Merry Christmas and a blatant plug

So, my turn rolls around to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! As for the somewhat incongruous image, I'm taking this opportunity to do a little festive giveaway of my own. From Boxing Day until the 30th of January, the first book in the Thelenic Curriculum, The Wake of Manadar, will be free to download on Kindle, so if you've got a shiny new device just waiting for books to be loaded onto it, fill your proverbial boots. Get it HERE, though unless you're feeling generous wait till Boxing Day :)

Other than that I'll see you all in the New Year, unless I get a bit bored before them and do Part 2 of my Sororitas overview. There's a lot to talk about!

Early Sororitas Impressions (Part 1)

I've had the chance to get a game in with my Sisters of Battle, so I thought I'd have a look at how the Chapter Approved beta-codex feels when compared to their Index incarnation, and previous versions of the army. Obviously there's stuff I haven't personally tried out yet, so this will be a mix of personal experience and theory.

Keep The Faith
So, the obvious first topic is the new Faith system. To give a brief summary, you get a Faith point for every 10 models with the Acts of Faith rule (rounding down) plus 3 more. These points are then spent to attempt the various Acts by rolling over a target number, and each Act can only be attempted once per battle round. So firstly, this system does  work quite well. By giving you points based on the number of Sisters you have, it rewards you for taking a mono army and comes with built-in scalability. In terms of raw power, it's debatable whether this system is actually more effective than the old one which gave bonus actions but it's certainly more colourful and closer to earlier editions of the Sisters.

Appropriately enough, some Acts also feel like a bit of a Hail Mary. Most notably, The Passion, which lets a unit fight twice, has to be activated on a 5+ and is done at the start of  your Fight phase, so it's tricky to know when to use it. What's interesting here is that you can get a +1 to the roll for having a Simulacrum in the unit, and a re-roll if a Dialogus is nearby, which could also be combined with another +1 from the Order of the Ebon Chalice's Trait. So that could be on 3+, re-rolling. However, you may well want to use it on a character (such as Celestine or a Canoness with the Blade of Admonition) in which case the best you can do is get it to 4+. For Celestine herself, ironically, you're stuck with 5+ because she has no Order.

Shiny Happy People
So why would you want to use an Act on a Character, given that most of them are more effective when used on a unit? The answer is the Vessel of the Emperor's Will stratagem. What this does is extend the effects of the Act to all Sororitas within 6" of the Character, regardless of Order.
(Side note: The Stratagem simply says the Act 'effects all ADEPTA SORORITAS units within 6" of the CHARACTER' which seems by RAW to mean the Act would effect vehicles which can't usually do them. I assume this is not intended.)
Obviously this has a lot of uses- whilst it's probably not all that likely you would want to give the whole bubble +3" movement, giving multiple units +1 to hit or making them all fight twice could be very powerful, depending on the units involved. There's also the deeply troll-tastic Spirit of The Martyr, which if popped on Celestine and then used in this way can heal her, bring back or heal one of the Geminae, and add a model to all the other effected units as well.

Order! Order!
So lets look at the Order traits (aka Convictions). As an old-school Sororitas player I was a bit narked to find that my Order, the Valorous Heart, gets the groan-worthy 6+ wound ignore save. In action it's not utterly terrible, and it at least supports most army builds, but it's certainly not exciting. The Order of Our Martyred Lady possibly gets a worse deal, though, getting a Faith point whenever one of its own units is destroyed. In my game, I ended up with Faith left over, leading me to doubt how necessary gaining Faith is, though I could possibly have used more. The Order of the Ebon Chalice feels like an early stand-out, gaining +1 to Act of Faith rolls. That gets some Acts to 2+, but depending on which Acts you plan to use and how many Simulacrae and Dialogus you have may not be necessary. The Order of the Argent Shroud take a more practical approach to martyrdom in that they prefer to let their enemies do it, gaining Faith on a 4+ when an enemy unit is wiped out. The same qualifiers about gaining Faith apply there. The Order of the Bloody Rose gain +1 A and +1 S when charging, charged or Intervening, making them the Order with the most obvious key units- you're going to want Seraphim, Celestians or Repentia with them. The Sisters melee units tend to be competent but a bit pillow-fisted, so this Conviction could be handy. Finally, the Order of The Sacred Rose have the classic 'lose only one model to morale' rule, but back that up with Overwatching on a 5+, so it's pretty much Grim Resolve IIRC. With all those Flamers, Sororitas are already quite good at Overwatch so this is a solid Conviction. I think Ebon Chalice will probably be the go-to for a reliable army, though all of them can work.

