Sector Imperialis Bases

Finally got my internet sorted to start doing videos. First few will be a little rough while I work out what the hell I am doing.

Dragon Rampant – Skirmish Fantasy with freedom to dream.

I started playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle with 4th edition, and while I stopped playing during 7th due to the slide towards rather unbalanced army books, and skipped 8th due to the many problems it had, I really enjoyed 6th and had hoped to return to a new, more balanced edition.

I was actually looking forward to Age of Sigmar, right up until I read the rules. I even tried to rewrite them to make them better, but gave up when I realised I was putting more effort into fixing them than GW had into writing them. I don’t owe GW my money or my time. If they can’t be bothered to create a good product that people want to buy and play, then that is up to them.

So I have a Dwarf, Brettonnian and Goblin army. I’m no longer tied to a games system. The problem I had with 8th was the necessity for giant units of grunts to gain steadfast. I saw battles that consisted of 1 unit of 120 goblins, and then just aracknok spiders and heroes.

I want a game where it is practical to paint an army to completion in a reasonable amount of time, where it is easy to transport, and where I can have some fun with the modelling, and the game is good, balanced and fun to play.

With the death of Warhammer Fantasy, and with the problems Age of Sigmar has, I am open to trying new things. I know Kings of War is doing very well now. I know Frostgrave has taken off like a rocket, and I have bought into that as well.

 I now strongly believe that the future for fantasy gaming is armies used for multiple systems, and that for the rank and flank games armies will split from being tied to rules + models from one manufacturer.

The big fish in the rank and flank pond, Games Workshop, is gone and the community is splitting in many different directions. With no ‘standard’ game, fantasy gamers will find pick up play and club play much harder to get, which explains why Age of Sigmar has obliterated fantasy gaming where I am. Some people were really enthusiastic and gave it a try. They aren’t enthusiastic anymore.

So that is where I am coming from and my biases.

So what about Dragon Rampant? Osprey Publishing have emerged recently as a rules powerhouse for skirmish gaming, with Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen Cityand Bolt Action: World War II Wargames Rules being published by them. They have been quick to provide niche products for different historical eras, and Lion Rampant Medieval Wargaming Rules (Osprey Wargames 8) was produced to cover the War of the Roses/100 Years War era. It was very well received, and because it includes points values and freedom to create your own army lists, players could tailor it to different historical periods. Some players started using it to play fantasy games.

The Review

The book itself is a high quality product of the sort you would expect from a major publisher. There are a nine pieces of art including the cover, and all other pictures are photographs of miniatures.

GW aren’t present, most likely for legal reasons, but Mirliton, Mantic, Grenadier, Reaper, Perry Miniatures, Minifigs, Wargames Factory, EM4, Standard Games, Copplestone, Demonworld, Fireforge, Artizan and Vendel are, with the Mantic and Copplestone models looking like photos from the manufacturer.

It gives you an idea of the range of manufacturers available, and demonstrates 15mm multibasing with Copplestone and Demonworld.

The rules are 14 pages. The additional fantasy specific rules are another seven. The rest is building your warband, example army lists and scenarios. The rules set is tight. The only question I had after reading it was whether scouts rolled 12 attack dice, and they do, they are so cheap because they die to a stiff breeze and the unit has 6 strength points.

So how does the game work?

You create a warband using the design rules. I’ll give an example below of a 30 point warband.

Giant Undead Construct – Greater Warbeast, Ponderous, Venomous, Undead – 10 points Necromancer – Heavy Foot + Spellcaster – 8 points
Armoured Skeletons – Heavy Foot, Undead – 4 points
Skeleton Warriors – Light Foot, Undead – 3 points
Skeleton Archers – Light Missiles, Undead – 4 points
Zombies – Ravenous Horde, Undead – 1 point

So what models would you need? A big undead monster, a necromancer (though you could include a couple of bodyguards), 6 armoured skeletons, 12 skeleton warriors, 12 archers and 12 zombies. 44 models, not that many to paint. The big monster also makes a nice centrepiece unit.

A 24 point Dwarf Warband might go like this.

Dwarf Thane – Elite Foot – 6 points
Dwarf Elite Guard – Elite Foot – 6 points
Dwarf Warriors – Heavy Foot – 4 points
Dwarf Crossbowmen – Heavy Missiles – 4 points
Dwarf Rangers with bows – Scouts – 2 points

So what models for this force? A Dwarf lord, 6 heavily armoured dwarves, 12 warriors, 12 crossbows, 6 scouts. 37 models in 4 units plus a character. Again, not that much to paint.

