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

Our Plymouth staff were/are wonders, they were real great for getting me into the hobby. What put me off was the amount of skids going in, playing, and getting supported by the same staff. That and the battles which were so popular you could never work out what was happening, there were so many people.

Never seen those Hellions. supposde O ought to go back and check 'em out. I promised one of the staff members I'd take my High Elves to one of their Games Nights. That was about 3 weeks ago .

What's a skid?

http://www.h2g2.com/A202465

Ah. Those people. Yes, I remember now. There were always squads of those irritating junior criminals in every GW shop I ever visited. But particularly Shrewsbury. Good shop, great staff but, crucially, a bit small and always full of 20+ of these Skid characters crammed around an unfeasibly large table, all trying to work out how to play Warhammer Quest, and failing. Nightmare.

These were kids that came in ever day and played games so many times. Well it seemed like that. You'd have a game of Necromunda and these kids would have all sorts of wierd gangs (in terms of accumulated equipment). And they'd be the only ones that would take part in the tournaments (along with a few adults that knew the staff personally).

Have you ever been to Games Day?

No, 'cause for some reason I could never fathom the photographs in White Dwarf every year always filled me with a weird feeling of dread. Though, actually, I wish I'd gone when they were giving away that cool veteran sergeant minature on the door. And I can't imagine it could be any worse than that Star Trek exhibition I went to in Manchester for some reason. Hell, it'd be much better. Why, was Games Day skid city, or power gamer town?

I've been there twice and it's -awesome-! I went to Games Dat '99, when I'd started to lose interest in the hobby. I came back completely fired up, and ready to paint! Of course, I have the limited edition Space Marine captain model, which I have painted in Dark Angels colours to a pretty good standard.

If there were skids there, then I didn't notice them. Too busy burying my head into the games. But if I thought the games at the Plymouth store were a nightmare to participate in, then Games Day takes the biskit!
There was a brilliant seige game set up by one store. I can't remember where they were from though . Somewhere in the south-east beginning with R. I got friendly with one of the staff, and when I came back to their game he says "let this one in with the Empire, he's cool". And I'm thinking "wow I only spoke to you one or twice!!!!"

Golden Demon was, as always, spectacular.

Redruth?
Golden Demon was always good. The last photo report I saw had a winning battle scene which had an Ork outpost with a crashed Guard Land Speeder alongside, with the crew gunning down Orks. The guy had modelled blood spurts from the exit wounds on the models! Cool.

Redruth is in the SW, isn't it?

Wow, that one is old! One from GD '98 that i liked was a four headed dragon. There was a great Hive tyrant painted in gray colours, which makes a change from the ones that are always painted like the one on the box.
Tragically, I've forgotten most of the entries for GD. I didn't really give it much of a look at last year, apart from the battle scenes. They're my favourite!

But I've seen entries in the battle scenes and young bloods catagories that made me wonder what the owner was thinking about when they entered it. Wishful thinking...

Dunno why, but Redruth just leapt out at me for some reason.
Battle scenes are my favorite GD category as well, though I seem to remember the vehicle category producing some nice gear too. Like that Blood Angels Rhino that somebody won with absolutely ages ago. The guy had completely reskinned the thing with extra armour plate and fitted a full interior.He had this fantastic converted marine sitting on top with his legs inside the top hatch, in a relaxed position, slamming a magazine into his bolter. That was a work of art.
I like the idea of non-standard colour schemes on models. I've been doing some fiddling about with old Stormtrooper minatures, seeing what they look like painted up like the marines in Half-Life. Isn't it great, though, when you see somebody use a different colour scheme - and it just works, completely? Always good.

In Citadel Journal 24 (I reme,ber cos I've only ever bought two journals!) they had a converted Ork Rhino. The top bit hinged up and the interior was totally redecorated, comolete with posters!
I've never really bothered with alternative colour schemes. Never had the imagination . But, surprisingly, I had an opponent have a go at me because I'd painted my Swordmasters with purple skirts and plumes. Said they looked too much like Dark Elves than High Elves. My arse!