All Stars
The good old Battle Sisters squad remains the sole Troops choice for Sororitas, but they're not at all bad. There are plenty of options, and since even the  basic 5-strong squad can take two Special Weapons and the Superior can have a Combi-Weapon they can function as small, highly-equipped kill teams in Immolators  or go all the way up to 15-strong blobs. Wtih their Acts, they're every bit as good at shooting things with bolters as Marines are and for less points.

Celestians are interesting. For a couple more points than Sisters they gain a lot- more Leadership, better WS, an additional Attack and a Bodyguard rule. The question is, though, if any of those things are actually needed. They seem to function well as a bodyguard for a beat-stick Canoness, helping keep her alive if her prey proves overly resilient or counter-attacks, and if backed up by a Priest of some sort for +1 A from War Hyms can put out a lot of hits. Obviously if you go with the Bloody Rose they become a lot more dangerous. Like Seraphim, they differ from most of the more specialised Assault units by still having Acts of Faith, putting The Passion on the table. I do think, though, that as an elite unit they should be more like Sternguard, with more Special Weapon or Combi-Weapon options, which are at the moment the same as those for the Sister Squad.

Seraphim are that rarity in 40k- an unusual squad that seems to have a clue what it's trying to  do. Seraphim want to shoot people with pistols, and they're pretty good at it. They can jump up to a unit, shoot it, assault it, tank return attacks with their armour and at worst a 5++ from their improved Shield of Faith before either falling back and using FLY to still shoot, or just staying in combat and shooting anyway. They cost the same as Celestians and most players will probably find them more useful. Seraphim are potentially very command-point hungry, with their own Stratagem, Burning Descent, allowing them to fire as they arrive, including boosting the range on their Hand Flamers. Since they effectively have four Special Weapons and already also bring Bolt weapons, they're a great target for Holy Trinity giving them +1 to wound too.

The Exorcist has largely returned to the position of being a bit of a beast. With the Exorcist Launcher now doing D6 damage and remaining Heavy D6 with a -4 save mod, it's capable of putting out a lot of long-range anti-armour damage and remains about the only thing in the Codex that can.

A Rhino-conversion Repressor I came up with. A tutorial can be found HERE

The Repressor (Forge World) got more expensive for no obvious reason though the reduction in points for Heavy Flamers mitigates that a little. It's still a very nice transport for Sisters since six models can shoot out of it. As always, not being 'on the table' reduces the buffs and Stratagems that can be used by the passengers, but it's a great way to get about and still do something.

Dominions are a little frustrating. They cost a point more than normal Sisters simply for the option to take four, rather than two, Special Weapons and can make a bonus move before the first turn, but that's it. I'd really have liked to see them regain their Outflank move, much like Deffkoptas' 'Scoutin Ahead'. I mean come on, if Orks can do it..

Retributors are still a solid fire-support unit, though taking anything other than Heavy Bolters on them feels like a bit of a gamble due to the short range of the other options. Not being able to make a bonus move like they could in the Index makes getting Multi-Meltas and Heavy Flamers into range tricky, though Divine Guidance can be used to offset the Heavy penalty. They do feel the lack of a +1 to Wound Stratagem that's practical for them, limiting their ability to challenge armour. Still, if you need some Sisters to sit on an Objective, you can do a lot worse.

Celestine and her Geminae have changed a bit, in a classic case of GW fixing one problem and creating a new one. To briefly recap, the old Celestine and her bodyguard formed one unit, and you could resurrect one of the Geminae per turn if one or both were dead. Since they were a unit, once a wound had been allocated to Celestine she had to keep taking them, making resurrected Geminae unable to protect her. Now, Celestine and the Geminae are two seperate units, and the Geminae can take wounds for her on a 2+ if they're 3" or less away. Unfortunately, this means that if both Geminae are killed, Celestine can't bring them back since Healing Tears adds a model to their unit. On top of that, Celestine lost a Wound and got a bit more expensive. (It's almost as if they're not trying to sell the model any-[REDACTED ON GROUNDS OF HERETICAL CYNICISM]

Still, overall the usual comments on Celestine still apply- she's quite potent, buffs Shield of Faith, and demands that you keep a Command Point back in case she fluffs Miraculous Intervention.

This has got pretty long, so I think I'll come back to look at Warlord Traits and Relics later. Keep the faith!

Walking the Walk, Talking Da Orks

I've now had the opportunity to get a fair few games in with the new Ork book, and I thought it was time to talk a bit more about it. Straight away, the biggest point with this new Codex is that it tries quite hard to push Orks off in a new direction- whilst the traditional Green Tide is still viable, Kult of Speed and shooting lists are heavily pushed.

