Ish

I found a great set of Earth Elemental-type critters for 3D printing. They’re actually designed as a complete set that could be used as a full wargaming army – wizards, soldiers, cavalry (riding large dirt turtles or “dirtles”), big golem things, and even a giant walking siege tower! So far, I’ve only done a handful of the smaller critters. But I think they’d work well as various summoned “demons” for a dwarf wizard.

Don’t know yet... But I’m definitely going to give it a shot. Especially since it seems to mesh so well with the Crusade system.

I haven’t seen any battle reports or anything, but a lot of the preview materials and hype buzz has stated that smaller format games were being given as much design attention as large ones. With 500 Point “Combat Patrol” and 501-1,000 Point “Incursion” formats getting dedicated missions, specific objectives, and so forth.

Most of the dedicated scalpers will be able to worm their way around any ordering limit. Either by using multiple accounts (me, my husband, my two kids... that’s twelve) or if they’re really dedicated, by signing up with GW as a retailer and placing a wholesale order (yes, this violates all sorts of contracts, but it’s hard to track or enforce).

I’m very strongly considering painting them in the colors of Disney’s seven dwarves. Other than dark british racing green and the occasional purple, I don’t think I ever really use jewel tones when painting... So that would be fun. On the other hand, I might just say to hell with the fancy and just go with basic grey, brown, black, and sepia wash everything. Because that’s easy and quick. I’m leaning towards Chronomancer or Summoner for my wizard’s school of choice, actually. Although that plan is subject to change once the updated rulebook is in hand.

$199 for the boxed set, $65 for the standard rulebook, and $40 for the mission pack/points booklet all seem quite reasonable to me.

Yes to both!

Work in Progress shot of Brunhilde, with Thor and a Space Marine for scale. The points where her arms join is smaller than the barrel of the boltgun. Her head is smaller than his helmet and was made up of three pieces. SMH.

These two tanks can legally shoot at each other, despite the only way they can “see” each other is by drawing a 90° angle from the muzzle of their gun: This Chaos Rhino can use the tips of its radio aerials to see (and thus, shoot) at the Marine on the other side of the barrier: I don’t care what the rules say, this is dumb.

I shouldn’t have to ever invoke π when playing with toy soldiers.

Excuse the crude sketch, but here we can see a turret with a 2.5” distance between pivot and muzzle. If the turret rotates 90°, the straight line distance between A and B is a mere 3.5”, but the distance traveled along the circumference of the circle is 3.9”. It gets worse the farther it rotates. If it rotated 180°, the straight-line distance between A and B would be 5”, but the path travelled would be 7.9”! And this is for a very short barrel, like a the twin-lascannon Predator Annihilator. With a battle cannon or a vanquisher cannon on a Leman Russ the problem literally becomes exponentially worse.

That’s how it should work, unfortunately the rules say it isn’t how it does work... But the rules say, explicitly, to measure along the path that it travels. If the rotating barrel moves 12”, then the model moved 12”...

Much simpler solution: don’t treat turrets, sponsons, gun barrels, and radio aerials as part of the hull.

I have been considering using Stormcast Sequitors as the basis for Sisters of Silence conversions, so I looked at this kit. Unfortunately, the head you want isn’t a separate piece, it’s full connected to the rear torso, upper arms, and legs of the body (upper left of the sprue): Aurel’s Wargame Shop on Shapeways has an excellent selection of female heads, several of which have a very similar long-hair and shaved undercut hairstyle.

I’ve got a tray full of GW’s LotR Dwarves sitting next to my painting table, waiting the release of Frostgrave 2.0 so I can get the proper coin costs to know how I’m going to assemble them into a warband.

Not a according to the portion of the rules I highlighted above. You have to measure along the path actually traveled.

Yeah, but if the turret is rotated... it’s the point sticking out (the muzzle) that’s going to move the furthest.

It’s a dwarf thing.

Many of the Marvel Crisis Protocol miniatures have tiny bitz and intricate details. But Valkyrie is by far the worst (best?) of the lot so far... Her legs are five pieces! Her forearms join just below her elbows with connection points that are less than a millimeter wide! Her head comes in three separate pieces! HER HEAD!

I may have a bit of a thing for minecarts.

The distance between the pivot point of a Leman Russ Battle Tank turret to the tip of it’s muzzle is about 4”... Simple geometry means that if spun in a complete 360° circle, the muzzle would travel approximately 25”... An undamaged Leman Russ has a Movement characteristic of 10”... Therefore, a Leman Russ tank cannot rotate its turret by more than 144° in a single Movement phase (and this will decrease as it takes damage)... However, weapons do not have facings (with the sole exception of the Warlord Battle Titan’s rear mounted lascannons for some reason?) so there is no need to ever rotate a turret... This is the single most complicated and most unnecessary rule I have seen from GW in over twenty years!

Oh. Oh, my. I’ll be in my bunk.

Oh, Lawd, the ICBM is a’comin’!

This depends on how mechanically involved you want the Player Characters to be in the trading. Will they be the actual traders involved (i.e., doing the buying and selling themselves) or will they merely be acting as deniable pawns trusted agents of NPCs doing the trading? If its NPC’s running the business, you don’t really need to worry about details. Just decide if their patron(s) are Doing Great, Doing Okay, Breaking Even, Doing Bad, or Doing Terribly. Adjust them up or down this track as you see fit in order to best tell the story... If the PC’s are doing the trading, then it becomes a question of how much trading their doing... A small tramp freighter worth of stuff, a la Han Solo or Malcolm Reynolds? A massive bulk cruiser of cargo, a la Rogue Trader? Or entire multi-stellar empires?