RIP Warhammer Fantasy, 1983-2015. Never forget.

During the massive and aptly named End Times campaign, Games Workshop officially destroyed the Warhammer Fantasy universe. And no, that’s not a metaphor: the campaign literally ended in gigantic magic battle that resulted in the annihilation of the entire universe. But some gods did some magic stuff, and the universe would be reborn after the cataclysm. Only it would be new and different. This was supposed to allow Games Workshop to shake up the 23 year old setting, add new factions, create new alliances and do some clever re-branding (GW was always upset they could not trademark words like Elf, Dwarf or Empire). The 9^th edition of the game was supposed to be all new and all different which was… Intriguing. As much as I bemoaned loss of two decades of lore and world building efforts, I was rather interested to see the brand new setting. Especially since I never used any special characters in my armies. My collection was not strictly bound to the Old World lore, and could be easily ported to the new setting if needed.

Part of my Dark Elf Army. Still unpainted.

Unfortunately, the 9^th edition never came. Instead, Games Workshop released a brand new, skirmish game called Age of Sigmar. The new game looks and plays entirely different from the venerable twenty year old Warhammer Fantasy. For one, it eschews the concept of unit block. In WFB the models used square bases (usually 25mm to the side) so that they could be arranged in ranks and columns. Square or rectangular blocks of roughly 20-60 troops would move together as one entity. You would usually place the entire unit on an appropriately sized movement tray and then slide the trays across the table. The units could perform wheel maneuvers to turn, or reform to change the number of ranks or do an about face. Age of Sigmar threw all of that out. It uses round bases and all models move individually, though units should stay in 1″ cohesion if they are able to.

Games Workshop did provide Age of Sigmar rules for all the Warhammer Fantasy models they currently sell in their online store. That said, all the game mechanics were re-tooled to focus on individual models, and low model count battles. Templates and guess range weapons are gone. All ranges were shortened to support smaller, more spread out armies. For example, Dwarf cannons in the 8^th had a maximum effective range of up to about 70″. The same model under Age of Sigmar rules can only shoot 32″ and is vastly less effective.

The game replaces the 8^th edition, but it does not seem to be interested in actually being a replacement of any sort. Instead it seems to be positioned to compete with with Privateer Press Warmachine (another low scale, low model count fantasy skirmish game) rather than with Mantic Games Kings of War (which focuses on unit blocks like WFB did). The new starter set has less than 20 models to the side, with powerful heroes being the main focal point of the battles and rank and file troops being just a filler. There is a dedicated Hero Phase in which powerful characters trigger their signature abilities. This is very similar to Warmachine which focuses on powerful Warcasters and their magically powered, clockwork Warjack machines – of which you only ever field a handful. Both games seem to favor small engagements with few powerful models on the table.

This is a legal Warmachine starter army. That’s all the models you need.

But Age of Sigmar can’t hope to compete with Privateer Press product (save maybe on model quality or pricing), because Warmachine is designed from ground up to be a competitive tournament game. It has balancing mechanics that ensure opponents will always play with equally powerful forces. WFB had a similar mechanic. Age of Sigmar has none. The rulebook for the game which is four pages long, and available as a free download from the GW website specifically encourages players to bring any models they want. There are no point costs, no unit size limits, no limits on optional upgrades. The only limit is how much you are willing to spend on the miniatures. The only balancing mechanic is the fact that the player who is outnumbered by 30% gets to pick a victory condition.

But that rule in itself seems inconsistent and easy to abuse, since you compare forces on raw model count, even though models are not equal in power. For example a player fielding 5 of the brand new, vastly overpowered medieval Space Marines accompanied by 3 special characters, each riding a dragon will be outnumbered by someone fielding a single unit of 10 rank and file goblins with no characters. Horde armies such as Skaven or Goblins that in the past relied on superior numbers to offset relatively weak core troops are now punished for fielding large armies. On the other hand players who field few special characters and no troops at all are rewarded.

If you wanted to make a small local tournament in WFB you could put out a flyer or a poster that said something like: “1,500pts, no special characters, no magic items over 50pts” and it would force people to bring balanced, characterful armies built around core units. The players would have to figure out how to build forces of specified size that leveraged the strengths of their chosen army while at the same time minimizing its flaws. They would have to think about unit positioning, protecting their flanks, synergies between units and leaders and etc.. In Age of Sigmar this is no longer possible. Since there is no point costs and no size limits on units, it is impossible to ensure any kind of balance.

Allegedly there exist these top secret, unofficial basic balancing rules released by disgruntled GW game developers through back channels, but even those don’t help much:

To put it simply, Age of Sigmar is not a competitive tournament game. Which would be fine, if that was it’s only flaw. I’m not much of a competitive player myself, and I much prefer casual play with friends than tournament play with strangers. But I do like game balance and structure, as much as I like my ranked up unit blocks and my movement trays. And I would like an option to play a tournament from time to time if I wanted to. Age of Sigmar does not support that. But if GW wanted to make a game that is strictly casual and non-competitive and friendly then so be it. Unfortunately the game is not designed to be either friendly or inviting.

Games Workshop products and lore has always been a tad problematic. Back in the day the Warhammer lore included monsters whose reproductive cycle involved kidnaping and rape. Their sculptors always had issues creating female models without objectifying and sexualizing them. But those were minor problems compared to the new rule set.

Age of Sigmar is a game that throws away the idea of good sportsmanship out the window and encourages players to hurl insults at each other in order to receive mechanical bonuses:

Yep, making the environment hostile, uncomfortable and facilitating abuse and bullying is a codified game mechanic. Abso-fucking-lutely brilliant, GW. good luck marketing this particular warscroll to parents whose children want to get into the war gaming hobby. Especially since the streamlined, simplified, non-competitive rule set definitely skews younger.

There is another rule that encourages players to give and accept bribes in exchange for in-game effects. Because adding a gambling mechanic into a core rule set is a splendid idea that will never actually backfire:

Some rules are simply straight up sexist. Anyone who can’t or simply does not want to grow a mustache can’t use this rule:

I can see this particular rule being used by players to body shame younger boys for not having enough body hair, or young girls for having some fuzz on their upper lip. Because making someone feel like shit about their own body is awesome, and sportsman like, is it not?

Some rules are just plain goofy. Bretonian players for example can get mechanical bonuses for rising a cup into the air, and screaming out a catchphrase:

Others are genuinely mean spirited, encouraging players to straight up mock people who suffer from mental illness:

I get what they were trying to do with these rules. They were trying to encourage players to have “fun” with their games. But you can’t codify fun as a game mechanic. People scream Blood for the blood god! when charging not because they will get a buff, but because its fun, silly and spontaneous thing to do. Codifying it as a mechanic makes it forced and awkward. Doubly so if the game tells you to do something you are not comfortable with: like insulting your friend, or mocking insanity. It is one thing to have a “mad count” type character in the lore, it is a whole other thing to encourage players to “pretend to be a crazy person”. It’s uncalled for, and it ignores the fact many Warhammer players may personally know people who struggle with mental illness, or may have one themselves.

It amazes me that no editor realized that these rules might not only be upsetting, but even damaging to the Games Workshop brand. But that’s sort of my general impression of the entire rule set. It seems to be hastily put together without much oversight. Its like none of these rules were play tested, or focus tested to see how they will perform in the field.

Many people are really excited for this new game. Folks in my Twitter feed and on reddit are already posting pictures of their models on round bases, and writing up first battle reports. Sadly, I don’t share their enthusiasm. Age of Sigmar is not for me. I like the WFB focus on unit blocks and core troops, I like my movement trays, I don’t like powerful hero characters that dominate the battlefield. I like balance and structure, and building armies using a spreadsheet and a calculator. The new rules do nothing for me. They are overly simplistic, and too goofy to be taken seriously. I also don’t feel comfortable playing or endorsing a game which encourages players to insult each other or mock mental illness.

Most of people in my gaming group share these opinions, so we will be sticking to the good old 8^th edition. While it isn’t perfect, it is pretty damn good and we enjoy it. It’s sad that it won’t be supported by Games Workshop anymore. This means that it will be more difficult for use to replace damaged rulebooks, and near impossible to convince new players to join the hobby. But the bittersweet takeaway from all of this is that Age of Sigmar means Games Workshop won’t be able to ruin the mostly well balanced and sound 8^th edition rule set. We can continue playing the game as it exists right now, without worrying about rule changes, power creep, getting our favorite units nerfed and etc..

Space Hulk, 4th Edition, 2014

The game proved to be immensely popular. The first edition got several expansion packs, until being re-released in 1996 and later in 2009. The third, most recent edition was a very limited run which sold out within a week. Space Hulk was also adapted into at least five licensed video games:

1. a PC game in 1993
2. a Playstation title in 1995
3. a mobile phone game in 2005
4. a recent and rather well received 2013 PC game currently available on Steam
5. an iOS port of the abovementioned 2013 title

There have also been a number of fan made expansions, conversions and attempts at digitization of the game. The popularity of the title is enduring and it remains one of most iconic Games Workshop properties. For many players it has been the gateway drug that got them into Warhammer 40k and wargaming in general. Thus it was no surprise that the company has decided to re-release the game earlier this year. The fourth edition of the game briefly appeared on the Games Workshop website in late September and sold out in less than 24 hours. I was lucky enough to snag a copy of it in that first batch at a discounted pre-order prince before they ran out of supplies.

Playing the first mission in the booklet.

If you have never seen the game played, it is a quite interesting box set. Instead of static-printed game board, Space Hulk uses modular floor tiles made out of thick, glossy cardboard like substance. They are more or less like big puzzle pieces that easily snap together to form the claustrophobic, tight corridors and chambers of the derelict, alien infested space wreck. The mission booklet that comes with the game includes instructions for assembling 16 game maps using the available pieces. Most of these are time tested maps from the original edition, but several are brand new. Players are encouraged to play the missions from the booklet in order, but with the plethora of available pieces it is entirely possible to design your own missions.

Many of the floor pieces are textured with groves or various protrusions that represent battle damage, machinery or wall fixtures which is a very nice touch. The material is sturdy, sleek and glossy. It should stand up to repeated use.

This is the setup for Suicide Mission – the 2nd scenario in the booklet.

The box ships with eleven Space Marine terminator models, a few dozen Genestealer models as well as a Blood Angels Librarian and a Broodlord. All of the models have been custom made for the game. They are the same scale as standard Warhammer 40k models but do not use the standard round bases. Instead the models are designed to be used without any bases. They are made of a waxy plastic which is softer and more malleable than the standard Games Workshop casts used for their flagship games. This particular material was likely chosen to allow the models to survive being stored in the game box, along with the heavy cardboard pieces without getting damaged.

These marines might be in trouble.

