h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Blood Angels were always massively overrated in my opinion. Remember when every model release and magazine article featured them? And every kid who came into the game did them as their army, so there were always zillions of more or less identical armies knocking about. Irritating. Best thing about the Blood Angels was that Librerian bloke who could kill folk by drinking their blood. Everything else...
How do you rate the guard's Chimera? Always thought that was a nice tank.

Mephiston was his name, eh? Imagine him drinking an Avatar's 'blood'!
Yes, he could do that!

The Chimera's ok, it does it's job, even if it is a little dangerous. They introduced some house rules that made transport vehicles even more dangerous and pointless, but I ignore those.
It was nice when you could use the lasguns in 2nd edition, cos I liked loads of little guns that did annoying bits of damage.

Does the new edition prevent you from using the Chimera's Lasguns, then? Bad vibe.
I've got to admit that I never understood some of the rules for vehicles. Take the Whirlwind. The background seems to say it's a mobile rocket artillery piece. Yet the rules seem to suggest that, even though it has a flashy radar and fire-control system that lets it see through cover, it must fire at the nearest target. So it's not so much an artillery weapon as a unfeasibly powerful rocket armed tank. Hmm. Am I missing something here? Cause I admit I may have misunderstood the rules.

I don't like the new rules much. They miss out all the little things. To speed the game along they say. But it still takes an age.
But you do have larger battles
But have to spend more money

Some of the backgrounds are very contradictory. Like your Whirlwind rules. And the Basilisk, which is more of an assualt weapon than the bombarding tool it's meant to be. Oh yeah, it can be an assualt thing -as well- as a bombard, but what kind of general would do that???

But my Blood Angels opponent would take the backgrounds sooo litrally. So litrally I stopped playing him.

They always seem to spoil their games. Did you see what they did to Epic? Rape! Rape, I tell you! It was stodgy and slow as hell before, admittedly, but at least you did actually feel in control of what was going down, cause it was so detailed. You could have nice, little battles with it. "Epic 40,000"? What the...? Everything appears to have be sacrificed in favour of simplicity, to the point where it all becomes a bit abstract and just ain't fun any more. And the little blokes looked okay on the old, square bases, but somehow look really irritating and wrong put out in lines.
Lots of the rules in 40k really do seem to be warped, don't they? Like the rules for those bombardment vehicles. What does it really serve, though? Play balance? If you fork out 20 quid for a Whirlwind or Basilisk, then God knows how many points to include it in your army, shouldn't you be able to expect to use it as an artillery piece? Given that it probably costs a fair few points that you could have spent on something else? Then, again, I suppose the rules are the rules. But they don't 'alf get to you sometimes...
Oh yeah, and there's nothing more irritating than a GW shop manager selling you something and then telling you it's crap and near unusable as you go out the door.

And now 'Warmaster'. How long before everyone realises that the reason for GW's crazy figure scales is so that they can charge outrageous prices? Why don't GW give credit to the rules designers from whom they borrow their rules mechanisms? As an ex Ancients wargamer, 15mm and 25mm, I am amazed that we go along with this - and yet I do. I think that it is probably because WH40K gives the player more opportunity to create their own army with its own 'history' and ethos. My space marine chapter is not one you will find in the codex and my sisters of battle are not painted black and red.

What is Warmaster? Is it the Epic Warhammer project?

Yeah, that sounds right!
You'll never see me play that though. I don't have anything against it, I just don't have any spare cash.
But it is a nice idea. They did that yonks ago and only now have they seen sales prospects for it .

I have just written two articles about Gorkamorka and Necromunda. In thinking of how I could explain the games to a novice, I got back to thinking about "the good old days". When I was younger, and so much more impressed by all the tanks and guns and demons and dreadnoughts and titans etc. Wow, glory days!

I wonder how kids can afford to get into GW stuff nowadays... Remember when a Rhino cost four quid? And a Predator cost eight? And you could get a box of 36 plastic Imperial Guard for a tenner? Damn, nostalgia. Now you are definitely paying more for a hell of a lot less. Mind you, I wonder how kids can afford to own N64s, given that Nintendo's idea of a budget game is one that costs £30. Maybe kids have stupendous disposable incomes these days .
Necromunda... That's one of those games that I always wanted to get into, but could never get the money together. Dark Future, that was another one.

Wow, I'm speaking to an adult. Meaning he has Experience. Experience of the things I could never taste when I was little.

These budget things sound great! But the old models did look rather crap. Suppose they justify the prices by saying "Well it does look great" and give other techincal details.
Rubbish. It's still not VFM.

I remember when I started out I only made a small purchase every two weeks. Or thereabouts. And prices still go up! I mean they even put up the regiment box sets by £2 when they realised they were too VFM.
I should be having strong words with them about this.

