What kind of gamer are you?

Bear with me on this one, it might get a bit meta.

I started playing Drakar och Demoner, the Swedish-language local version of (GURPS, actually) D & D back in 1980-something with some local middle-school friends. Read Dragonlance books. Read Battletech and Warhammer and Tolkien and the first big 40K story that made a big impression on me - Deathwing.

Gang Wars/Necromunda style game in White Dwarf 207 (?)

Got the Blood Bowl game. Got Adeptus Titanicus. Got some 40K terminators but never actually played any of the games. Played computer games. Fast forward to 2002-ish when I got the Diablo bug while studying for a Master's Degree (during a blazing war out to sea in the Persian Gulf, no less - but I digress). D2X. Then World of Warcraft fairly hardcore for 4-5 years, off and on - see coldbear.wordpress.com

All this time I've been more interested in immersion and emotional feedback from games, than winning (I'm hugely competitive in many other aspects of my life, and like to win at games, too). Games are memorable when they create emotions. See http://liquidcode.org/~lostman/wow/dkeserver.se/stuff/angwe/

Warhammer Fantasy Battle unit platter

If there's no emotion involved, if there's no caring, no immersion, then it's just a game. Of course it's just a game, it's not real, it's play pretend. But if you can invest something in it more than just some dice rolls or hitting hotkeys, then there's something there - and a potentially huge emotional involvement and payoff. To a point.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle - not much terrain, eh?

Let's face it, most of us live fairly mundane lives (though I've seen the depths of the ocean at 2,000 ft, have been to one of the toughest military training programs on the planet, been close to death on plenty of rockfaces and been around the globe twice etc etc...). It'd be cool to step into something more exciting once in a while, with no risk. Therefore my computer gaming insistence on lack of UI and immersion and internal consistency and believability - let's not explain everything with the old "oh, it's magic."

Now for the Games Workshop/Warhammer focus bit. Some pictures first:

Mordheim?

 Ok, the pictures are gonna have to hang out on the side. Take a look through them.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle - no or little terrain, moving things around on platters. No immersion. Just a flat field and weird big platters taking up space and making it seem like the bases of a bunch of models have a really huge footprint. Let's not forget the "ok, now there's big magic flying bolts going off, and this guy here has a magic sword thing." The latter part which is purely imaginary - there's no visual representation, unless you're in a computer environment.

40K with more terrain than usual

Necromunda professionally done

Mordheim - tons of terrain. City stuff. Individual units. Campaign-focused or individual skirmish games with low-model-count. Lose one model and you care. Lose a few more and you're done.

Same with Necromunda, Coreheim, Deathsquads, ITEN, Killzone or any of a number of skirmish-focused Warhammer Fantasy/40K styles. This is where the models really look like they fit in. Small bases that don't obscure the terrain much, since the model is large compared to its footprint. Sure it's just a toy soldier, but darnit - it fits. It's not quite an awesome immersive experience, but pretty darn close.

Epic 40K

Mordheim

40K regular style. 2000 pts on a 6x4 table top. Tons of models. Individually moved models. Small bases or no bases in case of vehicles (I hate vehicles, it's silly to have flyers - hell no a fixed-wing airplane with wings and propellers/turbines isn't a skimmer - and in a small tactical situation). Fairly decent, better than WHFB for me, and a bit more believable with some terrain and whatnot. I'm not a big fan of units just unloading and moving 30" in a turn straight across the board, but what the heck. Now there's less magic and more just shooty guns stuff. That's a bit more immersive to me than big magic - there's a guy with a gun, he shoots, you can't see the bullets anyway so there's no break in the suspension of disbelief (minor and tenuous as it is).

I'd prefer 500 pts or 1000 pts and not so many vehicles and less movement per turn to make the field of battle seem larger and each turn be a "smaller snapshot in time" of the battle. I'd rather have an immersive simulation than a game that you just play to win with GK vs GK and silly things like that. I'd much rather have a story-line narrative tournament/campaign than just a straight-up measure of skill with diabolically and clinically even playing fields to make sure that skill is the only thing that comes out on top - similar to the arenas in World of Warcraft.