Despite a lower quality casting material, the actual sculpts are very detailed, and feature the intricate over-design of the modern Games Workshop range. I might be a traditionalist, but I am a big fan of old school hand sculpted models. Miniatures designed entirely in CAD software tend to feature exuberant and needless detail that is invisible during the game but a nightmare to paint properly. The Space Hulk minis however don’t necessarily need to be painted. While the box art and examples in the booklets feature high quality paint jobs by the Evy Metal team, the actual game pieces are color coded (Space Marines are red, Genestealers are blue) to stand out on the game board.

Despite the seeming complexity of the game (the number of available models, modular floor tiles, different mission scenarios) the core rules are incredibly simple and intuitive. They are outlined in a 15 page rule booklet. The mission booklet contains instructions on how to assemble the floor tiles for each scenario, what models each of the players starts with, what are the win conditions for each side, and whether or not any special rules are in effect. You do not need to be familiar with Warhammer 40k, or have any experience with war gaming to jump right in. Once you set up the game board and arrange the models in the starting locations Space Hulk plays much like any board game. Each player has a limited number of moves they can make per turn. The aliens are fast and agile, while the marines are slow and methodical, but well armed. Their turns are timed forcing the marine player to think on their feet and make quick decisions under pressure.

Marines surrounded by aliens are making a heroic last stand.

For newbies, I recommend starting with the second mission in the booklet. It uses a rather small map, which means you will not need a large table, it will be easy to put together and it guarantees a fast game. The mission is heavily stacked against the Marines so you should let the newbie play the Genestealers on the first game to ensure smooth and enjoyable win. The mission typically won’t last longer than 15-20 minutes so players can re-set the board, swap teams and play a re-match immediately after to see both sides of the game. The frantic combat and cramped claustrophobic corridors of this scenario truly capture the essence of Space Hulk game play.

The first mission in the booklet is much more balanced and serves as a great intro into the actual meta-story that connects all the scenarios but it involves a number of special rules which might be confusing to first timers. That and it involves a rather large and complex map that might be more difficult to navigate and master.

The key to winning the Suicide Mission as Marines is being very aggressive and very lucky with your rolls.

For me, playing the game again was a trip down the memory lane. I did not own it, but my friend did have either the 1^st or the 2^nd edition box and we have played it countless times. For me Space Hulk was a gateway to Warhammer, Warhammer 40k as well as pen and paper RPG. Looking back at it with the eyes of a tabletop veteran, I can honestly say it has not aged. Or even if it did, the 4^th edition face-lift has smoothed over any jagged edges, and the game is still as fun and exciting as I remembered it.

Right before the holidays the game has returned to the Games Workshop store, albeit in limited quantity and at twice the price it was sold during the pre-order period. Still, I believe it is definitely worth the price. The set is lovely, well made and sturdy. It will last you forever, and it makes a great center-piece on your board game shelf.

Of course, as it always happens with Warhammer money got spent and I ended up with a 2,000 points. The good news is that this army is more or less complete. Unlike my ever-expanding Dwarf Throng, I don’t actually see it ever growing beyond this size. It’s compact, flavorful and diverse enough to handle most situations. It has all the unit types I like, and none of the stuff I don’t. I’ve been told it is a pretty fun list, so I figured I would share it here along with some pictures.

Please note that I am not what you would call a “competitive player”. When I design an army I usually pick units that fit a theme I like, and which seem characterful and appropriate for the army, rather than the stuff that will guarantee me a win due to a rule loophole. I tend to play with like minded people and we usually have a lot of fun with troop heavy, low powered pitched battles without any meta-gaming or dirty tricks.

Theme: Clan Skryre Field Research Team

The Skaven Clan Skryre is known for their Warlock Engineers which are essentially mad scientists who are also wizards. Skaven have a surprisingly advanced steam-punk style technology which is mostly powered by magic. Their main energy source is Warpstone which is magically “radioactive” substance – a crystallized magic that warps and mutates everything it touches. The instability of magic, and Skaven shoddy workmanship makes their technology highly unstable. Their war machines tend to kill as many allies as they kill enemies. But it works out in the end because Skaven life is cheep and plentiful.

Clan Skryre is known for unreliable, unstable, explody technology.

My army is a Clan Skryre Field Research Team whose primary task is to “peer review” the technological achievements of other races or factions. The review is of course done whether without the subjects consent and frequently over their dead bodies. To achieve this task, the Field Unit has been equipped with a lot of advanced Clan Skryre weapons. The secondary mission is to field test these weapons, figure out how they behave in extreme condition, note how often they explode, and how many friendly deaths they cause on a monthly basis.

Core

Let’s start with the core, which is the heart of every army. In case you’re interested, 48% of the total cost (points wise, not dollar wise) is spent on core troops.

Primary Field Research Unit

The unit consists of 36 Clanrats armed with spears and shields accompanied by a Poisoned Wind Mortar.

36 Skaven Clanrats with full Command Group

The models are the plastic Clanrats from the Island of Blood set. I specifically picked the models that had a lot of armor to represent their status and fighting capability. I painted them red and yellow which are the twp primary colors I picked for my army. This is partly because they are considered Skryre appropriate, and partly because I like how they look. I knew I would be painting a lot of brown, gray and black fur so I wanted their clothes to be distinct, and also to stand out on the table.

In most cases, this is the actual core of my army and this unit is typically joined by the Warchief making it quite capable in combat.

Unpaid Interns

They are also known as Skavenslaves but I don’t like to call them that. The unit is 60 model strong and contains a musician and a Paw Leader. It looks really, really intimidating when I put it on the table.

60 Unpaid Interns

The models are also from the Island of Blood set, but hand picked for minimum armor. They all are equipped with spears and shields because I like to have an option to add these if I need them. In most cases I field them “naked” with just hand weapons to shave of few points. I pained their coats yellowish brown color to set them apart from the Clanrats. Their weapons and armor are old and rusted to indicate that unlike the paid researchers they get worst equipment available. The rust effects were done using Typhus Corrosion technical paint.

The open secret here is that this is actually the weakest unit in my army. These guys cost less, and perform worse than giant rats. But due to the unit size, the way Skaven add their rank bonus to their leadership and the “horde” rule they actually become somewhat formidable in combat. Opponents often get scared of this unit and try to thin it out from afar via shooting, which is great for me because it means they’re not shooting at units that actually count. The inters can soak up an incredible amount of damage without actually impacting their fighting ability (which is basically close to zero).

Senior Research Fellows

A unit of 30 Stormvermin with full command group. They are usually lead by Warlock Engineer Babag who typically carries Warp Musket, a Doom Rocket and sometimes some magic spells. They also have an attached Doom Flyer weapon team.

30 Storm Vermin with Warlock Engineer.

The models are basic 8th edition Stormvermin plastics. They are armed with halberds and shields. The Doom Flayer attachment is a mini-chariot type thing which has impact hits and extra attacks. These are my heavy hitters and they are typically joined by a Chieftain with a Battle Standard for an extra “oomph”.

This unit is currently a work in progress. As you can see, I primed them but did not have a chance to paint them yet.

Stormvermin look imposing but not overwhelmingly so. They are only marginally scarier than the Clanrats and this is partly by design. I don’t like to put all my eggs in one basket, and by presenting the enemy with two heavy hitting core combat units I force them to make hard decision. Ignoring either is perilous, and splitting fire between the two is ill advised because both units can soak up a lot of causalities due to their large size.

Lab Rats

A unit of 20 Giant Rats accompanied by 5 Packmasters on loan from Clan Moulder. The rats have been purchased on a Clan Moulder grant to research “better things to poke the rats with” technology.

20 Giant Rats

The Packmasters are plastics from the Island of Blood set. You can actually buy them individually on eBay for almost nothing. The Giant Rats are actually vintage Marauder miniatures from the 80’s. The first rank with a lighter coat was actually painted by my brother ages ago when he was using them for Mordheim and I didn’t feel like re-painting them. I didn’t feel like repainting them so I just tried to match the color the best I could, though my rats are markedly darker. One of these days I will add some highlights that match the front rank.

Escaped Lab Rats

Four Rat Swarms on standard swarm bases. These are the smaller, inferior rats that are rejected from the grant program. The interns keep feeding them so they just follow the research teams wherever they go. Most of them think they are pets, though some actually think they are real Skaven and they even took to wearing tiny clothes and wielding tiny swords. This probably has nothing to do with the leak in the portable warpstone reactor under which they made their nest.

4 Rat Swarms

Some of these came in the Doomwheel set. I bought the rest on eBay in a bag. Someone was literally selling a bag of plastic rats for like a buck so I picked it up. They don’t look like much but they are unbreakable and can actually tie up the enemy units for a turn or two setting up some beautiful flank charges.

The Forward Recon Team

A group of 10 Night Runners armed with slings. Their task is gathering requirements for new projects, and also scouting ahead of the army.

10 Night Runners

They exist to annoy the enemy and take the heat of the core of the army. Their slings can do surprising amount of damage to lightly armored units, and they can easily block march moves or charges if they need to.

The models are old Gutter Runner plastics. My brother bought a box of them to use for Mordheim at one point and I inherited them later. He also managed to lose all the extra weapons that were in the set, which is why they have a mix and match type equipment.

Special

About 26% of my total point cost of the army is allocated into the special category. In most armies this is where all the cool stuff is, but with Skaven I did not actually feel the urge to max out this category.

Advanced Optics Research

Four Warplock Jezzail weapon teams. Their area of research is optics, and more specifically the “glass tubes what you put on guns so that you can shoot things far away”.

Four Warplock Jezzail Teams

The models are vintage Marouder models that date back to (I believe) 4th edition. Back then the Jezzail teams had the pavis shields which is why they are not represented on these models.

Originally I have treated these models like a cheep version of the Dark Elf Reaper Bolt Trhower, but cheaper, stronger and less accurate. At short ranges this small unit is very deadly – especially to heavy cavalry. At long ranges however, their poor accuracy makes them rather ineffective. I’m currently working on obtaining models to double the size of the unit. Eight Jezzails should be a very formidable firing squad.

Maintenance Team

The field equipment maintenance team consists of four Rat Ogre janitors and two Clan Moulder Packmasters. They were brought on board in order to handle heavy equipment and carry heavy boxes, but they are also pretty formidable in combat.

4 Rat Ogres

Two of the Rat Ogre models (extreme left and right actually) are from the Island of Blood set, and so are the Packmasters. The second model from the left is an old metal Marauder cast from the 80’s, while the remaining one is from the last edition plastic set. I actually really like the miss-matched look this gives to the unit. I used my standard red and yellow color scheme on all the models. The Rat Ogres skin is painted with Bugman’s Glow and the scars and stitches are highlighted with Ratskin Flesh. I painted the Packmaster fur black to indicate their high status. I imagine the Clan Moulder only picks the largest and strongest Stormvermin for handling of large beasts such as Rat Ogres.

They are very intimidating on the field, that said they are a bit of glass cannons. They might look tough, but concentrated missile fire will cut them down real fast so they need to be deployed and moved carefully.