For a Fistful of Teef
One of the more interesting things I've found is that despite most of my models being painted and decorated as Bad Moons, I'm increasingly finding that I'm playing them as Freebooterz. Fortunately a lot of Freebooterz tend to be ex Bad-Moons anyway due to a shared love of teef and flash, so it doesn't hurt my fluff-bunny feels as much as it might. As an aside, since my models are also painted Evil Sunz style in places (after absorbing a friend's warband years ago) I don't mix Klan Kultures in my armies. I don't like doing it at any time, and that goes double when some of my Bikers look like Evil Sunz and some look like Bad Moons.

What's particularly interesting about Freebooterz is that despite having the worst special Klan Strategy by a country mile (Kill Kroozer Broadside is just dire, I'm sorry) their Trait supports both shooting and assault armies, and arguably does it better than those of other Klans that might be considered to specialise in one or the other. Competitive Streak is one of those abilities that when explained, makes people look at you like you've grown an extra head.

Typical reaction to learning the radius of the Competitive Streak effect

It's the sheer size of the effect bubble that does it. A 24" radius +1 to hit for doing something that you're going to be trying to do anyway (i.e. krumping gitz) is extremely good.

The Key Players (Or, hold my Grot and Watch Dis!)

This guy. This guy right here.

There are several models that I've found are extremely useful for Freebooterz and really help to push them into the realm of exceptionally dangerous. One of the first is the Dakkajet. Already, even before the new Codex, the Dakkajet was one of the more reliable performers in the Ork army, since if it targets the same unit with all its guns (which will be six Supa Shootas unless you've cheaped out like some sort of grot) it gets +1 to hit, meaning it's usually hitting on an unprecedented-for-Orks 4+. A Freebooter Dakkajet, however, is even more exciting. If it's benefiting from Competitive Streak it's hitting on 3+, which can even get to a flat-out-bonkers 2+ against a unit with Fly through the use of the Long, Uncontrolled Bursts Stratagem. More usefully, however, it's an excellent MSU hunter. If an opponent has taken several small units of squashy infantry (eg, three squads of ten Guardsmen, to pick a.. random example) the Dakkajet is excellently equipped to hunt them down and is quite capable of wiping them out in a single salvo. Usually, other than conceding First Blood, people aren't too bothered when an inconsequential unit like this gets annihilated, but when that kill suddenly means that all the other Ork shooting is hitting on 4+ they tend to sit up and take notice.

Traktor Kannons are for grots. So's this, but it's better.

My next choice might be a bit surprising, but it's the Mek Gun, more specifically the Kustom Mega Kannon variant. As a grot-crewed weapon, the Mek Guns receive no bonus from Competitive Streak, but they do trigger it if they manage to kill a unit, because no self-respecting Ork wants to be outdone by a Grot. A well-sited battery of KMC Mek Gunz gives any Ork army a very respectable anti-armour punch and is also useful for winkling heavy infantry out of cover, especially the first floor of GW Ruins where they might have made themselves immune to Assault. Since you're not going to get the benefit of Competitive Streak, it usually means you can fire the KMCs first in a shooting phase and see if you can wipe a unit to trigger it for everyone else. As I'll talk about later, your order of attacks is very important with Freebooterz, so this is quite liberating.

The next Freebooter All-Star is more of an Ork All-Star if we're honest, and it's the humble Grot. They may not really be able to kill anything on their own, they may fight like sick in a paper bag and they may flee if a nearby Squig breaks wind*, but they give Orks their own version of the 'Loyal 32' and those extra Command Points can be crucial. I also personally like the idea that the Grots are providing logistical support to the Orks who simply can't be bothered with it. They can serve useful duty as objective holders (so long as no threat is allowed anywhere near them) anti-deep-strike bubble-wrap, and of course as Grot Shields.

The Loyal 32 does raise the tricky question of who else to bring to fill the two HQ slots of the Battalion. Whilst Orks do have plenty of useful HQs, most of them are rather more expensive than the Guard officers who traditionally fill out the Imperial version. Weirdboyz are a solid choice, providing useful abilities (and of course the Battalion provides the CP to make them into Warpheadz if required). It's annoying in this case that other very handy utility characters like Painboyz, Runtherds and the Waaagh Bannner are Elites since they would otherwise be an ideal way to fill out the Detachment. For Freebooterz, however, there's another option that meshes well with what we have already:

Must.. Orkbliterate!

