Lexington

WarOrgan’s pretty solid, and I’ve ended up choosing it over New Recruit for 40K, just due to the way its purpose-built for the task. Did have issues using it in my first 2K game the other day when the iPad swapped over to night mode and suddenly half the entries weren’t readable, but it’s very impressive for a free app.

I dunno, the two Nob thing is a bit weird, but doesn’t bother me all that much, overall. It’s kind of hard to keep up with all the background sources anymore, but last time I checked, the way squads are formed within an Ork war party was pretty vague. Are they life-long attachments or just ad-hoc arrangements made for a battle or two? It seems reasonable enough to me that a Boss could simply tell an extra Nob to run with a larger unit of Boyz to keep order or whatnot. I can also see bright side of the massive number of special weapons that Boyz can tote into battle. It could give a squad a real fun, ramshackle, armed-to-da-teef look if someone gets creative with the modeling. It’s very strange, tho, and it just makes me continue to think that GW’s choice to stop putting points costs on wargear was a very, very bad one, indefensible as an actual game design policy and even stranger now with how they push the app (which can do all the math necessary for you) as a necessary component of the game.

Yeah, a specific recreation of the old Blanche art would likely be overkill, but I wish they'd brought in some of Nazdreg's character more than anything. His most important traits since the Cretaceous Perio - er, that is to say, the 1990's - are that he is ostentatious, overweight, brilliant and somewhat lazy. This model barely attempts to communicate one of those. GW's become very good at modeling a combination of girth and strength, exemplified by the wildly fun new AOS Ogres, and I would've loved to see some of that design language ported over into this model.

Yeah, exactly. I'd prefer Trollet's version for an actual Nazdreg, but I'd also be over the (bad?) moon if we saw a set of Meganobz in armor like this.

Huh, first thing in this release that doesn’t really impress me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very nice model and I’ll likely end up turning it into a generic Mega-Armored Warboss at some point, but that’s kind of the problem - it doesn’t say Nazdreg to me. It’s just a big Ork in Mega-Armor. Still, tho, glad to see the big yellow galoot show up in the game again. Now we just need Zagstruk and Badrukk to round out the classic Ork characters in plastic.

I collected all the extra Squigs and Squig vat from a spare Buggy a few years ago with the long-term intent of eventually creating a Squig Taco Stand, and this guy plus all the various Squigs from the Armageddon box are dangerously close to making me pull the trigger on that extremely dumb idea.

Wow. Maybe a bit of bias here, but this Ork release is, so far, my favorite thing from GW in probably a decade or more. Every single thing gets me giddy.

Oh, sure, definitely, and I'm not saying otherwise. I think this may largely be a creative decision that's not important enough for a whole lot of management involvement. It's also possible that certain subsequent Primaris models like the expanded Grav Tanks released in 9th didn't sell as well as hoped, while Leviathan and its new-but-mostly-unchanged Terminators were apparently absurdly successful - like, possibly the best-selling product in GW's history - and that's motivated GW to go in a more conservative direction. Hell, both could be true! Or neither, and there's some other sset of reasons for this that we, as consumers, are blind to. Regardless, whatever's motivating it behind the scenes, I think we're definitely been a change in approach, with GW starting to prefer simply re-doing older Marine concepts in Primaris scale rather than pushing for new things.

I think there’s a very strong feeling within GW right now that the original Primaris wave was too much of a departure from the classic things that made Space Marines work, and things like hover vehicles have been consequently shelved.

Huh. Not sure that works out 100% as easily as claimed (IIRC, some torso halves fit pretty differently), but I’ve got another twenty Boyz coming in a few days and will definitely test out the theory.

Good lord are Orks ever doing well with this revamp. The Trukk is gorgeous, the Mek's all kinds of fun, and on top of it all they kick Space Marines out of their traditional first release slot. Everything's coming up green. Seriously, as a grognard who still has fond memories of being sixteen years old and excitedly ripping into a box of 3rd Ed Boyz on their first day of release, I was really prepped to ignore this release, but GW's completely knocked it out of the park here. Good on the team for it, I hope they're as proud as they deserve to be.

Yeah, this is what's getting to me as well. They're just too similar to standard Pathfinders. Really wish they'd gone with something closer to this classic piece of Blanche (RIP) art: Still it's neat to finally have Exodite models, and they'll be reasonable conversion fodder if I ever feel like realizing that art on my own. Well, assuming I live long enough to paint my way through all these Orks, which...eh, 50/50, to be generous.

Sure, because that's their purpose. It's what they do. They are organizationally structured, equipped and trained to do that thing in a way that the others are not. The Blood Angels and Ultramarines are structured and equipped almost identically. Likely enough there's some training differences there, but I don't think there's much evidence that it's so extreme that it'd be notable at 40K's scale. The purpose of the Blood Angels is not to do close assaults any more than it's the Ultramarines' purpose to have a stick up their genetically-modified keister about the Codex Astartes' specific commandments on salad forks or whatever. The purpose of both Chapters is to be Space Marines.

Definitely. This is actually where I think a "Detachments" system could work very well* - alternate army construction rules allowing players to field specialized forces that the ol' "Rule of Three" makes difficult-to-impossible. This would be especially handy for Space Marines, whose roster has become almost impossibly bloated over the last decade of Primaris-ification, and will remain so even with a lot of the cuts to Firstborn that we'll likely be seeing very soon. The current Detachments system sort of does this at times, of course, but it primarily showers bonuses and gimmicks on specific themed units for no real reason. It's like there's a ghost of 7th Ed's game-crippling Decurion/Demi-Company system floating around the Studio that GW just can't shake. * The name would even make sense again!

See, I'm not really convinced that this is true, or at least broadly true. Take our example du jour, the Blood Angels. Should they be naturally better in close combat than your average Ultramarine? I just don't see it. Sure, you see references to their peerless assault capabilities and etc., but they're also, y'know, Space Marines. They're all very strong and very fast and very, very good at disemboweling whatever happens to be in arm's reach. Careers at Black Library have been made by knowing and describing this fact in particularly visceral detail. It's not even like the Blood Angels are organized around close combat. They're (mostly) a Codex Chapter! They have exactly as many dedicated assault units as the Ultramarines. Most Blood Angels slog it on foot and wield a Bolt Rifle while doing so. Not exactly a life of close combat. Heck, they even have, like Devastators and stuff. Or, they did, I guess. You know what I mean. One can point to the Red Thirst, of course, but I don't think even that really translates to a bonus on the tabletop. If anything, it should just make them worse at not assaulting things. It's a curse, after all. So's the Black Rage, but that's why we have rules for the Death Company specifically. Those guys should definitely be a dab hand with a chainsword, but the average Sanguinian spends a lot of time trying to not be in the Death Company. That's probably the more important fact. I think this translates out to a lot of other Chapters and sub-factions. Do the Salamanders have a predilection for flamers? Yeah, absolutely. Are they actually better at setting things on fire than other Space Marines? Probably not. Is an Evil Sunz biker actually better at what they do than a Deathskull? Not in a way that makes a lot of sense on the tabletop, really. They just like bikes and tend to use them more. There's a lot of weak associations like this that have become expectations. Certainly they've not always been reflected in the rules. No one complained that Blood Angels couldn't punch as hard as a Heavy Bolter round on the charge until that happened one edition. Now it's their "thing," even though I'm pretty sure anyone would be at a bit of a loss to explain exactly why that should be.