Don’t get me wrong I love 40k, always have done and always will do but with the announcement of Warhammer 40k Seasons on December 28th, I’m beginning to tire of the amount of books needed to play a game.
In 1992/93 when first entered the 40k world all the books you needed were the books in the 2nd edition boxed set (of which there were three) and your armies codex (once it got released).
As a way of comparison looking at the Blood Angels, you need the Rulebook (core rules are free but what about all the other bits you may want such as Crusade) for £40. Then you need the Space Marine Codex (£30), followed by the Blood Angels Codex supplement (£17.50). That’s a total of £87.50 without any models.
Now if you want to take part in tournaments and the Warhammer Seasons (which will change every six months) you’ll need Chapter Approved for a further £25 followed by the seasons book which I imagine will be another £25. That brings you to a grand total of £137.50 plus £25 every six months.
This is becoming tiresome. Especially compared to other games companies out there.
It’s finally time to announce the winner of our painting competition who, with thanks to SCN Hobby World, will walk away with a start Collecting! or Combat Patrol box of their choice.
There were so many great entries to the competition and I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to take part and also to my fellow judges, Sarah, Ed, Declan and Rhys.
Marks were awarded out of ten for each miniature by each judge on the panel, and it was a very close run contest!
3rd Place – Antonio Rodrigo & Justin Jackson
The judges just couldn’t separate between the two miniatures with both receiving the same scores across the panel. So both Justin and Rodrigo will walk away with a £10 Games Workshop voucher.
2nd Place – Joseph Isham
In second place and winning £20 of GW vouchers in Joseph Isham who submitted this awesome Space Marine Chaplain conversion.
1st Place – Steve Milford
In first place and walking away with the inaugural Woehammer Painting Competition top prize is Steve Milford and his excellent Relictor.
As I said before the standard really was very high with only 6.5 points separating the top six positions!
I hope you have all enjoyed taking part, and again I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Sarah and SCN Hobby World for sponsoring this event and providing the top prize!
A little progress this week, and I’ve decided to stick with the rug which I’ll now paint up and get ready.
I’ve also found an original Rhino model, albeit heavily converted that I’m considering painting up fully.
Unfortunately it is missing the hand rails (as all of them eventually break off), but it’s in fairly good condition otherwise and just needs a good paint job.
I’m hoping next week I’ll have gotten a lot further with Marneus and have the diorama somewhere near finished. Still need to create the flags though…..
In my summary post of 2021 I promised that we would be posting more tactica and army lists in the coming year. What better way to start that than with a kit I received for Christmas?
So the first question is what should you build? As with all tank kits I personally feel they’re way to expensive to build as a single kit with set loadout so like with all my other kits I will be magnetising the kit to make both the Manticore and the Deathstrike – I’ll post a how to once I’ve figured it out myself! 🙂
Manticore
Courtesy of the GW 40k app and Warhammer+
The Manticore is almost a standard go to unit for competition Militarum lists, with board wide range not needing line of sight and 2D6 shots hitting at S10. You only have four rockets per game, but on average a single rocket can deliver 3 hits and will wound T5 targets on 2+. But you’re probably not going to want to expend your ammo on troops, but the enemies much loved tanks however are a different kettle of fish. This will wound most tanks on 3+ meaning out of your seven shots, two to three will wound on average, with one or two of those likely to get through the targets armour after the -2 AP. With D3 damage per hit which can be improved to a flat 3 damage if you give Tank Aces: Full Payload, this will mean you’re taking on average between two to three wounds off your target in the turn (or 6 with Full Payload).
Target Toughness/Save
Av Shots
Hits
Wounds
Unsaved
T6+ with 3+ Save
7
3.5
2.3
1.5
Up to T5 with 3+ Save
7
3.5
2.9
1.9
Now that doesn’t sound ground-breaking, but remember that’s average, if you’re rolling well and you have Full Payload equipped the tank will do a further three wounds for each unsaved hit, that’s some serious punch.
The drawback is the Militarum ballistic skill, with 4+ only half your shots may hit your targets. You can improve this, firstly with an additional five points you can purchase an Augur array which will allow you to re-roll a single failed hit roll per battle for that Manticore, well worth the points if successful.
For one CP you can also use the Direct Onslaught stratagem from Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good. This allows the Manticore to add 1 to its hit roll if it can see it’s target.
I would take two Manticores in any list where I’m looking to include them. Keep them out of sight and just use them to bombard enemy high toughness targets. You’re taking two for redundancy options as your opponent will soon destroy them once he realises what they can do.
Make sure you include the 5pt Hunter-Killer missile for the single S10 shot that’s AP-2 and can do D6 damage (or flat 6 if you have Full Payload equipped). Worth the points! I then choose the Heavy Flamer and Stubber for defensive purposes in case anyone decides to charge it.
Manticore (160 points) – Augur array – Heavy Flamer – Heavy Stubber – Hunter-Killer missile
So the results of last weeks votes are as follows:
Factions
Now we’ve got most (if not all) of the basic information in place for our game we can start getting our hands dirty with some of the nitty gritty stuff. Firstly, should we have pre-made ready to go factions or should players have options to construct their own units for their own faction? This would make the game miniature agnostic but it would also require players to take the time to build a faction from the ground up, i.e. this is a leader unit it needs this particular weapon, with this armour and these special rules.
