New Dark Elves in the eyes of a Dark Eldar player

Heya all and welcome back!

Now with the new Dark Elves model being thrown towards us to be bought over, there are whole lot of things that are quite cool-looking such as the Kharybidiss. However today I am here to talk about what I am looking at for this release as a Dark Eldar player.

First of all, despite the awesomeness of some of the kits, as a 40k player I will just ignore them for the sake of keeping my priorities straight. Unfortunately that means that the big monster had lost the vote to remain on the island. Units that are rather static in nature/too fantasy-looking will also be kicked off the island, however some exceptions will be given to some things as will be explained in detail.

Thus this leaves us is what is perhaps one of the best female sculpts that had ever exited the GW factories in living memory; The ladyfolk of Naggaroth.

I will say that the most obvious models for 40kers to look for are the Witch Elves/Sisters of Slaughter as they will do very well as much better-looking and kinkier looking Wyches.

In fact thanks to the Sisters of Slaughter, you can get a whole bunch of whips that can be used as Agonisers. Also the Sister of Slaughter masks can be used by elite units such as Bloodbrides and also characters such as the Archon, Sybarites, Hekatrii and also Succubi. A good kit to get for a Dark Eldar player, and I am certain that if a Dark Eldar player has already a bucketful of bitz for Wyches such as myself, you can go wild with the conversions.

However, here is when some of you might already be scratching your head as I also included the Cauldron of Blood/ Bloodwrack Shrine as something that 40kers should look out for. Why would you care about this darn kit? Isn't it too painfully Fantasy to be used in 40k?

My answer to that is no, it has quite a number of parts that can be used in a Dark Eldar army.

For one, that entire altar without the stage can be used in making very thematic Dark Eldar terrain, as you can actually make a Incubi Shrine or something out of the Cauldron of Blood parts, while the big mirror behind the Medusa can become an objective marker.

Speaking of the Medusa itself, look at her arms, and you will see that they will act as very good weapons for the Archon, especially the clawed gauntlet. For those old school Dark Eldar player, that clawed arm can become a updated version of the clawed agoniser (which I still believe is the best agoniser).

But here is the kicker; Did you see that statue on the Cauldron of Blood at the bottom right of the WD magazine? That model is huge right? In fact a lot of the pictures showed that it is way taller than even the wyches. For those Dark Eldar players who wanted to have an Avatar but do not like a truly Craftworld  look need not look further.

That damn thing is essentially an Avatar, but a much bigger and have the looks to match it. If you managed to see the legs, it is actually striding forward like the forgeworld Avatar, and with all those spikes you can actually justify it in a Dark Eldar-Eldar army list if you use an Avatar.

I am for one very glad that I waited a little while longer before I proceed to make my Dark Eldar Avatar, as now I do not have to think too much about how to mutilate the already very dated Avatar model.

With this I will be getting a few of these once the cash starts flowing in, and I will be spending several weeks making them fit into my huge Dark Eldar army!

The changing meta between two continents

Heya all, and welcome back to the Webway!

Well, now that I have finally graduated and returned back to Malaysia, I am able to experience what I call the 'Rip Van Winkle' effect. It has been two years since I have left my country, and when 6th edition hits me, it is when I am in the US and thus my 6th edition meta knowledge is based upon the US meta. Once I returned back to Malaysia, I have observed some interestingly odd things when I jumped around the few stores around the Kuala Lumpur/ Petaling Jaya area.

To be exact it is not really that odd as I knew the meta in its essential sense before I left, but that was during mid-5th edition. So with that I can now observe the meta from an outsider's view which is fun. Anyway.here are the main highlights of my observation (Disclaimer: This is based upon my observation and thus this may not be indicative of the general population or can be used as an objective data);

1)It seems that people rarely play more than 2 flyers based upon my observation. This is a big contrast with the US where any army that can take flyers will always take 2-3 of them (I am the odd one out as I only play one flyer). I believe that this is due to the prohibitive cost of buying flyers in Malaysia which is a significant amount of money, even more so here than in the US.

2) It also appears that not a lot of people actually pay a great emphasis on having lots of troops in their army. This is entirely at odds with the trends that I see in the US where troops are filled to a greater degree. Over here I am seeing a tendency to go for units that can dish out a lot of firepower, thus Malaysians are more prone to fill out their heavy support and any slot that could put a whole lot of firepower (Which usually means fast attack and/or elites).

3) There are a greater amount of Non-Marine players in Malaysia. The only Marine players have either jumped to the Dark Angels boat or the Chaos Space Marine boat, and the general 40k meta revolves around the Xenos races. This has always held true in Malaysia in my opinion as a result of our smaller community, for we like to be unique snowflakes. Also with 6th edition favouring non-Marine armies for the time being, I could see why the marines are not out in full force.

