http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/ Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy Battle Forum en Fri, 24 May 2013 12:37:51 GMT vBulletin 120 http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/images/misc/rss.jpg http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/ http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1140-gig-report-within-temptation-69-eyes-supporting-brixton-academy.html Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:19:38 GMT I just got back from the gig actually, and getting there was a story in and of itself.

Basically, I decided that I would go back early and give myself time to prepare. It was a long day and I have just handed in the bulk of my assignments for the term so I'm feeling pretty good. Went and dropped off my entry for the club's painting competition at GW and that's where I got sidetracked, deciding to hang around a bit. So, when it came to about 6pm I decided it was time to go and left to catch the train back home, so I could fetch my ticket.

The train then claimed it wasn't stopping at my station as it was closed. Okay, that's fair enough. Backup plan - I got off at another station and tried to grab a bus the rest of the way back. Looked around for the bus, but couldn't find the stop. Checked the maps carefully, and essentially spent about half an hour running around a roundabout that I had never used before because I always take the bus through and don't pay attention to what's there. I find the stop and grab the first bus but after about 10 minutes the reality of the situation dawns on me: I'm going back the way I came.

Immediately jump off that bus and grab the one going the other way, and then I *finally* get home and have time for a quick shower and grab my ticket. I am literally flying out the door. It's 7:30 and the doors open at 7. Since the closest station to my home is closed, I decide to take the next best one and grab a train down to Brixton. We pass by Borough station and the train stops. The station is very much open. God hates me.

So, 20 minutes later I'm finally at Brixton, 15 minutes ahead of projected travel times actually. I rush to the Academy and pass my ticket to the staff outside and fortunately enough, I have arrived right in the middle of the 69 Eyes' set. Managed to purchase a little merch on my way in and now I can truly say I've been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. The design is essentially the Heart of Everything album cover, nothing new but I don't actually have any band t-shirts. The 69 Eyes are a pretty good band and they played a decent set but I don't know anything about them so I can't really comment on what they were like.

45 minutes more into the evening, Within Temptation arrive on the scene and a massive cheer erupts from the crowd. Sharon made quite a dramatic entrance in what I can only describe as a red-and-black peacock train. At least that's what it seemed like to me. Anyway, it was an amusing start as the band was playing Jillian (I'd Give My Heart) while Sharon began singing Our Solemn Hour and I was beginning to think it was a trick by putting the Silent Force logo up and playing a different intro but as it turned out, she was singing the wrong song and realised it a few lines into the verse. No big deal and the band had a good laugh about it but kept going. Very professional, I'm impressed.

The rest of the set was very long, and very much awesome. Nearly every track from The Heart of Everything got played as well as some old stuff reaching waaaaay back to Enter and some famous stuff from Mother Earth. It was truly epic and there was loads of energy - I noticed that the Academy has great acoustics and the crowd was awesome at almost everything they were asked to do. I claim credit for that.

:P

Anyway, in no particular order (as my memory's not that good)

The Main Set:

- Jillian (I'd Give My Heart)
- The Howling
- Stand My Ground
- What Have You Done
- The Heart of Everything
- Forgiven
- Restless
- The Cross
- Hand of Sorrow
- Our Solemn Hour
- Frozen
- Mother Earth
- ?
- ?
- The Truth Beneath The Rose

Encore:

- Deceiver of Fools
- All I Need
- Ice Queen

...whew. It was a long set. I noticed that there were a few songs I didn't actually recognised so I assume they're from an album I don't have or covers. They didn't seem to be the traditional WT style but then again the people near me seemed to recognise them so I could be wrong. I was never a fan of Deceiver of Fools but it's a very different song live and they performed it really well. I was impressed by everything about the show - the stage, the way the band worked the crowd, even the light show was generally appropriate and not OTT. To top it all off, the queue for getting my coat back was quick in a way that the other venues I've been to just can't match. They're really efficient and I like it.

So, I go back to the station to catch the last train home, tired, but very happy when I happen to pass some guys selling merch out on the street. I paid 18 pounds for the shirt and they were being sold for 10.

