Newsletter June 2003

Next meeting:

Saturday june 14^th 2003, at St. Johns Church Hall, Norrie St., Drury, starting at 9a.m.

Games arranged:  

Morning session: 9.30 am to 1.00pm

Afternoon session: 1.30pm to 5.00pm

Copy for the Newsletter

Copy for the news letter needs to be to me by week before we meet .- Kevin

Booking Games

Each month we organise the next month's games during the day. This usually happens between the Morning and Afternoon sessions when I, your Club Secretary (I prefer P.A. but the rest of the club executives dont appreciate my secretarial uniform of a tight black skirt - I do so have nice legs) will be going round trying to fill in slots for the next month. Now the rules are that fully paid members will be given first preference - we have limited space and those members who have paid for the year will have priority. At the meeting you can organise games amongst yourselves and the tell me or simply tell me what you want to play and I'll try and find an opponent for you. If you are not at the club meeting and you want to organise a game for the next meeting you can contact me by email at arthur.young@whitcoulls.co.nz, and I will see what I can do. Now if you have a game booked then you will get a table, if you have not organised a game with me then you will have to make do with whatever is spare (if there is anything spare).

Arthur

Points Ladder

Below is a suggested scoring system for a points ladder that will run in the club over 12 months. If you have any sugestions or comments please contact Robert Groom at the next club meeting as he is looking for feeback.

The Forum

Typing this piece is going to be somewhat of a painful affair for me, my thumb is suffering heavily from extended button-mashing on the Playstation2, which has experienced a bit of a renaissance of interest for me due to my shiny new T.V. which has all the requisite holes for me to plug wires into, conveniently colour-coded so I don't have to actually THINK about it (or even go through the tedious effort of reading instruction manuals or matching an Audio plug to an Audio hole... nice chaps they are).

So, on the topic of PS2, not only am I enjoying the wonders of carpal tunnel syndrome (oww) as a result of saving Rohan from the forces of Saruman (you saved us, and to show our gratitude, from now on it'll hurt to move your fingers... gee, thanks) but I have Games Workshops third non-crap computer game to look forward to, the illustrious First Person Shooter "FireWarrior", living a day in the life of a Tau Fire Warrior and eviscerating representatives of the Imperium. There'll be a review of the game in issue 101 of PLAY+ (an unofficial PS2 magazine from the UK, sold here in most supermarkets and stationary/book stores and newsagents) which may be worth a look, visually the game is looking very nice, and the familiarity of 40K weaponry is always a kick, it'll be interesting to see how they represent this stuff in real-time... here's just hoping guns work better on Playstation than they do on the table.

The game comes out some time this year, but it's likely to be around August or a bit later.

This month, of course, I'm looking forward to Silent Hill 3 and Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick (hail to the king, baby!)

Okay, sorry to go on about Playstation, back to the wargaming!

What's big for Fantasy? Beastmen are about to be released, judging by the amount of fully painted beastmen units appearing on G.W.s Sneak Preview page thingame. They look... pretty good. Centigor are fairly good, it's all quite nice. Personally it doesn't really grab me, but I can't say that they're ugly... well, can't say they're ugly in a bad way at least.

After the beasties it's likely we'll see Bretonnians, with probably the Wood Elves soon to follow. Chaos Dwarves may be after that, and then maybe we'll finally see an end to the dreary Chaos Incursion (the Champion of Light verses the Champion of Dark, how original)

Of course, 40K is enjoying its Eye of Terror campaign, and soon to come out will be Codex: Eye of Terror, accompanied, as Armageddon was by the Steel Legion, the CADIANS! YES! Imperial Guard troops worth owning! No longer will Imperial Guard players be forced to bear the shame of using platoons of troops that look like the Michellin Tyres mascot!

There is also going to be vehicle accessories, and the Cadian Heavy Weapons Teams look very nice, and may come with a nice large round base to mount on... it almost makes me want to play 40K!

And to round off the Games Workshop news, Lord of the Rings.

OKay, a picture says a thousand words, right?

Well this picture says NICE! about a thousand times

This seems to suggest that G.W. will be releasing miniatures from Tolkein's world not included in the movie, such as Thorin the High King of the Dwarves, Balin in his not-so-dead state, Tom Bombadil etc. Don't quote me on this, it's just something I'm hoping will happen.

Now, I'd imagine ol' Glorfindel here is going to be one almighty ass-kicker, and here he is with some companions on foot:

So, needless to say, very, very nice.

With the likelihood of there being Haradrim miniatures, with Oliphaunts, after the release of Return of the King, not to mention the legions of dead soldiers, and all the other goodness from the Battle of the Pelannor Plains (gawd it's been a while since I read the book, I hope I spelled that all right) and according to White Dwarf, suppliments like Steel And Stone (rules for Dwarven armies) it looks like Lord of the Rings is going to keep going even after the series of movies ends.

And good news this is too!

I've already picked up a good host of Elves, and Men of Gondor, and will soon be building a force of Evil also, I'm looking forward to some fights in the lands of Middle Earth that don't involve me mashing my thumbs on the PS2 controller.

Oh yes, Collectable Card Games, Games Workshop's latest purchase, Sabretooth Games, are releasing WARCRY! There Warhammer Fantasy card game.

If you pop along to www.sabertoothgames.com you can read the rules of the game, which, I must add, are mightily complex at the start. Once you get the details it'll probably be easier, but it may take a bit of getting used to right off.

Not only do you get the rules, but the site also has some Demo Decks for you to download and print off and use, completely legit, which I think absolutely rocks, good to see a company doing something like this so we can get into the game instead of being pricks about things.

Anyone interested in a Warhammer card game? If I can find someone willing to be an opponent I'll probably get into it.