Then again, they do have a lot of highly trained staff. And so many things to run and mantain. I can't imagine it being cheap for GW.

Kids & consoles...well, that's the way of the world!

What's Dark Future?

Dark Future was this Mad Max stylee game that GW did about 10 years ago. You had little plastic cars and dune buggys with interchangable weapons, and a road that you built in sections as you moved. I've gotta stress, however, that I was very young when I was interested in this game. It looked great, but I heard people slag it down on the gameplay front.
I ain't really an adult. It's just that I first got into 40k when I was about 9, which was about 1989. Thinking about it, the only things I got were about £2 - £5, apart from the odd boxed set, and they were about £8 in those days. All the stuff like the 3 Rhino boxed set and the two Land Raider sets were about £15, so they were well beyond my means. And, to be honest, it wasn't until about three years ago that I actually bothered learning how to play the game properly. So when I think of those days, I'm really thinking of the missed opportunity they represented, since I was too young to really understand and enjoy the time before GW jacked all the prices up. So I think I'm in really in the same boat as you. To be honest, the boxed sets on sale then probably, with inflation and all that, cost as much as the sets now, but you got shedloads of stuff in them. Like 30 Mark 6 Space Marines or 30 Guardsmen, and heavy weapons, and special weapons. I'd kill to get hold of one of those sets now, I really would.
Sorry about the "disposeable income" thing. It's just that every kid I know has an N64 and about 20 games. I've got a PlayStation, which does have cheaper games, and it's still a nightmare getting dosh together to fund the thing. Also, every time I go into a GW store, there's always a kid buying one of those £200 army boxes. I am, to say the least, jealous.

Disponable incomes: how many kids have bought mobile phones -with their own money-?
But they do all seem much better off these days. Even the poor ones.

The most espensive thing I've ever bought was Gorkamorka in a sale. £20. The most expensive package I've bought in one go was a Slann-Mage Priest, a bottle of superglue and a tub of paint. £25.

How much was that 2,000pt Wood Elf army box set? Something like £200? How many people bought those???

Hey, did you actually have a store manager sell something to yuou and then say it was crap?

Dark Future - there's a blast from the past. I remember playtesting that game with a chap called Dean Bass who, in those days, had a sort of arrangement with Jervis Johnson of GW. I thought that it was OK as a kind of party game.
My son has sufficient disposable income to buy five Hellions and, so far, sufficient disposable intelligence not to ask for a mobile phone.
One certainly has to question ones definition of VFM when one happily pays £16 for four 40K figures and then bridles at £40 for a pair of running shoes.

Indeed.
What's a Hellion?

By an astonishing coincidence, the item which a manager informed me post purchase was a bit poor was the Whirlwind. I take the box to the counter, he smiles happily, I pay, he puts it in the bag, gives me my receipt and then say it's a bit crap and expensive and difficult to use. Which is sort of true, but it's a bit rich him telling me that as I left the shop with the damned thing. Nice.
I remember Dean Bass! He did all of the published Space Hulk campaigns and additional rules, didn't he? That was a great game. Am I right in saying that he was responsible for the 2nd edition of the game?

I'm sure the shop managers can't do that. It's like selling you a car and then telling you it's stolen.

Is Dean Bass one of these old Whaite Dwarf dudes or something?

Yeah, Dean Bass, if I remember correctly, wrote most if not all of the Space Hulk mission and rules articles for White Dwarf. I'm pretty sure he did other stuff as well, but I'm not sure what.

Thinking about it, that particular shop manager did a lot of telling people their purchases were worthless. But usually he did it before they bought anything. Suppose I was just unlucky.

I remember the first time I saw Space Hulk was in Sydney in 1996. I laughed to myself at the cover. The sergeant looked so lost, he had a tiny head poking out of this massive suit!

At Games Day I overheard 3 blokes talking about the Ipswich store manager, saying "it was about time he was suspended"...

Yeah, I had that edition of the game. That picture on the front was, funnily enough, a pretty good representation of the plastic Terminators you got in the box. They were really poor, though the Genestealers were great. Space Hulk second edition rocks, though. Interestingly enough, it turns out that Dean Bass was co-developer of that. A real pity that both the game and support for it seem to have been withdrawn by GW.
Shop managers... It's funny, cause loads of them are good. It's just that the bad ones really seem to stick out in your mind, which is a shame, to say the least. Good ones can attract people to the hobby and the shop, but bad ones can actually turn people off GW stuff for life. I remember seeing people flee from a certain shop near me, not because the manager was a bad bloke, but just because he was so overbearing. It frightened people.

Hellions are a Dark Eldar fast attack choice, equipped with skyboards which are effectively souped-up jump packs. They are just as fragile as most other Dark Eldar. Nice models though.