I cursed myself out all the way home. ]]> NiteRabbit http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1140-gig-report-within-temptation-69-eyes-supporting-brixton-academy.html http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1129-they-did-say-oh-boy-were-trouble-now.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:58:08 GMT So, here it comes. The day that all students, gamers, and people who spend too much money on pointless things dread.

I have officially run out of money. So, as they said in Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time, when the final Horseman of the Apocalypse rides out, "Oh boy. We're in trouble now."

I now have to survive four weeks until pay day, without a single cent to my name to spend on my beloved Warhammer 40k. This actually doesn't bother me that much - it will force me to spend more time working on my painting and actually getting my Thousand Sons finished for a change. It does mean, however, that I will not be able to expand my Legion of Everblight army for a very, very, very long time, and I do so want a box of those Nyss Raptors, maybe a couple of Nephilim Soldiers...

Anyway, I will probably have to focus on painting now. But this is not all fate has in store for me - not only do I have to paint, but I seem to have lost my camera as well. Hopefully I left it back at home when I returned to the UK, in which case there is no cause for alarm, but otherwise I cannot let anyone know that this has happened and hopefully no one will ever speak of it again. Then, I can get a new camera under the radar and no one who cares will ever notice that anything has gone wrong.

But all this pales in comparison to the fact that I now have to spend my meagre budget on food exclusively and there is no way I can make 250 pounds last 4 weeks. No way at all. If I had gotten paid by now, this wouldn't be a problem, so always remember this as a lesson for life - FILL IN YOUR PAY CLAIMS ON TIME!

So, in the meantime, what plan do I have for surviving this desperate time? Well I think it's time to take advantage of my apparently interest-free overdraft and give myself a small fund injection that will be repayable from my upcoming wages on the 30th. I just need to read the fine print now and find out if the overdraft is actually interest-free like they say it is, for my student account. Also, I need to find out if I'm even allowed to have an overdraft. It's a long shot, but really, I'm not sure that I have any other choice. I need food money.

But enough of my woes, let's get some real hobby stuff out of the way. I managed to figure out the proper colours for the Thousand Sons studio scheme, though I greet this revelation with mixed emotions because the 3rd Edition codex has been lying and making a fool out of me for the longest time. About 2 years, in fact. They only use Regal Blue as the basecoat, whereas they forgot to mention the two other key steps, those being a Blue Ink wash and a final coat of Ultramarines Blue. Then, we top it off with Enchanted Blue highlights for good measure. I really do like Ultramarines Blue, it seems to be a more "mystical" colour than the darker Regal Blue and is a less sharp contrast to the Shining Gold. I think without a Chestnut Ink Wash, it really causes the Gold to stand out whereas the impact on my new colour scheme is slightly less jarring. Still considering ink washes for the Mithril Silver (Parts of the backpack, all cables) but I feel it's more or less gaming standard at this point. Then there's the small matter of basing them... Oh yeah, and Hawk Turquoise and Golden Yellow make great colours for the headdresses. ]]> NiteRabbit http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1129-they-did-say-oh-boy-were-trouble-now.html http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1113-white-scars-field-test-no-1-best-laid-plans.html Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:30:48 GMT Okay, so I've spent the past few days frantically building up my White Scars army, that I created because I wanted to be different from all of the other Space Marine armies out of there and because I wanted to get back in touch with my Asian roots. So yeah, I have several units of bikes, a Tactical Squad, and a few Land Speeders as insurance to make sure I don't die too horribly. Went to the club this evening to test it out and I must say I was rather impressed with the results - I managed a pretty solid win in the end.

Or at least, that's what I would like to say. The truth is that my opponent, who was playing Space Wolves, had a rather nasty streak of bad luck which resulted in me slaughtering him. That and a few other tactical errors which I was able to exploit by dancing around him in textbook fast army fashion, but the fact still remains that I did not win due to my own skill but rather to the fact that he rolled a surprising amount of 1's and 2's that I thought only I was capable of. Only a few rending hits from the assault cannons, though, so I suppose that was good. Had I kept dancing around and been really cruel, I suppose I would've gotten a massacre as I certainly had the mobility to keep him at arm's length. But anyway, all has been said and done. Now I just need to finish building this damn thing.