Hopefully you are getting the idea of just how much freedom you get in creating your force. The game works by giving your unit’s orders to activate them, and you activate your units until you fail, and then your opponent takes their turn. This means the order in which you activate your units becomes very important, and like Blood Bowl, risk management is an important part of the game. You roll for activation on 2d6, and units have different scores to beat to do different things. A unit of elite foot will attack or move on a 5+, but a ravening horde will attack on a 7+ and move on a 6+. This means you may not activate all your units in a turn, and the zombies included in the undead force above may just chill for much of the game. It also means play flows well.

The rules have units of 6 or 12 strength points. Once a unit is reduced to half its strength points it rolls half as many dice to attack and defend. Strength points can be represented through models or with markers like dice. In the examples above the Giant Undead Construct would have 6 strength points and be one model, while the skeleton warriors would have 12 strength points and be 12 models. You can have a unit of 3 trolls have 12 strength points and be bellicose infantry (good for attacking, not for much else). Remove a troll for every 4 strength points lost.

Units have armour between 1 and 4, and based on the number of hits caused during combat you start to lose strength points. If you are armour 2 and take 5 hits you lose two strength points (3 if you are undead, but undead don’t take courage tests).

Morale is important and Courage tests are normally how units are destroyed. Once you start taking heavy casualties in a unit you stack up minuses to your courage, making you more likely to break and less likely to rally. Once a standard 12 strength point infantry unit has lost 8 strength points, it isn’t going to pass a Courage test on anything less than box cars.

This mechanic means that elite infantry and cavalry can still rally when reduced to 1 or 2 strength points, as elite riders have courage 3+ and will rally on a 7 or better even when reduced to 2 strength points. Elite units all have better armour, and are less vulnerable to being chipped away by missile fire. An Elite Riders or Greater warbeast simply shrugs off three hits from missile fire with no casualties, whereas Light or Heavy foot would lose a strength point and have to take a courage test. But Elite Riders are 6 points whereas light foot are 3.

Lore? There isn't any. Add your own. Play games in the Chaos wastes, the world of Dragon Age or any environment you care to create. With a solid set of rules you can play competitively (and actually try to win) and the game is fair. In the Undead list I created you have a lot of eggs in one basket with the Necromancer and Construct, and other players might be fielding three units of Elite Riders, or four units of heavy infantry and a unit of scouts for the same price, and if you go elite heavy that can cause you problems against an opponent who has taken scouts, and light infantry, and can lose units and keep going.

In terms of balance the only addition I would make is restricting the Summoner, which you pay 3 points for anyway, to summoning only units bought as part of the army already or Ravenous Hordes with the Undead rule (ie zombies). There are advantages to it, as you can use it to 'drop pod' in units during the game, but restricting the 'free' units to ravenous hordes prevents free units of Elite Riders or Giant Warbeasts popping up.

Dragon Rampant is the sort of game I was looking for from Age of Sigmar. The rules are simple but there is depth to them, it is well balanced and plays quickly, and army selection is meaningful, because you have to make choices and trade offs.

Is it worth £11.38 for Dragon Rampant - Fantasy Wargaming Rules (Osprey Wargames)or half that on Kindle? Absolutely it is.

Band of Brothers - The Bolt Action 2 boxed game

Well Bolt Action 2 arrived this morning.

And it’s packed. I got mine directly from Warlord so I could get a box of free plastic infantry (I went with Japanese, to start doing the Pacific theatre) so I’ve received it nice and early from the first print run.

So what’s in it? I know you’ve come mainly for the pictures, so I’m not going to tease you.

A very thick softback rulebook.

24 US paratroopers, which are new plastic models and one of the two paratrooper set Warlord are bringing out (the hope being that we'll see British Paratroopers in the next few months). 

I have done a photo of the whole sprue and close ups on the weapons and heads so you can see them. The weapons per 6 body sprue are - 1 .30 cal MMG, 1 Browning Automatic Rifle, 3 Thompson SMGs, 5 rifles (2 M1 Garands, 3 rifles), a 1911 pistol and a machete. There are 15 heads, 12 helmets, 1 soft cap, 2 bare heads. 

