While gaming generally doesn’t result in the fatality of either party (there are games in ancient civilisations where the captain of the winning team was offered as a sacrifice – this was considered an honour!) I think that sometimes having our community be so large can actually be a detriment to it.

While we benefit greatly from the vast melting pot that is the wargaming community and its online smorgasbord of thought I do believe that a lot of this, not all but a lot, tends to push most gamers into a single direction. The reason that I have titled this post the way I have is because I feel this affects the Warhammer Fantasy and 40k populations more so than any other. My belief here may be just down to the fact that Games Workshop reaches a larger portion of the gaming world than any other company’s offerings, even with an ever larger number of people deserting it for reasons I won’t go into here. It is also worth bearing in mind that a lot of the competition owes a lot to the Sherriff and his band, as without them breaking through into the mainstream it’s likely that none of them would be here now to make the market as saturated as it is.

Warhammer of both varieties has developed over a long period of time, more so than any other game, therefore the other rule sets have evolved to the current environment in which GW found itself; namely the tournament scene. I don’t think I’ll end up with a huge number of dissenting voices when I say that GW’s competitors generally have much tighter rule sets that lend themselves nicely to the tournament mindset. I’ve read a lot of articles that decry GW for their rules being badly written, for the games we hold around a dining room table this generally isn’t a problem as we can work things out and get the game going. Yet, when one adds in the competitive nature that is present at a tournament; that interpretation of a badly written rule becomes all the more important. I’m sure we’ve all seem mammoth threads that have popped up on forums the world over when someone has asked others to chime in on how something should be interpreted.

I’ve heard stories of people refusing to play games because they were trying to optimise their list and prepare for a tournament while another gamer was wanting a pick up game so he could just play the game he loved. To be honest that one post was the spark that got me thinking about things and led to this blog post.

Every forum you go to that allows the posting of army lists generally consists of advice for how competitive that list would be in a tournament setting. If people even bother to specify their list as “friendly” they will still get some advice that will try to “optimise” that list. One could argue that if a list is for a friendly game then getting advice on that list is rather moot anyway but I digress.

Somehow the Internet has transformed our appreciation of the hobby into a maelstrom of extracting every ounce of power out of our lists and weighing up the choices between character/unit selection, magic lores and item options. As soon as a new book is released it is stripped down to its bare bones and assessed against how well it would perform in that all-pervading competitive setting.

I’m aware that there are large numbers of tournaments running the world over, perhaps GW caused this themselves when they held their own tournaments, it may be that they’ve encouraged this, whether intentionally or not. I’ve also read a number of times that people have decried that the rules for Fantasy and 40k are not fit for tournaments, they are too random to necessarily be a true reflection of one’s generalship. This criticism is normally levelled at the random terrain generation and its effects for 8th Edition Fantasy.

I happen to have a lot of fun playing Warhammer Fantasy, even with the lack of opponents within my gaming circle. I’d say we play friendly games but we do like to play hard too so one could say we’re at a happy medium. Are we really playing a game that was meant for tournaments? If you consider the amount of players that use Comp systems to change the way the game is played (I’m not a fan of these systems myself) that try to “improve” things for tournaments then one could easily argue the games are not in a fit state for such. Then there is the perceived balance issues between various army books which also can tip the scales in one player’s favour just because of which army they bought.

I wonder whether these conditions on their own would be a non-issue, but having them all brought together into the ever-present online world we’ve created some kind of homunculus similar I suppose to the birth of Slaanesh from the Eldar fluff. All our thoughts and emotions have coalesced into this being that we are now all bound to.

Personally I’m happy with my “beer and pretzels” gaming with my friends. Despite some people’s arguments that they go to tournaments just to have fun and play some games I don’t think that really holds water. A tournament is about winning and I can’t rationalise someone who would go into that environment just to “have fun” and them actually having fun if they got their butt whooped by all the more competitive players. If that same person tuned their list to a tournament level to stop that from happening, well, you’re not just there to have fun then are you?

Considering what GW have put into 8th it seems they have really gone against the tournament mindset and created a game they just want you to have fun with. We’ll have to see what this year’s impending 6th Edition 40k release does with those rules (although I’m expecting the rulebook will be £50 after the latest round of price hikes) and if they move to a more tournament like set. I will congratulate GW on the fact that so far the Fantasy books for this current edition do seem to be nicely balanced and fair, we’ll see if they can keep that up once we get to some of the more popular and currently powerful armies out there.

I do think this tourney thinking might not be a bad thing though. While the GW offerings might be far from perfect for these things, WarmaHordes, Infinity and Malifaux for example work far better, in my opinion, because they can be played for fun but also have a robust enough rules system that a transfer to a more competitive environment works with no extra effort needed. Is the fact that these other companies do it better going to get to the point where GW either has to tighten up its own rules writing or make way for the other games that are snapping at its proverbial heels?

I’m interested to hear what anyone else things about this and how we might see this work for new offerings such as the current 6 Inch Move anticipation generator Drop Zone Commander.

My local independent retailer & associated gaming club started to organise and run a campaign based around the Civil War (that would be the English Civil War in case you were wondering); it looked good and I decided to get involve.  As you probably have guessed by now the campaign has reached a conclusion – we won!  I was playing the part of one of the Scot’s Covenanter; namely Archibald Campbell.  The campaign was based upon the First Civil War starting with the initial outbreak of war between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians.  At this stage of the Civil Wars the Scottish government (dominated by the Covenanters) sided with the English Parliament, and so in the campaign the three Covenanter players fought against the King.  For the campaign victory conditions were set (including the capture of certain territories and certain special characters), and then the games begun.  A few days ago the Royalist surrendered unconditionally.  To be honest their situation was’t good.  With about 9 players on each side we had managed to capture the King and the Royalist war time leader Prince Rupert.  We had captured the main port of Bristol, along with much of the Royalist territory.  They still had most of Wales and Cornwall, but they had lost all but two of their cities; namely Shrewsbury and Worcester and they were both under siege (yours truly was pounding the walls of Shrewsbury).  If they had lost these, and there was no way of relieving them in time, then all of their armies would have been out of supply and it would have been pretty much game over.  So as it happens they chose to surrender.  So WOOHOO!