Squat Epic 40K

BFG/Aeronautica Imperialis/Man O' War - kind of special deals here in that there's little actual terrain, mostly just empty space, a felt mat or whatnot. Plus no-one really plays much AI/MOW anymore. I'd love to get me some AI. Either case you can see that the model is not dwarfed by the base as is the case in WHFB platter-syndrome. Still looks a bit weird sometimes though.

Epic 40K and Warmaster etc - big bases that clash with the background. You look like you're moving around little squares with pegs on them instead of units. No. I'd rather not. Epic 40K looks nicer and more impressive and immersive when you're talking Titans. Or Battletech style. Big models relative to base size. Especially if the underlying terrain is a contrasting colour. Pet peeve with me. Nice looking model on crazy base that clashes with the terrain and just ruins how it looks in play.

But then again many people don't agree with me. I'm ok with that. It's just a matter of finding like-minded people to play with. I'd love to play this girl's list: http://elorrahstormbringer.blogspot.com/2011/12/genestealer-overkill.html Yes, she's a real live girl that plays 40K.

Battlefleet Gothic

 So - what kind of player are you? Is it a game or a story or both or more of one and a bit of the other? Is it about painting and the hobby and the fluff or more about finding a way to win.

To each their own.

Finding players and Tragedy of the Commons.

Just discovered http://www.tabletoptournaments.net/ today. Great site. Started in Germany (lol I just love reading English written by Germans, in a good way) in 2004-2005, then spread South to other German-speaking countries, then France, the UK and now the US as well. It's well populated in Europe but there's precious little in the US part of the database. But it's a start if you're looking for things that you can't just walk into a local gaming store and get a pick-up game with on a Saturday afternoon.

http://www.tabletoptournaments.net/ 

So what's the problem here?

The problem is we have a bunch of specialist websites and forums. And we have Games Workshop shutting down their forums (for good reasons, imho). And we have a bunch of local gaming stores. All of whom want traffic to *their* website. Advertising revenue, building a customer base, building reputation and exposure. You have lists of players of X, Y and Z games on each website.

All of this results in a bunch of different actors taking a chunk of the players and gamers out there, depleting a common resource (hang with me here, I know it's a bit of a stretch, but you get the point) - people's time, effort and energy in regards to joining and registering on a website and posting what they're looking for, where and when and whatnot.

Not directly relevant.

Hell, we even had a new one launch just a few months ago. What the heck was he thinking, making one more website for gamers to find gamers - that will take how many months or years to get fully populated and actually useful? He was thinking - "I have a good idea and I'm gonna make it happen!"

More power to him. It's good thing that he's giving the other, stagnant but established systems/websites/resources a run for their money. But the community of geeks and gamers have yet to fully embrace anything other than their local group, and Facebook and Twitter (?) and Youtube - the latter three of which are pervasive due to their ubiquitousness outside of the subculture of gaming and geekery. In a few years some of these websites will establish dominancy. Til then we're kind of stuck in a rut. But check them all out and register on a few or all, especially if you're crazy enough to want to play some weird, unsupported Specialist Game like Dark Future - then you'll have your work cut out for you.

SIMPLE SOLUTION(tm) - Spread the word. Research. Register on what you find worthwhile. Tell your friends. Help expand the sites to make them more useful. Write a small blog post about it. BAM - you just made things easier for the next guy. Check back in a few months, maybe things will be useful.

Best battle report I've seen.

This comes up if you google "40K cool" images.

Creative as all hell. Tons of work went into it. After effects. Planning. Semi-professional camerawork with a tripod. No wonder that the latter stages of the battle haven't been completed, as this is a crapton of work.

