Warhammer 40K 8th Ed game

Fg and I tried our hand at the 8th Edition of Warhammer 40K on Sunday. He drew up two lists of just below 50 Power points, which he told me was equivalent to around 1000 points in conversion. This still gave more than 70 figures on the side of the Imperial Guards, and around half that on the side of the Space Marines.

The Guard position from the Marines' point of view.

We played a Blitz scenario, which had the guards defending two defensive lines across the width of the table. This was a chance for me to lay out my sci-fi shanty town terrain, plus all the barricades, crates and oil drums we had between us. The result, as you can see, is a rather formidable position.

Ratling snipers take up position at a vantage point.

The Commissar standing at the front, inspiring the guardsmen.

The rules weren't difficult. Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill are now expressed as number needed to hit, which takes away one byte of brain function. Calculation of the "to wound" number is also made easier, and in a game where most figures on each side have the same Strength and Toughness, it became easier after a while. Calculating Saving Roll was also easy. Morale too was simple to adjudicate.

However, with more than a hundred figures on the table, and with most of the Guards figures able to shoot due to their well-prepared position, this meant more than a hundred die-rolls per turn. The game took less than three hours, but felt longer.

Assault Marines reach the defence position.

Over all the rules do seem easier that those of 7th edition, but 50 Power points does seem a bit much for beginners like us. I imagine a 750-points game to be what we should be aiming for.

Spartan Scenics Warehouse Accessories

I use battlemaps and miniatures for my RPG games, and a couple of sessions back I realised that I needed more cover for my battles. A bit of googling found the Warehouse Accessories set from Spartan Scenics. It was expensive (28 GBP) but it looked good, so I decided to get a box. After all, it can also be used for whatever sci-fi skirmish game we play, and we all know that sci-fi worlds all have random crates lying around when a firefight starts.

Thank goodness the umpire placed some crates right where I needed them.

The pieces are resin, and very well-cast. The lines and straight, the details sharp, and there is flash only at the bases of the pieces (where the "bottom" of the mould is, or the top, but you get the idea). The crates are just tall enough to give 28mm figures half-cover, There are also six biohazard containers in the set, but the yellow spray paint I used gave a very uneven coverage of the pieces, so I decided to leave them aside to be fixed another day.

I sprayed the pieces with a grey primer, and then sprayed the base colour for the pieces. The olive drab military-looking ones got some white decals I have left over from some WW2 German kit and some light weathering with black paint, while the beige, civilian-looking ones got black decals and moderate to heavy weathering with brown paint, as did the yellow pallets.

I am very pleased with the quality of these pieces, and if you are looking to give your guys some cover in your games, I recommend you pick a box up too.

August Giveaway

I was going through my box of starships stuff looking for a model to use in my Space Opera RPG when I came across these.

They are supplements for converting Starfleet Battles ships into Starmada Admiralty Edition which I bought a long time ago but never ended up using - Starmada Compendium was the last iteration of the rules that had the Shockwave weapon which I used for my Lyrans, and in this conversion they had it as a purely defensive thing. Pathetic.

Anyway, seeing them again led me into thinking about starship battles again, and I bought the Federation Commander Reference Rulebook and a couple of Ship Card Packs for the Klingons and Lyrans... at least they are all electronic and won't take up space (heheh).

Anyway, if you want these items, do leave a comment and I will draw a recipient on 01 Aug. This is not a first-come, first-serve offer.

The offer is free: once I let you know that you have won, do let me have your email address and I will send them off to you. You don't even have to pay for postage.

Good luck!

Also, there were no entries for the July Giveaway, so I am repeating that offer again this month and making the draw on 01 Aug too.

And, will Michael Mills contact me so I can send you your prize from the June Giveaway please?

Thank you.

Federation Commander

I was digging through my box of starship stuff the other day looking for a model to use in the next session of my Space Opera RPG campaign when I found my SFB-Starmada conversion rulebooks. I bought those hoping to use them with my collection of models, but as they didn't give the Lyran ESGs the respect they deserve (relegating them to a purely defensive role), I never ended up using them. So the three books will go up in my August giveaway, which will be announced later this week.

The encounter prompted me to finally buy Federation Commander and try the rules out. I played Starfleet Battles almost 30 years ago, late to the party in a group with a few dedicated players, each of whom specialised in a race. The Lyrans were the only unclaimed race at that point in time, and as it turned out it suited my temperament, and I have been playing Lyrans (exclusively but not expertly) since, even when I started playing Starmada (Compendium edition, where their Shockwave rule sufficiently replicated the effect of the ESGs).

As anyone who has played the game will know, SFB isn't an easy game to learn or play, but back then we had the time and mental capacity to assimilate large amounts of information. I actually learned the rules by watching and playing, and never actually read the rules myself.

When Federation Commander came out several years ago I looked at the reviews, but ultimately decided to stick with Starmada Compendium (never moving on to the other editions of the Starmada franchise because they dropped the Shockwave and did not replace it with anything replicating the effect). But despite the ease of play and the ability to handle a larger number of ships, we stopped playing after a while, and once in a while I still felt the itch to allocate energy and do movement by impulse...

So I bought the Federation Commander compilation rules, a few ship card packs, and wahj and I played a game of it yesterday.

We got some of the rules wrong (as usual when playing a new set of rules), but while some aspects of the rules are vastly different from SFB, there was enough of the elements that made SFB what it is to make it familiar yet new. A game between a Heavy Cruiser and a Battlecruiser took 90 minutes. A lot of time was saved by not having to allocate all the energy in advance, but things like deciding where to move, rolling to hit and rolling for damage still took the same amount of time as it did in SFB.

I liked the rules enough to want to play again; it is also very easy to set up, which is always a plus. wahj plans to buy a few more ship packs to cover some of the other races, in particular the Romulans (who under the FC Cloaking rules look rather nerfed). As for me and my household, we will continue to play the Lyrans.