Of course we could always have a mixture of both pre-made and create your own. But what do you think?
Turn Order
This is about how the players determine who goes first. There are many options for this, but I’ve narrowed this down to two or three, but bear 🐻 in mind these can also have vary to some extent. For example, while AoS is a UgoIgo system it also implements the turn priority in terms of a dice roll before each turn.
I Go You Go
This is the first and possibly most common option used. Players use a mechanic to determine who goes first and then play is simply alternated between the players until the end of the game.
Draw
Players use coloured dice or chips to represent their individual units on the table e.g. one players units are represented by red dice while the others are blue, when a red dice is drawn the red player chooses a unit to activate. This system will be familiar to those who have played Warlord Games Bolt Action.
Initiative
This could either be an army wide initiative rating or individual initiative ratings for units to decide what order they act in. For example, elite units may have a much higher initiative than conscripts meaning they’ll always act first.
Bidding
One of my personal favourites is using bidding systems to determine who acts first. This can take various forms such as rolling a number of orders each side can take on two or three dice then giving up a number of those orders to try and claim the priority that turn.
So which is your favourite? Perhaps there’s one I’ve not even thought of, I’d that’s the case why not add a comment below?
So the deadline has closed and the judges are reviewing the miniatures and giving their scores. We will announce the winner on Friday 7th January where they’ll be asked which Combat Patrol or Start Collecting box they would like as their prize.
This has all been made possible thanks to our amazing sponsor SCN Hobby World, where you can get up to 25% off your miniature orders!
Did you know that Woehammer have a Facebook group? Why not head over there and post some pictures of your miniatures, we’ll include them in monthly hobby summary alongside our own.
I’ve seen a few others post their blog stats and as a massive geek I always find stats interesting. So for those like minded individuals here’s our first few months as stats!
We started posting in July this year with one or two posts, which then picked up in August until we were then getting to the point of posting once a day (sometimes more).
Views by Month
July – 74 Views
August – 1,378 Views
September – 3,021 Views
October – 5,907 Views
November – 12,049 Views
December – 29,767 Views
For me this is staggering, in September I was over the moon with 3k views and had the personal aim of a 6% improvement month on month, however we’ve smashed that by essentially doubling the views we get each month.
I’m fully aware that this will not continue into 2022, but to come off a month where we achieved almost 30,000 views after only being around for a little under 6 months is great!
What’s also pleasing is that when we do get a visit to the site people are more than often viewing another article after their initial visit, with the average visitor viewing 1.65 articles each.
What’s being Read?
By far our most popular posts are the Top Three lists for competitive tournaments. These fill out five of the top right posts. So be assured you’ll see more of these in 2022.
Where are the views coming from?
This is possibly the most interesting part for me as initially a lot of the traffic in the first few months was driven by posts shared on Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. In August our top traffic source was Reddit (144 views) followed by Twitter (47 views), and while these continue to contribute major traffic sources for us, they have now been overtaken by search engines with the WordPress Reader App also contributing a large chunk of traffic.
Traffic Sources for December
This is likely to be due to us posting an article once a day and the various search engines starting to show these more regularly purely due to the amount of content we now have.
Who reads us?
It’s no surprise that we appeal to the English speaking world primarily, though we do have a high readership from many of the other European nations (yes, I consider us to be European despite the catastrophe that is Brexit).
So what next?
Well we already have plans to improve upon our top three lists postings with more in-depth analysis of the lists. We also have numerous tactic articles planned out as well as beginner army suggestions for each faction in AoS and 40k. As well as this I’m hoping to improve the look of the site itself as well as getting one or two more regular writers.
Either way, I wanted to thank all those who have visited us and my fellow Woehammerers Declan, Ed and Dave a Happy New Year, and here’s to an even better 2022!
About a month ago, the legend that is Dave invited me to play a few games of Warhammer Fantasy with him in the coming year. I jumped at the opportunity, and what better army to play with than my old Dwarfs!
I’ve always had a soft spot for these boys ever since I started in Warhammer way back in 93′.
This would also be the perfect opportunity for me to start rebasing them back on to their proper SQUARE bases as is only right! It also means that by the time Old World gets released I may have a fully painted and functional army from the off!
We’re starting out in Fantasy with the Grudge of Drong as Dave has previously mentioned, and for the first battle in the series I need to muster a small force of 1,500 points.
The first battle takes place in Grudge Pass as an Elven force blocks the road to advancing Dwarfs looking to topple Queen Helga from her throne whom the Elves have allied themselves with.
In this case, Dave is replacing the Elves and using his old Empire army. However, I will be using the Dwarfs. The suggested order of battle is below, but this is a 5th edition campaign box and we’re going be playing with 8th edition rules so I will need to adjust this slightly.
We’re going to be using 8th Edition rules, so my force will look something like this:
Dwarf Lord
Master Engineer
Runesmith
Battle Standard Bearer
15 Warriors
10 Warriors
10 Longbeards
10 Thunderers
10 Ironbreakers
10 Miners
10 Miners
This is by no means a competitive army , but then its not meant to be as this is a narrative campaign and we’re playing to act a story out rather than attempting to table our opponent.
Some of these models are already painted, they just need rebasing!
I’ve still a fair whack to get through as well as rebasing the above models!