That said - a few hopefully constructive criticisms. I'm not a fan of green playing surfaces. They end up contrasting a lot with bases and buildings and whatnot. Straight black usually works better, even given that many model's bases are black sides and some sort of "terrain-coloured" top of the base - or even worse, "special," with some sort of converted terrain piece addition like crystals or a piece of a ruin that makes the individual unit look great alone but doesn't blend at all with the actual table top gaming terrain environment. Black, grey, olive drab gaming surface and same with the model bases. Anything else just ends up looking very contrasting - but I suppose it's just a game after all and many people care more about how their models look alone or in the privacy of your own collection, or just not "boring."

#2 - individual units moving one by one looks a bit weird.

#3 - individual units in a crowd firing one by one looks a bit weird. A tactical squad all firing at once would have been very cool.

Both the above I'm inclined not to care too much about since this is a battle report, not an immersive simulation. The video is damn good, just a few things *I* would do different. Or try to. Mad respect to the people who did this. I'd try something similar, but on a smaller scale with fewer units. I have plenty of experience editing CGI gaming videos, but never messed with actual effects like these.

#4 - the buildings alternately look nice and just weirdly paper-y. Meh.

Starting to think that how people deal with this hobby is more and more a reflection of whether they want a game or a narrative, immersive story.

In other news dealing with the US health insurance/dental insurance system is a p.i.t.a. and complex as all hell.

P.S. I'm gonna try to get a "Flowchart Friday" fun series up and running. Sort of like http://forthebubbles.wordpress.com/tag/flowchart-friday/ First up will be some sort of take on "I want to play 40K..."

Ordo Xenos Inquisitor + Jokaero

Ordo Xenos Inquisitor + Jokaero

So my GK no GK no mech triple Assassin army list has an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor and monkeys in it. Jokaero, whatever.

Hmmm... not sure whether to call it a fluff list anymore, or just stupid. Or cool. Yeah, not really sure how to deal with this. Eh, *shrug*. I just want to play something cool with awesome stuff and have fun. I'm okay with only winning against bad players or horrible lists or people that I can manage to get drunk first.

6th Edition: Warhammer 41,000

IT IS THE 42nd millennium. The Tyranids have eaten Ultramar, the proud Ultramarines are presumed killed to the last man with a strike force lost in the warp. The commander of the Word Bearers sent a message of condolence to the High Lords of Terra, then curbstomped Cadia. Isolated fragments of the Cadian Guard and Titan units still hold out in the mountains, and some regiments were off-world. The Word Bearer's message was intercepted by Clade Vanus of the Officio Assassinorum but opened a warp-rift that destroyed 3 sub-levels of a hive. Clade Vanus was blamed, and a small war ensued for 13 months between Clade Vindicare, Clade Vanus and an Astartes garrison force. 5,000 citizens starved to death, too afraid to go outside during the war. One hive governor was shot at dinner, the rest of the guests were too scared to move and carried on dining around his corpse.

A Hive Fleet reached the doors to the Imperial Palace but was repelled, having taken down Earth's defenses with assimilated Eldar biotechnology and slaves. Ghostly apparitions are manifesting in the Imperial Palace. Necrons have all but conquered a sector in Segmentum Ultimus, Imperial Forces tactically advanced in the opposite direction while the Necrons were backdoor pummeled by Eldar, Orks and Eldar Renegades, the latter of which are lead by "a mysterious figure." Several High Lords of Terra flee to Maginor, face death by Orks, who ignore them in favour of attacking another Waaagh.

The Tau accidentally invade the Webway, and several large Tau fleets are now infested with Harlequins. Two never before seen Space Marine chapters appear and wreak havoc across multiple segments. Their chapter names are not confirmed, but it's along the lines of "Templar's Death Goth Angels." One Chapter Master, whose speech is near un-intelligble, has been lost in the Webway for millennia, doomed to slaughter and re-slaughter immortal Eldar spirits as well as lost Tau. He is sometimes able to surf a Tau ship into real-space but is forced back into the Webway by his honour oath to aid Ensign Amethystra Star Shinobi Aiko Pikard Janemay Sue, the troubled Medical Officer/Secret Inquisitor of the flagship Gloria Imperialis.