Meteorology Team

Ten Poisoned Wind Globardiers usually accompanied by a Warlock Engineer who study wind patterns. There have been some complaints that the chemical agents they use in their experiments are somewhat lethal if inhaled, so the entire unit was equipped with respirators just in case. They are sometimes accompanied by a Poisoned Wind Mortar

Poisoned Wind Globardiers

As you can see, the unit is still a work in progress.

The models are all current edition metal miniatures, with exception of the Warlock Engineer who was converted. The base model is a vintage Marauder death-globe warlock. I clipped his shoddy looking spear and replaced it with the high-tech looking Warlock weapon from the Island of Blood warlock. I also added the power-pack on his back from the same set.

This unit is rather versatile. Because their weapons ignore toughness they are excellent monster killers. I have also successfully used them to take down Imperial Steam Tank by simply drowning it in poison gas. The Warlock will sometimes have spells, but if I’m feeling especially nasty both him and the unit champion will be carrying a Death Globes.

Rare

Rare units compose 12% of my army.

Perpetual Movement Research

One Doomwheel used as a portable generator that also doubles as an excellent war machine.

Doomwheel

The model is 8th edition plastic set, which in my opinion is the best looking incarnation of this model yet.

I have always loved the Doomwheel because it is basically the signature Skaven war machine, and the finest Clan Skryre invention. It is basically a giant hamster wheel used as a chariot. It has random movement, can easily spin out of control and it blasts warp lightnings at the nearest target (so usually a friendly unit) making it fun and hilarious addition to the army. Doomwheel related failures are always spectacular.

Advanced Ballistics Research

One Warp Lightning Cannon used as backup generator / heavy artillery.

As of writing of this post, I don’t actually have it put together yet, so no picture.

Similarly to the Doomwheel, I think the current edition plastic set is superior to previous incarnations, partly because of how intricate it is. This machine provides much needed long range support for my army.

Heroes

Heroic characters compose 15% of my army. You will probably note that all of my heroes are named after TV science personalities.

Project Leader, Chief Engineer Billnye

Billnye is a Warlord on foot.

Warlord

The model is the Warlord from the Island of Blood set. I had to elevate him a bit by building up a pile of rubble on his base in order to make him fit neatly in the unit (his outstretched arms made it difficult to put him in a formation) so now he towers over his underlings. It is a really nice model, and it doesn’t really need much conversion work.

I typically field him on foot, with a halberd, tail weapon, poisoned attacks and sometimes a rat hound. I’m also considering building him a War Litter out of spare Skaven models.

Billnye usually hangs out in the Clanrat unit, and his sheer presence there is what makes people agonize as to whether shoot at him or the Stormvermin. He is pretty deadly in close combat against rank and file units, tough he usually struggles if challenged by tough heroes of other races.

Assistant Engineer Carrlsagan

A Chieftain upgraded to a Battle Standard Bearer with the Banner of the Underhive.

Battle Standard Bearer

This is actually my most complex conversion in this army. I used a crouching body from a Night Runner set, and repositioned it so that it looks like he is resting his foot on a skull of a fallen enemy. The right hand is a banner staff from an old Mordheim set. The cross-bar with a rat perched on it and the tiny bell are from the Island of Blood Clanrat banners. The left hand and the shield on the back are spare parts from current edition Stormvermin box. The head was carefully clipped off a Clanrat unit champion from the Island of Blood set.

He is nowhere near as intimidating as Billnye, but then again he is not supposed to be. The Banner of the Underhive provides additional attacks to the already quite capable Stormvermin unit he usually joins.

Warlock Engineers Degrese and Tyson

You have seen them above in the Stormvermin and Poisoned Wind Globardier entries so I will not be re-posting pictures. Degrese is unmodified Island of Blood warlock, while Tyson is heavily converted (as described above).

This is my Skaven army. I don’t really have any more ideas for adding new units. Other than putting together one or two more large Clanrat units accompanied by weapon team attachments I don’t really see a point. And that in itself would be a bit boring. What do you think?

Army on the Table

I will probably update this post at some point with pictures of painted and assembled models when I get them finished. As usual, questions and comments are appreciated. Do you play Warhammer? What armies? Do your armies have strong themes to them, or do you just pick whatever will win you games?

Let me know in the comments.

Granted, I wasn’t creating a fleshed out literary protagonist, but merely imagining some background fluff for my tabletop general. So a lot of the above does not necessarily apply. Still, I kinda wanted a miniature that would represent a strong, independent Elf woman who is both feared and respected by her underlings. I wanted her to be a graceful and distinguished but also ruthless and intimidating. In essence I kinda seen her as Cersei Lanister, if she had magic powers and a personal army at her disposal and no one in particular to answer to. Or maybe an evil Galadriel who has fully succumbed to the lure of the ring. That’s the kind of character I had in mind.

This is more or less the mental image I had of her:

Cersei Lanister

The basic idea behind her is that she is a highborn sorceress with a lot of power and influence. She is as much a magic user as she is a shrewd politician and a power player in the Nagarroth court. The rather subtle dress Cersei is wearing in the picture above would be a perfect representation of what she would wear on a regular basis. It looks expensive, but is not extravagant showing off her status, without really flaunting it. She eschews elaborate, full-on mage gear because she does not need to telegraph her power. People know her face, and know her reputation well enough to show proper respect or stay clear.

I figured I would just grab the model labeled “Dark Elf Supreme Sorceress” from the official Games Worlshop website because that sounded about right. It sounds like someone with a lot of power and gravitas. Unfortunately, this is how the model looks like:

Dark Elf Supreme Sorceress

I have a whole number of issues with this miniature. For one, it is a prime example of the “dynamic pose” thing that Games Workshop has been doing lately with varied success. Many of their new miniatures are sculpted in such a way as to convey sense of movement. When it works, it looks really cool. Other times, it falls flat – like on the Supreme Sorceress. I have no clue what does the smoke/mist snake thing is supposed to represent and frankly, it looks quite silly. Not nearly as silly as the damage Slave Leia outfit she is wearing. Can someone explain to me why does it come with only half a bra?

I might be wrong here, but I don’t think her attire is in any way practical or empowering. I have a hard time imagining the Dark Elf version of Cersei (let’s call her Xersei) that I just made up in my head, actually choosing to show up to battle like this. Another sorceress might actually find this attire cool, but I think Xersei would rather wear something more comfortable and warm (Dark Elf homeland Nagarroth is also known as The Land of Chill, and not because they are laid back people, but because it is a permafrost tundra and ice wastelands). She would go for something that would show of her wealth, power, status as a noble born and a magic user, rather than maximize skin exposure and sexiness because I consider these things more integral to her identity.

So Supreme Sorceress model is out. Let’s try the “standard” sorceress model:

Dark Elf Sorceress

I have very mixed feelings about this model. On one hand, I really like the static pose, and the subtle gear. One of my ongoing complaints about the Dark Elf sculpts are the out-of-control, extravagant head pieces that I usually clip off or file down. I’m all about the simple looking magic staff, and the very subtle head-gear on this model.

On the other hand, I have same complaint as above: I just don’t think this is the right fashion sense for my Sorceress given the head cannon I made up for her. She could perhaps be an apprentice – a secondary level 2 mage in the army or something. But not my cunning, ruthless aristocrat Xersei.

So, does Games Worshop sell any Dark Elf sorcerer models that are fully clothed? Well, there is this old sculpt from the 90’s:

Old Sorcerer Sculpt

This is much better. The cloth to skin ratio seems about right at the first glance, thought if you look closely enough you will notice that the sculptor could not resist actually having her entire leg poke out from the folds of her cloak for added “sexy”. In fact, I think he tried so hard to get as much of leg surface exposed I think he actually broke her anatomy. There does not actually seem to be enough space between where her waist ends, and the leg starts to account for hip bones. So her cloak is either a trans-dimensional portal of some sort, or she has the extra-special super-heroine anatomy rightfully mocked by Hawkeye Initiative, Escher Girls and similar blogs.

I am also not very fond of the Madonna styled conic bra thing she has going. In fact the entire outfit is too Maleficent, and not enough Cersei for my taste. Which reminds me, I should get around to watching Maleficent, because I heard it is actually slightly not terrible for the most part.

While this is the closest we got to what I wanted so far, it is far from perfect. I actually own this model, and my goal was to replace it. The extra-ordinary anatomy, mega-shoulder-pads, cone-bra and crazy head-gear aside, I’m not actually very font of the facial detail on this model. Unlike the two miniatures featured above, this one was hand sculpted rather than computer generated. Working in 28mm scale using Green Stuff™ as your primary scuplting medium is not easy and in the 90’s warped or lop-sided faces were a common problem on elf and human models (not so much on Dwarfs who typically had larger faces, and bushy low detail beards that could be used to mask any defects).

Perhaps I was looking in all the wrong places. Dark Elf army book actually includes rules for Morathi, the most powerful and influential dark sorceress of them all. She is actually one of the oldest living beings in the Warhammer universe, and some say she is actually the true ruler of Nagaroth (and that her son, Malekith the Sauronesque Witch King is merely a figurehead). Out of all the miniatures in the Dark Elf range, hers should have the right mix of power, gravitas and grace…

Morathi

Nope, never mind. She is also wearing an armor-plated bikini, because of course she would. I don’t even know what I was expecting.

There is one more sorceress model in the range I didn’t show you which is probably the best of all of them:

Sorceress on a Cold One

She has an almost functional armor, and a strong Xena Warrior Princess vibe to her, which isn’t actually a bad thing. She would make an excellent battle worn, front line mage. That said, I was still stuck on my Xersei idea. Also, I didn’t want to put my Sorceress on a Cold one because she would typically be embedded in a big infantry unit or running around on foot.

This, by the way is the entire available range of Dark Elf magic users. What really irks me about it is how one note all of them are. I do understand they are trying to make the miniatures unique, and so they are all highly stylized so that when you put a Dark Elf Sorceress, a High Elf mage and a Woof Elf Spell Singer next to each other there would be no question which is which. So they do need a distinctive art style. I just don’t like the one they chose.

All of these designs are designed for male gaze. Their attire doesn’t make any sense fluff wise. For one, Nagaroth is a cold and windy place, and male models are usually sculpted wearing heavy, layered clothing and/or fur under their armor. For example, check out this Dreadlord miniature:

Dark Elf Dreadlord

This guy is all bundled up underneath his plate armor, and his base is modeled to mimic snow and ice, which are common in Naggaroth.

Secondly, Sorceresses are typically wealthy, affluent and powerful, so one would expect them to wear warm ornate cloaks rather than run around half naked. Nearly all the women in the Dark Elf range are depicted as wearing these skimpy metal bikinis, and it’s for the sole reason of titilating the men and boys who are presumed to be the core consumers of the game. We can discuss Witch Elves and Harpies at some other time maybe.