12 German Grenadiers - these are quite recent plastics though not new, and again have a good mix of weapons, with 2 LMGs, 3 assault rifles, 5 rifles, 3 SMGs and a panzerfaust per sprue between 6 bodies.  

1 German Sd.KFz 251/10 Aus D half track.

1 Ruined farmhouse

Pin markers, dice, order dice and the new templates.

A quick reference sheet.

A get started booklet.

I am not going to get into the minutiae of the rules changes in this article. The major complaints I heard about Bolt Action 1^st Edition were machine guns weren’t effective enough for the points, and assault (particularly cavalry) was too effective for units that rolled multiple dice (and particularly Tough Fighters).

I played someone who had gone through the German army book and picked what they felt were the most effective units they could fit into a 500 point force, vs my entirely in theme British Paratroopers. So I faced cavalry, a mixture of veteran infantry with assault rifles and regular support teams, generally all 6 man units. I did field 5 man paratrooper squads, splitting my units into rifles/LMG and SMG squads to leap frog them around the board. It worked very well. It also proved to me that snipers are absolutely worth taking.

I absolutely creamed them, because veteran assaults are lethal in BA, but it was a very different game to the first one I played where I took a Last Levy german force against Americans and got battered (though my Volksturm launched a surprise assault and wiped out a Ranger squad).

This has been addressed in the new edition. On first reading the book is well laid out, logical, has examples and diagrams and is colour throughout.

Looking at the US paratrooper sprue, which is the brand new sprue in the set, it is crisp, has a good weapon mix, and includes the parts to make a 30. Cal MMG team.

I picked up the bazooka and mortar set with the order, a command squad, and another grunt with a Thompson to attach to one of the command elements and bring the force closer to 500 points.

I’m impressed with the sculpts and sprue layout, and later I will assemble and post some.

The rulebook now includes the Japanese, allowing you to play the Pacific Theatre from the base set. It’s a nice addition. The changes to assault will hopefully make Japanese players less unpopular amongst other players, because I’ve seen a lot of armies built around militia squads with spears swarming across the table.

The army lists in the main rulebook are enough to play games, but there are specific army books and theatre books that provide significantly more detail and options.

I’ve previously discussed Konflikt 47. The rules changes in BA2 are easily integrated into it, and will only improve the game further. The army lists in BA seem completely compatible still with the Konflikt 47 stuff, meaning I can support my new small American Paratrooper force with a Coyote Light Walker, and wait for American Jump Infantry to be released.

If you are thinking about getting into Bolt Action, this is a very good set to get. Lots of people collect Germans, going ‘it means I’ll be able to play everybody’ and this is to some extent true.

However a lot of people get pleasure out of picking specific campaigns and either as clubs or small groups collecting forces around that.

Warlord have now released so many plastic sets that for the main players (US, UK and Commonwealth, German, Russian, Japanese) there are hard plastic boxes of figures at around £20 for 30 models, that give you the core of a 500 point force. A handful of metal blisters or a vehicle or two is enough to take you to 500 points and that’s a good level for a BA game. Certainly you can find a lot of 500 point battle reports online. 

A 500 point force will be about 25-35 infantry, a weapon team or two and a vehicle or transport or two. This also means it’s paintable in a realistic timescale, as there’s nothing worse than grey armies facing off against each other.

Would I recommend Bolt Action as a game? Yes. There are large numbers of armies and it gives you the opportunity to nicely theme your forces. You can pick battles and situations you find interesting, learn more about them (Osprey books are notoriously good for this) and paint up and model themed forces. I prefer collecting both sides (and with hard plastics at £20 for 30 troopers that’s not bank breaking, particularly compared to GW prices) and so I don't go for super tough tournament builds. 

However Bolt Action, unlike 40k, is a game balanced enough to play competitively in a tournament format, and balance only benefits casual play, scenario based games and campaigns. 

Bolt Action is not enormously complicated. The Get Started booklet does a good job of explaining how to play, and talks about the background of the forces given in the box and show you lots of painted models and how to play, including what happens when units take pins and fail command checks. 

It's a well thought out and put together set, and I'd recommend it for gamers and WWII enthusiasts looking to get into tabletop gaming. 

Test Models and Batch Painting - Isorians

I’ve got a number of armies to get through, and even selling off a lot of fantasy and 40k stuff will still leave me with piles of Antares, Bolt Action and other historicals to get through.

Which means batch painting.

So we’ll talk about picking an army colour scheme, doing a test model, and then batch painting.