To sum up: Tyranids eat Ultramar and land on Earth. Necrons conquer a sector, and are in turn re-conquered. There is a mysterious figure. The Tau are lost in an Eldar bus terminal. Space Marines do their thing, with bad accents. The Orks go Waaaaaagh! The Blood Angels have not responded to questions about Necrons, other than to say "butt out."

In the grim dark darkness of the far grimness, there is only future, and it is grim. To be alive in such times is to have no clue what's going on, and you'll probably die before you're 40. With a headache.

Powerfist.

OP on a points-per-kill threat scale. Go away. Or up the cost. They should not be the sole go-to upgrade thing. Let other things play, too, like plasma pistols and power weapons and whatnot.

Randomness in 40K.

Randomness in 40K is a good thing. It's also bad.

It'd be boring if nothing random ever happened. If it was just a chess game and you moved them knowing exactly what would happen. There needs to be random stuff. There needs to be gambling on probabilities.

But some stuff is just wrong. Rolling for a new ability and looking in a table each turn.

Daemonhosts - roll each turn and check to see what ability you have. No. That should have been roll once before the game starts and pick two of the following abilities. Cost adjusted as necessary, or whatever. The thing is ridiculously underpowered and undercosted compared to the lore and fluff anyway. The Jokaero rolls before the game starts is perfectly fine, encouraged even. Your army just took a sudden turn in a direction you hadn't planned on. Adjust and play accordingly. That's great.

Doing that every turn is not so great. You don't want a "serious" game won or lost based on one dice that gave some weird unit some strange thing just for that one turn. That's not skill or exciting or cool. That's just a single dice roll that invalidated all the hard work that either of the players had done so far - unless you wish to claim that the skill is evidenced in getting the unit to a position where it could win the game dramatically in the first place. Which is a bit too meta for me. EDIT: then again, not like C:GK doesn't have a crapton of costly units already, so from a gameplay versus GK perspective this is understandable. But in that case I'd just as soon not have Daemonhosts in the GK codex. Cool model, cool concept, shouldn't be there, bad implementation. But then again, maybe I'm just another Dan Abnett fanboy and Daemons really should be 10 pts.

Coteaz' Psybereagle. Awesome little fluffy addition to a cool guy. No servitor skulls but we can forgive that, it's available via the Techmarine and another Inquisitor and the Grand whosyourdaddy anyway.

The Psybereagle gets D6 attacks. That's just another extra dice that needs to be rolled each turn. I'd be perfectly happy with just 2 attacks, cost adjusted maybe - or 3 attacks and same cost. One less individual dice roll each shooting turn is a simple way to speed up gameplay.

Orks are notoriously dice-roll-y for abilities and things happening. I'm fine with that. Some people love it. Cool. Let those people enjoy their thing, it's supported by tradition and the fluff and lore and all that. But the rest of the game could use with a bit less rolling one single die and looking in an obscure table each turn.

The dice rolling should mostly be confined to things that the players can easily keep memorized already, except for maybe some things here and there, big cool mega-important things. Not like some dipstick little 10-point underpowered daemonhost model that needs a D6 rolled each turn just to see what it can do.

Callidus

1. Callidus appears. D6 ST4 AP2 hits. Not specified if CC or shooting attacks.

I'd maintain it's either a CC attack or an unspecified "special" attack, but certainly not a ranged attack as the Callidus' ranged attack is a Template ST8* AP1 attack. (* Resolved against target's Leadership.)

Needs clarification.

Warhammer 40,000 Callidus Assassin
Nice inconspicuous long white topknot thing, etc.