Funny thing is, when I searched outside of the Games Workshop range it was actually trivial to find a model that looked exactly the way I wanted:

Dark Elf Sorceress by Reaper Miniatures

This one is made by Reaper Miniatures and it gives off the exactly right vibe. She is wearing a rather simple, but still rather expensive looking dress with some fancy ornaments. She is carrying a magic tome, and a simple staff crowned with a menacing looking skull and some dark crystal that can be painted to look like it is giving off a sinister glow. The evil looking staff and the claw-like appearance of her free hand telegraph the fact she is definitely not one of the good, kind elves. It’s perfect.

So it is not impossible to make an interesting Dark Elf model without resorting to a skimpy chain-mail bikini. The Cold One sorceress is a good example of that, and this one is another. With five available models in the range I just wish there was a bit more variety.

You should note that I am not saying all of this to be a prude. I am refraining from passing a judgment of whether or not the loin-cloths and half-bras are “appropriate” or “respectable” because it all really depends. Besides, who am I to try to pass judgment or police what women choose or choose not to wear. All I’m saying is that none of these models felt right for the character I made up in my head, who in turn I heavily based on another character in a popular Fantasy series on TV. None of them screamed Cersei at me. But perhaps it is unfair to criticize a limited line of models for not having the exact miniature you think you want.

Here is the thing though: if you look at all the available models together, and compare them to for example male characters for the same army, you will notice certain patterns emerging. So really, I just want you to notice them and ponder what do these patterns say about us (the Warhammer players), and our hobby.

For example, how come we hardly ever see, hear or read about Dwarf women? Dwarves have been one of my favorite Fantasy races ever since I finished reading a very heavily used library copy of The Hobbit back when I was still just a wee little lad. Back then I didn’t really notice the gender ratio discrepancy among the bearded folk, possibly because most of the fantasy books (including Lord or the Rings) were about dudes, doing dude stuff, with an occasional princess being damseled somewhere in the background, but only if she did not get in the way of important world-saving dude business. Then, of course, I grew up, but it seems like most of fantasy didn’t. Or at least not entirely. While it is not uncommon to see modern fantasy games, novels and series try to be better about gender representations, they are still virtually no Dwarf women anywhere. Why? I don’t really know, but I suspect it is for the shallowest and worst of reasons: because artists, designers and storytellers can’t figure out how to sexualize them.

Dwarfs are short, stocky, strong and grumpy and there really aren’t many easy or effective ways to make that sexy. And by sexy, I of course mean the Hollywood version of “sexy” – meaning whatever is deemed to be attractive to middle class, white, cis-het males between the ages of 18 to 35, which is a rather narrow definition of attractiveness. One must wonder if we should eve try to apply such standards to clearly a non-human group of imaginary people. After all, male Dwarfs do not need to fit the Hollywood definition of a “hunk” to be cool, and so Dwarf women do not need to be Hollywood style “babes” either. Which does not mean they have to be ugly. They can still be good looking, and even beautiful – just on their own terms. For example, take this image:

Dwarf Warrior

This is unmistakeably a Dwarf warrior, who also happens to be a woman. She epitomizes everything we usually associate with Dwarfs: raw strength and resilience, determination, overall grumpiness, penchant for heavy ornate armor and weaponry. I don’t think anyone could argue she is not a Dwarf. She definitely looks the part. Not only that, she is far from being ugly or visually unappealing. She definitely has a lot of gravitas, presence and charm. She may not have the supermodel body of an elven princess, but she does not need it. She looks like she would be an interesting and probably a memorable character.

So it is not conceptually impossible to take established cultural template we have for the short bearded fellows, and successfully apply it to someone who is not a dude. In fact, it is quite easy.

Which is why we should just stop using whole hand-waving theory about Dwarf women being rare, sheltered and treated like expensive furniture. Making Dwarven society extremely patriarchal is not only sexist (and therefore not cool) but also artificially limits the stories we can tell within the imagined universe. Fantasy, especially as expressed through role playing and tabletop games is supposed to be about escapism and creating shared narratives, about far-away places, and larger than life heroes… As long, of course as they are not Dwarf ladies.

Whether you are a player or a game master, I implore you to ignore any lore that artificially tries to limit your choices by creating single-sex races. Make female dwarf characters, NPC’s and enemies. Randomly put female Dwarf models in your tabletop armies. Why? Because it’s cool, and because you can. And to make it easier for you, I decided to compile a list of female Dwarf miniatures you can use both for RPG and war gaming.

The rest of this post is very picture heavy (I’m including thumbnails for each miniature) so I’m going to put it behind the break.

Citadel Miniatures

As you probably know, I play Warhammer Fantasy so I figured that I might as well start with the miniatures for the game I know and love. Warhammer uses 28mm heroic scale which is probably the most common size for RPG and war-game miniatures. In most cases this means miniatures made to that scale should be roughly interchangeable regardless of the manufacturer and the game they were made for. This typically works out well for humans and elves, but Dwarfs are a bit of a special case.

You see, Dwarfs are short. Exactly how short they are varies from game to game, and so do their body proportions. For example, Warhammer Dwarfs are not proportional at all. They have foreshortened legs, low center of gravity and enlarged heads and arms. While they are a good few millimeters shorter than humans, they are about twice or three times as bulky and massive. So if you want to use, say Reaper miniatures (which are proportional) in your Warhammer Dwarf army, they will stick out and you may need to do some converting to make them fit in with the crowd.

Unfortunately, Games Workshop currently does not sell any female dwarf miniatures. Their entire range is composed of male dwarfs. They did however sell a few female models in the past.

• Name: Dwarf Queen Helgar Longplaits
• System: Warhammer Fantasy
• Maker: Citadel Miniatures
• Serial: 99060205013
• Year: –
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: unknown

eBay
Out of Production

The most popular, and most recent of these models is Queen Helgar Longplaits who was a special character released with the Grudge of Drong campaign. Up until recently she was still available from the Games Workshop website as a failcast sculpt, but she is now officially out of production.

She is probably the only model on this list you can legally field in Warammer tournaments without anyone making a fuss. She crops up on eBay quire regularly and usually goes for about twenty bucks or more.

The other Games Workshop / Citadel female miniatures that I know of were actually released as “adventurer” models for Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. This means they are semi-legit with regards to tournament play. They are unmistakeably Citadel / Games Workshop designs, and most people assume them to be legitimate part of the range. Then again some may dispute their use in tournaments because they were not originally made for the tabletop game. Still, they are a catch for collectors.

• Name: Shieldmaiden/Norse Axe 14 Shaz Ensun
• System: Warhammer
• Maker: Citadel Miniatures 1988
• Serial: 0305/19
• Year: 1987
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Michael and Allan Perry

eBay
Out of Production

• Name: Dwarf Adventurer #9
• System: Warhammer
• Maker: Citadel Miniatures
• Serial: –
• Year: 1987
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Michael and Allan Perry

n/a
Out of Production

I own Shaz Ensun, and she fits right in either with my vintage Marauder era clansmen. I can also technically field her with my Marauder Iron Breakers because she sports the same type of chain mail as they do, though she does not have the plate armor over it.

There were also a few more pre-slotta models produced for Games Workshop by Ral Partha, but I didn’t list them here because they are very old, actually quite poorly made and I couldn’t find any clear photos or identifying information about them. As far as I could tell they were all non-combatant villagers in babushka style head scarfs, an proportioned more like Halflings rather than proper dwarfs.

Reaper Miniatures

Reaper has a huge selection. If you are looking for variety or want to buy female dwarfs in bulk, they are the place to go. I own Freja Fangbraker model and I can attest they make good quality minis. That said Freja sticks out like a sore thumb when placed among Citadel dwarfs. She literally towers above them, and I’m considering taking out her knees to drop her down a few millimeters.

Reaper makes Dwarf miniatures for two games, and they feature female models for both. The Warlord range is 28mm heroic scale with 25mm slotta bases but the models fit neatly on the standard 20mm bases used by Warhammer Dwarfs. The Dark Heaven Legends range is also 28mm but they are designed to be baseless. The minis have a wide flat surface on the bottom. They do fit on 20mm and 25mm bases though.

• Name: Freja Fangbreaker
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 14085
• Year: 2004
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Werner Klocke

$6.99

• Name: Ametrine Earthlyte
• System: Dark Heaven Legends
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 02719
• Year: 2003
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Jason Wiebe

$4.99

• Name: Nalila Goldhammer, Dwarf Paladin
• System: Dark Heaven Legends
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 03413
• Year: 2009
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Tom Mason

$4.99

• Name: Dwarf Forgemaidens
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 06209
• Year: 2009
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Jason Wiebe

$39.99 for 9 models

• Name: Dwarf Standard Bearer
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 14531
• Year: 2009
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Jason Wiebe

$7.99

• Name: Gwyddis, Dwarf Valkyrie
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 06209
• Year: 2009
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Gene Van Horne

$6.99

• Name: Dwarf Valkyries
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 06211
• Year: 2009
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Jason Wiebe

$39.99 for 9 models

• Name: Valana, Forgemaiden Sergeant
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 14524
• Year: 2009
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Jason Wiebe

$5.99

• Name: Dannin Deepaxe
• System: Dark Heaven Legends
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 03363
• Year: 2008
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Werner Klocke

$5.49

• Name: Lydia Copperthumb
• System: Dark Heaven Legends
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 03399
• Year: 2009
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Gene Van Horne

$4.79

• Name: Bailey Silverbell
• System: Dark Heaven Legends
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 03125
• Year: 2006
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Werner Klocke

$4.99

• Name: Ursula Silverbraid
• System: Dark Heaven Legends
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 03293
• Year: 2008
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Bobby Jackson

$4.99

• Name: Annasha Tomebreaker
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 14482
• Year: 2008
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Gene Van Horne

$5.99

• Name: Shield Maidens
• System: Dark Heaven Legends
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 06115
• Year: 2007
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Derek Schubert

$39.99 for 9 models

• Name: Azrin, Dwarf Barbarian
• System: Dark Heaven Legends
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 03108
• Year: 2006
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Werner Klocke

$4.99

• Name: Margara, Dwarf Mage
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 14082
• Year: 2003
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Werner Klocke

$5.99

• Name: Kara Foehunter
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: 14143
• Year: 2005
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Derek Schubert

$4.25

Hasslefree Miniatures

Hasslefree is a UK company but they do ship to US. I bought Haela from them, and she currently hangs out with my Dwarf Rangers. Their minis have the opposite problem to the Reaper’s Warlord range: they are smaller than Warhammer Dwarfs. Haela is perfectly sized for the Lord of the Rings 22mm scale, but among Citadel Dwarfs she looks too slim. Still, it is a very nice mini and I just tell people she is basically the equivalent Arya Stark – a teenage bad-ass adventuring with the Rangers.

