New 40K rules... and a new source of 'Cheap' GW figures?

40K !

I 'bit the bullet', ordered the rules from the UK, and they arrived yesterday...

I managed to read through the main rules up to the Morale section last night. Looking forward to giving them a whirl with my young son, (who's mad keen), with my old figures, and those I got in the 'BlackReach' set.... trying to squeeze in the odd 40K marine and terminator in among the EotD stuff and FoW stuff on my workbench... to keep him happy...

I have always bemoaned the pricing and quality ('Failcast/Finecost') of GW figures in recent years, but something has occurred and been brought to my attention, that has me rather intrigued, amused and dare I even say even excited...

As has been the case for what seems like decades now, those fine little folk in the Orient have been taking ideas from the west, and invariably copying them, often making them far cheaper and perhaps in some cases even better?

Well that now appears to be the case with GW figures...

Various Chinese based suppliers are offering what amount to be copies of GW figures, made from a plastic/resin(?) material that seems as good if not better than than GW current Failcast...

They don't come pretty - no box, no instructions, just a plastic ziplock bag full of the bits you need...

As yet I have not ordered any, but am watching blog details of others who have..., so can't comment from personal experience...

If they turn out to be 'legit' and good quality, I'll be in with both feet...

To put things in perspective... if I were to buy the current Ghazkull (sp?) model for my son, prices:
From GW (NZ);     NZ$73
From UK source; ~NZ$40 delivered
From China;         ~NZ$25 delivered...

Its a no brainer really who's going to get my money... the traders have feedback ratings like on Ebay so you can 'buy' with confidence...

Watch these spaces...

Those wishing to check out more, go to

www.aliexpress.com , and search on Warhammer, 40k, etc... not the easiest site to navigate but you get there eventually...

It does of course leave you wondering what GW will do, or indeed can do about this, if anything?
Dropping local prices would be a start!

If any of you out there have experience in purchases from 'aliexpress', I'd be grateful for your feedback, comments below please...

Updates to this post...
http://scottswargaming.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/aliexpress-and-gw.html
http://scottswargaming.blogspot.co.nz/2013/11/aliexpress-refunded.html

... and further interesting observations from DiceOdyssey:
http://thediceodyssey.blogspot.co.nz/2014/01/explain-or-why-i-removed-recaster-posts.html

Old school 40k Squats - Pictorial

By popular demand I present pictures of my 40k Squat army from the late 80s / early 90s. I painted these in my late teens / early 20s. They have been pretty much in storage for last 20+ years.

Please forgive some of them looking a bit dusty, and the basing flock I used way back then was just cheap coloured saw dust... I'd never heard of static grass then...

I hope you enjoy the pictures...

Ogryn Squad

Ogryn Bone 'ead

Ripper guns and attitude!

I recently rebased these as they originally came on 40mm square bases.

Quad launcher, AKA the Thud gun - I have two more half painted

Rapier Laser destroyer - Ultimate tank killer

Ratling sniper squad - hobbits in space! (check out the furry feet)

Guild Trike squad, with pintel mounted MultiMeltas

HearthGuard Exo-Armour squad - the famous 'eggs on legs' - the original squat terminator

Stronghold Warlord in ExoArmour MkII with thunderhammer and custom gun.

Thunderer Squad with Multimeltas

Thunderer Squad with Lascannons

Mole mortar or 'Moler'

Living Ancestor - squat psyker

Guild bike squad. Looking at these now from 20 years ago - its no wonder I bought a Harley!

Brotherhood squat warriors with assorted weaponry

Hearthguard squad with meltaguns

Hearthguard squad with Plasma guns

Stronghold standard bearer - I like the Romanesque look.

Thunderer squad with Heavy Bolters

Mole Mortar battery

Tarantula sentry guns - looks familiar from the movie - Aliens

Berserker and cyborgs

Hearthguard flamer squad

I have a few more bits and bobs to finish off for the army too, but they effectively got put on hold all those years ago when GW canned them...

So if you have any old spare squat models, and don't mind offering them up, I'll be sure to give them a good home! ;-)

Thanks for looking.

Scott

40k Squats!

Well my dabbling in 40k continues... I have enjoyed several games together with my young son, fielding my squats and orks from the late 80s/early 90's against each other.

Last night I even took them down to the club for a try out against one of the guys there. It was rather amusing to see the looks on the younger players faces, wondering what on earth are they!? The older more savvy hands were quick to inform them; basically an 'imperial guard variant' in todays-speak, that was discontinued by the 'Evil Empire' many years ago, probably before half the current players were even born!

"Cor, they're cool" - looking at the squadrons of Guild Trikes equipped with pintel mounted MultiMeltas...

"You've got to bring these back again" , was a common request...

Well I played using my fan-made squat codex, against Mikes Grey Knights, which were not what I was expecting (Terminators and Marines - Nope!), henchmen, demon-possessed humans, an Uber hero (expectedly) and a psyker Inquisitor (expected), and a bunch of tanks - chimeras and a land raider. The Land Raider is huge - makes my one from the 80s look like a dinky toy...

The battles was for objectives which had to be held by troop squads.

I got to go 2nd and took the customary first turns firing... and lost my lascannon armed thunderer squad - boo hoo. On my turn, my guild trikes wiffed and missed just about point blank shots at the chimeras. But my Rapier nailed the Land Raider, blowing it apart spewing the Uber hero and Demon-humans out all over the place..