2. Callidus can hit vehicles with the opening "Polymorphine" special rule attack. The Callidus' ranged weapon, the Neural Shredder, can not harm vehicles.

3. Callidus is placed within 3" of the unit, or where the unit was if destroyed. Nothing says a Callidus can't attack a unit locked in CC. No shooting can generally be done against a unit in CC.

4. Let's assume that the Callidus destroys the unit that was locked in CC. Does the friendly unit get a consolidation move? I'm inclined to say no.

5. Rule as written has the Callidus placed within 3" using Deep Strike rules - therefore can shoot but not assault that turn. This is somewhat ridiculous, but I suppose it could conceivably be overpowered if not. Weird. OP-ness must of course be measured against unit cost and synergy with the rest of the codex and weapons and likelihood of swaying a battle and fluff and lore and all that.

EDIT: Rumoured changes coming in 6th edition is Deep Striking units being allowed to shoot immediately upon entry into play. Maybe I'm grasping at straws here, but there's a few possibilities:
A. The rumour is full of crap.
B. Rumour true, but Polymorphine rule changes to make the Callidus essentially stay the same.
C. Rumour true, Polymorphine changes differently or is clarified or Callidus is otherwisely changed (my guess).
D. Rumour true, Polymorphine wording is unchanged, all of a sudden Callidus is looking a tiny bit better. Not good, but better.

Grenades, grenades and more grenades.

I have not read every codex. I haven't even read the entire rulebook in, oh, about 20 years. Maybe more.


But after checking out some Eldar and Eldar Renegades and Tyranids and the GK (I'm only there for the Coteaz + Henchmen stuff) lists I've come to a conclusion:


TOO MANY GRENADE TYPES.


How many does this game really need?
Frag
Krak
Blind
Smoke
Rad - umm, ok. A little shoehorned Mary Sue stuff never hurts. Well, it does, but not that much.
Melta bombs - sure, kind of like a satchel charge thingy. All right.
Plasma - ok, well known 40K stuff that goes boom.
Photon - wait, what?
Empyrean Brain Mines - dunno if this is even a grenade.
Psychotroke - huh?
Psyk-out grenades - the first thing I ever looked at in a 40K rulebook and went "dude, that's a stupid name." Come on, why not call it something like "Anti-psyker grenades".
Egerian Geode?
Haywire - ok, basic EMP thing.
Ork grenades - ok, sure, but why they couldn't just use the Krak stuff is beyond me.
Anti-plant - Agent Orange, sure.
Choke - what? CS?
Hallucinogen - do we need this and the Psychotroke?
Scare gas. Come on. How about just making that a possible result of the Hallucinogen ones?
Stasis - getting silly, now.
Tanglefoot - how about calling it "Web" or "Sticky" or "Glue" grenades?
Toxin - sure.
Vortex - still around?
Xeno filament - huh? Wouldn't that be peculiar to each race?


So what's the point?


The point is that there's too much stuff to keep track of for a new player - it should just be about 5-10 main choices and the rest "count as" or have a modifier to the result. There's only so much stuff you can do with explosives and their effect on an animal. You're an animal. Humans are animals. Tau and Eldar are animals. 


Let's say that the Tau designer wants to give his footsoldiers a close-in anti-tank weapon. He designs a cool, fluffy little self-contained robot that runs around autonomously and kills tanks. Or "counts as" a double melta-bomb, rather. There's no need to give the effect a new name, like "Chumba-Wumba grenade Mk 3" - just say "Melta Bomb x2" and move on.


Same thing with the weapons. There's inflation in number of different weapons and their ammuniton. Each new codex just has to have some "new" stuff. But really - there's only so much stuff you can fire out of the barrel of a gun until you run into warp magic or whatever. Let's keep it to "Armour Piercing ammunition" and "Armour Piercing +2" or similar. Make things easy for a player to relate to, even if they haven't faced that threat before. I should be able to look at a list and immediately know if their weapons/ammunition are a huge anti-vehicle threat, etc.