The same goes for my Legion of Everblight force, haven't started painting that yet, though I'm impressed with how my superglue is holding together. My Carnivean hasn't broken yet. ]]> NiteRabbit http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1113-white-scars-field-test-no-1-best-laid-plans.html http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1108-thousand-sons-field-test-no-1-elite-armies-low-points-levels-fail.html Sun, 07 Oct 2007 22:02:40 GMT Managed to cobble together a basic Thousand Sons list involving the six Chaos Spawn that I have managed to complete thus far. Only two or three more to go at this point... The list was two squads of Rubric Marines, a Terminator Sorcerer, and two squads of Spawn. Admittedly not the best choice of... Managed to cobble together a basic Thousand Sons list involving the six Chaos Spawn that I have managed to complete thus far. Only two or three more to go at this point... The list was two squads of Rubric Marines, a Terminator Sorcerer, and two squads of Spawn. Admittedly not the best choice of list but I was hoping that I would be able to carry the day based on the volume of Chaos Spawn attacks and AP3 Bolters, but then again, long term strategic planning was never my strong suite.

Oh yeah, in case you couldn't tell by now, I got slaughtered.

The table we were playing on was slightly less than regulation size and we were playing Cleanse so the Orks didn't actually fit into the deployment zone. A unit of 'Ard Boyz was screened by a unit of grots with Shoota Boyz, Killa Kanz, and Kannons rounding out the rest of the army. It was a case of them running forward, killing my spawn (who only rolled 2's and 1's for their attacks) and then killing my Thousand Sons who didn't managed to wound very many of the Orks. Needless to say, it was a complete massacre by the end of Turn 3.

I did learn from this match that small armies aren't exactly the best way to go at 1000 points. I would probably have done better with an equally-pointed Space Marine army composed entirely of tactical squads, if we're going to talk about using elites. Perhaps a Vindicator would have evened the odds but because I don't have one at the moment, that was a non-issue. Perhaps Spawn just work better at 1500 points... I have to complete this army double-time so that I can test it out. Got some interesting feedback from the Druchii.net 40k community as well, as opposed to the knee-jerk "Spawn Suck" reaction that I was expecting. I will make sure to pay extra attention to it as a result. ]]> NiteRabbit http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1108-thousand-sons-field-test-no-1-elite-armies-low-points-levels-fail.html http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1107-year-rabbit-self-examination.html Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:55:27 GMT So, another birthday has come and gone and I'm 20. Not a teenager anymore and now whole new vistas of possibility have opened up for me to...go forth and be an absolute asshole. Okay, seriously, I'm not going to go into some philosophical rubbish about growing up and getting a job and possibly quitting Warhammer. Seriously! Don't walk away! Please?

Anywho, as the wheel turns, I have suddenly begun playing Jade Empire, purely on an impulse and I have to say it is quite a solid game. It's a bit too much of a Knights of the Old Republic clone along with all of the awesome philosophical minigames we have come to expect from Bioware (Trial, Interrogation, and Arena). They should really have just gone the whole hog and included a Twin Towers of Hanoi style puzzle as well, but what are you going to do? Mind you, these minigames don't anger me in the slightest; I enjoy attempting to get the jury on my side, fighting in a few arena battles, or interrogating a prisoner. Overall, it's a solid game and definitely has a bit of replay value in it, so it will tide me over until I have the money for Bioshock.

On the Warhammer front, I have decided to take a different direction with my Thousand Sons, returning to the genetically corrupted roots of my original storyline (rather than the army of golems that I had originally envisioned), thus leading me to field a veritable tide of Spawn. The thing that bothers me most about the new Spawn is the Mindless special rule that forces them to attack the nearest unit if they're able. That being said, the fact that they're beasts makes it a tad bit easier to catch speeders that think they can just lead you on throughout the entire game but it also means that the majority of my army is not scoring. Apart from that, they're pretty good in close combat and the models brim with conversion opportunities. Anyway, these spawn will bring a massive change in tactics for the foreseeable future and I will need to test this idea out at the earliest possible opportunity.