My Warlord and Exo-armoured Hearthguard (the famous eggs-on-legs) were charged by the Uber dude, and went two rounds with him before killing him - miracle of miracles! The Thunderhammer helped :-)

I was taking lethal fire from his twin-linked autocannon firing Dread' and most of my bike squads and trikes got wrecked pretty quickly before hitting anything...

However in the face of such incompetence from  the bikers the Warlord sauntered over to the chimeras and managed to charge one with his Thunderhammer, destroying it and all on board, before being melted by troops in the 2nd chimera... Still, I think he deserved a posthumous Man-of-the-match!

Time was drawing to a close and is it happened my Warlords charge had been just enough to push the chimeras back from the objective, and my ground hugging Brotherhood squad hung on by their fingernails to secure the centre objective, giving me a 1-0 victory!

If the game had continued it still could have gone either way...

Jolly good fun, and I learned a lot. Perhaps most importantly, the way units score now, and the use of Deep Strike and Reserves. I think next time I'll try bringing the Trikes on in reserve and see if they do any better.

The game is certainly better than when I last played back in 80s/90s, and I am up for more.
I'm just not prepared to pay the ridiculous prices now being charged by GW for their figures.

So...I'll stick to my squats, and look to increase my options with them, and even have plans to scratch build some Termites and an IronEagle Gyrocopter.

So, I am on the look out for any 80s/90s 40k squat figures you might want to get rid of, at a sensible price. Yeah yeah , rarity value and all that but they're still just a basic metal pewter figure, so if you want rid and have sensible price in mind, please get in touch (Emails to link in sidebar under pirate picture).

Many thanks.
Scott

PS I'll try and include some pictures of the next game if you're interested?

Oh Gods, what have I done...?

I have been helping my young son find the rules, at a sensible price, for his 40K gaming... He started playing a few months ago with his chums at school on their lunch breaks, with my old ork figures from years ago...

Then we joined the local club that mostly plays 40K & WFB, where he enjoyed playing there, whilst I introduced those at the club to Flames of War. All went swimmingly, with me so far...?

So in the quest for decent pricing, after the B***ards at GW banned online re-sellers like Maelstromgames in the UK from selling to AUS&NZ customers, I came across LiveWire games based here in NZ, who appear to sell GW 40k stuff at about a 25% discount from NZ RRP. But still no rulebook, on its own.

Rulebook RRP here is $113NZ . What a rip off, when its only about 30Quid in the UK...

Luckily I managed to find a copy of the rulebook on the auction site Trademe here and got it for $53NZ. :-)

However, I had been tempted by the Assault on Black Reach set from Livewire... listed at $149NZ, against $195 from GW...

It triggered nostalgic memories of the original Rogue Trader book and the starting basic scenario in the back of the book..., and it had all the templates and dice in too, to play the game...

I was suddenly struck by a couple of thoughts:

A chance to relive old fond memories, now with my son... and a cool idea for a Space Marine Chapter paintjob, especially with recent influences of VSF/steampunk activities involving the dastardly Hun/Nazi. There's also a new movie out at the cinema - IronSky, looks a lot of fun? Nazis in space...

So I thought why not do the Space Marines in a German armour late war colour scheme (as on my Panzer IV in above blog title picture), and use the German black cross transfers to finish the effect. Its probably been done before...? But it seemed an idea too good to pass up...

So before I knew what was happening, I was reaching for the credit card...
Oh heck, what will SWMBO say!

Some Warhammer 40K stuff from the late 80's / early 90's

After raking about in my collection of figures, now that I have a bit of space to unpack and have a look at them, I thought I might add some examples of my earlier paintwork on figures for Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K.

First up is Ghazkull (spelling?), Ork Warlord. I can't remember all the fluff, but I think he had a pretty tough head, and was always accompanied by his battle standard bearer; Makari (spelling?)
Painted in Citadel acrylics and inks. Basic flocked base with coloured saw-dust.

This next figure is a prototype, that I do not believe was ever released. It's a cyborg-squat or "cy-squat". Aimed at giving the squats a bit of hard up front melee ability. Sadly they never saw the light of day as GW scrapped the squats from 40k! BooHoo! Still, I guess with a move of 3 they never could get anywhere!
Still I did have some fun with my squat bikes and guild trikes with multi-meltas! :-)


Ah yes, a deathskull-loota, scavenging the battlefield for left overs to make interesting weapons with. If I recall correctly; roll artillery dice and times by 10 for range, then roll again for strength of hit. Cover wouldn't help you!
Just don't roll a misfire though...boom!
They could also allow you to field vehicles from other other races (or was that the bloodaxes?? - I cant remember). Needless to say I got a few imperium tanks and orkified them :-)

A bloodaxe commando - great melee troops and special rules allowed infiltration into battlefield during ( or after?) deployment. Models even had a "swiss army knife" sculpted on their belt at rear. Cool!

A Goff ork; basic ork - bolt pistol and axe. In theory great for swamping the enemy with numbers and if you get them close will do some damage. In reality never make half way across board - mown down in droves.
Hopefully, your gretchin screen might save them for a round or two...

Zodgrog Wortsnagga I think. Great at keeping your gretchins in line, and an interesting up close melee weapon.
The back banner is a cut out (or provided with model, cant remember which).