I recently purchased an Isorian force, and have about 1000 points worth of models to paint, consisting of 2 Phase Trooper Squads, a Command Squad, 2 Tsan Ra squads, a weapons team, a phase sniper, 2 light combat drones and a Targeter shard. This clocks in at 30 models and 13 drones.

So what colour scheme to use? There was a good recent article on the Warlord website with people’s Isorian colour schemes, and I had a good look at it.

I knew I wanted to play up the bio-mechanical aspect and alien-ness of the Isorians, to increase the contrast with the Concord (who are largely a mirror in terms of troops at the moment, though this will hopefully diverge more as more supplements are released).

The immediate thought when it came to bio-mechanical monstrosities in popular fiction was the Borg, who, in Star Trek, were to some extent a metaphor for the dehumanising nature and forced loss of personal identity of modern corporatism. However the only thing I took from that was the idea of having a dark base colour.

I imagine the Isorian phase armour as not something you wear, but something that plugs into you. I wanted to make it inhuman but organic. Shark skin was another thing that came to mind.

I ended up choosing a dark grey base for the armour, and the exposed ‘muscles’ or piping or whatever 

I chose to paint red. In some schemes these parts were treated as being light sources, but I chose not to in order to make the whole thing easier to paint. Given some models have more than 15 of these patches, I didn’t want to spend ages on them.

That left me with weapons, plasma sources and bony protusions. The weapons and bone protusions I painted a bone colour, the plasma sources I painted as a green metallic using the Citadel technical paints.

I did a test model, which was a solid 5 hours of work including listening to podcasts etc.

I was fairly happy with this. I had a basing scheme of ash over volcanic rock, which contrasted a lot with a fairly dark miniature.

I then painted the rest of the squad and the special weapon team in the same scheme. Having done the test model though I came up with a number of shortcuts for doing the full squad.

The scheme I used was:

Undercoat – Black enamel spray from Wilkinsons touched up with Vallejo Black.

Armour:

Mechanicus Grey (GW dark grey) – wet brush (like a dry brush but with more paint).

Mechanicus Grey dry brush

Nuln Oil Gloss wash (to give an oily finish to the armour)

Warpfiend Grey (GW mid grey)

‘Flesh’ panels:

Khorne Red (GW Dark Red with good coverage)

Mephiston Red (GW Mid Red with good coverage)

Blood for the Blood God Technical paint (blood spatter to give a more glistening look).

Bone

Rakarth Flesh (GW Khaki)

Ushtabi Bone (GW bone colour)

50/50 Ushtabi Bone/White mix

Plasma

Silver (Vallejo Air Silver, excellent silver colour)

Waystone Green Technical paint (gives a green metallic finish, is meant to give a gem effect)

I completed the rest of the squad in about 6/7 hours on and off.

 

So that's my Isorian colour scheme nailed down, and a reasonable chunk of the force painted. 

Konflikt 47 - Background thoughts.

So what’s the background and opportunities for conflict in Konflikt 47?

It changes a couple of things in the background. The Battle of Midway is more indecisive, and it was only decisive because an American attack caught the Japanese in the middle of re-arming and refuelling their planes on deck. Stalingrad is more indecisive and the 6^th army escapes. These two events change the balance on the Eastern front and allow the Germans to better consolidate into defensive lines there (and Stalin has a purge of his generals again) and the Pacific, where things bog down into stalemate between the US and Japanese navies.

Then the US test a nuclear weapon, creating a rift in space at Los Alamos. The US don’t really understand or study it that much, concentrating on getting a second device built. The US drop the device on Dresden after Hitler calls the Allies bluff after they threaten to use atomic weapons on Germany.

However the US are then out of nuclear weapons.

The Germans start studying the rift much sooner, and both the US and Germany find signals coming from them with new scientific concepts. As they don’t talk to each other, they don’t work out that they are receiving different messages.

They start developing technology based on these messages. Which leads into the parallel history.

Konflikt 47 kicks off when the war has already gone on two years longer, and Germany and Japan are nowhere near defeat. The worst winter in a century is finally lifting and everyone gets back to it.

There are 4 major theatre’s of conflict.

Western Front – US/Commonwealth vs Germany.

Eastern Front – Germany vs Soviet Union with partisans supported by both sides and the US.

Persian Front – Soviet Union vs UK/Commonwealth vs Axis (which Turkey has joined).