End rant.


EDIT: Fluff is nice. "Flesh hooks" for Tyranids is nice, and it'd be a bit silly to just give them Frag grenades. The "Flesh hooks counts as assault grenades" is a very nice way to give Lictors a small buff something while still keeping things nominally fluffy lore-wise. Solution would be to have the Army List info for Lictors read:


Lictor with Flesh hooks 6" 6ST Assault 2, Rending (also counts as Frag grenades)


That way any person not familiar with Lictors doesn't have to flip back to the Lictor-special fluff page to find the special rule, they just know that having the Flesh hooks gives the Lictor a pistol-type attack that also counts as having Frag grenades for purposes of Assaulting. Ta-daa! The fluffy-loving Tyranid player gets to keep his fluffy cool name "Flesh hooks" (because that *is* a pretty damn cool name) and the rest of us innocent victims get to quickly and easily figure out what the hell is up with this thing that's set to get sprung on my slice of cool mini dudes.

Rules, special rules, and special special rules.

There's no need to dumb down the game, but there is a need to stop making a new special rule for every single unit to the extent that there's an bunch of exceptions to every single basic rule, or even exceptions to already special rules where one USR trumps another.

• Rule: all units in this situation have a cover save, always.
• This USR makes this unit ignore cover saves. OK, WELL I GUESS NOT QUITE "ALWAYS".
• This new USR makes units with rules that ignore cover saves - no longer ignore cover saves. WAIT WHAT?
• This super mega new, really new USR ignores all other rules, and cover saves do not apply, no matter what any other rules say times infinity more than you can say. Nanananaanaana-naa. OH, CHRIST. REALLY?

WTF, dude. They need to organize this stuff. See more at http://kirbysblog-ic.blogspot.com/2011/06/in-defense-of-modular-rules-by.html

Or better example - what's that rule that is literally explained as "This counts as Fleet and Scout"?? Why not just say "Fleet & Scout" then, why have the special name that I don't recognize until I've played that unit/army/list a bunch of times?

New guy walks up to table with his unpainted group of whosyourdaddys with a not-yet-legal army list and not much clue other than a few days looking at the rulebook and having bought his own army's codex that afternoon.

He's now facing an "equal" points army list that's not ideal or perfect, but at least put together by someone with some clue about how an FOC works. He gets tabled. Again and again and again. 

Ok. So Warhammer 40K is a bit of an elitist system to get into, you need to know a lot of intricate stuff to stand a chance. It's unforgiving and not nice to new people. That's not cool. There needs to be some sort of learning curve and - wait, that's impossible, you're pretty much just stuck being at the mercy of whatever person you're playing against. And some people are jerks. Luckily there's also nice people. If you meet the latter, latch on to them and never let them go.

My argument: Any person should be able to read the "special rules" section of the basic rulebook and now have a basic idea of how things work - then get a printout with the army list and special rules for each unit/character in the opposing <Army he's never heard of> and stand a fighting chance at knowing what each unit is capable of and what could possibly happen.

Necron Lordylord with grenades, grenades, heavy cannon, supersafety armour and special rules Resistant to Bullets, Leader +5, Terror +2

2 squads of Skeleton Warriors with Armourpiercing +9 rifles, safety armour and special rule Resurrect 50%.

And so on and so forth.

Ok - new guy has never read the Necron codex or heard of Mr. Lordylord. But he saw the thing in the rulebook about "Resistant to Bullets", knows that a "Leader" can grant +5 to some Leadership roll army-wide, and obviously the Terror rule is something to scare his guys with. That's a good situation. Yes, the example rules are corny and the names are bad - hopefully you're smart enough to realize that they're just examples and I've never even looked at the Necron codex.