• Name: Svala
• System: –
• Maker: Hasslefree Ministures
• Serial: HFD002
• Year: –
• Scale: 22mm
• Sculptor: Kev White

£3.34

• Name: Anghela
• System: –
• Maker: Hasslefree Ministures
• Serial: HFD004
• Year: –
• Scale: 22mm
• Sculptor: Kev White

£3.34

• Name: Heidi
• System: –
• Maker: Hasslefree Ministures
• Serial: HFD007
• Year: –
• Scale: 22mm
• Sculptor: Kev White

£3.34

• Name: Brynda Wulfsdottir
• System: –
• Maker: Hasslefree Ministures
• Serial: HFD105
• Year: –
• Scale: 22mm
• Sculptor: Tre Manor

£4.17

• Name: Svala (b)
• System: –
• Maker: Hasslefree Ministures
• Serial: HFD019
• Year: –
• Scale: 22mm
• Sculptor: Kev White

£3.75

• Name: Hayden
• System: –
• Maker: Hasslefree Ministures
• Serial: HFD007
• Year: –
• Scale: 22mm
• Sculptor: Kev White

£3.75

• Name: Haela
• System: –
• Maker: Hasslefree Ministures
• Serial: HFD013
• Year: –
• Scale: 21mm
• Sculptor: Kev White

£3.34

Stonehaven

Among all of the miniatures listed here the Stoneheven ones are probably the most recent. They are a result of a very successfully funded Kickstarter and are essentially one man’s passion project. There is a good variety of models to choose from, most in non-standard Dwarf roles such as rogue, necromancer and etc.

The range is aimed mostly at RPG players but they can be used in war games.

• Name: Stonehaven Dwarf Druidess
• System: –
• Maker: Stonehaven
• Serial: SHD15
• Year: 2012
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Mike Evans

$5.49

• Name: Stonehaven Dwarf Rogue
• System: –
• Maker: Stonehaven
• Serial: SHD14
• Year: 2012
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Mike Evans

$5.49

• Name: Stonehaven Dwarf Blacksmith
• System: –
• Maker: Stonehaven
• Serial: SHD01
• Year: 2012
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Mike Evans

$5.49

• Name: Stonehaven Dwarf Witch
• System: –
• Maker: Stonehaven
• Serial: SHD11
• Year: 2012
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Mike Evans

$5.49

• Name: Stonehaven Dwarf Necromancer
• System: –
• Maker: Stonehaven
• Serial: SHD08
• Year: 2012
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Mike Evans

$5.49

• Name: Stonehaven Dwarf Fighter
• System: –
• Maker: Stonehaven
• Serial: SHD05
• Year: 2012
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Mike Evans

$5.49

• Name: Stonehaven Dwarf Mage
• System: –
• Maker: Stonehaven
• Serial: SHD19
• Year: 2012
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Mike Evans

$5.49

• Name: Dwarf Children & Tombstone
• System: –
• Maker: Stonehaven
• Serial: SHD21
• Year: 2012
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Mike Evans

$6.99 for 4 models

Victoria Lamb

Victoria Lamb is an independent sculptor who sells some really great looking female Slayers from her website. They are 28mm scale, and they seem to be proportioned to fit with Warhammer dwarfs.

• Name: Troll Slayer
• System: –
• Maker: Victoria Lamb
• Serial: –
• Year: –
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Cictoria Lamb

$10.00

• Name: Rank and File Slayers
• System: –
• Maker: Victoria Lamb
• Serial: –
• Year: –
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Victoria Lamb

$10.00

Scibor

All Scibor minis are multi-part resin casts. I don’t own any of them. They are European company (Polish I think) and I have no clue if they ship to US. They also seem to be on 20mm scale which makes them much smaller than Citadel or Reaper products.

• Name: Dwarf Female Gertrude
• System: –
• Maker: Scibor
• Serial: 28FM0011
• Year: –
• Scale: 20mm
• Sculptor: –

€7.52

• Name: Dwarf Girl
• System: –
• Maker: Scibor
• Serial: 28FM0042
• Year: –
• Scale: 20mm
• Sculptor: –

€7.52

• Name: Ridda
• System: –
• Maker: Scibor
• Serial: 28FM0086
• Year: –
• Scale: 20mm
• Sculptor: –

€7.52

• Name: Hildegard
• System: –
• Maker: Scibor
• Serial: 28FM0085
• Year: –
• Scale: 20mm
• Sculptor: –

€7.52

Spellcrow

Spellcrow makes two female dwarf miniatures for Umbra Turris battle game. They seem to be 28mm scale, but the proportions are very odd. They have a cool cartoonish look to them, but they will stand out quite a bit if you use them for Warhammer. No clue if they ship to US.

• Name: Dwarf with sword & crossbow
• System: Umbra Turris
• Maker: Spellcrow
• Serial: SPC_H 0205
• Year: 2011
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: –

€6.90

• Name: Dwarf with spear & owl
• System: Umbra Turris
• Maker: Spellcrow
• Serial: SPC_H 0207
• Year: 2011
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: –

€8.00

Other

Here is a bunch of other minis I was able to find. I don’t know much about them, or the companies that sell them so caveat emptor.

• Name: Frieta Ymirsdottir Shieldmaiden
• System: –
• Maker: Red Box Gamess
• Serial: RBG0048
• Year: 2010
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Tre’ Manor

$4.99

• Name: Hjordisa Ymirsdottir
• System: –
• Maker: Red Box Games
• Serial: RBG0089
• Year: 2011
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Tre’ Manor

$4.99

• Name: Female Dwarf Warrior
• System: –
• Maker: Chainmail
• Serial: –
• Year: –
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: –

n/a
Out of Production

• Name: Dwarf Women Warriors III
• System: Tales of War
• Maker: –
• Serial: DS000008
• Year: –
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: Ivan Santurio

$14.99 for 3 models
Out of Production

• Name: Female Dwarves
• System: –
• Maker: Fenryll
• Serial: –
• Year: –
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: –

€10.00 for 3 models

• Name: Individual Female Dwarves
• System: –
• Maker: Bronze Age Miniatures
• Serial: 32FDWF-1 to 32FDWF-8
• Year: –
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: –

$5.00 each

• Name: Female Dwarf Fighter
• System: D&D
• Maker: Otherworld Miniatures
• Serial: DAD13
• Year: –
• Scale: 18mm
• Sculptor: –

£4.00

• Name: Logrim, Female Dwarf Captain
• System: Warlord
• Maker: Reaper Miniatures
• Serial: RPR 14304
• Year: –
• Scale: 28mm
• Sculptor: –

$7.49
Out of Production

This is all I have for the time being. It is kinda sad that there are so few of these out there. It should be impossible for me to make a comprehensive list of female dwarf minis, and yet here we are. This is a pretty exhaustive list, but I’m sure I might have missed something along the way. If you know of any miniatures that should be on this list, please let me know in the comments and I’ll add them.

Anyway, miniatures are not only used in tabletop war games such as Warhammer. They also get a lot of use in classic RPG settings. The 4th edition of D&D for example brought back the whole grid and miniatures style of combat resolution. Granted, some RPG purist would prefer that 4th Ed did not exist at all but to be honest, I think it can be fun in a hack-n-slash type of way. It’s also a great way to introduce younger players into the fold. They can get their munchkin phase out of their system on the miniature based, dungeon grid battles and then slowly graduate to storytelling systems. Because that’s what happens, isn’t it? Don’t even try to lie – you power-gamed and tweaked your character builds like a fiend when you were 12, and so did I.

What was I talking about? Oh, yes – paint stripping. Whether you are into tabletop battle games or RPG, chances are you have been doing it for a while now. This means you likely have a back-log of miniatures with paint jobs. Some folks who are consistently active in the hobby don’t have that problem as they re-paint their stuff all the time. I fell out of the hobby for a number of years, and my miniatures were put in the attic and mostly forgotten until recently when along with some friends I decided to bring the `hammer back into our lives. I’m actually really glad I didn’t toss the entire lot out when I sort of gave up on the hobby a decade ago. Now I have a sizable force of classic 80’s miniatures that have been out of print (some models I have are so rare they typically don’t dip below $50 starting price on eBay auctions). The main problem I have right now is that a lion share of them are painted.

I was never a stellar miniature painter, but by Crom, I have tried my best. Let me give you a little sample of just how bad I was. The picture below shows you the same model painted by two different people. The top image is what I actually would consider pretty decent paint job by some dude with an interweb handle of ajefferism. The bottom one is young me exhibiting zero hand eye coordination whatsoever.

Paint Job Comparison

Granted, this is one of my “early” masterpieces. I have later learned a lot of tricks of the trade such as using inks, dry brushing, mixing paints to do highlights and etc. Unfortunately most of my Dwarf Army was speed painted with little to no concern for aesthetics and as a result it looks like ass. It is actually quite amusing to look back at these models and laugh at how bad I was but the terrible paint job is kinda distracting when you are trying to play the game and everyone has to pick up your models and go “wow dude, really?”. And by someone I mean mostly me. I mean, listen – when I put detail oriented on my resume I don’t actually mean work, I am talking about this kind of detail. That’s the kind of shit that drives me bonkers.

So I have been experimenting with paint stripping techniques lately. The idea is to take the badly painted miniatures and get them back down to bare metal state so that they could one day be painted again.

A word about paints: I have always been using Citadel Paints by Games Workshop. As far as I’m aware they are not the best choice when it comes to miniature painting, and some pro painters swear by competing brands, but I never really tried anything else. It was always more about not wanting to venture outside of my comfort zone rather than anything else. Also, Citadels are labeled as water based and water soluble which meant that they were easy on the brushes and clean-up required just a little bit of soapy water and no paint thinner. Also, I guess I have always had a little bit of foresight in this, predicting I might one day want to strip the minis down. And supposedly oil based paints are harder to get rid off.

Seeing how the paints were labeled as water soluble, I decided to use the least drastic measures first. I filled up a can with water, added a liberal amount of soap and left bunch of miniatures to soak in it over night. This made my miniatures wet. That was about the extent of the effect. It also made them somewhat cleaner than before, which is nice, but not entirely what I was after. So soapy water did not do the job.

Round two involved isopropyl alcohol. I use it whenever I superglue myself to myself when working with miniatures, and I figured that if it can dissolve glue, it can probably also dissolve the paint. The miniatures I was stripping were made out of some sort of metal alloy so I was pretty confident they wouldn’t get damaged. I soaked them in a can overnight, and when I extracted them in the morning I was overjoyed to find it kinda worked. That said, the results were less than impressive – the paint flaked off in few exposed places but it was still pretty hard to remove.

Finally, I decided to use the heavy duty stuff: acetone. I figured that if it is strong enough to kill toons, it should have no problem stripping paint off my Dwarves:

Ok, granted the stuff Judge Doom uses to kill his brethren is not pure acetone but rather benzine, turpentine and acetone mix, but I was not really going to play alchemist trying to mix up that nuclear concoction. So I went with simple store bought acetone based nail polish remover. This turned out to be a winning solution. Granted, it did not dissolve the paint away by itself, but it did break the adhesive bonds it made to the metal and made it brittle enough to be scrubbed away easily.