Oh yes, I should point out that Games Workshop Auckland won't be stocking the game, you'll have to go to card stores, comic shops, and so on, in order to get the cards for this game... this means enduring being around various Star Trek geeks and Magic: The Gathering nerds, in order to get anything for the game.

And finally, if I remember correctly, Games Workshop is holding another Auckland Grand Tournament this year, September from memory. I'd advise serious consideration to attending the event, tournaments are usually a whole heap of fun. I just have to get my army painted by then (Empire Cavalry Army, going for the quick-to-paint-nicely army) and hope to see a lot of you others there!

It's worth putting in bold writing so people just skimming through the newsletter take notice of it

GAMES WORKSHOP GRAND TOURNAMENT IN SEPTEMBER!

Sweet? Sweet

Inquisitor

Now, I've seen The Matrix Reloaded, and, every time I see a Matrix movie I get the urge to do this stuff, and as INquisitor is the closest thing to being able to do The Matrix things, and considering the recent release of a lot of Inquisitorial styled 40K miniatures, I'd definately be wanting a ressurection of the old Inquisitor game.

Now Arthur was going to be running a campaign, I'm not sure what he has planned now, but anyone even remotely interested in Inquisitor, pester Arthur about it until he caves and runs a campaign for us =P

40K: Eye of Terror

Okay, most of us don't bother much with 40K... hell, half of us barely bother with G.W. at all

BUT, an old nemesis from the club, back in the good old days when I just started, evil fiend Jarrod Finlay, and his partner in crime Tabitha, may soon be returning to the club with their foul forces of not-goodness, intent on burning and pillaging Cadia and the Imperium as a whole.

Now me, I collect Orks, so I aint exactly gonna stop them, but there has to be SOME loyalist marines or friends of marines willing to try to stop the invasion?

Basically, the evil fiend wants a few games of 40K next month, and then in August he wants a really quite big game.

We may need to find a few opponents to make up the points, to even have a chance of stopping the evil conquest of whoever his Chaos Lord is.

Any takers?

Any Imperial whipping boys man enough to step up to the challenge?

The power-gauntlet has been thrown.

Necromunda: Hive World

Okay, I'd like to know who is interested in trying out my minor conversion of Necromunda.

It will take me about a month to get most of the rules conversion sorted, and the miniatures ready, and I'm especially keen to grab some of the new Cadians, because they look so nice, and I want to use them, but hate 40K. I know Anthony has a bit of vested interest in the game, anyone else willing to have a crack? Existing Necromunda gangs work just as well in my minor conversion (I'm basically just changing the campaign system to express a different setting for the game, and making a couple of new forces with some new skills) so anyone even remotely interested, give me a buzz, and I'll try to set this up in time for about the August meeting.

Warhammer Fantasy Battles Campaign

Okay, I really want to get a fantasy campaign going that's interesting, that has stuff worth fighting for, but doesn't alter the game much or at all. I'm working on the rules, conceptually, right now..

Basically, it's a land-grab deal, and once all the land is grabbed, it's a struggle over each others territories.

I'd like it to encompass not only games of Warhammer (including Siege, I'm keen on a game of Siege) but games of Warhammer Skirmish and Warmaster also.

The only difference to your games of Fantasy that this campaign will have, is you may get minor bonuses like an extra 3 Dispel dice to use over the course of your game, or the removing of a 0-1 restriction on certain units, etc., as a result of draining one of your territories of it's resources and leaving it temporarily unguarded (low strength garrison forces only) so there won't be any major overhaul to what is, essentially, a very smooth-running game, nothing to screw it up too badly.

Now, I'd like an indication of how many people are interested in this campaign, and I'd hope everyone that plays Fantasy is willing to take part, as it's a very low-maintenance campaign and very easy to sustain, so I can take certain consideration for map sizes, army terrain charts, and so on.

Also, there's some things I can't decide, like whether each player can only have one Kingdom/Empire/Domain for one army, and all other armies used by that player are merely raiders and mercenaries, or whether each person may take multiple kindoms, things like this.

Anyone with any good ideas for a campaign, please let me know, I'll incorporate the good ideas if they'll fit in with the structure

So, if you wouldn't mind taking part in the fantasy campaign, please tell me, it only takes a second.

I'm hoping to run it from january/february 2004, for 12-24 months, depending on the way it goes.

Lord of the Rings

Play it.

We have a few players at the club now with decent sized armies. It's inexpensive as all you need is 500points to have a fair sized game, so I urge you all, collect some beautiful Lord of the Rings miniatures, and give me someone to fight.

The Club Points Ladder

Half the year has slipped past us without this being worked on. I suggest it be brought in for 2004 and onwards.

If anyone has any suggestions on what to reward and how, then PLEASE tell me.

I've been volunteered by the idea's originator, Bryan, to head the project, so, if I don't get any feedback from you lot showing me what you consider to be important and worth rewarding, this whole thing will be biased on what I consider important and worth rewarding, needless to say I'll be walking off with a lot of Club Funds and laughing all the way to the bank (or more likely the nearest hobby store to feed my toy-soldier addiction)

Battle Reports

Yeah, you know the drill.

I want to read them. I can't read them unless somebody writes them.

Somebody, write them.

Well, I think that's about it

Cheers

-el Presidente, Peter C.

Club Information

This newsletter is edited by Kevin Carberry so anything you would like included in the newsletter should be sent to   kevin@profax.co.nz

Peter "Evil Gnome" Colson is the Club President so any queries, problems, issues or suggestions about the club should go to him at colson@xtra.co.nz or deathloveswar2@hotmail.com (for e-mails with attachments only), monday-thursday, and all day friday and saturday (09) 298-7293