Black Crusade: An Overview

Black Crusade: First Impressions

          Black Crusade by Fantasy Flight games retails in at £40.00 (best price £35.00 from IGUK with free shipping to the UK). Wow, just wow! It's been a long time since I've been looking forward to an RPG, and is this worth it? Well I'll let you know when we get a game going.

          Well now, I have some coffee and the rule book - let's have a read, shall we? Okay so what can you expect? Well after having a thorough flick through this 400 page core rule book, there’s a number of aspects which just seem, well, better.

          Character Creation: rather than the classic roll up your character, appearance, job this has been scraped. Now we run on archetypes. There are 4 space marine classes and 4 human classes, each of these relate to your archetype, in this edition it's not so much of a case of "what can I be," but "who do I want to be?" What is my goal as a servant of chaos? Each class panders to a different playing style, but at the same time makes the games more story driven (I'll get to that in a moment). So if you fancy playing the rogue Inquisitorial acolyte; or maybe a Imperial Guardsman who become disillusioned with his lot in life; you have the renegade as a template for your cunning (if manipulative) character. On the other side, perhaps you're thinking "I'm a lone wolf," maybe a loyalist marine who has broken form his chapter; or maybe you've always been servant of the dark lords, living a tribal existence with your battle brothers, seeking to carve your name as the butcher of worlds - then maybe the Champion or Forsaken space marine classes are for you. Each of course have their own strengths and weaknesses, but in the end it is balanced - the leaders amongst men, the cold killers, the manipulative spy, or the classic power-crazed psyker.

          To add to this you have 3 other traits: your motivation, your disgrace and your pride (optional to roll on) charts. These of course will effect your overall stats or corruption points and yet add in extra elements for GM and players alike to truly flesh out their character and add elements for the story; or maybe just to come back and bite the players on the ass (depending on how sadistic your GM is lol).

          Okay, the new and interesting element is infamy. Now the infamy has, to say the least, a wide and varied roll with your servants of chaos. Not only as a percentile stat to literally see if you are well known enough to get that few extra rounds of bolter ammo, or to go "hey night lord, do you now who I am!?" It also acts as this edition's version of fate points, however there is a limit depending on how much infamy you have, limiting your 'fate point' options. Infamy can be easy gained (or lost) through actions with your peers, or to the chaos gods themselves. The ideal goal being - have more infamy than corruption points, but these can be barged with your dark patrons perhaps to gain a gift, or maybe to remove that new tentacle you acquired last mission. It's a very interesting stat, but it does have one other use! As a being of darkness and paragon to the dark lords you can spend your infamy points to avoid death! And trust me, it's normally a heavy price.

          All these things combined can lead to very interesting and unique story campaign! Especially when you have the missions. Now, like Deathwatch you have set tasks and objectives; however it's not so much the GM going "okay, go here do this" (and puts few little extras in to see if the players will gain that bonus exp). It seems to me more case of: GM sets up the world, say there’s and imperial bastion on this world. Thanks to it the mutant populous is kept under strict control. It's then the player's that go "well this needs to be taken out! So we can purge the servants of the corpse emperor (primary objective)."
          "Okay, how we going to do this?"

          "Well, we could get the mutants to rise up as a distraction (secondary objective)."

          "Okay, what about weapons? Well intelligence says the bastion receives weapon and equipment shipments via mag rail."
          "Okay, we'll take that out and supply the mutants!"

          One player could go "Okay, I'm tech user. I could probably hack in to the sever if we can get inside and disable the defence systems (adding something of his own skills to the plan)."

          "But wait, if we do this right we could cause enough slaughter and appease the blood god (now you have something else to offer coupled with favour of the chosen patron)."

          "We'll need explosives. I can get my contacts off-world to help," says the former inquisitor...

          And so on. By the end of it you may just have a incredibly detailed plan or not. This of course will gain the players infamy and respect; hell even a war-band of mutant rebels. However plans may not go to smoothly, the GM does have cards up his sleeve in the form of complications, unknown to the players. These vary, making the mission more of a challenge. So in this example, perhaps the supply train was early and won't be around for the next month. Perhaps a Sister of Battle contingent has arrived and gone on a pure, thus upping the stakes and plausibility of the plan. Maybe it's just plain bad intelligence and the mutant populous would rather stay in the hovels or even still loyal to the Imperium... any number of factors could help or hinder; and of course failing will come at a price, but the rewards for victory will be great.

          Okay what I have missed oh yes... due to the sheer nature of the chaos gods each potential patron has set stats, skills and traits associated with them. Such as Khorne favours strength, Tzeentch willpower and its intelligent booting/psi-power-ness etc. It's not strictly necessary as you can stay 'unaligned.' However, periodically as you purchase upgrades, new skills and what-not there will be a point where maybe you've got more Khornite abilities than say Nurgle related ones. So you can become aligned to your patron. For every 5 skills/upgrades you have with on patron or another coupled with periodical checks every 10,20,40 corruption points, you become aligned... what’s the benefit? Cheaper upgrades! If I've become more battle orientated as soon as I favour Khorne over the others, I can then purchase skills etc. at say, tier 1, or simple advance at only 100 exp rather than 250. However the gods don’t exactly favour each other, so say you're suffering in the toughness department. Being Khornite you look at your chart and see that toughness is a Nurgle skill, Khorne will tolerate Nurgle, meaning rather than simple advance of 100 (for Khorne) you'd pay 250 exp or maybe you think willpower (Tzeentchite) needs boosting. Well needless to say Khorne and Tzeentch don’t get along. That'd cost you 500exp... so it is a bit of double-edged sword. As long as you have a balance you can stay unaligned as long as one set of skills/talent/advances doesn't exceed 5 over the others of another patron.

