Day: February 9, 2019

LVO Previews 2019

Okay, so I’m a bit late to this party, as the LVO previews slid online in the early hours of Friday morning for me here in the UK, but my goodness, it’s taken some time to digest these things!

Starting with what I’m looking forward to the most, the new boxed set Shadowspear. Full to the brim with new sculpts of Primaris and Chaos Space Marines, this has got to be the thing that is top of my list! I mean, we’ve got new Black Legion models for the first time since the showdown between Horus and the Emperor, including some very sexy beasts and horrifically mutated dudes. What’s not to like?!

If that wasn’t enough, we’re also getting sniper-Primaris, alongside perhaps the best Primaris sculpt that has been released for the range:

I don’t know what it is about this boy, but this is the first time I have been actually excited for the Primaris as a range. Sure, PriMarneus Calgar was a nice surprise, and those Hellblasters sure look good, but there’s something about this Librarian with his camo cloak and leather gloves that speaks to me. Not sure about the actual snipers- they look like they’re trying too hard to replicate the original sniper scout marines, but in power armour they look a bit silly. Still, there are more, as-yet-to-be-revealed minis in this box, which I’m guessing will be coming out to coincide with the end of this 80-day countdown we’re still on. Exciting times ahead!

As an aside, a lot of people seem to be assuming that this box is going to be push-fit models like Dark Imperium, but the article does actually compare it with the line of battle boxes from Forgebane, which I think everybody is forgetting came with the actual multi-part kits. So I’m assuming instead that we’ll be getting the actual new CSM kits, etc, and that is an exciting assumption, indeed!

While the Black Legionaries are indeed very exciting minis, I’m particularly looking forward to the new Abaddon that has now been teased:

This could be along the lines of Roboute Guilliman big, which I suppose just further tips the balance towards Chaos (still only one loyalist Primarch out here in the wilds of 8th edition?) but it’s still a very exciting prospect. Of course, Abaddon can’t be expected to have Primarch-like stats, but given that he has the favour of all four Chaos gods, and is basically the rallying point for the majority of the Chaos Space Marine warbands in the galaxy, I’d hope he would be better than, say, new Calgar.

We’ll have to see! At any rate, all of this is making me want to get a CSM force off the ground like there’s no tomorrow!

We’ve seen more CGI-renders of the new Sisters of Battle, which is all very exciting and good and whatnot, but I feel a bit like this is just being drawn out a bit too much now, and I think I’d prefer to just have the models already! It has been very much a drip-feed that I’ve found a bit more irritating than interesting, but I suppose that’s just me being a grumpy old git! Hopefully the announcement of a more regular bulletin means that they’re closer to the release of these models than we knew.

The next warband for Shadespire is Sylvaneth, and definitely makes me wish I hadn’t sold off those models that I’d been building up – take note, kids: it’s not always a good idea to get rid of stuff you may later want!

Not quite sure about this one – a distillation of the best bits of 40k Kill Team and Shadespire? Sounds like it could be good, for sure! Details are a bit too sketchy for me to actually have much more of an opinion, though, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens with this one…

More vague promises of stuff that could be interesting: Forbidden Power is an expansion for AoS that continues the story of the Soul Wars, as something ancient and terrible awakens. What on earth is this about, then? Is Slaanesh the ancient and terrible force? This could be interesting, at any rate…

Staying with Age of Sigmar – new armies are coming, as well as new battletomes for existing armies, so that’s all quite interesting! After Skaven and Flesh-Eater Courts get their books, we’ve got a new book for Khorne, which I can’t decide if I want to get or not. I am, however, interested in the new Skulltaker model (even if it does look remarkably like the old one)

There are also “Khornate phenomena” – because the Lord of Skulls cares not for your magic, peasant!

I mean, they’re just what we’d expect, aren’t they? Delightful pieces of death and destruction from the Blood God.

I feel like this year has been on a par with the last LVO reveals, at any rate!

Coming so soon after my recent post about the Allure of the New, I probably sound a little hypocritical talking about how much I like the new stuff coming in that Shadowspear box. I suppose I’m just Games Workshop’s target market – always wanting the next new thing, never really halting to do anything with the stuff that I already have. I definitely want to start getting better with my purchasing strategy, and I’m trying to not get carried away by all of this stuff. I’ve found it interesting to think about my responses to the way that GW have been revealing stuff on the community site, with previews of next week’s preorders coming pretty much two weeks prior to their actual availability, and how this has made me almost too wary of committing myself to anything new because I want to see what’s coming the week after. If that makes sense.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, as the whole Gloomspite Gitz preorder window got me really enthused for starting up with those guys, but because I knew that the Genestealer Cults would be coming out at some point around the end of January – an army that I already own a considerable number of models for already – I have been wary of over-spending anymore. Knowing that there was something else coming over the horizon has kept me from going too deep into any of the very new stuff, and it makes me wonder if there are any others out there who have been the same. I definitely don’t get caught up in the release excitement in the same way that I used to, that’s for sure! And now that I know I have Shadowspear that will likely cost £95, I’m going to be very cautious with anything that comes out between now and then. Interesting times, that’s for sure…

Star Wars thoughts

Oh my word, have you guys seen this?!