In order to compensate for the apparent weakness of Spawn, I've built the rest of the army around being fluffy and supporting them, which means plenty of anti-tank and wholesale unit destruction to ensure that I get a limited degree of control over who the Spawn actually attack. Also, the fact that they are non-scoring and fairly cheap means that I can throw them away without too much concern and they're enough of a threat that they can't be ignored for too long.

The list is as follows:

HQ
--
Chaos Sorcerer
- Terminator Armour
- Mark of Tzeentch
- Bolt of Change
Total: 170 points

Elites
------
8 Chaos Terminators
- Mark of Tzeentch
- Combi-meltas
Total: 315 points

Troops
------
8 Rubric Marines
1 Aspiring Sorcerer
- Doombolt
Total: 254 points

8 Rubric Marines
1 Aspiring Sorcerer
- Doombolt
Total: 254 points

Fast Attack
-----------
3 Chaos Spawn
Total: 120 points

3 Chaos Spawn
Total: 120 points

3 Chaos Spawn
Total: 120 points

Heavy Support
-------------
Chaos Vindicator
- Daemonic Possession
Total: 145 points

Overall: 1498 points

I currently have the parts to build 6 of the Spawn so just a few more boxes and then the Terminators. The new Vindicator model on the Mk IV Rhino Chassis is coming out on the 13th of October so I have that to look forward to, as well as Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer. That is all for now, more or less. ]]> NiteRabbit http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1107-year-rabbit-self-examination.html http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1087-legiones-astartes-chaos-4th-edition.html Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:17:13 GMT Okay, so its been discussed to death a hundred times and the Chaos Codex has been out in some form or other for a pretty long time. Yet still, every time I trawl the web for a discussion on Chaos Space Marines, I seem to come across one or two (or three, or four...you get the picture) naysayers... Okay, so its been discussed to death a hundred times and the Chaos Codex has been out in some form or other for a pretty long time. Yet still, every time I trawl the web for a discussion on Chaos Space Marines, I seem to come across one or two (or three, or four...you get the picture) naysayers who state that all flavour and fluff has been drained from the new Chaos codex. It is apparently a shell of its former self, and they hearken back to the days of 2nd and 3rd Edition when the Traitor Legions had special rules, nay, entirely separate lists dedicated to them! I may be going a bit over the top here but I think my feelings on the subject can be best summed up by the following quote:

"Rules for fluff are a crutch for people who aren't imaginative enough to come up with their own fluff." - Caluin

The outcry seems to be rather strong amongst three different Legions: the Alpha Legion, the Word Bearers, and the Night Lords. Let's take a look at what has been lost by each of these three Traitor Legions in the transition to 4th Edition:

Alpha Legion
- Units can no longer select the Infiltrate veteran skill, which Alpha Legion players not only benefitted from having but also benefitted from having at a lower cost, a steal for them and ultimately what lead to them being typecast as an infiltration force.

- Cultists, cheap and expendable troops that were more or less on par with Guardsmen in terms of statline, the key difference being that they got to select Infiltrate and one other Veteran skill for free. For free. This essentially lead to Alpha Legion forces being typecast as infiltration forces supported by Assassins, because let's face it, there is absolutely no point in Cultists having Tank Hunters or Move Through Cover when they can have Furious Charge. I will eat my shoe if I can find anyone, even among fluff players, who, when given the choice, would not use Assassin cultists. I don't begrudge them this choice, it's what I would do, but please stop deluding yourselves into believing there was ever a choice.

- Many of the armoury options

Apart from this, it seems that an Alpha Legion force has access to all of the previous items that they did in the previous codex, including all vehicles.

Night Lords
- The free Night Vision veteran skill

- The ability to take the Stealth skill

- The modified Force Organisation Chart

- Many of the armoury options

The Night Lords even have access to the option that (in some peoples' minds) was thought to define their army - 3 squads of Raptors, one for each Fast Attack choice. Oh sure, you're not allowed to give them Infiltrate anymore but I think that for a reduced point cost and the ability to give them icons, I'd say it's a fair trade.