Essentially, here is what you will need to get the job done:

1. Acetone based nail polish remover
2. Container – preferably glass or metal that can be sealed
3. A toothbrush
4. Pair of pliers

Here is your paint stripping kit, in picture form:

Paint Stripping Kit

The procedure is rather simple: you fill up the container with enough acetone to be able to submerge your miniatures without anything sticking out above the surface of the liquid. I think it is fairly obvious that you want to remove the bases from your minis and lay them down flat on the bottom rather than have them standing up. I wouldn’t recommend using acetone on plastic miniatures or ones that have plastic components, but for metal ones it works fine.

Once you place your miniatures in your container and pour the acetone in, close it tight and put it away for a few hours. You want to keep it sealed because acetone stinks to high heaven. In fact, I recommend doing all of this in a well ventilated area. Open up your windows or take the entire kit outside if you can. I know this stuff is used for nails, but I’m fairly sure there were some safety warnings on the bottle which I completely ignored and I’m to lazy to look up right now. Don’t get high huffing that stuff – there are much classier recreational drugs you can put in your body if that’s what you’re after.

Here is a tip: if you have some nail polish remover in your house, and it belongs to your wife, girlfriend or cross dressing roommate do not use it. When used on nails this stuff lasts forever but we are going to use a lot of it. Depending on how big your container is, you might use up to a half of the bottle to fill it up. So be nice and buy your own.

How do you know the miniatures are ready? Well, typically you want to soak them for a few hours. The nail polish remover was clear and after few hours of soaking it changed color to dirty brown and flakes of paint started depositing on the bottom. That’s usually a good indication that you can start scrubbing. Use pliers to extract your miniatures and hold them while you scrub. I know people use this stuff on nails, but I’m pretty sure you are not supposed to soak your fingers in it. Unless you have gloves, I wouldn’t recommend getting your hands wet with this stuff.

I recommend getting a hard or medium toothbrush. Soft ones are a little too delicate and you want to have some abrasive force in there. It took me about 5 minutes of vigorous brushing per miniature to get most of the paint off. If it seems like you are starting to get diminishing returns, I recommend re-dipping the mini in the brine. You typically don’t need to soak it again – just dip and brush. The paint comes off better when wet.

The results were pretty encouraging. I was able to get most miniatures looking like they were brand new. I did have some issues with one shade of blue for some reason, which wouldn’t come off no matter how hard and long I scrubbed it.

Paint Stripping Results

The miniature on the right is one that I was able to clean up completely. You can barely tell it was stripped save for a random flake of paint in the plume of beard here and there. Most of the paint rubbed off in the first minute or so, the rest of the time being spent trying to get the paint out of the crevices in the beard, plume and the chain-mail.

The miniature on the left shows the blue paint I couldn’t get off. This one got scrubbed 3 times, each time landing in the acetone to soak for 1-2 hours. The brown paint on the beard and the metallic finishes came off on the first round, but the blue armor pieces persisted. Each time I would scrub it for 10-15 minutes and the blue would get slightly lighter. I suspect part of the issue might be the alloy this miniature was made out of. It is actually one of the oldest miniatures in my collection, and you will note that it is actually much darker than the one on the right.

At some point I decided to give up on it. Eventually these will get primed and re-painted and the blue tint is so thin it should not be an issue once that happens.

When I use up the remaining acetone, I might try picking up a genuine paint thinner at a hardware store to see if it gives me better results. Have you ever stripped paint of old miniatures? What is your method? What do you use for plastics? Let me know in the comments.

This may sound counter intuitive at first, seeing how the entire “hobby” aspect of war games revolves around models: collecting, painting, converting, trading, etc.. Undeniably, they are very important and without them the companies that release and market such games would have no profits. But when you just want to play a quick game with a friend, it can be done without models.

Unlike strategy games that are played over the network via keyboard and mouse under strict rules enforced by a soulless machine, tabletop war games are gentlemanly affairs conducted between consenting man-children. In essence, when you play Warhammer you are on the honor system – there is no game engine to make sure rules are followed, and no referee to ban someone for cheating. You simply have to agree to follow the rules and conduct yourself in a sportsman-like way because otherwise the game ceases to be fun.

Because of this, you can technically play a game without any models. Or rather you can substitute actual models with just about anything: lego figurines, old plastic army men, poker chips or even paper cut-outs. When you play Wahrammer Fantasy you typically deal with square or rectangular units that all move as one. Models are typically mounted on square bases that are 20mm on the side (or 25x50mm for mounted cavalry). If you are really lazy all you need to do is to draw a grid on paper, cut it out and you have a unit. When the models “die” instead of taking them off, you can either cross them off, or rip them out of your paper cut-out.

This is more or less how we have been playing lately. None of the participating mentlegen had a complete army – at least not by the rules as they stand today. We all had some old models at our disposal, and so we decided to just create the types of armies we would hope to one day assemble, and simply use paper cut-outs for all the units we didn’t own.

Unfortunately drawing grids is actually not that easy when you can’t find a metric system ruler (or any ruler for that matter) in the house, and you are forced to trace model bases on notebook paper to create crooked grids that line up only in theory. After scribbling down a dozen units like this I decided there ought to be a better way of doing this. And being the lone programmer in the group, I was uniquely equipped with the know-how on how to accomplish such a thing.

The next day I sat down, rolled up my sleeves and created MovementTray – a quick and dirty Ruby script that spits out printable grids that can be used as stand-in Warhammer Fantasy units, or as movement trays (pieces of paper you put underneath the models so that they are easier to move as a unit).

Screenshot

Before you give me any credit for it, let me explain: this took about 20 minutes and was absolutely trivial. I put it online mostly just to make it downloadable. The core functionality is roughly 20 lines of code, and the rest is just fluff, error checking and user prompts. It was much, much easier to write than I expected, primarily because of Prawn.

Prawn is an amazing Ruby Gem that lets you generate PDF files on the fly. It is feature rich, ridiculously comprehensive and super easy to use. Let me give you a dumb simple hello world example:

pdf = Prawn::Document.new
pdf.text "Hello World!"
pdf.render_file = "hello.pdf"

Yep, it is that simple. Drawing custom shapes is just as easy – Prawn defines a whole array of shape drawing methods. So to generate my grids all I had to do was to repeatedly call the rectangle method (which took 3 arguments: starting coordinates, width and height) in a loop. Here is an example of the document my little script generates:

Output of mt.rb

If you ever need to programatically generate PDF files, Prawn is definitely the way to go. I highly recommend, especially seeing how it has a strong team, a lot of contributors and sees a lot of activity on github.

The other really nifty gem I discovered was Trollop. What does it do? It simplifies parsing of command line arguments. I stumbled upon it almost accidentally, but now that I know about it I wonder how I ever created command line tools without it.

If you think about it, it is both baffling and staggering how much code typically gets written to parse command line arguments. Simply grabbing one or two values from ARGV is easy and quick, but when you want to have a unix-like command line switches, some of which are optional toggles while others take sub-arguments the problem of parsing them suddenly becomes non-trivial. Especially if you want the user to be able to specify the arguments in random order, and be able to leave out arguments providing sane default fall-backs.

In my particular case, I was looking at a program that generates PDF files in 20 lines, and requires 100+ lines to parse the arguments which seemed absolutely ridiculous. Trollop allowed me to reduce all that mess into more or less this:

opts = Trollop::options do
    opt :base, "Base size: standard, large, monster, cavalry", :short => "-b", :default => "standard"
    opt :rows, "Number of rows", :short => "-r", :type => :int, :required => true
    opt :cols, "Number of collumns", :short => "-c", :type => :int, :required => true
    opt :file, "Output file", :short => "-f", :type => :string, :required => true
end

Basically you need a single line per command line switch. The snippet above defines both long (double-dash) and short option switches and checks for their presence if they are required. It also automagically defines –help and -h options that will display all the options along with their descriptions.

I don’t know what it is about Ruby, but regardless of what I set out to do, there is usually an amazingly designed, well maintained and meticulously documented gem that firs my needs exactly. Half the time it just feels effortless.

Warhammer Fantasy is a tabletop war game. What this means at the highest level of abstraction is that you get together with one or more of your friends, you commandeer a table (or any other flat surface) and transform it into a playing area upon which two (or more) armies will have an encounter. It is a bit like playing a board game, only there is no board.

In chess you have pieces, each of which has a special movement rules – ie how many squares it can hop and in what pattern. In tabletop war games you typically have units (which typically consists of dozen or more miniatures) which have rules describing how many inches they can move across the table per turn and etc. When units meet they fight and you resolve the combat by rolling dice. There are all kinds of rules concerning which units strike first, which have advantage, how armor and equipment affects their chances and etc. It can all be very simple or very complex, depending on the game.

The units look like this:

Dwarf Unit

In case you are interested, these little guys come in pieces on plastic spures, kinda like model airplanes or train sets. Each one is composed out of about 4-5 individual pieces that you can mix and match to give them a lot of variety and different poses. These guys are brandishing double handed weapons, but the same kit also lets you build dudes with hand weapons and shields…

Which is the other side of the game – something that makes it a hobby. The army you use to play the game is in essence one big arts and crafts project. You need to lovingly assemble cut out all the units, file down the imperfections, glue them together and paint them so that they look nice on the table. Some people spend a lot of time doing just that. If you go online there are many sites and youtube channels that teach painting basics, share advanced techniques and etc. Since most models come in pieces or can be cut to pieces easily, people like to mix and match different sets to create interesting looking combinations. Sometimes this involves drilling and pinning pieces together, application of modeling putty and etc.

In essence tabletop war games are like a MMO for the real world: just about anyone can find an aspect of them that they find interesting. Folks who are into competitive strategy games will be drawn to the tactical aspect of choosing the right unit combination and making the right plays during the battle. Those with an artistic bug or a penchant for craft projects can really get into the building/painting and conversion. Collectors will find a lot of joy in just trading models, finding classic miniatures that have been out of print for years and etc.

That said, the hobby ain’t cheep. Especially Warhammer Fantasy which unlike it’s Science Fiction sister-game (Warhammer 40,000) typically requires a large number of models on the table. The unit I posted above is actually unfinished. The actual unit I typically field in real games is twice as big (30 models). And it is one of a dozen units of similar size of the table.

Prices vary depending on model size and detail. The Dwarf Warrior models in the picture come in kits of 16 models at approximately $35 per box. Some units don’t have cheep plastic kits and instead are sold in boxes of five metal models at around $24. For a Dwarf player a typical unit size is 15-30 models and you need at least 3-4 units plus a few war machines to have a viable force. That’s a lot of money for something that is just a silly weekend hobby.

