Whole Day Session:

This month the Warhammer Fantasy Battle tournament is being held. So far the following club members are participating:

Robert Davies, Kevin Carberry, Bryan Orsbourne, Peter Colson, Glenn Orsbourne, Robert Groom

Ivan Soo, Jarrod Finlay, Damien Morley, Matene Uataki, Manoj Parsot

Participants will play four games each during the day. If you want more information or to join in the see Kevin Carberry who is organising this tournament.

Other games are welcome to be played as well!

Afternoon Session – 1pm to 4.30pm:

Allister Nicholas v Raymond Campbell GorkaMorka 100teef

New members and club fees:

We have a lot of new and ex-club members returning to the club in droves. Fees for the rest of this year are $20 each, payable now if you still want to come to club meetings! Most of you (and you know who you are) have come to the last couple of meetings for free, so now is the time to show your commitment to the club and pay your fees. Sorry to take such a hard line but it is not fair to expect financial members to support the gaming of this influx of people. We have to pay for the use of the hall, so if you want to play then please, please, pay! See Bryan with your payment by the next meeting at the latest (or I’ll send "Killer" Kevin and Robert "Dictator" Davies round to see you – now you wouldn’t want that, would you?!) Seriously, enuff said?? Take the hint.

Dogs of War – the new mercenary book for WHFB:

Did you know that there are going to be multiple Dogs of War books? The first one contains mainly troops from the Border Princes and lands to the south of the Empire though there are a few different troop types.

To take a Dogs of War regiment you must buy the Hero (who the regiment is named after) plus four other models to make the regiment up to the minimum of five. You can then buy as many additional troopers as you require. Dogs of War come out of your ally points unless you are playing a Dogs of War Army.

Some of the regiments in the book are:

• Three different pike regiments. Pikes attack in four ranks, always go first and have several bonuses against cavalry. Basically don’t use mounted troops against pike blocks. One of the pike regiments is based on the theme of a leopard.

• Two Crossbow Regiments. One is very similar to the normal Tileans you get in the Empire book whilst the other uses heavy armour and an oversized shield giving you a save of 3+. The figures are called the Crossbowmen of Mirangillano – and hey they’re Empire crossbowmen. These are nothing special though the standard bearer is nice. The crossbows are a seperate piece. They look very similar to the Tilean crossbowmen already available and I’m sure that you would have no problems using these older figures mixed in with the new.

• Crossbows on hangliders! Sounds an unusual troop type?

• Dwarf Slayer Pirates. These use pistols and have enough that they can fire two shots a round without ever having to reload.

• Galloper Cannon.This can move 8" and still fire. This mini consists of a light cannon which is on a towable carriage. You get three crewmen, one of whom rides on the horse towing the gun.

• Golfags Ogre Mercenaries - one of the old time favourites returns.

• Renegade High Elf Dragon Rider.

• Norse Werewolf type people.

I just picked up some more 3^rd ed. WH40K rumours:

• The new plastic SM’s have "ball-joint" shoulders that will allow a great variety of poses. Jes Goodwin has done them.

• A plastic landspeeder in the boxed set looks like a distinct possibility.

• New Orks (brutish look ala Gorkamorka) seem very likely. That would explain why Brian Nelson has been quiet for a while now.

• Space Marines will be getting an overhaul (again) in 3^rd ed. Their stats will allegedly be improved (boring) and they will gain some benefit from their power armour (not sure what, although moving and firing heavy weapons with a penalty is one possibility).

• The rumours about the timeline moving forward (ala WH50K) appear to be true. Here comes the freaky stuff...

• The Emperor "dies". Not sure how, but I think Cypher is in there somewhere (see later). As his final act he uses an enormous psychic burst to annihilate a huge Tyranid hive fleet that was on its way toward Imperial space and would have caused havoc if it had been allowed to arrive. Whether or not this has a knock on effect (like conveniently making navigation easier/possible) is anybody’s guess.