4)Everyone plays with the hardest list that they could do, and at the same time also adhere to a certain concept in mind that may or may not be fluffy. I find that this is rather interesting as in the US, the tendencies for army building is between two very extreme spectrums; Competitive to the point that it is bland, or fluffy to the point that the list is utterly useless. Of course there are a few in between those two, but they are quite uncommon and the netlisting can be rather endemic.

The Malaysian wargamer on the other hand is a very different kind of beast; they tend to be casually competitive players. That means that they intend to win with a powerful and/or efficient list, but they also like to have a certain concept to have in their lists that allows them to use models that they want.

In a way, I am very much surprised and yet not surprised by the meta. The main reason why I have these mixed feelings is that it is a meta that is very reminiscent of the 4th edition meta for me, the edition where most Malaysians are introduced to 40k (at least to my knowledge) which prioritized the use of heavy firepower and min-maxing. I am also surprised that despite the change of the rules to have a greater emphasis on objectives, the players are playing to kill than to take objectives.

On the bright side, my Dark Eldar feels at home both here and at the US, for I build my Dark Eldar based upon a Malaysian mindset but also at the same time I also build it for an American meta. This impacted my playstyle as I now have a bizarre range of philosophies that I used in my games now in Malaysia.

Alright my evil bondage sado-masochistic space elves of doom, time to get used to your new home.

A concept for the Black Crusade Roleplay game

Well, I am currently in San Francisco visiting my sister and since I am not really near anything resembling a 40k miniature for a week or so, I am essentially stuck with building army lists and also trying to plan for a Black Crusades RP campaign. 

Do it for the Evulz!

It is a rather intriguing thing to try and make a campaign with villains in mind, as the dynamics of having them not doing anything that resemble good can push a GM to a much greater height of storytelling. So far, I am trying to make a Riddick-like campaign for the PCs to play in and putting them in a prison planet in the first place and escape it. From there it is basically just dumping them in situations where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't, which is a specialty of mine whenever I become the GM (would love to play around with Necrons and Dark Eldar as well in the storyline).

Nonetheless, I will have to see if there are any dudes/dudettes that are interested in the game to play the campaign.

In the Grim Darknesss of the Far Future, There is Only WUBZ!!!!!

Hunting in Guardian Games for Dark Eldar - the progress so far....

Heya all, welcome back.

Now remember that in the last post, I managed to find a gaming store in Portland and how it got some pretty nifty models. With that in mind, I decided to slowly search my way through all the models with my nifty little itchy hands. Every time, I would find something I like in more ways than one, but not enough for me to go all "AWWWWFUUCCKKKKYYEAAAAHHH!!!!!"

But after two sessions of hunting stuff in the store for two days (one on the weekend and one today), I managed to find a few things that I find very interesting.

1)On my first hunting trip, I managed to find an OOP Archon, the one with the huge claw and the flayed skin-mask. I always liked this model, as it got this baroque feel to it that I really enjoy. Since it is the only one in the store.....well, I better buy it so that no one else will get it. :P

On the table, he will be my Asdrubael Vect if I ever play with him. But fluffwise, this guy will be Vespera's (grand)father who's kinda jaded and despite his apparent retirement, he would kick ass from time to time.

2)Second trip, I managed to bump into two old school raiders (which I would like to make into the raiders for my Wyches) and Drazhar. Always interested to have Drazhar's model, and also if I ever use Drazhar I would have him. If not he can be the Klaivex of the Incubi if I ever use Incubi as he is the only damn model with a Demiklaive. Due to my current lifestyle adaptations for the moment, I decided to buy Drazhar instead. With him being the only Drazhar in the store.....yeah, I did the Dark Eldar-ly thing to do.

So with the purchae of Drazhar I have now all the Special characters that have actual models representing them (the other two being Lelith Hesperax and Urien Rakarth).

If my budget would allow me, I would be getting those old school raiders because they are cool in their own weird way, but now it is very well-hidden in the store's massive array of minis. PURCHASE WILL BE MINEZZZZZZ!!!!!

Lost and Found

Welcome back, and though it's been a while since I posted anything but this time I got something that I can blog about.

I have been in the Land of the Free (apparently) a.k.a US of A for a few weeks now, and seeing that I need to know a lot more about my realspace I explore Portland whenever I could. On one of those days, I decided to cross the river to go and see what's up with it.

As I crossed the river, I realized that it is quite different from Portland City Center, and indeed I felt like I am in totally unfamiliar grounds. And thus, begins the exploring. Suffice to say, the awesome exploring becomes more like a screwed misadventure and I got lost.