Granted, we are all adults with disposable income but if I owned no models I’d probably think twice about getting into this hobby. Fortunately, I already did most of the required spending in my younger and more vulnerable years. In my attic there was a box that had a treasure trove of ancient Dwarf miniatures. Some of them unfortunately been smashed to pieces, or inadvertently destroyed by my attempts at “conversion” but quite a few have survived. Some of these are absolute classics. For example, I own around 20 of the classic Dwarf Long Beards designed by Aly Morrison and Colin Dixon back in 1998:

Morrison-Dixon Long Beards

Morrison and Dixon are responsible for the lion share of the Games-Workshop/Citadel Miniatures lineup in the late 90’s. If you look through the old catalogs, their names are stamped on just about every page. The thing about their work is that the quality was very uneven. Their Dwarfs for example are fantastic. In Warhammer universe Dwarfs don’t like to shave – so the older the Dwarf, the longer the beard. The Long Beard units are grizzled, grumpy veterans and I think the models do a great job of conveying this. The miss-matched weapons are a little annoying (these days you’d be hard pressed to see a Dwarf miniature brandishing anything but an axe) but they kinda work in the context… Compare this to say… Their 1998 Dark Elf Witch Elves:

Ugly Witch Elves from 1998

They are not proportionate, their faces are smushed and weird, and in general they lack the charm and style of their Dwarf miniatures. And yes, those Dark Elf miniatures are also from my personal collection.

But I digress. I guess my original point was that I actually like the sizable force of Dwarfs that I found in my attic. They are all classic miniatures from the 90’s which makes them a rather unique. Well, at least parts of my army. The Dwarf Hammerers I bought in the early 00’s are absolutely fantastic and such an iconic center-piece of a Dwarf Army that their design has not been updated since then. The chemical composition of the alloys they are cast in has changed a few times, but the models are still cast from that same mold:

Classic Hammerers

Hammerers, by the way are Dwarf super-elite infantry. They are strongest and best trained warriors hand-picked to be the personal guards to the Dwarvern royalty and as such they typically accompany your army general. They are not only gorgeous model, but a really good unit and a joy to field in the battle – and more or less a fan favorite.

Other units however, such as the aforementioned long beards are long gone and out of print. These days Long Beards are typically built out of the same unit kit as the basic Warriors and simply spruced up with fancier shields, and painted with gray beards. So having a number of Morrison-Dixon models that actually have long, floor sweeping beards fighting with swords, maces and flails really makes them stand out from your rank and file.

My other favorite unit are my Iron Breakers – also Morrison-Dixon design. They are unofficially known as the “Classic Plate Mail and Plumes Iron Breakers” because of their stylized armor:

Plate-Mail and Plumes Iron Breakers

This was actually a really clever ploy to increase model sales. Back in the day Empire players could field Imperial Dwarfs units as part of the army and these particular models had armor that closely matched what knights of the empire would wear. Hence they were coveted both by Dwarf and Empire players.

The default characteristic of Iron Breakers is that they are very heavily armored – they are akin to knights on foot really. Modern Iron Breakers have a very cool tin-can style look to them. And while I actually really like the new models, these classic knightly Dwarfs are really, really fun to look at. They have a very distinct feel to them that sets them apart from the entire army. Not to mention that I have over twenty of these bad boys and it would cost me a fortune to replace them with the new models. I don’t really want to mix and match new models with the old because they look markedly different.

So right now I am scouring Ebay for good deals on the classic Morrison-Dixon Iron Breakers and Long Beards. I only need about 10-15 of the later and 5 of the former to have the unit sizes that I really want. I already got a few decent models on the cheep, and a set of nice shields that will give my breakers a more armored look.

My next adventure will be stripping the paint from the old models. Yes, in my younger years I was an avid painter. I was passionate about it, but unfortunately not very good. Which left a lot of my models in a rather bad shape. Fortunately, seeing how most of them are made out of metal alloys they should be able to withstand a dip in the acetone or some other cleaning agent without melting down. So at some point you may see me writing a post about paint stripping techniques… Maybe.

So that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing all last week – uncovering my old treasure trove, rediscovering my love for modeling and war games, and scouring ebay and bits stores for parts. Oh, and playing a few games too.

How about you? Have you ever played Warhammer Fantasy? How about 40k? What armies? Have you played any other war games? At one point or another I have played just about every game from Games Workshop: Necromunda, Mordheim, Battlefleet Gothic, etc. The only things I haven’t played were Blod Bowl, Epic and the Lord of the Rings game.

Of course if you love the hobby and enjoy painting and converting, this is not a big deal. Even if you won’t field the unit in many battles, it will still look cool on your shelf as a display piece. But if you are putting together an army for tournament play for example, things like effectiveness matter.

Personally, I’m an Eldar player. For those of you who don’t know much about the game Eldar are essentially space elves. They are fast but fragile, and the have a wide range of very specialized, hard hitting, special-purpose units and almost no flexible all-purpose ones. As a result we love to discuss which of these units will fare the best under the most common set of battle scenarios. The most heated discussion usually involves close combat units.

Eldar are not great in melee. They are decent, and can cut through weaker foes, but often struggle facing elites. Space Marines – heavily armored super soldiers can usually mop the floor with your average Eldar unit unless you get a jump on them. And it just so happens that Marines are the most popular type of army out there. At an average tournament, chances are that 80% of players you face will play some flavor of marines – either vanilla, one of the four specialized chapters with their own special rules and disadvantages, or Chaos Space Marines (the evil flavor). So picking a close combat unit that can stand up to Marines is an important strategic decision.

Eldar have two main close combat specialist squads: Howling Banshees and Striking Scorpions. Banshees are usually thought of as the designated anti-Marine choice. They wield “power weapons” – energized can openers that ignore the impenetrable Marine armor which lets them shrug off over 60% of incurred damage. Unfortunately they are rather lightly armored, and do not pack enough punch to actually hurt the marines too badly, which makes them slightly less than imposing.

Howling Banshees

Striking Scorpions on the other hand are about a match for marines in terms of raw strength and punch-out force. They wear heavier armor which gives them more staying power, and they can score more attacks per round (up to 30 in perfect conditions at max size compared to up to 20 for a Banshee unit in the same circumstances). What they do not have, is Banshee ability to crack open Space Marine armor, which means a large number of their attacks will harmlessly bounce of of it.

Striking Scorpions

You can probably see the dilemma here – what’s more effective: the ability to score a lot of wounds, many of which will be deflected, or the ability to score a few wounds but make them count. Many Eldar players have strong opinions one way or the other. Some skirt around the issue and just field both units in every battle (oh, Biel-Tan, when will you ever learn). As far as I know, no one has really made any statistical analysis on this subject. Most of what you read online is anecdotal evidence – stories of players who had particular luck against marines using either Banshees or Scorpions – or theoretical discussions of probability distributions for each unit.

I figured that the only way to settle this dispute once and for all, is to set up an experiment. Lets pit a unit of Scorpions and a unit of Banshees against your average Space Marine squad. Let’s roll the dice, record the results and see which one managed to kill more marines while loosing the least troops. Then let’s repeat it over and over and over again until we have a viable statistical sample. Let’s say 100,000 rounds should do the trick.

Methodology

Conducting such experiment using real models and real dice would be silly. I opted to simulate them in software. I wrote a small Python script (a little over 150 lines) that would emulate the first round of combat between an Eldar and Marine unit using the following assumptions:

1. Both Eldar units fight against standard Space Marine Tactical Squad – not an Assault Squad. I figured tacticals are more common.
2. Neither Eldar or Marine unit have any upgrades. This means no Exarchs, no powers, no sergeants, no special weapons and etc.
3. The combat takes place on flat field, and the units line up perfectly – every model in base contact with an enemy. This means all attacks go in, there are no cover bonuses and etc..
4. Eldar get to strike first due to their higher initiative
5. Eldar and Marines are more or less matched when it comes to weapon skill so they always hit on 4 or more
6. Banshees have two attacks each, and need a 5 to wound. Scorpions have three attacks and need only a 4.
7. Marines forgo saves against Bashees but get the usual 3+ protection against the scorpions
8. When Marines strike back they need only a 3 to wound. Banshees save on 4, Scorpions on 3.

I’m simulating dice rolls using the standard python method – using the random library like so:

def roll(over):
	i = random.randint(1,6)
	return (i>=over)

You can see the entire script on Github. I’m not going to copy and paste it here, because it’s to long:

• eldar.py

Please note that I am only simulating the first round of combat during which Eldar have the biggest advantage. While a melee between Marines and Eldar will often last several turns, the first round is usually very important. Scoring enough wounds right of the get-go can cripple the opponents ability to deal damage later on, and even if they win in the end, it may render their unit unusable for purposes such as capturing objectives.

I figured that showing how each of the units will fare in their first round will be enough to judge their overall effectiveness.

When judging the results, I do it the way you would normally resolve a round: I compare how many unsaved wounds was scored on both sides. If Eldar scored more wounds than they incurred casualties then they win the round. If both sides score the same, its a tie. Otherwise Marines win.

Results

When I started running this experiment, I expected to see a large skew in favor of either Banshees or the Scorpions. Because of all the heated discussions about their effectiveness I witnessed over the years I wanted to see one or the other side of the argument validated. Unfortunately, it seems that both units are remarkably balanced. After 100,000 rounds here is the overall spread of wins, losses and ties:

Banshees vs Scorpions

Over 100,000 runs, Banshees won a round only 6% more often than Scorpions. On the other hand Scorpions tied a little bit more often – most likely due to their superior armor. The difference between the two units it is almost insignificant at this scale. Both units are quite adept at dominating the enemy on the first round, but neither one seems to be better at it than the other. Lets delve a little bit deeper and see some more statistical data on this simulation:

Banshees vs Scorpions Statistical Detail

Over the 100,000 trials both units killed on average between 2-3 Marines. Banshees killed a little bit more efficiently (nearing almost 4 marines on average, 3 being the median score) with scorpions averaging a little below 3 (2 median). Looking at that data alone, you could summarize that the brute strength and ferocity of Scorpion attack is essentially a perfect match of the Banshee can opening skills. Or rather, in the long run Marine armor is not as effective as one would think.

I expected Scorpions to incur significantly less casualties due to their heavy armor, but surprisingly this turned out not to matter all that much. Both units lost on average one man in the first turn showing that the Scorpions do not have a huge advantage over the Banshees in this department.

Banshees did show a slight edge in their ability to bring down the Marine unit below half strength on the first turn. They have accomplished this feat roughly 10% of the time, to Scorpions measly 3%. Of course, both cases are rather statistically insignificant. Most rounds ended in a close victory for the Eldar, but with Marine unit still over half strength. The rounds in which Eldar stomped the Marines into the ground, eradicating the entire squad were extremely rare – 44 occurrences for Banshees and 5 for Scorpions.

I urge you not to take my word for this. You can find my data sets on Github alongside the code. They are tab-separated text files that can be easily imported into Excel, or parsed with awk/sed for further analysis:

• Banshees data dump
• Scorpions data dump

Here is the clarification for the headers:

eh = eldar hits
ew = eldar wounds
mh = marine hits
mw = marine wounds
de = dead eldar
dm = dead marines

Summaries are underneath the raw data. You can use these files to run more in depth analysis than me. Also feel free to inspect the code, correct any mistakes you see and run such experiment on your own.

