Astra Militarum in 8th Edition - Part 1 Review

I have spent the last few years focused on the Horus Heresy and kept gaming with 40k by just transferring my codex over, well that was until 8th came along. I tried using the fandex which is brilliant work, but it just wasn't the same.

So it was time for me to unpack my Astra Militarum (still getting used to calling them that) and take a look through the 8th edition rules properly and the AM Codex. Suffice to say I am loving them!

I've been looking through the codex, listening to podcasts (Forge The Narrative), and scanning through various blogs to look for consistent great units. With a tournament in mind next year and a desire to get a half decent sense of what makes a good army in mind I am embarking upon a review of what I think works well in the codex for me and fits with the models I have already (although I'm not ruling out the odd addition here and there).

8th Edition 40k - Flesh Tearers v Orks - comment on the game and rules

Rolling on for my 3rd game of 40k in 8th edition dad Steve challenged me to pit my Flesh Tearers against his Orks. He obviously wanted revenge for the loss his Blood Angels took last time and has put his faith in the dirty xenos greenskins - fool! I think Mephiston will show him the error of his ways!!

Pre-amble

This was going to be interesting. I had only ever faced Orks before in tournaments at Warhammer World where I was running my Emperor's Feth Astra Militarum army. These battles never ended well for the greenskins as 2 Manticores and a bunch of Leman Russ's tended to take care of them by turn 3! Now however I have a smallish more elite army that is mainly assault based - not a good match up for a dedicated assault army with lots of bodies that will effectively run me over.

Game 2 - 8th edition 40k - Thoughts and comments on the new system - Blood Angels v Blood Angels

For my 2nd match up I managed to get a game with dad Steve for the first time in a while for a head to head with my Flesh Tearers v his Blood Angels in an all assault clash!

This was always going to be an interesting battle as we both have a good amount of assault troops and so I was really looking forward to how the new assault phase works and how devastating it would be after the rumours I had heard that it was vicious. This would also be Steve's first game so we kept it fairly simple by using the same armies to help each other out with getting to know the new rules.

The Mission
We decided that we would keep it simple playing the standard Only War mission with 4 objectives and the battlefield was set up with an average amount of terrain (below)

Battlefield

The Armies
The two armies were 1500 points and assault based to the point that I brought absolutely no long range guns at all!!
I had a power level of 97 to Steve's 95 so we were fairly matched.

The armies

Rulebook Pictures - Warhammer 40k 8th edition

Hi all.

I have stumbled across some pics of the new 8th edition rulebook.
What do you think?

James

Shadow War Armegeddon - Prelude to 8th Edition 40k?

The release of Shadow War Armegeddon has certainly piqued interest in the Warhammer 40k community. The box looks amazing with some amazing terrain and 3 kill teams (2 x scout marine squads and 1 Ork squad) included.

The Rescue - Mission & Rules - Imperial Fists (Rich) vs Flesh Tearers/Astra Miltarum (James)

The Challenge
The challenge has been thrown down, a night has been arranged and the fluff has been written. Yes on Saturday evening Rich is coming over for beer and toy soldiers to my house to throw down some dice for the first time this year.

As we don't get to play too often (bloomin' kids) we love to have a bit of a story behind our games now that we are out of our 5th Ed. competitive stage. So the planning has been extensive over whatsapp deciding on mission, forces and story line. I thought that it was quite interesting and different and so here it is shared with you all.

It all starts with a map
Firstly as soon as Rich got the ok from his better half the first thing he did was draw a map...

He had this idea in his head about a rescue mission and that because we love playing Zone Mortalis he also wanted to incorporate his realm of battle and Zone Mortalis boards in the game.

Angels Blade - Blood Angels v Chaos Campaign Rules

As you should know I bought the Angels Blade supplement (Angels Blade review) to play a campaign against one of my friends and his chaos forces. As you also should know we were thoroughly disappointed that there was no sign of a campaign system in either Angels Blade or Traitors Hate!!!

As if I haven't got enough things to do I was still excited by the book and decided to write a campaign for the two of us, the dads and anyone else to play!!

I took inspiration, and stole content from, the campaign system in the Badab wars Imperial Armour books which are awesome.

I then wrote a brief background for each phase of the campaign from the Angels Blade book and ended up with four phases to the entire campaign. The winning side from each phase gets some sort of bonus to take into the future.

I also included different points values for different types of games depending on how relevant they are to the story being told in each phase. For instance in phase 1 for a normal game of 40k a win would be 1 point, for a kill team win you gain 2 points and for the special missions stated you gain 3 points. And yes to add some flavour and fun I stole a load of special missions from Angels Blade, The Badab Wars and Battle Missions.

