New Warhammer 40,000 Edition announced!

[Evil Eye]

Kinda lame honestly, this is supposed to be a creative hobby, pre-painted models seems kinda counter to the point*. Not to mention it'll drive the prices up even further. Terrain looks decent sculptwise but if I get any I'll be stripping it and painting it myself.

 

*Yes I am aware of the old pre-painted foam terrain, but "basic drybrush over black on foam pieces" is a bit less egregious than "fully detailed and finished plastic terrain".

[Blindhamster]

Personally, I’m not opposed to the idea. I’ve never got round to painting much of my terrain and I have quite a bit. Finding time for painting my actual models is challenging enough

[Joe]

Believe Archon also started putting out pre-painted terrain recently(?), so this sort of tracks.

[Antarius]

38 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

Kinda lame honestly, this is supposed to be a creative hobby, pre-painted models seems kinda counter to the point*. Not to mention it'll drive the prices up even further. Terrain looks decent sculptwise but if I get any I'll be stripping it and painting it myself.

 

*Yes I am aware of the old pre-painted foam terrain, but "basic drybrush over black on foam pieces" is a bit less egregious than "fully detailed and finished plastic terrain".

That's pretty much how I feel about it. I mean, it's nice for the people who actually want it, but I really hope they put out an unpainted version too.

[Ming the Merciless]

3 hours ago, Mogger351 said:

An assembled pic has now appeared, they resemble the suggested GW terrain layouts very closely...

Totally out of scale with their chaos marines...

[Lord Marshal]

Some details on the Dominatus narrative deck.

 

Quote

This handy deck is a completely new way to run Warhammer campaigns, tying your games together in an exciting narrative while keeping the bookkeeping to a minimum. You get a copy in the Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon launch box, and it’ll also be available separately, alongside the Core Rules and Combat Patrol Companion books and the Chapter Approved Mission deck.

The basics

At its core, the deck is themed around the conflict on Armageddon, but it can represent all kinds of campaigns involving any of the factions you want to play, so don’t worry if the only green on your xenos antagonists comes from a gauss flayer. Players are split up into two or three alliances – Liberators, Oppressors and optionally Raiders – who fight several games across three campaign phases, hoping to bolster their chances of victory in a final climactic battle. 

 

Dominating the battlefield and seizing control of key territory in each phase will put you on the road to victory, but it’s not the only thing to fight for. Each player will have their own Agenda to complete during their games, and the number of times each alliance achieves these goals will have a big impact on the narrative conclusion.

Step 1: Start the campaign

Once you’ve got your players together and arranged them into roughly equal alliances, you’re ready to launch right into Phase 1 by rolling a D6 to find out which of the phase’s three locations you’ll be fighting over. Each location has a bonus that applies to whoever controls it – more on that later – as well as a set of war zone rules that affect all battles fought that phase.

 

 

Then, you’ll have your players read their assigned alliance’s Briefing card. There’s one of these for each phase, and it sets out the narrative situation for your forces and determines which Agenda players will tackle based on their and their opponent’s Force Dispositions.

 

Step 2: Play the first mission

A standard Dominatus campaign will have all players using 2,000-point Strike Force armies and creating games using the Chapter Approved Mission deck – with one major difference. Each player will have the option of following an Agenda instead of a normal Primary Mission, replacing their objectives with a thematic task unique to their alliance.

 

 

Succeeding at the conditions on the card grants an Agenda Achieved card, and these will be tallied up at the end of the campaign phase. Otherwise, games play out as normal, keeping in mind the special war zone rules from the Location card.

 

Whoever wins the battle will get to draw a Battle Honour card, while the other player gets a Battle Skill card instead. Both give your army a useful boost to bestow on a chosen unit for the rest of the campaign, such as more OC, weapon abilities or redeployment tricks, so those who succumb to the will of the dice gods in the first phase don’t need to worry about falling behind.

 

 

Once the first game is over, it’s on to the next, with a new opponent and new Agendas to complete. A typical Dominatus campaign will have two battles in Phases 1 and 2, plus a single decisive battle in Phase 3, giving you plenty of time to fit it into a two-day weekend or weekday event. 

Step 3: End the phase

Once everyone has finished their second game, the pounding of guns ceases (momentarily) and everyone gathers to find out which alliance claimed victory. This is where the cards earned after each game come in – whichever alliance obtained the most Battle Honour cards takes control of the location and gains its location bonus for the rest of the campaign. Then, whichever alliance holds the most Agenda Achieved cards is in ascendancy, and gets one of their alliance’s powerful Relic cards.

 

By turning over the Briefing card, you can now find out the narrative impact of your efforts. There are three levels of success on each card, and an alliance gets one point for either controlling the phase’s location or being in ascendency.* Do well, and your side will sweep the sands of Armageddon like the wrath of the God-Emperor/Gork/Mork. Do poorly, and a lot of Grots and Guardsmen aren’t making it back.