          So as you can see it's shaping up to be a very interesting and diverse game, this one! Oh, did I forget to mention you can fight Necrons!? And Dark Eldar!? Oh yes it's all at your finger tips.

          How the game plays? Well I'll let you know once I scour the depraved pits of Brierley Hill and drum up some willing (or unwilling) candidates who wish for nothing more than to stick it to the Imperium or maybe see what fate the lord of change has in store. Until next time, this is the Dm reminding you that you do get to re-roll one stat, but you must keep the second result!

Sisters of Battle: Old vs. New? Pandora speaks!

          Hey there, Pandora here.

          Like a lot of people I have been waiting a very long time for Games Workshop to re-launch the Sisters of Battle. After a long absence from the shelves I was starting to worry that nothing would ever get done with them and they would disappear. Well now they have finally released the new rules, not as a Codex but as articles in White Dwarf. After such a long wait that was a big let down - this army has a hugely loyal fan base, so why such a low key re-launch? The Grey Knights got all of the usual GW fanfare when they were relaunched. Still, the articles are better than nothing, so I got the 2 issues and have spent the last few weeks trying to decide how I feel about the new rules and set up my army.

          As it stands there are good and bad points, so lets start with the basics: the Sisters of Battle as a force have now been moved away from the Inquisition and closer to the Ecclesiarchy. This, of course, means no more Inquisitors on the field, including Karamazov. This in turn means no more inducted Imperial Guard or Space Marine units. This is the start of the problem as this has limited the options for a lot of categories. Although the Sisters of Battle units can hold their own on the battle field, having the extra options to play with was helpful. For example, I would always field Imperial Guard Rough Rider Cavalry as a fast attack option, as their points cost was fairly low, and have some awesome weaponry. Now however your fast attack options are limited to Seraphims and Dominion squads.

          There have been some new additions - there are now 2 new named HQ units and the option to have a Confessor and Battle Conclave. The Battle Conclaves and Cannoness Command Squad are now much more like the Inquisitor retinues, there are a few options for what units to include, each with their own unique statistics and special rules. This makes them well worth their points cost. Death Cult Assassins and Arco-Flagelants can now only be fielded as part of a Battle Conclave, which I think is awesome because I am a massive fan of the Death Cult Assassins, and I can now field them and still have 2 other elite choices.

          I have also been looking on the GW website, as all the models have been sold out for a very long time. For some reason, I'm guessing to make more money, squad size box sets now seem to have vanished from the site. All that seems to be on there is the blisters of 3 standard Sisters, with all Superiors and special weapons sold separately. For me this isn't such an issue as I have a fairly sizeable force already; but this would put me off if I was just starting out. I don't get this at all, this and the lack of a proper Codex makes it seem that GW thinks of this army as one that won't attract new players, which would also explain why no models are back in stores.

          Before this all gets too negative there are some good things about the new rules. The Acts of Faith have always been a great special rule, and in the new rules they have gotten even better: instead of having a total for the length of the battle, they are now rolled at the start of the players turn. As each Act of Faith costs 1 Faith Point - that's potentially 6 Acts of Faith per turn. In the new rules each unit type has it's own Act of Faith, and they all seem well thought out and compliment the unit's strengths. For example if the Act is successful, Repentias that are taken down in close combat get an extra attack at the end of the phase; Dominion squad's weapons count as twin linked and Seraphims get to re-roll any failed to wound rolls. As the rules are used in different phases, depending on what they affect, this makes planning how to use them much easier; and because the Faith Points are 'per turn' it gives the player more freedom to use them.

          The Shield of Faith rule is another of the army-wide special rules that has changed. This one I am still not sure which is better: old or new. The Shield of Faith special rule used to mean that any minor psychic power would automatically fail and on a roll of a 5+ any psychic power would be nullified. New rules mean all models with that special rule have a 6+ invulnerable save. After being at the wrong end of AP1 weapons in the past, even that small chance seems like a bonus; but I did like messing up players who liked to use psychic powers. The jury is still out on that one for me.

          Time to talk points values now. There hasn't been many massive changes points-wise. The biggest one being Saint Celestine, who has dropped from 201 to 115 while still keeping most of her special rules (all the good ones). Most of the other points changes are one or two either way, so won't have a great effect on points totals for standing armies such as mine. There has also been little in the way of statistic changes, which I'm not too surprised about as the stats, as they stood, were pretty good.

          So, which is better: new or old? To be honest I still haven't decided on that one. I would have liked to have seen more new models and more choices added. The new Acts of Faith rules are awesome. Most of the unit special rules have stayed the same. Also, there is now no war gear allowance for the Cannoness, which I would like back. I still think the Sisters of Battle have enough fire power and tricks to take on armies as well as they used to, which is the main thing!

Space Marine game - the early report!

Space Marine game - the early report!


Dm here as one of the major 40K fans has literally received a text message giving first impressions of the new Space Marine game via our gaming guru Marty the Elf (since he has the money LOL)!

And I literally quote:-

the campain is short and theres a set up for a sequal,
i recon it was the right length
tho the game does get a little repetative and i think much longer it may have dragged
this way i squish ork and it just feels right lol :)
yea the last boss is a little meh but alright
oh and any time you get a thunder hammer and jet pack
fun happens!


(He hasn't yet played online, though this will be his next conquest).

So there you have it, Space Marine in a nut shell (at least until we can steal his copy lol). So from one 40K fan to another it really does seem to be a fun game, with what seems like distinctly memorable moments.

We shall have more information in the near future.

Dm reminding you when your dice fail get new ones. :)

Space Marine Demo Impressions - Part 2

Space Marine Demo Impressions - Part 1

Auros and the DM give their first impressions on the Space Marine demo. FOR THE EMPEROR!!!