The end result is far from perfect of course but is fun I think and should be good to play through.

At the current time I am dictating that the first phase will run for November and December to give us dads a bit of time to play some games!

So far 4 games have been played. Dad Steve has played 2 standard games of 40k with 1 victory each for Chaos and the Blood Angels while I have managed to sneak in 2 games of Kill Team again with 1 victory each for both Chaos and the Blood Angels.

Phase 1 scores so far:
Chaos 3 points
Blood Angels 3 points

If anyone wishes to play some games and let us know the results by all means post in the comments section to this post and i'll tot the phase 1 scores up. The forces don't necessarily have to be Chaos and Blood Angels either. One of my games included Astra Militarum on the side of the Chaos forces as a militia traitor guard force. You may decide that the Ultramarines have answered the call of help and come to join in, it really doesn't matter just let us know how you aregetting on!

For anyone who is interested the campaign PDF is attached below with a copy of the special missions.

All the best and have fun playing.

James

Campaign File
Special Missions File

fourdadsoftheapocalypse.blogspot.co.uk – A blog about Warhammer 40k and the Horus Heresy by four Dads

What apps do I use for Warhammer 40k?

There is no doubt that we live in a supremely technological age. I can't believe how lucky my children are with the information, fun and convenience that technology gives us these days. I was at university 17 years ago and having to trawl through journals and books in an actual library to research my dissertation. Then it would be a trip to photocopy a hundred pages to take home which would then be highlighted in different colours before finally writing up on a word processor!

These times are history now and all has changed except for the fact that I am not playing computer games, I am still playing with models on a tabletop.

So how have I moved on with technology to make my wargaming easier and keep me in touch with the wider community?

What apps do I use to 'plug in' to Warhammer?

1. Battlescribe
This has to be my most used app. One thing I love about 40k is list building. Should I put this unit in? Wait, what about that tank backing up that unit? How should I kit out my Death Company? It gets me thinking and imagining I am a tactical genius planning to take over the 41st millennium - I am definitely NOT this!

It can be complicated and time consuming though trawling through codexes and rules, finding out the point values and adding it all up. Luckily I found Battlescribe which I think is the best list building app out there. It can be awkward to set up and will take a few minutes to work out how to use it properly but once you get going you will soon have 15 lists to choose from. I love it!

2. Feedhammer
Feedhammer is a great app which has a number of blogs and twitter accounts on its list. As soon as there is a new tweet or blog post from one of these it appears on the feed. This allows me to keep up to date with what's going on easily and quickly without trawling Twitter or the internet.

3. Wikia - Warhammer 40k
What an incredible amount of information! Anything you want to know about the 40k universe is in here somewhere with pictures.

The info is split into categories to browse or there is a search function to get you what you need fast. Great resource.

4. ToF psychic phase
This is an app that works out the odds based on the number of dice you need to reach certain degrees of success. You can work out chances for both casting and denying in the psychic phase and it calculates your chances of suffering a perils of the warp too.
A great app for any psyker in your army.

5. Rules 40k
Want to know any rule in any codex or the main rule book? Its all on this app.
You can search or just browse alphabetically to find what you need. All special rules and rules for characters are here and are super easy to find in the middle of a game.

6. Pinterest
I use Pinterest as a source of inspiration. Searching on Pinterest is much easier than searching on the net for pictures and tutorials and a search for Warhammer 40k always brings up a wealth of pics and tutorials that are amazing to look at and easy to access. Pinterest is sorted into 'boards' too so accessing someone's board is an easy way to find pictures of a certain theme. In particular I really enjoy looking for dioramas and terrain which inevitably fuels my thirst for some hobby time!!

7. Whatsapp

I think that Whatsapp is the best way to communicate with your Warhammer buddies. Its free, quick, you can have conversations with groups of people and posting pics to each other is super easy to get feedback on models or relay battle reports. This is how the 4 Dads speak to each other everyday!

8. Twitter

Some people love it, some people hate it, I really enjoy using Twitter. It allows you to find out new information quickly and easily and interact with the community. I really like the convenience of Twitter and the fact that tweets are so short but allow you to click through to a blog post post or website if you want to. Of course the dads are on Twitter so follow us if you fancy on @4dadsapocalypse

So those are the apps that I use. Let me know if there are any other good apps out there that you use and what you think of the one's I am currently using.

All the best,

James