For me the whole thing has been great fun, despite my many defeats as I learnt how the system works (most notably to Montrose).  For the campaign we started off using Warlord Games’ Black Powder rules.  This is a rules set based on the musket era.  Once Warlord heard of what we were doing they started working on a Pike & Shotte era rules set that we then play tested.  We went through a couple of revisions and helped to provide valuable feedback to Warlord.  Our club and independent store even got a mention in the recently released Pike & Shotte rulebook, which was cool.  That was another first for me; play testing.  I’ve been meaning to write a few comments about these rules, and I will get around to that soon.  For now here’s a few pictures of the army I used.

I will be the first to admit that they aren’t my finest painted models, but when you think that I painted most of the army in just 3 weeks, they’re not that bad.  The army consists of;

• General Archibald Campbell plus battalion commanders for the 8 battalions my army is divided into
• 5 Pike Blocks with 2 Musket Wings each
• 4 units of Scot’s Lancers
• 2 Cavalry units
• 2 Highlander units (note the one showing off his buttocks)
• 1 Skirmisher unit
• 9 Frame Guns
• 6 Sakers
• 1 Mortar

I do have a couple of units that I never finished painting in time (though as I have them I’ll still paint them up and put them in the army).  Future plans for the army?  The club is looking at doing the Second Civil War, plus friendly games.  Overall it has been a great experience for me.  Glory to Scotland!

Press release: For immediate release

Hi everyone!

I know this is something no one wants to hear, but we need to delay the launch of the full Hawk Wargames site by 7 days. This is due to a number of reasons (not all bad though!):

- Final assembly of the site is taking a little longer than expected, since we’re working on extra content.

- We’ve been making several improvements to our line after user feedback, as well as adding extra army deals (There will be three for each race).

- Simply keeping up with the overwhelming response from Salute has taken a while, but this is no bad thing!

We’re working our hearts out to ensure that the site does not disappoint. Hopefully you’ll agree that taking the time to get it right was worth the wait when you see it!

The site will now open for Dropzone Commander pre-orders on June 8th, to ship July 23rd (since this delay has a knock-on effect to our schedule). In the meantime, the daily previews will keep coming!

Thanks for your patience and apologies for the short delay,

Dave Lewis
Director
Hawk Wargames

This is sad news, I would liked to have given you some info on releases and prices shortly but it looks like there will be a short delay. To make up for it here is some nice new images:

First off, The UCM Raven Type-A light dropship:

UCM Raven Type-A light dropship

An now the PHR Triton A1 strike dropship:

PHR Triton A1 strike dropship

Carabus

Scourge Hunter Main Grav Tank

Carabus

Shaltari Ocelot Warstrider

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Either have a look here: BOW on the table

or check out some screen grabs by yours truly

I cannot WAIT!!

Carabus

While one may be forgiven for thinking that this does not impact too much on those of us ensconced within the mighty fortress that is the 6 Inch Move floating citadel it does mean that we will not be bringing you a project we’d been alluding to since the start of the year.

Last year, the Warhammer Fantasy contingent here at 6 Inch Move came up with an idea. We had decided to run our own version of the fan favourite “Tale of X Gamers” while putting our own twist onto the genre. I was planning on putting together a 3000pts force and showing you all, dear readership, that this could be done on a budget if one were to plan appropriately and be clever with what was purchased. We’d have been assembling and painting our way to fully painted armies and we’d have been showing our work here on this very organ. The reason behind this was to show that despite the Sherriff’s eye-watering prices that with a little forethought you could get the army you want for less than you think and I’m not just talking about a 20% discount from online retailers and some lucky purchases from eBay.

Sadly, after reading rumours about price increases around the net today I had the news confirmed by my FLGS. Therefore it is with a heavy heart that I have decided that I can no longer support this endeavour. I’ll be sticking to my other games and enjoying the 3000+pts of Ogres that I already have. From talking to the others involved with this project it looks like they will also be doing the same. I’m saddened it has come to this but belts are tight these days and despite the hobby’s luxury status I can get a lot more for my money from other games systems that I enjoy just as much. I should be able to now make that custom gaming board I’ve been thinking of.

The silver lining to all this is that I don’t live in Australia, if this rise goes on there as well…. that’s not going to be pretty.

Modern Multiple Launch Rocket System

So when I was at Salute and looking at the jaw dropping DropZone Commander line in the glass cabinet and I saw what I now know as the PHR Taranis Multiple Launch Rocket System, I thought, I have to have one of those, no two, three argh! It was another tick in the box for me on picking PHR as my go to faction

Now David’s version of this system has the smooth sleek lines true to his consistent style for the whole range and the spookiness of a no driver view of an autonomous weapon system. Awesome

PHR Taranis Multiple Launch Rocket System

You may notice that the Taranis has 13 rockets, unlucky for some!

Carabus

Today we have the UCM heavies the Gladius HBT a low sleek main chaise with awesome looking weaponry on a powered arm or some kind, sweet looking. I am not sure if the aspect is correct on the image from David, but that is the post he sent.

8 Days to go! Then we shall all find out more…

UCM Gladius HBT

Carabus