Step 4: Again!

When all players have reflected on the ramifications of their actions, the next phase begins in the same way as before. New location, new Briefing card, new Agendas. By the time you get to the single epic battle that makes up Phase 3, you’ll have a bunch of unit upgrades under your belt. The best part is, you won’t even have to track anything on a sheet or app – it’s all in the cards you pick up after each game. 

 

And that’s it! Your forces have saved/ravaged/pillaged Armageddon, and the campaign is over. Mix up the armies, factions and alliances, and you can run through another campaign with entirely different locations and Agendas to tackle, or expand it out with more players and games per phase.

 

You can have your first shot at a Dominatus campaign with the deck included in the Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon launch box, alongside the Core Rules book and Chapter Approved deck you’ll need to play. It’s a great package bundle to get started in the new edition, and that’s even before we get to the awesome Ork and Space Marine miniatures that headline the box. 

* If you get both, good for you! You’ve got big shoes to fill in the next phase. 

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Lord Marshal

[Orange Knight]

Sorry to go back to the terrain and ignore the new narrative pack (which actually looks pretty cool).

I've been chatting to some friends - one of them knows a lot about 3rd party, pre-painted terrain sets and has ordered many over the years. He thinks this is absolutely legit, and the pics show all the signs of the kind of finish and graininess that you'd expect to see on this kind of product.

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Orange Knight

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, Antarius said:

That's pretty much how I feel about it. I mean, it's nice for the people who actually want it, but I really hope they put out an unpainted version too.

 

Worst case you can prime over the factory paint job.

[Indy Techwisp]

18 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Worst case you can prime over the factory paint job.

 

People tend to already do that with prepainted stuff in other hobbies, but at the end of the day it's your call.

[Orange Knight]

I find it amusing that people turn their nose up at this, or try to talk it down. For one, like everything else, it's completely optional.

 

Also, if I see entire tables of terrain painted like this, they will look better than 90% of the tables I've played on over the past 30 years.

 

I have some nice gaming mats and terrain that I've painted myself for personal use in games I arrange, but most people really don't make anywhere close to the same effort with terrain as do with their actual army models.

 

Edited just now by Orange Knight

[Crimson Longinus]

4 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

I find it amusing that people turn their nose up at this, or try to talk it down. For one, like everything else, it's completely optional.

 

Also, if I see entire tables of terrain painted like this, it will look better than 90% of the tables I've played on over the past 30 years.

 

I have some nice gaming mats and terrain that I've painted myself for personal use in games I arrange, but most people really don't make anywhere close to the same effort with terrain as do with their actual army models.

 

It ceases to be optional once they start to do all of their terrain like this and we must pay for crappy colours we don’t want. 
 

What’s next? All marines will be sold as prepainted as Ultramarines?

[Mogger351]

28 minutes ago, Crimson Longinus said:

It ceases to be optional once they start to do all of their terrain like this and we must pay for crappy colours we don’t want. 
 

What’s next? All marines will be sold as prepainted as Ultramarines?

Do you already buy GW terrain?

If yes, do you paint all your terrain?

If no, how is this new product a negative?

 

If you don't buy GW and don't paint it, it might still be appealing.

 

If you buy gw and paint it anyway, if its no more expensive, then you just... paint it anyway? Still not a negative.

 

If you buy outside GW and do paint it all, then no, these likely arent for you.

 

What they are for is avoiding the below.

Spoiler

 

 

[jaxom]

I’m confused. Between 3rd party terrain-specialist companies and making your own; why does it matter what GW decides when producing their brand of mission terrain?

 

Personally, I think of it like the GW brand glue. It exists and I don’t use it because I prefer other brands. 

[MoriyaSchism]

This just seems like a way to excuse another price hike. I'll pass on this painted terrain nonsense. 

[DemonGSides]

4 hours ago, Blindhamster said:

Personally, I’m not opposed to the idea. I’ve never got round to painting much of my terrain and I have quite a bit. Finding time for painting my actual models is challenging enough

 

Yeah I totally would understand someone being against pre painted models (tho entire industries exist to help people bridge the gap between the idea of Warhammer and having a full painted army and frankly that's a good thing), but I can't understand why some one would be against painted terrain. That's just gatekeeping for the sake of it at that point. 

 

Never doubt a WH fan's ability to look down their nose at their fellow hobbyists for asinine reasons. It feels like it's about the only reason half of them still engage; anything to try to dunk on someone.  Truly baffling. 

Edited 10 minutes ago by DemonGSides

[Evil Eye]

Realistically, if someone isn't interested in putting any effort into the painting/modelling side of a painting/modelling based hobby, then that hobby probably isn't for them, and attempting to accommodate them will only dilute the experience for the already-established base. It'd be like bringing store-bought cakes to a baking group; yes it lowers the barrier to entry but it completely defeats the point of the hobby.