People like that are mono-minded gimp criminals. People who object to other peoples' models always seem to end up making utter bloody fools of themselves, and in public as well. The nearest to anything like that I saw was what a manager kept saying to little kids whenever they bought tanks. "You can't just use vehicles", he kept saying, "Nobody just uses vehicles". Laudable statement, I suppose, but the guy said it in such an insulting and snide way. It got to people. Anyway, what do you expect was in White Dwarf the very next month? A battle report with two armies composed entirely of vehicles. And the next issue had a feature on selecting and using armies of vehicles, making it legit and "official". Isn't that great?

My guess is that the manager wanted them to spend their hard-earned cash on some troops, so they could watch their army get masdacred good and proper.

The opponent that criticed my Swordmasters, I beat him yesterday. For the umpteenth time. Last time he won a game against me was a year and a half ago. He is a very foolish general.

That's good to hear. Soon I'm going to be fighting against a guy who completely ignored that manager, and has a vast Imperial Guard army with loads of vehicles. The guy appears to have some sort of track fixation - he's got a Leman Russ Demolisher squadron, for example. Well, I don't have anything like that, but I'm tooling up my marines with close assault weapons in the hope of kicking his ass, or at least turning some of his tanks into molten slag. That'll do for me.

Heh heh, I gotta tell you about my ex-Blood Angels opponent

1. He wanted allies, and came up with the idea of buying some sisters of Battle, painting them red, sticking Blood angels transfers on them and calling the Blood angels sisters of Battle. Thankfully I rubbished him before he could start on it.

2. In one battle he had a command squad of three models. One of which was a librarian which you can't even have in a command squad.

3. His idea of a bike squadron is one bike and one attack bike.

4. He has four or five special characters.

5. He paints bad.

I can't have special characters in my army, because of the following conversation I had every week with the track-loving opponent, who had a Blood Angel army:

Me: The problem with the Blood Angels is, they're a bunch of gay, feeble, pretty-boy jessies who cover each other's heads with daisy chains.
Him: Yeah, but look at your Dark Angels - they wear skirts and look like transvestites!

And the thing was, he was right. Damn. So I've ignored all the special characters and used marine officer models who've left their dresses at home.
The worst misuse of allies I saw was this one kid who used white and red painted Eldar Harlequins as allies to his White Scar army. This was with his pink Land Raider ambulance. And his four blue and pink Eldar war walkers with Marine drivers. Weirdo.

Hey, Dark Angels are cool! So what if they wear skirts, I never noticed that! At least they aren't homosexuals!

And I have 32 pink skinks, but I don't worry about them.
But you should have seen my mate's High Elf general. Phsychadelic, man!

Pink Skinks are fine. But a Pink Land Raider? One with no guns - "Because it's an ambulance, innit"? Strange. Actually, to be fair, it wasn't meant to be pink - there was some sort of "red sock in wash with white shirt" scenario that resulted in a pink tank. But he never repainted it, so he must have been quite happy with the situation.
Dark Angels are the coolest Marine chapter. Cool markings and colours, cool background, just a worrying fixation with long, gown-like robes to muddy the waters slightly.
Just spent an afternoon chipping all the rivets off one of those Predators with the lead parts, and I was surprised to find a tank under them all. Rivet city.

A pink White Scars Land Raider...at least the skinks were pink because the Old Ones said so!

Thing is, Dark Angels -don't- seem to have a fixation with skirts. The special characters, and the new metal models, and that's it.

So, Predators have lots of rivets? I never noticed that. Probably because Imperial Guard have their own killer tanks thank you very much .
Although these have now been penalised in 3rd edition rules

Ah, well, the special characters with the robes were fine - I mean, they're /special/ characters, they're rock hard, so everything's fine. That librarian with the breathing mask was particularly cool. The only reason I haven't got these characters is because I haven't got the old Dark Angel codex, and I am wary of buying the current one, since I still use 2nd edition. No, it was the standard Dark Angel marines in the massive robes they released that was a step too far in my book. What do you use them for? Squad leaders? Bodyguards? I could never work that out.
The part-lead Predator looks great in the photographs, but has far too many rivets everywhere. They just look wrong. Trim them all off and it looks much more presentable. The old, all-plastic Predator was, in my opinion, The Beautiful Tank. But I expect the profit margins on it were not good enough, so they brought out the part-lead one to bump up the price.