• Humanity is plunged into disarray. Rumour suggests that there is hostility amongst the SM chapters. Humanity is divided and vulnerable.

• The Dark Angels are finally redeemed (probably due to Cypher’s actions, again see later).

• The Space Wolves and the Ultramarines merge (!?) to form a single chapter. (I find this hard to believe, but it could be true if they set up in opposition to the Dark Angels).

• The Blood Angels’ flawed gene-seed deteriorates to the point where the chapter is doomed to die. In desperation and in an Attempt to survive they turn to Chaos for help (!?!!).

• The Primarchs return (not Sanguinius because he’s dead and his chapter may just have gone bad anyway).

• Seeing a great opportunity to crush the Imperium, Chaos attacks. The Eldar, now fewer in number than ever, realise that humanity is the only race capable of standing against Chaos in the long term. They also see that in humanity’s current divided state they are an easy target, so the whole Eldar race jumps into harm’s way in an effort to hold Chaos off while humanity sorts itself out.

• The Dark Eldar and the Necrons are actually part of the same army (sounds wild, but I heard this a couple of months ago from a completely different source so I wouldn’t bet against it).

• The new leader of the Imperium is... wait for it... Cypher. He was on a secret quest for the Emperor all along. There may be mention of Sensei and Illuminati too, conclude what you will.

Pretty much all of the codexes would need revision, but new army lists for them could appear in the boxed set "Black Codex" pending a re-write of each race. A host of new models could be released without making old models obsolete (apart from the Blood Angels, if that bit is true), so nobody would have any real axe to grind. Would they Kevin and Glenn?

If the rumour about selling the shrinkwrapped rulebooks separately was also true I’d call this a potential winner!

The original thought of WH50K didn’t sit well with me but the more I think about it the better it sounds. A stagnant universe is boring, change is good for gamers and game designers. Moving the date to 50K wouldn’t invalidate anything invented in 40K, but the new framework could allow for so much more. I can’t wait. The target date for release is supposedly Games Day (UK), making it the end of September. If this is the case we should start to hear official rumbles a few White Dwarves from now.

The new Dark Eldar figures were on show at a recent convention. They looked like eldar, but much thinner, they had heads like striking scorpions and long thin rifles with lots of spikes on it. The rifles are called splinter rifles, and are like the shuriken catapult, but the sustained fire dice is exchanged for the ability to fire twice at close range. There was some sort of witches, with close combat weapons, some psykers (ugly) and the warriors.

The new "Space marine command group" was on show as well and should soon be released. It was a captain with a power sword and stormbolter, he looked great, he was large and really looked like a army commander. Next there was a apothecary with a chainsword, a techmarine with a scanner and power axe, a standard bearer and a model with no chest eagle, but a single small skull to the right on his chest, he had no helmet and was equipped with a boltgun, he had no other visible markings.

There was also the new plastic marines, the greatest change is that they are now multipose (I meen real good multipose, not 4 poses), with the new boltgun that looked like a mix between standard boltguns and the carbine from Warzone, it looked more like a real weapon than the old one. The boltpistol looked like the Sisters of Battle boltpistol. The flamer rifle looked like the flamer in the movie "Aliens", it looked like a thicker M16 rifle, with no bottle mounted under it. The missile launcher was much smaller and was connected with the backpack of the marine. All space marine heavy weapons are supposedly going to be smaller and more "real".

Other information was that all codexes will be re-released, and every codex will be "general" codex, as Space Marines, Eldar, and Chaos, etc., then small additional codexes will follow, like the Exodite codex and the White Scars codex, etc.

Apparently Orks will be more "orky" by skipping the clan structure and making them like Gorkamorka Orks, they will have ws 4 and bs 2. I hope this last part isn’t true as it will really screw a lot of the Orks flavour with it’s different clans and rules, etc.

Some players kindly supplied the following battle reports from our May meeting: