Hakuna Matata

I resolved early this year that I was going to make a point of distancing myself from competitive Warhammer. I realised that competitive tournament play was not really what I was interested in, and that making a conscious effort not to get sucked into it was perhaps the best way to ensure that other things got more attention.

The majority of the regular Warhammer players at our club play competitively at tournaments. Actually, nearly everyone who has ever played Warhammer at the club has also played in tournaments, but those who have persisted with it as their main game (rather than keeping it as an occasional game and focusing on something else) tend to focus very heavily on attending events and trying to be competitive. As someone who has retained Warhammer as my primary game, I tend to get somewhat pulled along by this. I ended up attending several tournaments last year (6 if you count the ETC), as well as running one. This was slightly busier than normal, but for a very long time I would have been attending 4 or 5 tournaments every year.

For all that I have been attending plenty of tournaments, it's been quite a long time since I was going into an event looking to perform really well. I no longer make lists with the intent of winning the event, and when I get solid comp scores it's normally because I've just entered a list that deserved it (I'm not one of those trying to “ride the comp train” by sliding through a list that's sneakily tougher than it looks). Winning Axemaster last year was basically an accident, brought about by my list gradually toughening during the year as I painted more stuff that worked together to make the list better (many of them new toys that appeared with the current incarnation of the Empire army book). If had already had Demigryphs painted and no Spearmen, you probably would have seen my list getting weaker as I kept painting, rather than the other way around...

Anyway, some people probably don't understand entering a tournament without trying to do especially well in it, but from experience I can assure you that there are plenty of people who approach events with this mentality. Some people are just looking for a weekend full of gaming, and a bit of socialising. There was probably a time when I didn't really understand such people either, but now it seems I am one of them.

Lores of Magic: The Lore of Slaanesh

And now we come to the final Lore of Magic in the new Warriors of Chaos book, the Lore of Slaanesh.


UPDATE:
The Daemons of Chaos were re-released shortly after the Warriors of Chaos, and they use the same Lores of Magic. However, their Lore Attributes are different. I will include both in this review.

Lores of Magic: The Lore of Nurgle

Continuing with our review of the Lores of Magic in the new Warriors of Chaos book, next we will look at the Lore of Nurgle. As with the Lore ofTzeentch, many of the spell names found here already exist in the Lore of Nurgle in the Daemons of Chaos book, although the effects are often different.

UPDATE:
The Daemons of Chaos were re-released shortly after the Warriors of Chaos, and they use the same Lores of Magic. However, their Lore Attributes are different. I will include both in this review.

Lores of Magic: The Lore of Tzeentch

It's been a while since I reviewed a Lore of Magic. I've had a couple of requests to look at the Skaven and Wood Elf Lores, however right now I thought I might focus on something that generates a bit more excitement, with the new Warriors of Chaos book. Maybe then I'll get into a rhythm and can look at those other lores that are now well overdue...

I've chosen to start with the Lore of Tzeentch, however this was pretty much a random decision. The people I have talked to about the new book seem to rate this as the weakest if the new Lores. Let's take a look and see if there is actually anything wrong with it, or if this is just a matter of personal preference.

As an aside, I notice that the Lores in the new Warriors of Chaos book seem to be a blend of the spells from the old book, and those found in the Daemons of Chaos one. I wonder if this is an indication that we could find the exact same spells in the new Daemon book, when it appears. Time will tell.

UPDATE:
As predicted above, the Daemons of Chaos were re-released shortly after the Warriors of Chaos, and they use the same Lores of Magic. However, their Lore Attributes are different. I will include both in this review.

What next?

After the excitement of Hel Fenn and then, less than a month later, the biggest event on the gaming calendar in Cancon, I am afraid I suffered a little bit from hobby burnout. At least, I assume that was my problem. In the few weeks since Cancon, I have achieved little in the way of modelling or painting, and I haven't played a game of Warhammer either (despite making it down to the club twice). The lull felt kind of natural to me and thus I didn't try to push myself to do anything much. But now I've had time to recover and it's back to work.

My painted Empire army continued to grow admirably last year, but there are still gaps I am yet to fill. The main one is Reiksguard Knights. Granted, I have a couple of different Knight units painted, and was able to substitute in the Knights Snow Leopard up at Cancon when I put Reiksguard into my list and didn't have time to paint any. However, the Reiksguard are an easily recognisable part of the Empire army, and so I actually want some dedicated models for them. It also happens that I am quite comfortable painting Knights (I've had a fair bit of practice now), so a unit of Reiksguard feels like a good way to ease myself back into the realm of hobby productivity.

Eventually I expect to be able to field a regiment of 30 Reiksguard, but that felt like too many to prepare and paint in a single go (I am trying to ease myself back into this, after all). Instead, I am doing about half of them at once. If I am enthused, I can then go back and do the second half of them when these ones are done. So, the first wave is 16 models. Below you can see their current state.

16 Reiksguard Knights, almost ready to be based and painted.

Lessons from Hel Fenn

A massive game of Warhammer like this, with several players and huge armies, takes a lot of effort to put together. 

Well the battle is over, the report is written, and it's finally time to step back and take stock after the Battle of Hel Fenn (actually, I started writing this article weeks ago, so by now it is well past time for us to take a look back). This was the most ambitious thing our gaming group has ever tried to do, and to be honest it's resulted in the largest (at the very least, the longest) battle report I've ever seen. I'm delighted with how it all worked out in the end, and as a whole I would say the project was a success. However, there are always things to be learnt from an exercise like this, so I thought I'd take a look at what went right, and what could be done better in the future.