Here's reality:

Hive Tyrant - Monstrous Creature (more or less self-explanatory), Synapse Creature (what?), Scything Talons (what? why not just say "Rending Talons"?), Psyker, Shadow in the Warp (why not just call it Anti-psyker 12"?), Old Adversary - why not just say "Preferred Enemy 6" friendly units"? And I didn't even get through half the rules yet.

A new guy shouldn't have to stop, ask, borrow a book, flip back and forth and then still get his butt handed to him because he didn't understand the synergy between this or that special rule. Like a whatchamallit Eldar wizard dude in a transport escorting an Avatar with some wizard buff stuff. Rules don't need to have a special name every time.

There's no need to re-invent the wheel every time you write a new codex. Each new codex doesn't need to be better and stronger than the old ones. Hell - why even launch a brand new codex if the old old ones aren't updated yet?

Luckily Necrons are about to drop here in a week or two with - unluckily - some rather insanely overpowered rules. But each of the 4th Ed codexes should be updated before any new races or more likely - Spess Mehrine chapters - are introduced.

While we're at it, CSM chapters need their own codexes. Nurgle, Tzeentch, Khorne and Slaanesh all need their own. Orks need Gorka and Morka codexes.

End rant. 

What the hell was that?

That was a throwaway post on some random musings related to:

Getting back into a hobby that I put on hold back in 1989-ish.

What's cool in 40K:
Assassins
Inquisition
Scouts
Infiltrators
Genestealers
Eisenhorn
Bikes
Swarms
Fluff
Lore
The imaginary universe with the most amount of wasted person-hours. [Rough paraphrase of something I saw written.]

What's not:
Imbalanced gameplay. Outdated mechanics. Non-streamlined gameplay. New people having to know everything from 15 different books to get a good game going. Mech everything. Zoom across the board and pull your favourite move, slingshot, disembark forward or whatever silliness.

What else is cool:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dan-Abnetts-Eisenhorn-trilogy-should-be-made-into-movies/320023800200
http://www.thelordinquisitor.com/
Man O' War
Dark Future
Battlefleet Gothic
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Aeronautica-Imperialis/Rules_and_Accessories/AERONAUTICA-IMPERIALIS.html
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeronautica_Imperialis
Epic 40,000
Dark Elf assassins & scouts/skirmishers
Skaven assassins & scouts/skirmishers
Lizardmen chameleons & scouts/skirmishers
Eldar Renegades jetbikes & scouts/skirmishers (btw, the whole "Dark <something>" as a name for whatever ...needs to go away, it sounds silly. Same with Spess Mehrine vs. Astartes)

Aside: I'm with Aaron Dembski-Bowden on this thing. http://aarondembskibowden.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/

• “Why do you always say ‘Astartes’ in your novels?”

Because I hate the way “Space Marines” sounds.

They’re post-humans. They’re technically a different subspecies, vaguely similar to the way a mule is different from a horse or a donkey, but has bits of both. They’re Homo Astartes (stop laughing, you at the back), not Homo Sapiens.

“Space Marines” connotes something very lame, very generic, to me. “Astartes” doesn’t.

Gorkamorka is cool, too.
Dark Heresy.
Necromunda.
Mordheim.
Blood Bowl.

Not cool:
Necrons (the me-too evil robots with skull-faces race)
Race inflation
Codex creep
Mary Sue Grey Knights with blood all over them and a dude running around the warp doing his thing whatever.
Every unit having a special rule negating another special rule or a basic rule from, you know, the rulebook?

Starting to get the point yet? Probably not as no-one will read this for a while. The point is that games are there for fun and cool and awesome stuff. I'd rather pull off a cool move with cool stuff in one of 5 games than win 10 out of 10. But that's just me. I like winning, too.

So first up, Coteaz 1000 with no GKs, no vehicles and 3 assassins. Not competitive. Not  winning. But cool as all hell and might just be tons of fun. Add some tactics, some min-maxing and you just might be able to pull something off. Rock-paper-scissors weak against (I'm guessing, here)