2014 Musing and Thoughts on the End Times

Yeeehhaaaaa!

So. Another year in the hobby done. One year closer to the cold and uncaring grave.

Still with me? Great. So, the year that was. A lot of great stuff hit the house of Saturday. My obsessive trading for old lead continued apace. This year though, my focus returned to 40k. Not so much the current game as the background. This was thanks to the O'Hammerers (the Irish Oldhammer contingent,) that my interest was rekindled. Our first outing was at KnaveCon 3, where we set out a participation game of Warhammer 3rd edition where my ravenous fimir were attacking a not so defenceless halfling village. Good times.

Delicious halflings

Since then the beginning of a genestealer cult has started in infiltrate my cabinet. Still small, perilously so, but growing. We've taken Pulp Alley as out rules du jour, and it's a very pleasant system. Easy to learn, but with enough variety to apply it to pretty much any scenario. We took to the road again for BroCon.

Paul Shoten's (Cheetor) amazing terrain

I have a couple of models I'm planning on painting for it next year I'm quite excited about. I mean, what would a hybrid ride into battle?

The fimir were not forgotten, with a large ettin joining the army, as well as some new characters. The ettin was the largest model I've yet worked on, and my first Forge World model. I was very impressed with the detail on the resin. I have some new bits and pieces I want to add to the army in 2015. Some hound handlers, along with more hounds, some fianna fimm and another wyrm rider for starters. Truly armies are never finished. I am toying with adding a large unit of human tribesmen complete with the dagda and his mates, but sure we'll see.

As the Summer wore on I got more and more engrossed in the cult. Post BroCon my hobby tailed off some due to life, but I've been adding to the cult in the time I had. It's a very enjoyable project and has really invigorated me to go searching off after a lot of the old Rogue Trader miniatures. My latest notion is a maniple of old Rogue Trader era robots led by a magus. The robots aren't common, and I'm acquiring them almost literally one piece at a time.

I know it says bog pools. I really must fix that.

There have been a couple of KnaveCon this year, which keep getting better and better. The next one is the fifth, which is on April 11th, and if you're an Irish gamer, I really recommend coming along.

September saw my now annual trip to NWG, where the games were fun and craic gooood. Nigel and the lads always put on a great event. I picked up a couple of painting prizes which was very nice indeed. Another great event in the Irish gaming calendar.

These fimm are in trouble.

The All Quiet of the Martian Front and Mars Attacks kickstarters shipped. Mostly. I'm still waiting on wave 2 of All Quiet. The models are bloody great though, especially the Martian tripods. In general the game is good, with a few little glitches, but nothing sensible gamers can't overcome. The wonderful models make any rules jiggery irrelevant. The human tanks are really excellent in my opinion, with a great alternate World War One feel to them. I'd really like to get a few tripods and tanks painted up next year.

I've played a few games of Mars Attacks, and it's a nice wee game. Mantic did a pretty decent job with the shipping, but have been so busy since that they're having trouble responding to backers looking for missing parts etc. Still, I'm looking forward to assembling the saucers and giant robots. With both this and All Quiet awaiting painting, surely I won't need to buy and models in 2015?

Indeed.

So, looking back it's been a pretty decent year gaming and painting wise, bar the terrible slump in painting in the last few of months. Still, the brushes are in hand once again. There was one other big event that warrants discussion, and that is the end times in warhammer. WARNING: SPOILERS.

Nagash has had enough of your shit.

I've been playing Warhammer now since 1986. You can't do anything for almost 30 years without it becoming part of you. Over the years the background of the game has soaked into my subconscious and nestled there. This is part of the reason the End Times series has made me gasp more than once. Both for the events in the books and the ramifications on the future of the game.

Major characters are dead. Nations burned or sunk. I mean, Ulthuan is gone. GONE. That still needs to sink in. (Sorry.) Khemri GONE. That promoted a bit of a sulk. Kemmler apparently dead, Zacharius dead, Eltharion dead, Tyrion dead. Teclis dead. Malus Darkblade dead. Naggaroth abandoned. Estalia and Tilea taken by the ratmen. Bretonnia essentially razed. Kislev destroyed. The list of losses goes on and on and on.

It's almost too much. 

The imaginary world that has seeped into my bones over the years is being take apart, one paragraph at a time. Where will it end? Part of me wonders what GW are doing. A lore that has taken over 30 years to build is being razed to the ground. That said, I LOVE the books. Despite the destruction, the sense of excitement in the books makes it no wonder they sold out. Everyone I know who has read them has devoured the story, and read only some of the rules. We all want to know how it ends. I've not been as excited about the game in a while. And yet, where is it heading?

According to those that may know, we are looking at two, maybe three more books, with the skaven the stars of book four, out January 2nd. That date is still a rumour. I really do like the united armies of undead and chaos, as that's how they were when I started the game, and my skeleton archers, skullchuckers and Realm of Chaos army might see action once again. What GW seem to be doing is consolidating the books down into 5 or 6 main armies for 9th edition, whatever that might be. Will Warhammer 9th edition just be a tin box containing cooling ashes and fragments of bone?

What will be left of the Warhammer world for 9th? Will your human army consist of a battered knight, four starving halberdiers and old guy on a horse?

The discontinuation of the Tomb Kings book bodes ill, for what replaces it? Is the rumoured ravening hordes book for 9th really going to happen? Added to that Tamurkhan and Monstrous Arcana are discontinued, with Forge World not looking at any new Warhammer releases for the next two years at least. Bad times for chaos dwarf players, myself included. Ah well, it's not like we weren't out in the cold before. Maybe what we need is for space marines to land in Altdorf to get things moving. We could have empire space marines, skaven space marines, undead space marines, (I mean, they have a primarch) lizardy space marines... sorry. That sounds bitter. I actually like space marines. Just not all the time.

I'm really very curious about where Warhammer is going post End Times.