A Chaotic Period

It’s been a while since I added any Blog posts, which is mainly down to real-life (work) getting in the way. The year has been quite quiet as a result. I’ve managed to attend a few games across Kent, London and Essex, and enjoyed all of them. Even when getting absolutely kicked in by The Ironic Warrior’s Iron Warriors when we did a Mastodon-off at Bad Moon Cafe. It’s just not been a productive year for me in terms of hobby output.

Hobby Forecast

Over the past 12 months I’ve been toying with several ideas for next years hobby plan, and ultimately I’m kind of happy where I am in the most part for Battles in the Age of Darkness.

I’ve definitely decided it’s time to cease work on my Night Lords. I just can’t enjoy them in 2.0, so it’s with sadness that one of my original 1.0 armies goes now to sit in storage (in the loft in a box) until next edition at the earliest.

My new year/new army focus initially swung to a potential World Eaters Army, but I haven’t even played my Nurgle Ruinstorm Daemons properly on the tabletop this year, and my Khorne army hasn’t even been completed.

My Dark Mechanicum saw only one outing, and have then sat in the middle draw behind me awaiting the monthly check over and dusting time. So a new army feels a little pointless when I can’t get the armies I have on the table reliably.

My Sons of Horus have seen the table quite a few times, and even had some new units built and painted (Breachers, Kharybdis, Seeker Squad, Falchion, Mastodon, another Contemptor, and a few Deredeos).

Therefore, my hobby plan for next year is simple – play more. Get the Nurgle Ruinstorm army out on the table. Get the Sons of Horus out on the table. Get the Dark Mech on the table and if, at the end of all that, I have some overheads – start up a detachment of World Eaters, probably some Rampagers, Angron etc – but ultimately that’s a slippable objective.

In terms of Warhammer 40,000 I’ve painted the Revenant, and I’m working on the Phantom, but again, the Mymeara Army sits in a box in the loft, awaiting a time that 40K isn’t turd. I know, it’ll be a long time waiting.

Gaming Forecast

So the first event I’m off to is Damnation of Acropolis in February at 4TK Gaming. It’s a narrative event, and I’ve decided to take Drop Pod Assault – a proper Speartip-type Rite of War! The army is pretty elite in terms of unit construct versus points limitations (2,500pts), and when combined with the issues surrounding Drop Pod Assault as a Rite of War, it’ll be incredibly swingy as a result. But at least it’s narrative, with some special choices in there (such as Horus Aximand), knowing that I’ll likely be facing off against Loken at some point.

Honestly, past that, I’ve got nothing planned. I’ll see if the Heresy Hammer team have any events planned and potentially attend an event run by The Ironic Warrior if they’re going them this year. Mostly, it’s about ad hoc events that take my eye, steering clear of the WAAC bullshit events that seem to be “the norm” in certain parts of the country. I’d love to get my two Vulturum Titans down on a Titan Walk with the Titan Owners Club, and that’ll be pretty high on the list as a result.

Fear of change, Fear of staying the same

Everyone has been talking about 3.0 being “on the horizon” and even though I still prefer 1.0 to 2.0 in terms of gameplay, I have (legitimate?) concerns about 3.0 and until we get some shoring up would prefer something like a 2.5, over a 3.0. My concerns lie in the fact that The Old World aside, Games Workshop seem to be focusing on “simplicity”. I don’t think this is a route Heresy should pursue, with one exception – the rules writing. The rules in Heresy are, excuse french, fucking awful. I’m not talking about the ridiculousness of the Imperial Fists, or the ultimate tailoring army of the Dark Angels, or even the not-so-subtle strength of the Raven Guard. I’m talking about the wording.

I don’t care if there are people out there who want to break the game and ruin opponents fun because that’s how they personally have fun – they get found out, isolated by a community that’s sick of their shit, and will inevitably return to Competitive 40K where they belong. What we don’t need is a rule that takes seven minutes to read, five to comprehend and two to double check you definitely aren’t misunderstanding it. If anyone at Games Workshop reads this blog, please, I implore you – Make it as simple as A + B = C. By adding in pages of text per rule, you aren’t making it harder for those WAAC knobs to break the game, you’re making it easier because of how tiresome it is to read the damn rules and work out what’s what.

I think my wishlist for 3.0 and Games Workshop in general would be:

• Better written rules.
• All relevant rules in one book. I shouldn’t have to dive between Liber Hereticus and the Main Rulebook.
• Remove reactions, they’re shit.
• Balance out the bullshit Legions, such as (but not exclusively) Imperial Fists, Dark Angels, Raven Guard and Night Lords.
• Sort out the gameplay approach for Legions to be lore based – Sons of Horus are perfectly fine where they are in terms of overall focus, with a balanced-but-leaning-into-melee approach, but Night Lords were never a shooting army, and shouldn’t be one now. They were always balanced-but-leaning-into-bully-melee. Fists for instance shouldn’t have the advanced reaction to charge – it makes no sense and for the love of God give Legions who actually deepstrike constantly in the lore (like Sons of Horus) access to native deepstrike via Wargear – instead of once again giving it to the WAAC yellow bastards for reasons.
• Make a cards pack to create dynamic missions like we had in Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition.
• Stop reusing previously free content and paywalling it behind “new” books.
• Actually have black books (or their analogues) be focused on adding rules and units to that army. The Mechanicum book being mostly about adding Imperial Fists and Blood Angels was a piss-take that this fanbase didn’t deserve.
• Actually release relevant models in plastic. No one cares about an Overseer that was clearly supposed to be a Chaplain model, except in Games Workshops twisted mindset of “how can we get people to buy more models of other armies”? Just make the models the community wants and sell those instead.
• Stop the Mark 6 spam. Retcons don’t make it acceptable.
• Where’s the Legions Praetors at for those Legions who STILL don’t have any?
• Where’s the plastic Legion specific terminators at?
• Where’s the Mark 4 scaled-up at?
• Where’s the plastic Breachers at?
• Where’s the Legion-specific Leviathans at?
• Where’s the FAQ for 2.0 at? It’s been a while and Contemptors and Heavy Support Squads with Lascannons still rule the roost. Why aren’t you dealing with them from a rules point of view?

Ultimately, I think most of my own concerns will fall by the wayside. I’d like to think that if 3.0 does come along, it’s a good thing, but frankly I feel that those who genuinely cared about the game system are long gone and the focus will move to a three-year cycle for Heresy editions, with worse support than 40K, which will cause people to remain on older editions (split playerbase) or simply cease playing. I hope to be proven wrong.

A bleak end to a post, but hey, in the future, there is only war.