Word Bearers
- The ability to take any kind of daemon, regardless of allegiance, mainly because they are all grouped into the category of "lesser daemons" and "greater daemons".

- The modified Force Organisation Chart

- The Dark Apostle as an HQ choice, as well as his associated Accursed Crozius

- Many of the armoury options

Apart from that, the Word Bearers still have access to every unit choice in the Chaos Codex and like the other Traitor Legions, none of it is inconsistent with what they had in the previous edition.

Out of those three Traitor Legions that supposedly got hit the hardest, I would have to say I feel the most sympathy for the Word Bearers. They lost one of the features that could single-handedly make a Word Bearers army a Word Bearers army: hordes and hordes of daemons. Then I consider what the daemons made many Word Bearers armies: glorified Daemon Bomb lists consisting of nothing but Bloodletters and Daemonettes, with little thought for any of the other Daemon choices. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the "one man's cheese is another man's brilliance" philosophy but if anyone ever debates fluff with me and tells me that the Word Bearers had the option of taking Daemons of the four Great Powers and went from four to one, I will stab them repeatedly. Maybe it's different in your area but the internet community seems to suggest otherwise - out of the Word Bearers lists I have looked at each and every one has contained Bloodletters, Daemonettes or both, possibly Horrors and Flamers but certainly not Plaguebearers.

Just by looking at the bullet points I've written down, I can see that the majority of the things that each Legion lost were special benefits that the player received by "limiting himself" in order to follow the fluff for that specific group. The fact that players lament this loss says two things to me. Either their creativity has been confined to what the 3rd Edition Chaos Space Marine codex said their armies should be composed of or they started playing the Legion for the benefits that it entailed, above and beyond the standard army list. I find that Alpha Legion players are particularly guilty of the latter, lamenting the loss of Infiltrate, nevermind the fact that they got it at a major discount, or the Iron Warriors and their Obliterators of doom. Yes, I'm looking at all of you.

This brings me back to my original point - there was a time when I might have agreed with people and said that GW has violated the fluff that made the Traitor Legions. However, I've thought about the subject and realised that no, the removal of special rules for each legion hasn't changed a thing. Do we need special rules to define our armies for us or can we simply adapt the current codex to suit our needs? So before you start flinging about claims like "flagrant disregard" or "disrespect for the gamers" with relation to GW, just think about it for a second. These accusations just bother me, not because they are directed at GW but because they're just not true.

What was the point of this article? Well, I'm going to kickstart a series of articles that originally started as a forum post I made awhile ago about adapting the fluff of the Traitor Legions to the current 4th Edition codex. I will attempt to illustrate how all of the Legions can modify their background to accomodate each and every choice available. Of course, some may be more difficult than others, but believe me, it is entirely possible. ]]> NiteRabbit http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1087-legiones-astartes-chaos-4th-edition.html http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1080-like-samara-rising-well.html Tue, 11 Sep 2007 11:02:49 GMT Up! Up, my loyal and faithful blog! Rise and take thy revenge upon the quick! I shall lead the way for thee! After a long hiatus mainly caused by lack of interest, I have decided that I once again feel the need to put my thoughts down on an electronic medium for all who care to see! Yes, and... Up! Up, my loyal and faithful blog! Rise and take thy revenge upon the quick! I shall lead the way for thee!

After a long hiatus mainly caused by lack of interest, I have decided that I once again feel the need to put my thoughts down on an electronic medium for all who care to see! Yes, and from here I shall plot my domination of the world and tear down all manner of authority, creating a society in which the individual need live only for themselves... Wait, what's that? Curse you, Irrational Games! Curse you and curse BioShock! You'll warrant no villain's exposition from me!

So yeah, this is a blog dedicated to whatever thoughts I feel need to be vocalised. You might even derive something useful from reading my blog (though I doubt it), but most of all I think you can best summarise the experience here as being both disturbing and alluring at the same time. Or neither. I wouldn't know; I'm just getting started. ]]> NiteRabbit http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/blogs/niterabbit/1080-like-samara-rising-well.html