Last Day for Dreamforge Games Leviathans Sale

Today is the last day for the Dream Forge Games Sale on their Leviathans and accessories.   You can get 1 of each of the two designs plus one extra ranged weapon of your choice for just over 200 dollars shipped in the US.  That gives you 2 ranged weapons (right handed rotary cannon and another of your choice) and 3 close combat weapons (plasma sword, right handed fist, and death sickle).  Seems like a pretty solid deal for 8.5 inch models that have a high degree of positioning options.  The design is a little strip down compared to GW standard high gothic but it is more realistic in terms of war engines are not there to be things of beauty but to kill stuff.

Two of these is too much new modeling for me personally right now but I would love to see a setup from them in the future where you pick you core body and then any two weapons for about 100 plus shipping.  They will still be under selling even discounted GW stuff and essentially have all the customization you really need.   Dream Forge Games has report that the response to the sale has been great and he expects to have all the product inbound by mid march so if you are ordering now you will have to wait a little bit to get you big mecha action started.

Added New X-Wing Content Index

I added most of my X-Wing Miniature game content to an index page on the right column there.  This is sort of like what you get if you just use the keyword but it loads in a single shorter page so you can look at all the different posts.  Noticed that I missed reviewing the X-Wing expansion and the tie bomber.

GW Rants Just Seem to Write Themselves These Days

Due to all the commotion with the new imperial knights model, I was looking through the GW 40K online store for the first time in a while.  I followed the Space Marines release pretty closely, buying nothing, then pretty much ignored everything since.  I remember hearing that new nids were released and seeing a couple of pictures on various blogs so I went to take a look.

Imperial Knights Shrink 25%

 

Apparently GW messed up the height in the initial preorder.  It was reported initially as 8 inches which people thought was high based on the shot next to the nid that had leaked but maybe just rounded up.  Well now the preorder page has them listed at 6 inches instead.   That also makes it about 25% shorter than the Ork Stompa kit that is 115.50 dollars currently.  GW seems to be rushing with both the preorders and White Dwarfs as errors/omissions are all over the place. 

In other news I see that Codex: Imperial Knights is listed at 41 dollars which makes it pretty close in cost to what you would expect for a print copy of the Inquisition Codex.  I really do not expect very much in this.  Rules from white dwarf clarified plus some named Knights which might have an extra ability or something.  Maybe it will include all the standard rules for Super Heavies not in the basic rulebook so that you can use the knights without the Apoc or Escalation books but that is probably asking to much.

Ofcourse the Dreamforge Leviathan is listed at 8.5 inches tall making it the big brother.  So maybe that 75 dollars plus shipping sale even without a weapon/mask swaps is an even better deal.

Ofcourse Imperial Knights are Scoring and Not Lords of War

So I saw the notice this weekend that White Dwarf Weekly seems to think that facebook is the place to release rules they forgot to put in the magazine.  Well it is nice to see them include real rules for once.  So they said in this informal post that Imperial Knights count as scoring units and that they are not Lords of War like I think every other super heavy which gets into non Apocalypse games through the Escalation expansion (which is just the perfect name for that type of stuff).

Dreamforge Leviathans Shipped in US: 84 Dollars

DreamForge Games has their Leviathans on sale for the next week to compete with the new GW kit.  They are priced at 75 dollars and shipping looks to be about 9 dollars in the contiential US.  Probably would not arrive to mid to late march.

The GW kit looks more gothic and does have more options with a weapon and face while this kit is very bare bones but at 25% less than a 20% discounter assuming free shipping for the 140 retail Knigth kit that might be fine for some people.  Adding in the arm option makes it similarly priced to a discounters knight but allows you to pick the arm.

Going forward for Dreamforge, I think the best thing would be try to beat the discounters price slightly and let you pick any two arms when you order the model.  Not sure how easy this would be based on the sprue design but would definite be a cool selling point.  Maybe at 100 dollars plus shipping.

I was looking at the instructions and the model goes together with screws in certain places instead of all glue.  This is supposed to allow the model to still move after assembly.  Not sure how you paint it in that case.  Probably prime and some dry brushing in those areas before assembly.

Imperial Knight Kit is Weak Sauce

Yeah, you heard me, weak sauce.  The design is great, really large dreadnought bottom crossed with a beetle back titan/heresy terminator style.  But if GW has one thing their kits are know for it is an excess of plastic components.  The baneblade kit which is the same price can make 8 different tanks.  Here you get 2 weapon choices and 3 face guards.

Blood Bowl: Games Day Lizardman Team: Skinks and Kroxigor

So today we take a look at something special from my blood bowl collection.  This is the Games Day Lizardman team that was created for a US Games Day before the more recent lizardman team was designed.  From the look of them I would guess that they started as Warhammer Fantasy Battle models that a sculptor added some additional details to make them a Blood Bowl Team.  There are a ton of pics for this team so I have seperated it into the Skinks plus Kroxigor then the Sauris.  There was something like 200 of these teams produced so it was a pretty limited release.

GW's New Pocket Titan

So GW has finally made the Imperial Knight model that people have been expecting for a while after Dreadknight, the giant Wraithknight and Tau Riptide.  That above is a Forgeworld Epic Reaver with some knee high dreads.  I actually do not have any knight epic models as those where mainly available when I was not active.  I also use my titans as allies and not stand alone army where the knights show up so I have not had any use to get them off ebay.

PSA-Remember to Check Your Dryer Vent

Don't be like me having to walk through 2 ft of snow in my pajamas at midnight to clear out the outside vent which was a mix of ice and lint.  Dryers have temperature sensors to limit the chances of fires but you do not really want to test if it is working.

The More You Know

X-Wing Miniatures: Tie Interceptor

A quick look at the Tie Interceptor today for the X-Wing Miniatures game.  This is from the second wave releases so my little write up is pretty late but there is the new Imperial Aces box coming which has 2 of these with new cards due out at the end of the month so maybe just a little early :-).

Will Players Support a New Epic?

So the question was asked on a major blog this weekend if players would support Epic if GW re-released it.  That is a big question even for specialist games fans.  But it is the wrong question; it is not our jobs as the customers to mindless buy what GW is selling.  It is GW’s job as a company to develop and support games that inspire us to invest not just our money, but our time and energy on.

Could GW make Epic a successful release of an awesome game with a growing player base and model range, sure but not by doing things the way they have been recently.  GW has not launched a successful new game in quite a while.  LOTR sold a lot of minis for a while but never caught on as sustainable main game.  Space Hulk was a stand alone release that had a ton of demand built in since it had not been available in 20 years and was known as a great game.  Dreadfleet was just a disaster.  Hobbit also went over very poorly probably for multiple reasons.  Choosing Epic as the first specialist game to try to reintroduce is not a great idea.  Epic has several disadvantages compared to other specialist GW games and GW has managed to reduce its main advantage.  I really do not see that they can do it successfully.