Archive for the 'warhammer' Category

Happy Dance

Tuesday, October 17th, 2006

I just pre-ordered the brand spanking new and shiny Codex Eldar:

Codex Eldar Cover

Wohoo! The book comes out Nov 4th so I should have it shortly after that. Awesome! 8)

Can’t wait to see which fluff made into the book, and find out more about the new craftworld. That, and I want to see how do the new Autarch models are going to work. Supposedly Dire Avengers and Shining Spears (two lamest units in the army considering the point cost vs. battlefield efficiency ratio) are totally pimped out now.

Dryads and Ents

Tuesday, August 15th, 2006

Have you ever seen an Ent or a Dryad in the forest? Here are some pictures of weird, human looking trees:

Dancing DryadTall DryadScarry DryadBig EntWalking Ent
click to enlarge; © haha.nu, morpheus, pacamanca, rivermonkey

Nature works in mysterious ways…

On the other hand, I take that back. Nature is completely unpredictably random. The ents and dryads are all in our heads. We project human features onto inanimate objects. We are biologically hardwired to do this! Essentially every culture of the world uses anthropomorphism, and then socially reinforces it via fairy tales, myths and etc..

Speaking of dryads… Check out this awesome dryad-centaur conversion I found:


Dryad Centaur

click to enlarge

Apparently the guy uses these as Wild riders of Kurnous. This looks like a really awesome Wood Elf army in the making.

Mark of Chaos Trailer

Sunday, July 30th, 2006
Mark of Chaos

Holly Fucking Shit! I absolutely love the new Mark of Chaos Trailer [youtube mirror]. It is so incredibly bad ass cool that it leaves me speechless. If you are not a fan of Warhammer you will probably not understand. This vid made me feel the same way the first LOTR trailers did. Or like that time when I was watching the earliest trailers for Phantom Menace (back then we still hoped that the movie will live up to the originals).

This is the kind of giddy excitement that you experience when seeing your favorite fictional universe being brought to life on the movie screen. These guys should make a full CGI Warhammer movie!

I’m serious about this. It would be a good time for someone to license the universe from Games Workshop and make a feature film. Enough time has passed to avoid looking like a cheep LOTR ripoff, and the audiences are getting hungry for another good fantasy production. Someone could really cash in on this…

As for the actual game - meh… Doesn’t do much for me. It looks like an upgraded Dark Omen, which by the way did not rock my boat at all P But the trailer… Holly shit, it is awesome!

Cursed Dice

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
Dice Set

Reading about a guy who buried a set of allegedly cursed 10 sided dice in his back yard reminded me of our own set of dice related superstitions. You may think this guy is silly, but I can totally relate to that. I’m the least superstitious guy around. I usually laugh when people talk about black cats, broken mirrors and all the things that. But when it comes to dice - that’s a whole different story. Sadly, you have never played RPG or tabletop games you most likely will not understand this.

Here are some of the dice superstition from my gaming years:

  • There are lucky dice, unlucky dice and neutral dice. You should never ever mix them.
  • If you store lucky dice with neutrals dice, they will loose their power.
  • If you store unlucky dice with any other dice, they will infect the whole set.
  • Dice use up their luck when rolled repeatedly. Each time you get one or two desirable rolls you should retire the dice for a turn, and allow it to recharge before rolling it again. Otherwise you may tap out all the luck out of it for the rest of the game
  • If you treat your dice well, the dice gods will favor you. Never call your dice stupid, or curse at them. It guarantees bad luck.
  • Even the best dice will roll low once in a while. However, lucky dice usually yearn to redeem themselves after a particularly bad roll or series of rolls. A dice that just rolled 1 is likely to roll high the next time. This only applies to lucky dice though.
  • Dice gods hate to be taunted. You should refrain from saying things like “Anything but 1″
  • It is lucky to invoke the name of a relevant in-game deity before your roll. If you play in Star Wars universe, you may invoke the Force.
  • Sharing dice is very unlucky. If your dice get mixed with your opponent’s dice, they may turn against you.
  • You should have a pre-roll ritual - such as shaking the dice certain number of times, huffing on them, whispering to them and etc… It does help.

Statistically speaking, all of those things are bullshit. I personally do not believe in any of these things. But I do half-jokingly conduct my little pre-roll rituals, watch not to tap out my lucky dice, and segregate the good and bad dice.

As a side note, there are high and low rolling dice. It is virtually impossible to manufacture a perfectly random die. The cut, wear and tear on the corners, distribution of weight and etc are all important factors. Sometimes you get dice that are cut in a way that gives them minimal preference on certain rolls. Sometimes you get ones that have air bubbles trapped in them, or where the plastic is denser in one area. These effectively act as “loaded” dice even thought they are perfectly untampered with.

The superstitions, and rituals do help you keep track of those odd dice, whether you are doing it consciously on not. mrgreen

Battle Report Template Sheet

Sunday, July 9th, 2006
Tabletop Games

Whenever you want to to create a battle report, for your tabletop miniature game you need a structured way to record the game events. There are many ways to do this. Most people just write things down on paper, and draw small maps to show unit movement.

Unfortunately, if you are not careful your battle notes may end up being incomprehensible 2-3 days after the game, when all the details are no longer fresh in your mind. It may be difficult to piece together a coherent report from incomplete or scrambled notes. Thus some people use “templates” to structure the data collection process.

Today I stumbled upon one of these template sheets while browsing some 40k forums. It is very compact, and yet usable enough to keep fairly detailed notes. Next time someone invites me to a battle report game, I will recommend using this sheet.