I have been in a bit of a Star Wars flunk lately, after having been burned by mediocre (or less) Star Wars novels and comics coming out from Disney. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been enjoying the new films, it just feels a bit like everything else on offer has been just stale, somehow, and uninteresting at best.

Well, I think I’ve just stumbled across the thing that will get me back among the stars, with the announcement of Star Wars: Outer Rim, from Fantasy Flight Games! It’s not a co-op game, but looks like it can be played solo, which is always an interesting point for me these days.

There’s no mention in the article of any kind of AI or beating a game engine, but rather just trying to become the best scoundrel in the galaxy. Of course, I imagine there would be some kind of way to make it enjoyable solo, though I do feel it might end up a bit like playing a deck-building game without any opponents. Certainly sounds like a fun time with more players, as you each race across the galaxy trying to gain influence and the like! Sounds a bit like the much-vaunted Firefly game, which I’ve never played but hear pretty much nothing but good things about!

It looks like an encounter-based system that should be a lot of fun, and being designed by Corey Konieczka – the man behind Eldritch Horror and Rune Age among others – I have high hopes that it will be an immersive experience as well.

My love of Star Wars has been on a definite decline recently, though, so I’m really glad there has been something like this come along to kick-start it once again. The upcoming release of the ninth installment of the main Saga hasn’t even got me this interested, though I think this has a lot to do with internet-fatigue. You know, I kinda liked how different The Last Jedi was from all the other movies, in the same way that I’ve come to appreciate the Prequels more and more for being different to the Original Trilogy. The Sequel Trilogy (are we calling it that, now?) has been markedly different, for me, and while there have been some hiccups for me along the way, nevertheless I think they’re telling an interesting story in their own way. If all of my frustrations with these sequels could be boiled down to one thing, it would be that we still haven’t really yet gone wider in the universe. I guess that’s my own problem, because the OT wasn’t particularly wide, but the EU we had for years did a very good job of filling the rest in, so it still felt like a whole universe. I suppose once we’ve had all of the plot holes filled in with Episode IX, we’ll hopefully get some novels that can go back and tell us more about Snoke, the First Order, how the Rebellion became the New Republic which became the Resistance (though I believe that is starting already). I suppose I just need to try and give it some more time.

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And now, this! #StarWars #Solo #nowReading

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I started to read Last Shot back in July last year, and had to give it up as a bad job roughly halfway through. I read a few more books, got married, and then came back to finish it in, I think, October – mainly because I hate to leave a book unfinished, even if it’s a bad book. And this, in my opinion, was a bad book. It suffered, for me, from having an author who seems determined to only use the movies as reference material, and begins to incorporate all manner of ridiculous, annoying things in here, because he doesn’t know anything else. The Ewok slicer just got on my nerves, and the Gungan prison warden in Kessel made me want to punch the book multiple times. I mean, there was just so much wrong about this book that it just annoyed me to pick it up and try to read it.

I’m not going to attempt to do a full review of it on my blog, because I’ve been trying to cast all memory of it from my mind, but suffice it to say, I did not enjoy this one, and as it happens, I’ve been pretty much away from Star Wars since. I suppose it’s just part of this burn-out, where I’ve still not really read an enjoyable SW novel since the excellent Bloodline, and the comics are so bad I’ve actually stopped buying them month after month, as I’ve only marginally found one or two interesting, at best. I’ll probably do another catch up with them at some point, but otherwise, I’ve just been feeling decidedly unimpressed with the new stuff.

In all honesty, I don’t think this has got a lot to do with my nostalgia for the old EU, either, as there was plenty there that was, shall we say, less than inspiring? But it’s a shame, because I think there has been some good stuff to come out since the Disney take-over, and for me, one of these has actually been the Solo movie. I’ve been quite disappointed with the internet reaction to this, as while there were some odd things, and some unnecessary things, overall I thought it was actually a good movie, and definitely worth its place in the movie-verse.

Details seem to be pretty scant as to what new movies we can expect from Disney post-episode 9, which I find to be quite curious. Solo was, apparently, the most expensive Star Wars movie ever made, and that it failed to make that back at the box office seems to have put the nail in the coffin – or at least, the brakes on – any further movies being developed. Maybe they’re just waiting to see how well IX does before they announce anything further? At any rate, while I’ve not been enjoying the new films anywhere near as much as I enjoyed a movie with Lucas at the helm, I’ve still been finding a lot to enjoy in these new offerings, and I think I’m over that initial fear of Star Wars-saturation. It’s been a long slog since The Force Awakens started us on this road, but I’m hopeful that, once we’re out of the communications blackout that always seems to surround making an “episode” movie, we’ll have a lot more to look forward to. And, y’know, I hope they finally go wide and let some really talented and imaginative authors explore this new universe and finally flesh it out for the fans!