Pacific Theatre – Japan vs US and UK/Commonwealth with Soviets

This takes in pretty much every major theatre of WWII.

But it leaves it open for big changes.

Would countries like Spain and Argentina join the war on the Axis side? Turkey has joined the Axis, there’s plenty of room for more countries to join the Axis.

Spain’s Blue Division fought alongside the Axis on the Russian front, would they join the Axis with the promise of Nazi technology?

With Brazil siding with the Allies would Argentina officially join the Axis? Particularly given how many members of the SS and Nazi regime settled in Argentina after the war.  

There’s a lot of space to expand things or plot hooks to use.

The jungles of South America, with secret Nazi labs plotting to release Nachtjagers into American cities and cause mass panic.

A jungle war in South America between Argentina and Brazil with walkers might be a very interesting route to go down.

Argentina attacks the Falkland Islands as part of joining the Axis.

It would also add conflict to South America.

What about me?

There has been a lot of discussion some places from people with less mainstream armies (Polish, Italians, French, Hungarians etc) asking what they will get. In the interim there is a very simple solution to this.

In the background, who is supplying this nation with tanks?

Hungarians are being supplied by Germany, so add the Spinne light walker to their force list.

Brazil is being armed by the Americans under Lend Lease, so add Coyote and Grizzly walkers to their list.

Communist China is being supplied by the Soviets, so they get Cossacks. 

Konflikt 47 - US Starter Unboxing

Well guess what I got in the post today?

I’ve been quite excited about Konflikt 47 by Warlord Games and Clockwork Goblin, and liked Secrets of the Third Reich (SOTR) and some of the other Weird War stuff done 10 years ago.

However going back and looking at the sculpts now SOTR minis look a bit rough. 10 years of advances in sculpting (including the move to digital sculpting by a lot of companies), means the West Wind figures are showing their age.

In the last year I’ve got into Bolt Action (BA) and Beyond the Gates of Antares (GoA) in a big way, and sci fi WWII where I can use the existing figures I have appeals to me.

I bought the £70 American starter, as I don’t have an American force (though I do have 3 Shermans knocking around because I picked them up on sale). My Bolt Action forces are British Paras and a Last Levy based late war German force. They are of course as yet unpainted, though at least based and cleaned up, and in the case of some of the German units, undercoated. 

So what’s in the box? I’ve actually got my phone out and taken pictures of the stuff so you guys can see it. I hate reviews where you don't see the goods because if I'm thinking of buying the Warlord 'Rangers Lead the Way' set I want to know what the extra bits actually look like rather than having a description of them as 'additional metal pieces'.

The starter contains everything you need to start your army. Which starters should, but we can all name some companies that give you starters full of stuff you wouldn't take in an army if you wanted to stand a chance of winning. 

Dice and Pin Markers (the GoA plastic pins look like being a staple for GoA and BA going forward) and Warlord have got a supply of small dice from somewhere to go in my increasingly cramped dice tin. I have the Pretty Princess bag (£1 from Poundland) so I have an order dice bag (though Warlord sell faction specific bags for BA and GoA).

There is a 208 page rulebook. This contains army lists for the big 4 (USA, Germany, Russia and Great Britain and the Commonwealth), the background for Konflikt 47 and an amended version of the BA 1^st edition rules.

When Konflikt 47 was written there was no set date for the publication of Bolt Action 2^nd edition. 

BA2 has been brought forward (I’m guessing because of the same rumblings from GW about the future of 40k that mean Mantic are trying to get their sci-fi skirmish offerings finished and in stores) to September, so there will be a gap of a month. 

Clockwork Goblin will be producing an FAQ when it comes out, and the changes between the editions are largely small (LMGs in squads getting a fix for example) so a 1-2 page long FAQ to cover those changes seems likely. When the new and much more flexible way of organising forces comes out we'll see the effect on Konflikt, as suddenly squadrons of walkers start taking to the table. 

It's a shame they weren't more bold in the main Konflikt rulebook and switched to a system where you could take a lot more tanks and walkers.

Don’t let edition shenanigans put you off. Konflikt 47 is also compatible with the force and theatre books that currently exist for Bolt Action. You can add walkers to the defense of Berlin, or Operation Market Garden, or D-Day.

Certainly to have walker heavy forces you can just swap them for similar category vehicles in the Tank War supplement organisation structure. 

Then to the meat, the miniatures.

