Man that was a busy couple of weeks!
So here’s your digest. In case you missed it, our boy Pat Nevan won another event, this time Sovereign Smash at Ballarat. Well done big fella.
Pete was also there with his Bonesplitterz, with emphatically different results. Let’s focus on the fact that Pete won a tourney game with 1500 points of an army, after leaving his Mega-Gargant at home…and forget about everything else that went down at the event. Now what’s that saying: history is written by the bloggers? Pretty sure it’s something like that.
The Dawnbringer releases are coming thick and fast: we covered the Gorgers (TLDR: they’re OK) plus the FAQ to Brodd’s Stomp and the KO Grundstok build (TLDR: I still like Brodd’s Stomp without the teleporting bullshit).
In the hobby space, Seanzor wrote a thoughtful piece on challenging yourself with minis of different scales, and Pete saved a few dollars by kitbashing a Beast-skewer Killbow from spare parts.
Meanwhile we launched Six Questions at Tristan Smith, who’s been takin’ names with his Gordrakk list, and Calvin delivered a couple of competitve lists for the Trugg’s Troggherd Army of Renown.
What’s next
…but we’re not slowing down. A few things we’re working on in the next week or two include:
- Our series on faction Battle Tactics has been a hit, and next up is Skaven as requested by our Patron Clarkzium. These articles make a good primer for playing against those armies too, so they’re well worth following whether you play those armies or not. If we do say so ourselves.
- Pete’s working on some Orruk lists, especially centred around the new Ironjawz units. Should be a bit more competitive than his Bonesplitterz, which let’s be honest isn’t hard.
- Next up in the Hobby Aesthetics series, Seanzor will have some advice on improving your miniature photography. If you want your minis to get more likes than Messi holding the World Cup aloft…. OK let’s not go nuts, but you should still check it out.
- We’re working on a Tactica to deal with the Fights First that has crept back into the meta, which we’re hoping will be another strong resource for competitive players (or garage gamers who want to smash their mates).
- The October Listbuilding Challenge is open for your Armies of Renown lists. There’s still (just about) time to chuck your submissions at us – Twitter DMs are best – so keep an eye out for the results plus the upcoming November Challenge.
Craicheads
We’re rapt to welcome our new Patrons:
- Craig Ellis
- Josh Kale
- Zel
- Erin Howard
- KS
- Kyle Nelson
- Alex McCormick
Thanks so much for jumping on board – we’ve been smashing out a whole bunch of proper Age of Sigmar coverage week after week, so it’s great to know you’re enjoying the articles.
There are hosting costs involved in doing this on top of the time we all put in. We don’t accept free review copies, we don’t pump out “Here’s some free crap I glued together” or “Look what they just said in a WarCom article” garbage for cheap clicks, we don’t have 40K coverage propping up the site and we don’t run ads because they make the page look shit for the readers. We’re doing this because we enjoy putting out coverage that we’re proud to put our names to, and it’s the Patrons who are making that possible. So thank you.
Tweet of the Month
Hugh goes BANG!
Masters of the Universe
Was there ever a flame that burned brighter, for a shorter time, than He-Man and the Masters of the Universe? It was just as big as Transformers back in the day, but with nothing like the lasting impact on today’s pop culture. As cynical as the premise was – essentially an animated 23-minute toy commercial – there was some seriously strong world building. The people who created Eternia were all experienced, respected and accomplished writers and artists, and there was some real magic there at first.
As a young kid it was the first IP that drew me in, so I was actually quite old before I realized that Sci Fi and Fantasy were usually distinct genres. Of course the bare-chested guys with swords are zipping around on jet bikes, firing laser beams at dragons. Why wouldn’t they?
But I was on the younger end of the fandom and to anyone even a couple of years younger than me, it’s like the whole thing never existed. US toy sales collapsed from $400m in 1986 to $7m in 1987, the live action movie released that year was a dud, and that was the end of He-man.
Why am I banging on about it now? I picked up a copy of the new Clash for Eternia miniatures boardgame. Yep, 30-odd years after those glorified TV ads first aired, and Mattel are still picking my pocket for He-Man toys.
Extended adverts dressed up as content ay? What are people like.
The game is actually really good, and I was frankly as shocked as anyone. It’s a hex-based skirmish game with a couple of expansions available, but no more planned: it’s self-contained by design. This isn’t meant to be your main system like Age of Sigmar; it’s a pallet cleanser, and the rules are streamlined as such.
You can blast out a couple of missions on a weeknight so it can fit a great spot in your gaming portfolio, and the 45 minute run-time means that if one mission doesn’t feel perfectly balanced, that’s fine: you can just laugh it off and move onto the next one. “Balance by triviality” kind of works for something like this, and I’m having a blast. Highly recommend.
Now can someone please write a PG-13 screenplay and get a live-action movie made?
Tales from the Craichouse
Meanwhile in the Craichouse (our Patrons- only Discord server), we’ve got a really cool project underway: we’re working together on our own Army of Renown, for a combined Bonesplitterz and Spiderfang force. This will be a self-contained set of rules for the not-too-distant future where the Splitterz might not have a book of their own, to give people who like the army a cool way to use their minis.
Spiderfang and Bonesplitterz fit together aesthetically, and the best part is it works thematically too: Spiders don’t have bones (they have chitin instead), so there’s no reason for the Splitterz to hunt them. We’ll be aiming to make something fun to play with and against, with a notional ~45% win rate, so if you want to get involved, you know what to do.
If you’d like to help us continue with our work, we’d love to have your support. We’re the Age of Sigmar specialists, publishing regular AOS articles, including Patron-only posts on that platform. Please click here to join us on Patreon.
Plastic Craic 