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

Sounds interesting - generally have liked the dawn of war ones except for the difficulty of multi tasking between home base and multiple battles if playing at the hardest difficulties
Enjoyed Tau Firewarrior when i originally got it, until by not watching where I was saving I got stuck near the end with no ammo, and no way to kill except with my sword, which proved rather ineffective
Tried to play it through again recently, but my saves kept corrupting so that was out
The space marine shooter one I struggled to get all the points for a high final level - getting through the missions suitably quickly prevented me from actually holding all of the various facilities within each area

I really like Dawn Of War and Dawn Of War II. I'm generally a fan of strategy games and I think they are really done well and have good graphics and capture the feel of each race quite well.
I've also got the Warhammer Fantasy strategy game Mark Of Chaos, which is good too.

I've never played Firewarrior, I only know that people didn't really like it, but my guess is that this was because it a) doesn't have Space Marines and b) has Tau. Nobody seems to like Tau, but I don't know why.

I watched my bf play the whole of the Space Marine shooter and I think it was well done and had great graphics/effects. Only the fact that not all weapons were available at all times was slightly annoying but bf cept his energy hammer for the whole last part of the game without swithing which was really fortunate.
I was always waiting for a 2nd part / addon to Space Marine but it never came.

I also played the Warhammer MMO but it had some major flaws in gameplay, the design was awful and some of the quest texts/cinematics were just ridiculous. I remember giggling through all of the first dungeon because it was so silly.

They also wanted to make a Warhammer 40k MMO but somehow that never got done. It also seemed like the had completely the wrong ideas. And once again it seemed to be all about Space Marines.

I'll definitely try Space Hulk. I'm a Tyranid fan. Got a whole shelf of them at home.

Playing Tau in real life requires massive control of movement with jetpacks to avoid combat (a massive board helps them) and hopefully playing a force without so many transports that they can't be killed

I'm a blood angels fan myself, though I'm not such a fan since they altered the rules for them - no longer is there such entertainment with the death company

Opponent - just generally hates the death company
Me - hate the fear at the beginning (please don't let me lose a terminator to the death company)

It was in a battle with the Tau, the blood angels and the imperial guard (three way - imp guard obv being annoying) that we had to figure out the rules for bombarding a combat that you're not a member of

I'm playing Tyranids, Orks and Eldar. Got about 2500 points each, or rather more than that. The new rulebook does me some favour as it allows me to use all my heavy support choices. Oh, and I share an army of Chaos Demons and some Necrons with my bf.

This means I don't have any Space Marines, we only got a few fro mthe starter boxes (old and new) and bf has Space Wolves, but they are hardly typical I think. He also has Tau and Imperial Guard.

I read on forums that people are complaining about the new looks of the new Space Marines while I myself think they are really going to the right direction. I can't comment on the rule changes.

My impression as a non-Space Marine player is that they are bringing new stuff for them far too often and neglect the other races, or many of the other races. The Eldar for instance should get an update this year, finally. Their codex is far too old. And now they tell us the new rules will have to wait until winter because they first have to make some more Space Marines.

The update schedule as a whole always seems to be: Space MArines, other race, Space Marines, Space Marines, other race, Space Marines, Space Marines, Space Marines, other race, Space Marines...

yeah, space marines are overlly revamped - it's because they're all rounder (if you don't pick a specialty chapter) so more beginners pick them, and so they redo it again and again

I did imperial guard when i was younger, but with my brother doing space marines and my dad doing orks, I got bored of being crushed in close combat - there's a limit to the amount of ogres i can bring

Blood angels, as well as great close combat, standard space marine range units have a great specialty predator pretty much designed for killing orks
Two twin-linkes assualt cannons and two twin-linked heavy bolters

Problem with my dad's ork army is just one unit - Gazguall and a squad of mega armoured nobs (in effect, terminators) that would sit in a ramped up buggy
If you could take out the buggy in the 1st two turns, it was really easy to win - the nobs were always in difficult terrain
But otherwise gazguall's waghh gave them a 2+ invulnerable, that was a nightmare

I did find that imperial guard were better than pretty much any other army at taking down necrons, especially if they had monoliths

Vanquisher anti-tank rounds (in effect, long range melta bombs), worked a treat

I must say I'm quite scared of my bfs two (!!!) Valkyres and the Stormlord and he's got quite a few special characters. All his weapon teams are no fun either.

With the Space Wolves I'm scared of the psykers, there's one guy who gets worse every round that he spends in the game.

With Orks I just can't make up my mind about a good headquarter. I do have bikes, killa kans, aircrafts, Deff Koptas, Kommandos and all kinds of that stuff. I bought the Ork Megaforce when they offered it ( http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod320001a&setLocale=en_AU ).Would like to get a Deff Dread some day.

My tyranids have quite a few big things, too. Unfortunately I completely misplaced my Trygon so far and I always manage to forget about the Liktor. But my two Carnifexes and the Genestealers to a good job.

My Eldar's main problem is, as I said, that the rules are jsut completely dated. The Guardians tend to rather shoot their own foot than anything else and I really don't bother to get them into the game at all anymore. I do try to assemble a standard unit of Wraithguards (elite unless you got 10 of them) now on the other hand, those should be good.

