AICN TABLETOP: Massawyrm looks at Games Workshop's move towards incorporating Forgeworld

Hola all. Massawyrm here. This has been an interesting year for Warhammer 40,000. Both the Blood Angels and the Dark Eldar have made an impact on the scene, while the BATTLE MISSIONS book has changed the way a lot of us play the game. Coming up in February, we’ve got a second wave release for my beloved Blood Angels, reportedly the long rumored Storm Raven kit and what looks to be a new plastic Furioso kit – both of which fit seamlessly into the forthcoming codex for the Grey Knights (Demonhunters). I’m on pins and needles for both. I’ve been slowly assembling a Grey Knights army over the course of the last year and painted up a GK army for someone in order to test out the color scheme; meanwhile my Blood Angels army has grown far larger than it probably should be, but is still 3 Storm Ravens shy of being complete. But for my money, the single most interesting things going on at Games Workshop is actually happening over at their sister company Forge World. And it looks like GW is starting to notice that. Games Workshop’s biggest problem right now is the fact that the company is having a hard time coming to grips with the digital age. They’ve been incredibly slow to embrace the internet and are still locked into their long outdated quarterly release cycle which offers new content and product to gamers of a specific game only once every three months or so. If you play 40K, then you have to wait through a Warhammer Fantasy Battles and a Lord of the Rings release before you can hope to see something new again – hoping it is relevant to you and your armies. This was a great release strategy back in the day when brick and mortar stores were king and stores didn’t have the shelf space to handle a steady stream of product, but now that we live in the era of the digital download and the online purchase with overnight shipping, it all seems a bit silly. In the current system, once a codex is out, it is out for the next five years – at least – and if a unit in the codex is terrible, it simply goes back on the shelf and no one bothers to buy it until the next codex hopefully makes it worthwhile. Sometimes all a unit or an army needs is a shot in the arm – some fresh blood or a new HQ unit that changes the way the army plays to addresses issues in the play environment – but GW has been resistant. But Forge World hasn’t. On the contrary, Forge World has a steady stream of product from a large range of armies always coming out – once every month or so – and now they’ve gotten their operation running smoothly, they’re putting out 2-3 new books a year overflowing with new content spread out between many of the different armies. This past year saw the release of three new Imperial Armour books – Apocalypse 2, Raid on Kastorel-Novem, and Badab War Part One – introducing 2 completely altered army lists and new non-apocalypse units and vehicles for 7 different armies, several of which that haven’t seen any 5th edition love at all. Even more radical, they’ve been making new Space Marine HQ units, each with different play-styles, allowing you to fundamentally alter the way a Space Marine army plays. In a scene in which 50% of the players are suited up as the Imperium’s finest, now there are a dozen new ways to play it different than your buddies, without the need for new vehicles or codexes. Unfortunately, it’s kind of hard to convince people outside of your circle of friends to play with the new books. Tournament organizers tend to ignore the books and ban them from tournament play because most tournament organizers are brick and mortar stores and they can’t sell either the books or the Forge World minis. In fact, up until just a few weeks ago, if you wanted the books at all, you had to order them directly from Forge World and pay a 15% shipping charge just to get it shipped to you inside of a month – or pay the extra 15 Pounds to get it expedited from the UK (which is admittedly *VERY* fast). But now you can buy the books directly through the GW store – complete with their free shipping on orders of $15 or more. This is probably the biggest shift in GW policy towards the hobby aspect of the game that we’ve seen from them in a long time. If you’ve never handled a Forge World book, you might be wondering what the big deal is; if you have, you know exactly why I’m excited. Forge World books are large, thick, hardback tomes, printed on top quality paper, in color, and almost groaning from the weight of illustrations and content contained inside. Most books contain an entire codexes worth of content geared towards one or two armies, while detailing the history of a particular campaign or series of battles taking place in a certain point in 40K history. If you’re the type of person who spends more time playing 40K with friends in your garage than you do at tournaments, these books are the ones you want to start picking up to expand your armies. Many of the models and units contained inside are things you can purchase only from Forge World – but a large number of them are easily kit bashed from easily available models, or simply slightly altered versions of already existing ones. If you can scrounge together some spare assault cannons, you can build a Deathwind Drop Pod – a heavy support choice perfect for an all reserve army. Or you can buy the Space Marine Commander kit and build 90% of the new characters in IA9: The Badab War. And you’re just some greenstuff and a Soul Grinder away from making yourself a Plague Hulk. The GW store is now carrying Books 3-9 and both IA Apocalypse books (which, for my money, are the very best deals available on the GW site). There are rumors that the shift involves the company wanting to merge the lines. Here are the two books I think you should go over and buy RIGHT NOW.