There are 20 US troopers (4 of the US infantry sprue) in the box, with 2 gun sprues. Each sprue has 3 LMGs (2 Thompsons, 1 Grease gun), a BAR, a bazooka, a sniper rifle, 9 rifles (2 with fixed bayonet), 1 pistol hand and 2 pistols, and two M1s.

This means from the box I can create 2 infantry squads, a command team, a bazooka team and a sniper team.

But what about the weird stuff? Well here we go…

US heavy infantry.

Nice clean metal models coming in 4 pieces plus base. They are armed with assault rifles, meaning a squad throws out reasonable firepower. I will delve into the rules significantly more in a separate post.

I like them, they are nicely sculpted, imposing next to standard BA infantry, but they aren’t crazy sci fi. They don’t have colossal shoulder pads and look like something that could actually exist.

The M4A9 Sherman T tank. This is the Warlord plastic Sherman with a resin turret and metal piece  to add to the rear of the turret. I’ll be adding some stowage when I make it as well. The turret is cleanly cast and quite detailed, but isn’t ‘busy’ and again looks like something that could actually exist.

As it is the standard Sherman sprue, you can build the normal turret and switch them, meaning you can use the normal historical Sherman as well. 

Finally the M5A2 Coyote Light Walker. In the rules this replaces a recce unit, and with a HMG and MMG (though it can only fire one in a turn due to having a single crew member) it can do a recce role the same as a light armoured car, with a similar level of threat. However two fists mean it rolls three dice in assaulting another vehicle and can tear apart soft skins or armoured cars quite easily. 

Walkers can also assault infantry, which will certainly be interesting.

The kit itself is a resin body with metal limbs. The resin is cleanly cast, and again the model isn’t too ‘busy’ (covered in unnecessary crap is what I mean). Look at the nice clear front for adding a big allied star or nose art.

I like the set and I would say it is a good buy for anyone looking to get into WWII. In terms of value it’s £20 of plastic US infantry, a £20 tank, and likely £15-20 for the Heavy Infantry and Light Walker, so the dice, pin markers and rulebook are free.

The models are nice, and if you are thinking of getting into Bolt Action or Weird War II then it’s a very good starter set.

As the first question I know I’m going to be asked is about points, I’ll give a breakdown of how I’ll make up the set.

1^st Lieutenant + 1 man (veteran with SMGs) – 103 points

Heavy Infantry Squad (veteran) – 105 points

Infantry squad (Regular, 1 SMG, 1 BAR, +2 men) – 78 points

Infantry squad (Regular, 1 SMG, 1 BAR, +2 men) – 78 points

Bazooka Team (Regular) – 60 points

Sniper Team (Veteran) – 67 points

Sherman M4A9 (Regular) – 210 points

Coyote Light Walker (Regular) – 90 points

Total 791 points. I could add anti-tank grenades, I’ve got two spare SMGs, I could upgrade regular to Veteran squads, etc to get to 1000, but this is 8 units at 800 points.

A firefly squad and a heavy anti tank gun would put that at 1000 points with 10 order dice and give 3 units enemy armour has to worry about (Sherman T, anti-tank gun and the walker getting into combat).

Doubtless I’ll end up with a bunch of extra options anyway, and the prospect of the next theatre book being Pacific and being able to throw Walkers and Marines at Japanese Terror troops is appealing.

400 points of weird stuff and 400 points of normal WWII stuff. By switching the turret on the Sherman you have 600 points of normal stuff. Can you see what Warlord are doing?

The beauty of the range is that:

• 1     It’s a sci fi point of entry into the Bolt Action system, which while BA isn’t particularly groggy makes it easy for players used to having dreadnought style stuff and centre piece units in their army.
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• 2      It’s an easy buy for BA players to yet again expand their forces and give them another way to play. Bolt Action is fully compatible with Konflikt 47, which means you can throw your Italians or Vichy French or Polish against them and you don’t have to buy a new army. It gives a built in player base that games need to be successful. 
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• 3      The starter sets are an excellent buy. I got mine at £10 off because of the Warlord July offer, but full price it still gives you everything you need to play the game.

 Would I recommend this? Yes I would. I'll also actually be painting the set up in the next few weeks.

The Force Awakens

X-wing overtakes 40k as most popular tabletop game in North America.

The ICV2 survey results for Fall 2015 are out.

http://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/33912/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-games-fall-2015

X-wing has taken 1st place in the sales from distributors and independent retailers in the US market.