I can't say a lot about Necrons yet, we didn't get to play with them yet.

the habit of getting back up again makes it a nightmare to completely clear squads so you can advance past them

however, unless they've changed their rules, refuse to play special characters with them - they have a god that is impossible to kill - far far worse than a monolith

Something like 7 wounds, a 2+ save, he touches you you die - it's very irksome

Benefit of killing monoliths is they cost so much, that if you take one out they're well on their way to being below 25% of their points and disappearing

I do remember my little cousin complaining when i was using artillery in imperial guard because my blind fire guess range weapons were always bang on - he didn't really understand my use of pythagoras to figure it out

They do have all new rules now, although I'm not sure about the Nightbringer and the Deceiver. They changed stuff about them getting up again after being killed and such. They also got quite a lot new units which make them much more interesting for me.

Using Pythagoras seems like cheating.

Oh, and I wanted to say I really like the look of the new Dark Angels, but they are just too expensive, otherwise I'd have bought a few in addition to those we got in the new starter box.

I play very rarely now, I've played four games with my sister's bf in the last couple of years - running off what we remember the rules to be

We may have stopped playing, since despite different formats of game, we've managed to draw every single time - once very close to a victory for each person, once relatively close to a true draw, and once with six points more (out of 2000) for one player than another

We do have a really old set of rules (c1998 i believe) which had far more interesting rules than we do now - i especially liked reading the ones that said for orks, transport buggies didn't hold a set amount of units. They ran off how many you could physically fit on it - if they fell, off they had speicific rules for that

We don't play a lot at the moment, too. And it's only games between me and my bf, altough a friends OH plays in a club and has said several times that we should come play with them.
I didn't even manage to paint all my models yet. Orks are a hell of a lot of work to paint and Eldar need much inspiration to make them look really good, that's my trouble. Only the Tyranids arealmost all completely painted (I think only one unit is still white).

Yeah, my painting is awful - most of the models dated from when my brother and sister painted them - and blood angels are at least easy, in red and black

My painting is usually very good, but it takes a really long time.

3D printing will be well suited to models and Warhammer

I'm trying to think what I thought the most stupid weapon I've seen in 40k


There was, before I started playing, but remember watching either an elder or dark elder weapon that had a 180 inch range (but only line of site) - I've never seen any board where it could feasibly be used

I did like the basilisk long range guess fire during the apocalypise games, firing onto other tables

Me and sister's bf do keep trying to set up a board with enough rivers that the chimera will finally be able to use its amphibious special ability - the only ground transport i've seen with the abililty, and the most useless one I know

Well, yes, on boards it's difficult with such ranges. Bf and I usually play on the living room floor and so we get more distance. We still didn't build enough terrain unfortunately so many of our hills tend to be just boxes and stuff from our desk and the forests are usually sheets of paper. I really have to get building some day again. Rivers are a good idea in fact...

With my injured back playing on the floor would cripple me quite quickly

We should probably get some more - all our tree covered hills are pretty shredded by this stage

I'd also rather buy anything that might be using polystyrene than do any handling of it myself - polystyrene is my one phobia

Ah, well, when I made our polystyrene hills I could borrow a polystyrene cutter. That's essentially a metal plate with a vertical hot wire which you use like a saw. It neatly cuts the polystyrene but it stinks.

I have used one, but don't have a personal ability to lay my hands on one - and I'd barely use it anyway

What are some other barely covered armies

There are the "modern" ones - tau, tyranids, necrons (my def of modern being whether they predate me playing or not)

The common ones - space marines, orks, imp guard

The uncommon ones - elder, chaos space marines
Somewhere in between - some of the space marine chapters - blood angels/space wolves
The rare ones - dark elder, all the other space marine specific chapters, chaos demons

Oh right, reminds me my bf also has Dar Eldar and Gray Knights and Sororitas. I think have almost everything except for a full collection of Space Marine chapters.

I'd kind of love to see a game which is more about Eldar some day. I really like their style, although it seems they are being considered a girly army by some. I have almost all kinds of aspect warriors and Phoenix Lords, a wraithlord, the transport tank and a Fire Prism. I even have the rare old Bonesinger miniature which has no rules anymore so I can only use it as a warlock or something.
I'm hoping for more Eldar aircrafts at the release in autumn/winter. And there were rumors about new avatars.

Elder in the dawn of war games have been a bit of a pain since they require you to run your home base and then deal with absolute coordination between different specialities
And, true to form, the guardians are awful at anything

Well, yes, that's how Eldar are. They are just extremely specialised which make them very different. That's why I have bought almost every Aspect to be more flexible.

As far as I remember a Guardian costs more points than an Imperial soldier but is definitely less effective. The Eldar battleforce was so far the most stupid thing I have bought because:
a) there are Guardians in it
b) there's a single warwalker which is alone not so much use, you'd really need 3
c) there are 5 Dire Avengers, you need up to 10 for a good squad and they are only sold in packs of 10 so I will forever have either 5 too little or 5 too many
The onyl thing that makes sense is the transport tank.