively. Sure, I'll build competitive armies and I'll theoryhammer with the best of you, but I'm also someone who reads through the lore section of the army books, subscribe to Black Library novels and just enjoy the Warhammer universe in general. I would love if the local games made use of the special terrain features more (some of us do, sometimes), I'd also welcome more special characters in the games we play (that doesn't mean I'd love to face Teclis on a weekly basis). I guess that's part of the reason why I'm closing in on 6000 points of Greenskin, rather than 2500 points on the number.

For me, Storm of Magic is a chance to have fun with the game I love to play. It's a good opportunity to immerse myself in the world of Warhammer. The added 25% ontop of your normal army will be cool to play with, and I've already set my sights on some of the monsters destined to join my Greenskins in battle. However, I just hope that the abuse factor won't play too big a part. You know, that some monsters will just be too good for their prices while others won't ever see the field. Even reading through the White Dwarf magazine, I'm torn on the subject. While I love the idea of River Trolls joining up with a Wood Elf army to protect Athel Loren, or even Great Eagles allying with a Ranger-heavy Dwarf force (imagine how useful those will be in the game), or Giants helping out a Mercenary Empire army,  I'm less excited about the prospect of dual Hydras joining up with a Skaven army already fielding Abominiations, or something similarly abusive that will just turn the game into a power creep. Unit choices made simply because some monsters are much better than others, turning them into no-brainers. In fact, if the only thing Storm of Magic does for our local gaming community is to ensure that everyone gets their own Abomination to play with, I'd consider it a big failure. Reading through the White Dwarf articles, I'm already sensing an early pattern: anyone else noticed that 4/5 armies included a Chimera? Perhaps it's merely another promotion trick, but it's unnerving me slightly...

What are you expectations for Storm of Magic? Are you looking forward to it for the gaming possibilities or merely for the shiney new models?

Price and terms will change

So lots of headlines today about the news that GW will be changing the terms and conditions for independent retailers, essentially putting Maelstrom, Wayward and other such companies out of the non-EU market. That, combined with another raise in prices makes it difficult to be a GW customer on this day.

I won't go far into detail, since really this doesn't affect me overmuch. Pete over at the Fields of Blood and John at the Plastic Legions have both made excellent posts discussing this recent change. I recommend checking them out if you'd like to dwelve deeper into this topic, since really I won't be doing that here.

New Orcs and Goblins FAQ

A new set of Warhammer FAQs have been released, this time including the new Orcs and Goblins book. For us Greenskins, in my view some of the more important "changes" were:

• You may use the General's Inspiring Presence, you must not.
  This was such a strange and frustrating thing, when if the Giant was running next to the Orc (or even Goblin) general you had to use the Inspiring Presence, not the Giant's leadership of 10 for the breaktests. So now it's perfectly safe to deploy the Giant where he will do the most damage, close to the General or not. This was also frustrating when Lore of Death spells lowered the General's leadership from on top of his Wyvern, making everyone within 18" use his new leadership of 5 or 6. Good to have this rules hiccup fixed.

• You can now move your characters around freely within a unit as part of their regular movement, no longer needing to reform for this.
  If you're a longtime reader, you will know I've had some trouble keeping my Orc Shamans in the right corners of my units in order for other units nearby to benefit from their spells (the 'Ere We Go spell buffing both the Savage Orcs and the Black Orcs, for example). Being able to move and march normally and still change where my Shaman is in the unit will be of great help for this. Also, whenever a space in the front rank is freed up, characters in the second rank will have to move forward. It's no longer possible to hide fragile characters forever, which is a welcome change.

• The Night Goblin Shamans Magic Mushrooms won't save your spell from failing if your normal power dice show less than a 3+.
  This makes it a bit more risky to throw a single power dice plus the mushroom dice at, say, the Sneaky Stabbin' signature spell. A good change probably, although it does make the level 1 shamans that I like less useful.

• You are not able to reveal Nasty Skulkers to replace characters and command groups from the front rank of a unit
  I think the main benefit had this been allowed would be to bring your shamans out of base contact with the enemy while still with the unit. It's a change that makes good sense, although it does mean that if you're only keeping your Goblin units in ranks of five, with a full command group and perhaps even a character, your Nasty Skulkers won't be as effective, especially not all three of them. So if you plan on bringing a full set of three, you'll have to be prepared to go wider as a unit.

New Tomb Kings mean more Giants!

So today is the launch of the new army book for Tomb Kings. I've had a good look through the unit entries and the rules for the various kinds of Sphinxes and Constructs available to the dead guys only serves to solidify my earlier army musings.

With T8, those constructs will wreak havoc amongst my troops, since even my Wyvern will have just as difficult of a task in wounding them as would my Night Goblins. Except, that is, for the Giant. As solid as the Sphinxes are, they are extremely slow at an initiative of 1, which makes them a perfect target for the Giants attack. In fact, every single attack possible from the Giant will prove effective against a Sphinx and so he shouldn't have a problem taking one, or even two, out completely.

I know for a fact the Tomb King book will be allowed in the tournament, and I expect to face at least one of them. So that does it then? The big guy is in?

A few green articles

Today actually features some very good articles on games-workshop.com dealing in Orcs and Goblins. Simon Grant has written an excellent hobby article on Waaagh! Magic Tactics that I really think is worth a read. I don't neccesarily agree with all of the advice given, but it's still nice that every once in a while the web team gets to publish articles that doesn't contain blatant and obvious product promotions.

My fellow blogger Rafal Maj from the HardOrc blog gets to show off his gorgeous new models on the What's New Today blog. After seeing both the Forest Goblin army and the Gobbotonia tribe featured on the blog, I'm happy to see so many of my fellow online Greenskin hobbyists get a well-deserved official mention. Congratulations man!

Thoughts on the new O&G releases

So what did I think of the new advance orders for Orcs & Goblins? First of all, I'd like to compliment Games Workshop on completly shutting down the pictures leaking onto the internet. It made the release all the more special and I know that many of us were practically glued to the screen for most of today, just to get an early glimpse.

Orcs & Goblins Pre-Orders are up!

Go here and check them out right now!

I shall post my reactions later on today. For now, Waaaaaaaaagh!

Da Black Gobbo is back!

I have been told that some ten years ago, a certain Warhammer-related magazine changed its name, if only momentarily. You see, a tiny, snot-faced little creature known as Da Black Gobbo crawled out from his cave and took over the White Dwarf Magazine. Crossed over the letters did he, and for a time the White Dwarf magazine was known as simply Black Gobbo. Unfortunately for those who heed the call of Gork (or possibly Mork), by the end of said magazine the White Dwarf caught up with the little nuissance, put his pistol to its green little neck, and forced him to surrender. And so the Black Gobbo did, but he vowed that one day he would return.

Well, he has. Go to games-workshop.com and see for yourself. Da Black Gobbo is back. It can only mean one thing: Orcs & Goblins pre-releases are close, mere hours away. Februwaaaaaaaaaaghi! has come.

Are you excited? I know I can barely contain myself!