IA 9: THE BADAB WAR As many of you might remember, it was two years ago that our local group of players, led by the guys over at Bell of Lost Souls, began constructing armies and rules to play through the famous Badab Campaign – the war between a number of feuding Space Marine chapters. I took up the Fire Angels while the remaining 15 armies were assembled and painted by folks around town. In the wake of that – whether inspired by the effort or simply coincidentally – Forge World set out to make their own rules for the Badab conflict. Split between two books – each focusing upon the beginning and the end of the war respectively – each books offers new Space Marine HQ units, vehicles and in the case of book one, a complete army list drawn from a strange mix of Imperial Guard units and altered Space Marine units. The book is incredible, offering up 12 new characters (one of them a Dreadnought Chaplain) from 10 different Chapters. There’s a new version of Red Scorpion bigman Carab Culln, fixing his rules to allow the Red Scorpions to play more smoothly in 5th edition; there’s an early war version of Chaos Space Marine Huron for use in Codex Space Marine armies (not to mention two of his lieutenants); and there are chapter masters and captains that grant their armies crazy abilities like Tank Hunter and Stealth or allowing them to count Terminators or Vanguard squads as scoring units. The Tyrant Legion list is probably the most interesting list to come out of Forge World, mixing IG tanks and troop choices with a Space Marine troop choice that allows up to 20 marines in a unit and up to 4 heavy/special weapons in each unit, options to pull some units out of Codex: Space Marines and a special conscript unit that allows Space Marines to use them as human shields to gain a 3+ Cover save. I’m actually putting together 2500 points of the Tyrant’s Legion to run in friendly games around town. It’s certainly not a tournament winner as the list is stripped of all the nastiness that makes IG so gross right now, but it will find itself well balanced against most every other codex out there that doesn’t begin with the word “Space” and end with the word “Wolves”. In addition to the usual shit ton of fluff and historical refights, there’s a new set of rules for fighting boarding actions during ship to ship combat. It’s another style of mission type in the vein of Cityfight and Planetstrike that requires you to build your army for the missions and offers new options and stratagems for engaging in them. Pretty great stuff if you’ve ever wanted to run Space Hulk battles in 40K with a modicum of balance. My only complaint about this book at all is a single entry, located conspicuously next to the section on my Fire Angels, noting that the records throughout the Imperium are pretty screwy and occasionally entire histories or chapters can be fabricated, flawed or just plain wrong. This exists, of course, to give a polite “screw you” to guys like me with red and white painted Fire Angels when the new color scheme looks identical to the Grey Knights Silver and Red. (Yes, I thought about repainting, and no, fuck them, I won’t. Red and White they stay. I’m not stripping 150 minis, dreadnoughts and vehicles.) Several of the chapters found themselves with new (and sometimes improved) color schemes. Others, like the once proud Space Sharks, are finding themselves complexly rebranded with a new name.
IA APOCALYPSE 2 The single best value there is on the GW website, IAA2 is 112 full color pages of new units for both Apocalypse and standard play. A large, Hardback book, this will set you back $33 – just $4 more than a Codex, despite the disparity on printing quality and content. This book sports units and Apocalypse data sheets compatible with 13 different codexes: IG, all Space Marine, both Chaos, Tau, Eldar, Ork, Grey Knight and Witchhunter. But where this really excels is as a codex expansion for Imperial Guard, Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines. Each of these armies get so many new standard (non-apocalypse) game options to play around with – especially Chaos, which has been sorely neglected in 5th Edition – that you can build armies that pretty much center on the new options listed within. Highlights include the Lucius Pattern Drop Pod, which lets Dreadnoughts assault immediately after deep striking; Plague Hulks and Blight Drones, which flesh out the Nurgle Heavy Support option as well as providing a killer Fast Attack option; Slaneshi Sonic Dreadnoughts (best Chaos Dreads in the game; read: useful chaos dreadnoughts); Imperial Guard Heavy Quad Launchers, effectively super mortars; and a Grey Knight Land Raider sporting twin linked Psycannons and an assault ramp that grants Grey Knights initiative 10 when assaulting from it. Effectively supplemental material for so many codexes, you are going to be hard pressed not to find a use for worthwhile something in it if you play any of these armies. If you’re like me and have several armies on the shelf, you’ll find that this book is invaluable, providing a large amount of new content for a very low price. Just keep in mind that unlike the other Imperial Armour books, the Apocalypse line is all about the crunch and not the fluff – don’t expect the same kind of story depth with these; just the stats, facts and army lists you’d expect out of the second half of any good codex. Well, that does it for me today. Check back on Monday as I look into what Wizards of the Coast have been up to lately.
Until next time friends, Massawyrm
Got something for the Wyrm? Mail it here.