This happens at the same time as a reduction in retail sales for Games Workshop, and without licencing money GW would have had a much worse time. 

So what is ICV2 and why should anyone care? 

Internal Correspondence version 2 is basically a trade website for pop culture stuff. If you are a buyer for a chain (like Forbidden Planet) or an independent retailer (like most of the US market), then ICV2 is somewhere you go to in order to work out what to stock after Magic. Like it or hate it Magic, with Friday Night Magic, organised play, etc etc pays the bills for most Local Gaming Stores. The secondary market for cards helps as well, much like Game Stop and their second hand games. 

Aren't there problems with the survey? Doesn't it miss off ebay scalpers, people fire selling their collections and GW direct? 

Yes, GW never releases a breakdown of what they sell, and this leads to some amusing stories about how Space Marines outsell everything else put together, or how paint sold better than fantasy after the End Times that people can't back up with quotes from the financial report. GW are competing with people fire selling their collections as much as LGSs do, and some LGSs monetise this through second hand bins.

The secondary market for GW is huge, but that is because of the churn and burn business model GW has. 

What does this actually mean?

It means what I have been finding anecdotally in the UK already, that you are going to find it easier to get a game of X-wing at a club or store than a Games Workshop game. 

Why?

X-wing and Armada, which comes in 3rd on the sales list, both have standard play formats. For X-wing this is 100 points. How easy is it for a new player to get to 100 points? For Rebels buy the starter, Force Awakens X wing blister and either an E-wing or X-wing, and you have a good 100 point force to fly all Aces. For Imperial buy the starter, Imperial Aces and an Interceptor and you are there as well.

For Age of Sigmar there is no agreed play format because there is no balance mechanism, so unless you are planning out a game with people ahead of time and know what each others forces are and then engage in long conversations, facebook chats, whatever, then you might have a balanced game or you might have a one sided slaughter, you just don't know. This leads to a lot of people not bothering, because they have jobs and lives and families, and life is too short to engage in a long conversation on game design before every game. 

For 40k, you can still play games, but it seems to be getting harder to organise. You need to discuss allowing formations for a start. And buy, assemble, paint and then carry your army, whereas X wing you can fit it all in a box or small Plano case. 

Why is it important what other people play?

Games are a social activity. While 40k was on top you had the network effect, where you played because it was easy to find a game. Warhammer Fantasy Battle had that for fantasy games, something Age of Sigmar didn't inherit, with legacy players going to Kings of War, 9th Age and Frostgrave. 

There have been a lot of good games not make it because they didn't build up enough of a network of players. All Quiet on the Martian Front seems like it was a good game, got heavily backed on Kickstarter, but died at retail. The players couldn't find enough other players, and couldn't get the critical mass needed. 

So what does this mean?

40k losing the top spot means that any LGS or nerd store looking to get into miniatures looks at it, sees X-wing at the top, sees how similar the support given to stores by Fantasy Flight is to Magic, which is the 1st stop for any nerd store doing gaming, and picks X-wing. 

Lower number of product codes, a more familiar sales format, Fantasy Flight publishing lots of popular board games just makes that easier. 

Greater availability of X-wing + more store events reinforces the network effect. 

Fantasy Flight's biggest problem with X wing has always been not being able to get it into stores fast enough and in big enough numbers. They have solved that problem now.

The game is easily accessible, has depth to it, has possibly the world's most popular IP, is supported by tournaments and events and is a very good game. GW need to solve at least some of their issues not just to defend their market share, but to simply lose market share less quickly in North America. 

Fantasy Flight is a division of Asmodee, who are competing with Hasbro (WotC being one of their divisions). Games Workshop are used to competing with smaller players that they can crowd out. Warlord have, through clever expansion and deals, now got a lot of good miniature ranges in their portfolio and will be launching a Doctor Who IP miniatures game later this year with a plastic core set.

Also GWs smaller competitors are mainly composed of people who used to work at GW, and are part of the GW Old Boy network. Which led to Mantic Games having a better idea of what Age of Sigmar meant than the people at Forgeworld. 

Games Workshop are treading water in an industry that is massively growing. All the growth seems to be going to other companies. Kickstarter has helped some companies both get product out there and launch entire product lines at once and in hard plastic. Not all of them have survived, but things like Zombicide have, and Mantic have used it to get to hard plastic sprues years before they otherwise could have, as has Hawk Wargames with Dropfleet Commander.