Gillyfish

Always nice to see new content for AT, even if unofficial.

I can understand this from a corporate point of view, although I am personally not a fan. I mean I still google Games Workshop rather than Warhammer, so some habits die hard...

I was going to suggest deepcut too. I have a couple of their mats for Dropfleet and another for use in AT/dropzone. There are other providers out there who do some very good mats too; I recently picked up an AI hex mat from one, but will need to look up the name. They definitely had a selection of different mat types and scales.

To add to Brother Tyler's post, some of the mooted bans in the UK, may either be blanket social media bans or to the 'more addictive elements' of social media, which suggests (to me) the more algorithmic side may be what they are targeting, in which case we may be okay in those jurisdictions, although the precise definition used will be where any issues truly arise. Some of these stances ignore recent academic research which suggests that users would actually like better moderation of what social media there is, but discussion of the precise motivations for outright bans vs. more nuanced approaches is likely to take us into areas we cannot discuss on the Board, so that is best left alone. We are looking at this closely though.

Angels of Darkness was clever in that you got the perspective of the Fallen and it caused doubts in the minds of the Dark Angel's Chaplain on Piscina. That rug pull was pretty well-executed to the extent that a lot of readers assumed that the words of the Fallen must be true, not realising that characters can lie or have their own perspectives. At the time of release it did rather split people as a lot of readers weren't quite sure how to take it. Of the books of his I have read, it's probably the best executed (I have not read all of the above). Some of his later books do feel a bit rushed in places which I suspect may be due to impending deadlines. The first part of Scanlon's Descent of Angels was great. I really enjoyed reading about Caliban, but everything felt incredibly rushed once the Imperium arrived. It felt like there were chapters edited out to make it fit to a publishable size and that would have been a shame as what was being created could have been a lot better. I have really enjoyed ADB's description of the Dark Angels from the perspective of the other Legions. It's a nice take and they feel more rounded, somehow. I think part of the difficulty of writing these characters, particularly primarchs, is that they are so different to us and supposed to be so intelligent that it is actually quite difficult for an author to convincingly portray that sense of them being several steps ahead of everyone else, even the other Astartes. One author mentioned in passing but not for his Dark Angel work is William King; he wrote the original Deathwing short story in the boxed supplement of the same name and, for a long time, that was a really defining piece of fiction. I remember devouring it as a teen. It is a portrayal of a very different chapter, of course.

The rulebook should tell you if there are any alterations to the number of blips you get, etc. It's been a long time since I played it, but I think there might have been some minor changes like that (but not much). Getting all nostalgic now; I loved that game and still have it, poorly done enamel-paint coated models and all. Are you going vanilla or do you have some of the expansions? I think I even have the WD article on using terminator armour somewhere...

Well, given what has already been contributed, I am not sure that this is quite what you are after, but here goes. The two 'starter' BFG fleets, Imperial and Chaos, had playstyles inspired by periods of naval history. So the Imperials had an age of sail broadside approach for their batteries, but with the addition of forward facing ordnance and self-propulsion rather than wind. So a better analogy might be the early ironclads such as HMS Warrior which still had broadsides, but also had steam propulsion. Chaos, by contrast, was supposedly designed to be closer to a WW2 era fleet, with longer ranges and perhaps less of a fleet line. However, those are fairly loose analogies as cruiser class vessels form the main battle lines rather than battleships, as would have been the case in the world wars. Even in the latter Age of Sail, battle line ships like the 3rd rate '74s were pretty slow and the role of a WW2 'cruiser' was performed by frigates in that era (eyes and ears of the fleet and hunting down merchant vessels). So we should be wary of drawing too clear parallels; I suspect the reason that battleships are not the norm for battlelines in BFG is because they wanted them to be 'special' and a centrepiece ship for your fleet. Andy Chambers has said that one of his design regrets was that escorts and 'aircraft' did not work in quite the way that he had envisaged, something that he remedied in Dropfleet Commander, where both work rather differently and play a far more significant role in fleets.

