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

Yeah, it really puts me off when you see a grat conversion, and it's done with plasticard, putty, or worse: old discontinued models. Grr.
Or when the person who's writing te article has 'contacts'. They say "I used 10K solid gold for this model I know someone at GW who can get it for me but you're gonna have to dig!"

Mail Order...I've got a few Trolls from it, some random Epic models...and a few other things, I'm not sure.
The Epic stuff came when I had this period when I had an obsession with getting Epic scale versions of 40K armies. It may sound sad, but I started plotting how much I'd have to buy and how much it would cost. I didn't give a cuss about gaming with them, I just wanted them!

When you do this, you realie how unbalanced some of the armies in 40K Battle Reports look in Epic

Ah-ha! So 40K has flaws in its army lists regarding balance. That's really strange, because it always seemed at the time that Epic was just large scale 40K. But then 40K always was a bit warped in some ways. Like the rule in Second Edition that you couldn't shoot at heavy weapon guys because "in the fog of war it is unlikely that a single specific trooper could be targeted". So, if you're faced by five guys, and one of them has a heavy flamer and hence emits an incredibly potent and highly visible jet of flame every turn, killing three of your mates at a time, despite all this you're not going to concentrate your fire on that one bloke? Questionable!.
The sad thing I did in Epic was buying all the Squat super-heavy vehicles, just so I could fiddle about with them. Man, they were cool! The Overlord airship was not cool, however. It was unfeasibly crap! Got shot down by bolters and all sorts

There were some bits of 40K that really pissed me off when I started out. I remember there were these heavy weapons guys or something, and I wanted to shoot them, but I could't cos there was people in front. Thing is, I'm sure these HW guys were on a small hill or something. These guys are firing rockets at your mates and you can't do nothing about it!
Then again, I would be really frustrated if all my efforts at screening my decent guys came to nought if some prat could just shoot past 'em all.

I ythought the Overlord was a pretty neat idea. An airship in the 40K universe, who'd have thought of it? I liked the bombs underneath, you know how it is with these things.
So, how did the Overlord rules work out then?

The thing with the Overlord was, though it carried a fun bombload and some nice looking, if not particularly kick-ass guns, they had some dopey special rule to simulate the vulnerability of the airship's gas envelope. This made it really easy to shoot down by even infantry weapons. Pointless. So it was (literally) a big of a letdown.
First time I used it, it powered its way into battle only to suck down a Volcano Cannon round from a Warlord Titan. In turn one. Well, that was okay, it was hit by one of the most powerful guns on the block, so it was bound to die. But then the second time it actually got to drop some bombs, but missed, and then got punctured by a Rhino's bolters. By its last battle, where it got shot down by some Guardsmen (with lasguns!), I was beginning to notice a trend. I promptly retired it. Tch!

That's stupid! Do they build this thing out of paper?! Don't they think to, like, protect the gas bits? Surely that would be one of the first things on the minds of the Squat manufacturers?
Maybe a certain element of cunning is involved. Terrain hugging, hiding behind buildings and that...bit like Scout Titans.

Getting shot down by lasguns and bolters is silly. How many guardsmen fired at it?

Five!
What makes it even worse is that the model has sodding great rivets all over the gasbag, in a sort-of "Gorblimey, this thing's built like a brick shithouse" style. A lightly built vehicle with pretty mild offensive power that has to terrain mask to survive; doesn't sound very Squat-like, does it? You'd think it'd be rock solid and that. Okay, gyrocopters are a bit weak, but at least they have speed on their side.
Got a question; what was that truly massive Squat artillery cannon called? The one that was just one vast gun.

Oooh, a thundercannon or something, methinks. I'll try and find out later (thank god for old white Dwarfs!)

Ah-ha!
I remember that, as well as the pointlessly huge gun, the Squats had a massive twin big gun mount as well. I can't remember what that was called. Damn, I've gotta get my Titan Legions handbooks back off my mate!

You'll wanna get 'em back quick, they'll be worth something in a few years time...
Hang on, we've already discussed this, haven't we?!

As we have with Epic. Back to relishing in the size of the guns! What's the biggest gun I've got? A lascannon, I guess *^_^*

What was that gun on the heavy weapon platform Knights called - the quake cannon? God, I loved that. Epic scale weapon for an Epic scale game. "Well, I can't reach any enemy this turn. Think I'll reduce that building to steaming rubble to pass the time.". Wahey
Here's something odd - some guy's working on a Warhammer 40,000 Total Conversion for the PC-shoot-em-up Half-Life. Check it out, maybe: http://sites.netscape.net/joethechamp/40kmod

Dunno about the weapon. I thought those Knights were cool, but I never saw them fight

Tanks and assassins in Half-Life! Scary. Who'd have thought it possible? anyway, that's cool too! I'd be the eversor, go around taking everybody's heads pff. Eversor was always my favourite assassin .

I'd be a Vindicare. Killing tank commanders from concealment with an immense sniper rifle sounds cool.
Knights... The best Knights were the heavy weapon carriers, the Castellian and the Crusader, mainly because they were rock solid. Massive firepower. The worst were those fragile close combat things - Lancers? Cool name, but the life expectancy of a drowning mayfly.

I like the aggresive, no-nonsense style of the Eversor. Matches my personality . Leap in, kill everyone with a blunt axe, chuck a bomb or two, then find some more to kill.
That tank commandrr, I'd leap on top of the tank, wrench him out of the turret and throw him underneath the tracks. The chuck a krak grenade in and run.

I thought the Lancer would make a pretty good 40K Necron.

Yep, it would! Especially the one that looked a bit like an octopus.
Woah! Anger management required! The only trouble I can see with the Eversor is that edged weapons in first-person-shooters are always, always crap. Ever played Jedi Knight? With the light sabre with only two animated positions:
1)Being held still, and
2) Attacking. Badly.
Maybe if they could program beat-em-up style moves it'd be cool. So you could stab, swipe your axe in an horizontal arc or bash the enemy's head with the thing. Or throw him, as you pleasingly suggested.

Have you ever played Die By The Sword? You control the bloke's movement with the keyboard, and swing his sword around with the mouse. And it works really well. You cut off arms and legs and heads and your guy cracks sick jokes .

That sounds much more like the kind of thing. Reminds me of Blood 2: The Chosen ("When you get to heaven, tell them I sent you. You'll get a group discount."). But I think I'd better stop there...
What about that weird kind of assassin, the Culexus, is it? What do they do?

I had a demo of Blood 2! That was f**king amazing! People still hear me saying "I'm the guy with the gun!"

The Culexus killed psykers. That was the only thing it was good at. But if it got it's mitts on one, then that psyker was dead. Full stop. Nothing could save a psyker from a Culexus, apart from copious amounts of luck.
So, use 'em against Eldar, I guess.

"I'll beat you like a bad stepchild!" Man, that was sick!
I saw the Culexus in GW the other day. It's a blob. Very strange, I thought.

It's a very specialised assassin. You are wasting it if you use it on anything other than psykers.

Ah. And they had some kind of weird birth defect or something. Hmm.
Actually, off topic for a moment, how, errrm, /connected/ are you to the whole furry scene? Just out of curiousity, like.