I have ran this 100,000 round test several times to make sure the numbers I got were not a fluke. Remarkably the ratio of wins to losses remained almost the same on subsequent runs.

Based on the statistical data I can conclude that there is virtually no tactical advantage in using Banshees over Scorpions. Both units are equally effective at fighting Marines. In fact, these results suggest that Scorpions are a more well rounded choice for tournament play. While they are about equal to Banshees in effectiveness against Marines they do have superior strength and armor making them much more dangerous to less armored opponents. While Banshees specialize in cracking open Marine power armors they do not pack enough punch to do well against lightly armored, ferocious melee fighters.

Further Research

This experiment was rather limited by the scope. For one, it only looked at the first round of combat – mostly to keep things simple. While in many cases first round tends to be decisive, I have witnessed enough nearly miraculous third or fourth turn come-backs to completely discard them. To get a full picture, it would be worth while to extend the python script to simulate entire combat sequence – from start to a failed moral e check or annihilation.

In addition, part of the Eldar Aspect Warrior effectiveness stems from their Exarchs – an upgraded unit leaders, who can use more powerful weapons and bestow a range of special effects on their unit. It is likely that combination of weapons and Exarch powers could easily skew the balance toward either Banshees or Scorpions.

Perhaps I will investigate these things in another post.

A strategically significant Imperial forge-world that renovates/maintains irreplaceable and incredibly potent war machines artifacts of a bygone era is engulfed by the green tide of destruction that is the Orc horde. Wave after wave of green skinned, brutal and savage warriors rain on the planet surface from the sky, pillaging and murdering everything in sight. They are scavengers and opportunists, and they are after the technological wonders made on this factory planet. The Imperium takes notice and dispatches the Ultramarines, it’s most trustworthy and loyal chapter of super-soldiers to the rescue.

We are reviewing Warhammer 40k: Space Marine

In the cinematic opening cut scene we see the planet ravaged by explosions and surrounded by rings of space debris – remains of the defense fleet that attempted to hold the alien horde at bay, and failed. We see a lone Thunderhawk gunship swoop in from the right, and head towards the planet surface. We patiently wait for the rest of the Space Marine fleet to arrive, but apparently the short range vessel is doing a quick scouting run before turning back towards the capital ships and carriers that must be in-system. After all, Tunderhawks don’t have interstellar travel capabilities. Strangely enough, the Marine fleet (or at least a single capital ship) that must exist is never shown or mentioned. The scene cuts to the interior of the Thunderhawk.

There we see three of our protagonists: Captain Titus, Sargent Beard-face and Some Dude. I’d look up the names of the two other guys but honestly, I don’t care much. As their gunship enters the atmosphere the pilot says they can’t land because the Ork fleet is laying down a curtain of fire so thick, there is no way they can squeeze through. Titus decides to fuck caution to the wind (yes, you read it right), strap a jump pack to his back and use it as a makeshift parachute.

Some Dude is opposed to the idea. The voices his objection telling the captain that such brash and reckless action goes directly against Codex Astrates. Titus won’t have any of it. He says something along the lines of “Codex-shmodex, chill out dude and go with the flow, man” – only you know, more distinguished and space marine like – but that’s essentially is the spirit of his response. Then he jumps out of the ship, and soars through the air to single handedly fuck up an Ork fire-barge.

Pictured here, Some Dude whining about some Codex infractions as usual

Being a life long, super-massive Wahrammer 40k fanboi, I can’t help but wonder how this guy even made a captain in the Ultramarines chapter. You see, the Codex Astrates is sort of a bible for everyone’s favorite power armored super soldiers. It is a book that describes their force organization, approved strategies, combat prayers, daily routines and even mundane things like how to take a quick-combat-poop while wearing that bulky armor. All Space Marine chapters base their dogma, philosophy and tactics on this one book in some capacity, but many play fast and loose with many of it’s rules and proscriptions. Space Wolves for example are more or less “viking marines” and they mostly don’t give a fuck. Their army, combat doctrine and traditions is heavily influenced by the tribal culture of their chilly home planet. Dark Angels are shady, secretive and they do all kinds of weird and non standard things with their army because of their secret agendas, and clandestine operations. Black Templars are a crusading chapter, that picks up recruits as they go and their organization is a form of pragmatic controlled clusterfuck that is only loosely based on the Codex. Ultramarines however are the chapter famous for doing things by the book.

Hell, their primarch (eg. founding father) is the guy who wrote Codex Astrates. Among 40k players, this chapter is known as “the vanilla chapter” because it’s sole distinguishing feature is the slavish, stubborn and boring adherence to the codex. While many of the other famous named chapters get special rules, and additional units, Ultramarines get none because they are supposed to be the standard, archetypal Space Marine army.

Titus, captain of the Ultramarines, dangerous maverick who rocks the boat

For an Ultramarine officer, Titus is a reckless maverick. Now, if he was a captain in the Blood Angels, I wouldn’t even bat an eyelash. I wouldn’t expect anything else from the chapter famous for being a brash and reckless band of berserkers. Their heavy weapons teams tend to score more kills by clubbing enemies to death with their Lascannons rather than shooting them. So it would work fine. But Titus is an Ultramarine captain. The obvious in-character thing for him to say would be to scold the younger Marine on his ignorance of the Codex, and then quote some obscure rule that allows improvisational use of a jump pack in a crisis situation.

Unfortunately some writer did not pay attention to the 40k “fluff” and Titus comes off as some bizarre Ultramarine rebel, that thinks codex should not be followed too rigidly. In Ultramarines that sort of attitude puts your career on a fast track to become a servitor, not a Captain. In my mind the only way he could have made an officer with that mindset is via instant in-combat promotion (ie. everyone above him in the chain of command just died).

Beardface, being a yes man to Titus and agreeing with his fast and loose philosophy

In retrospect this actually makes some sense, because it would explain why the Tunderhawh which apparently was the entire relief force sent to the forge world, only had three Marines on board. Everyone else died en-route or something. Either that, or someone dropped the script on the floor and then took a shit on it. That’s the only explanation.

Unless of course we assume that they are playing second edition, in which case – yes, that would make sense. In those times a single command squad, tooled up with all kinds of crazy wargear could potentially wipe out an entire opposing army, provided that you could somehow shoot down and equally tooled up command squad of your opponent. In other words, rank and file units were basically there because you couldn’t legally field just your force commander model on his own, but they didn’t really contribute to the battle much. But I digress… This was supposed to be about Space Marine.

I’m not even five minutes into the game, I haven’t even seen any game play yet, and I’m already annoyed at the gaping holes in the plot. We are not off to a good start.

Fortunately, it gets better. The combat is actually fun. It is a brown linear button masher, but it is undeniably enjoyable. The controls are pretty good, and the combat is visceral and satisfying. My first instinct after I finally gained control over Captain Titus was to try to hug the waist high cover, but he would not flatten himself against it. Confused I opened the key-binding screen, and to my astonishment I discovered that there is no “take cover” button in this game. My jaw instantly unhinged, dislodged itself and hit the floor so hard that the aftershocks could have been felt in the entire Tri-State area.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am actually playing a linear, third person, shoot’em-up made in 2011 and it does not have cover based combat. This is unprecedented. No, this is revolutionary! It also does not have quick-time events, but the animated, nu-interruptable cut-scene take downs that are all the rage lately are in, and deeply integrated into the game play (you recover health by doing take-downs). Granted, I would never expect a Space Marine to use cover-based tactics on the account of the fucking Power Armor (in the tabletop game it gives Marines a 70% chance to just shrug off all damage, except if it was inflicted by a select few heavy weapons awesome enough to penetrate it) but I did not expect the game designers to resist the temptation. They did, and they deserve a lot of credit for this. Perhaps lack of boring cover-shooting is what makes this game so appealing.

Orks really do look Orky!

It is perfectly ok to run head first into a horde of enemies and dice them with your power axe. It is perfectly ok to circle-strafe a big ork Nob. It may not be very Ultramarine like to do these things, but it works and it is fun. And once you get over the horrible miss-characterization of the protagonists the lore and the setting does get better.

For example, the Orks do scream “Waaaaaagh” while charging sometimes. The Imeprial Guard are properly awe-struck and intimidated by the sight of the Space Marines. There is also that iconic, shifty Inquisitor who is probably a traitor, because that’s just how Inquisitors work in the 40k universe. If there is only one inquisitor in the story, and he does not turn to Chaos at some point, or turn out to have been a traitor from the very start, then that counts as a plot twist.

If this guy does not become a traitor before the game is over, I will be surprised

The forge world does look very Warhammer-ish. The look and feel is there, and so is the iconography. The audio logs you can collect do adhere to the game fluff, and give you some more background on the daily lives of the workers on this strange planet. When you are in less destroyed parts of the factories you can hear automated announcements on the overhead speakers. It seems that unlike the writers, the artists, the level designers and concept people were all on the ball. They were right on target, and created a world that feels true to the source material – at least in the audio-visual layer.

Love the gothic warhammery architecture!

Unfortunately, while combat is fun, joyful run-and gun experience, a lot of it feels like padding. After a while, the game starts to be monotonous. There is just a limited number of shades of brown you can use to paint a scene, and a finite number of arrangements you can make out of industrial rubble. After a while, all the different locations from the game start to blend in. They do try to mix it up – sometimes you fight in city ruins, sometimes in factory ruins, sometimes in a trashed underground factory, sometimes in the desert full of stones and rubble, sometimes in dilapidated sewer system. Granted, the planet is a brown, desert like wasteland with just one huge hive like city/factory complex so expansive that is clearly visible from space. It would hard for it not to be brown and industrial, but it does get boring after a while.

You do get a few good glimpses at the titan being renovated, and it is kinda awesome. Then, back to more indusrial ruins.

Especially since you mostly fight Orks and there are just not that many different unit types. About two hours into the game, you’ve already seen all the different available Ork types. From that point on, till somewhere around hour six, you just fight the same enemies, just in different quantities and combinations. They don’t even palette swap them to keep things more interesting – it’s just more and more of the same. Eventually Chaos forces show up, throwing some demon and Traitor Marine forces into the fray which is a more than welcome change. But soon enough, even that gets a tad monotonous.

This guy pops up about once per hour, just to taunt you and then runs away.

It becomes even worse when a big boss type guy keeps popping about once an hour, to taunt you from some inaccessible ledge while completely impervious to damage. He always fucks your shit up, but you are not allowed to fight him because he is needed in some future cut-scene. I really, really hate when video games do this. When you show me a boss character, I want to fight and defeat him. Making him a recurring antagonist is just annoying. I’m sure you are fond of him, but I just want to pump him full of led, and get it over with.

Shit just got real!

I’m currently about 7-8 hours into the game and it almost looks like the story is slowly winding down. There has already been one big reveal, and a hit that there might be some mystery surrounding Titus himself that won’t be revealed until the finale. I do feel that I’m in for a long and slow slog to get there. I will try to write another post talking about the end game, and the story when I finish it.