I got Warhammer Quest: Darkwater. Should sit alongside Silver Tower very nicely (I am a fan of standalone games, to be fair, and still have Battle for Armageddon, Doom of the Eldar and Chaos in the Old World (the latter by FFG). Fun games all. Definitely something to be said for everything you need being in the box!

Some of us joined so far back we had accounts lost in the first Great Crash, which was then eclipsed by the second Great Crash a few years later. I have met a few members of the Board in real life and can verify that they are over 16 personally. However, this doesn't seem a terribly systematic or sustainable age verification process.

Couldn't possibly comment... The question of whether it sticks is of particular interest with the question of who it sticks to being only secondary at present. If, indeed, it was them we were talking about.

The answer to that is 'maybe'. Law involving internet jurisdictions is still evolving and is, to put it mildly, complicated. Some jurisdictions consider that you operate within them if you have a significant number of users/customers from that jurisdiction. By that definition we might be considered to operate in Australia, depending on how a jurisdiction chooses to define 'significant.' The internet forum I mentioned in my earlier post has decided that it's servers are not in the UK and therefore it does not need to comply with the Online Safety Act despite the fact that it has a number of UK users and is available from the UK. It will be interesting to see how that works as a test case, although it is unlikely to be directly transferable to the Australian context. Often these things come down to who can afford the best lawyers.

I can see that a number of people have mentioned GDPR (and its equivalents). This is something that Brother Tyler and I are well aware of (my real-life job requires me to have a reasonable understanding of GDPR, particularly around the collection and storage of sensitive personal data, so I hope that provides some reassurance). We are keen to not store sensitive personal information if we can possibly avoid it. We are considering what options are available to us. I have noted with interest that any attempts to introduce age verification through facial identification appears easy to circumvent, particularly through the use of AI images. There was even a story about an Australian teen nabbing her parent's ID card and using that to retain access to a social media site she was already on. So if we implemented something, we might have to accept that it was imperfect. From the viewpoint of the Australian government it may be more important that a site tries. Someone mentioned the algorithmic nature of some of the sites mentioned. The self-assessment tool is less interested in that than whether a site promotes sustained engagement. Some of the sites that have an engagement do use algorithms (YouTube most obviously). However, it seems that these sites are used as tools in other ways (Discord for gaming and it is worth noting that gaming is currently exempt, although it is being actively debated by Australian MPs, apparently). YouTube will be used for some of the educational content and it might take time to separate this out. Personally, I think that we pose very little threat to teens in terms of content because we have consciously aimed to maintain a family-friendly atmosphere. If we had not, we might have had to implement age-verification in response to the UK Online Safety Act (and I note that the UK regulator, OfCom has recently fined a large forum for not implementing such restrictions and then for not responding to them). Whilst it is highly unlikely that we pose a threat to Australian teenagers or would be a principle target of the legislation, we do need to consider our response to it.

Well, it counts as Adeptus Titanicus, right? Are the 'nids in the final picture wondering how to get in to eat the soft bits?

Agreed, they are very cool, although some generally amazing miniatures all round!

There is definitely cosmic horror within the setting. People have already referenced the RPGs which have a range of alternate Xenos species for you to use as antagonists, plus abandoned ships and cults to deal with. Chaos and the genestealers have obvious 'cult' and cosmic horror options, depending on how they are depicted (Chaos ought to be pretty seductive before it becomes horrifying). I would also mention the Ian Watson novel Inquisitor which has some really interesting ideas in it and concepts for cults. Similarly the 54mm Inquisitor game almost encouraged a semi-RPG approach to the warbands and the different factions within the Inquisition, which obviously lends itself to elements of cosmic horror. I would even go so far as to say that Lovecraftian ideas were one of the central inspirations for the setting, albeit with a slightly more tongue-in-cheek feel back in the RT days.