We're going a long way back in my own personal collection here, but these three charmers are known as Da Obliteratorks**, and were originally built as Chaos Ork Obliterators back when allies were a big thing. These days, however, I use them as Shokk Attack Gun Meks, and the weapon's very random shooting profile meshes well with their look. There are a couple of reasons why these guys fit very well into a Freebooter list. Firstly, if interspersed among the Mek Gunz they can fix them, dealing with the inevitable overheat damage and forcing opponents to work that little bit harder to get rid of the things. Secondly, that +1 to hit can easily turn the SAG from 'entertainingly erratic' to 'downright terrifying'. Their AP of -5 means even the very best armoured foes have little chance to save, even in cover, and their potential to inflict Mortal Wounds allows them to even threaten things like Knights and Custodes. In the extreme case- and this is the never-going-to-happen case but it's fun to tease opponents with, a single SAG can inflict 36 Wounds plus 18 Mortal Wounds with one shot.***

Da Uvver Stuff
Of course the nice  thing with Freebooterz is that anything shooty or fighty works with them just fine. (Sorry Killa Kans). The Morkanaut is handy for the big KFF bubble and if it gets the +1 to hit can be a very dangerous shooting unit, but a CP should always, always be saved to prevent its 9" radius explosion when it gets focused down, which it will. Lootas get a lot of benefit from the bonus as well, though they can't double-tap like they could if they were Bad Moons. A sore point is Flash Gitz- whilst their firepower is amazing, especially if supported by Badrukk, their expense, shortish range and relative fragility make them tricky to use, even with Freebooterz. On the rare occasion that you get them to shoot with both the benefit of being stationary and with Competitive Streak up, they hit on 3+ (2+ for the Kaptin with his Gitfinda Squig) and do tend to delete things. Meganobz love being Freebooterz so long as someone else krumps something first to get them good and riled up, since it cancels out the deeply irritating -1 to hit on their Klaws without the need for a Waaagh Banner, though to be honest the Banner is so useful I try to always take one anyway. Potentially Meganobz under both effects and led by a Freebooter Warlord with Killer Reputation can be hitting on 2+ and re-rolling 1s, which tends to get their victim's attention.****

Fiddly bitz, gubbinz and know-wotz
There are a few considerations, and at least one irksome rules issue, when playing Freebooterz. First and foremost, the most killy models tend to be those which will benefit most from Competitive Streak, but are at the same time those most likely to trigger it, making deciding what to attack first with sometimes quite tricky, which is one of the big benefits of Mek Gunz. This is even more important in the Assault phase, where you have to balance the need to mitigate the inevitable Counter Attack stratagem against the desire to get a quick kill to trigger Competitive Streak. The rules issue comes with Open-Topped Transports. We know from the FAQ that to no-one's great surprise, models shooting out of Battlewagons etc can't have Stratagems played on them, which makes Lootas firing out of them distinctly less appealing, for example. What isn't all that clear is how Competitive Streak works with them. Personally, I play it that a unit killed by models  shooting (or even fighting, with Boarding Action) out of a vehicle counts as having been destroyed by the vehicle itself for the purposes of triggering Competitive Streak, whilst the models inside it never benefit from the +1 To Hit bonus since they aren't on the table. This is of course logically ridiculous, but does seem broadly consistent with how GW treats embarked models.

Final Thoughts
So, this turned into a Freebooterz post! It wasn't exactly meant to be, but  the Ork book is so chewy and has so many different options that there's a hell of a lot to talk about with it. Speaking of chewy, I've found it's a good idea to mark a Freebooter unit that gets a kill with a token, and I usually use some sort of individually-wrapped (ideally green) sweet. This means that you get to give your ladz a sweetie when they excel, and at the end of the phase the sweets can be shared out amongst players, with first refusal going to the player whose unit got wiped out to earn said sweetie in the first place. Just be sure to bring as many sweets as the opposing army has units, to avoid disappointment..





* in the Grots' defence, depending on the type of Squig this may actually be lethally dangerous.
** Annihilatork, Devastatork and Eradicatork.
*** This requires you to roll at least 15 sixes. Of course if the hits are also 6s, you could do more hits so the theoretical ceiling is in fact 72 wounds plus 36 Mortal!
**** Briefly.

Chaos Theory and the Wouldacouldashouldda

I promised (threatened?) earlier in the week that I was going to talk about Chaos Theory again on here, and I'm going to follow through on it because that's just the kind of guy I am.

Regular readers (don't you have anything better to do? On second thoughts don't answer that.) might recall me talking about Chaos Theory before with regards to time-travel plots and how it makes most of them not really work, but today, in a shocking departure from established convention I'm going to link it directly to 40k! And no, I don't mean by math-hammering how many Obliterators it takes to kill a Knight Castellan in one turn.*

Here's a scenario most 40k players, or indeed players of most games with dice in them might recognise. A player fails a clutch roll during a game, and realises after the fact that they could have done something about it. For example, they could have used a command re-roll, or used a one-time rule that gives +1 to a roll, etc. Maybe then they look at the dice and say "Damn***, a 2. If I'd used my +1 to hit ability I'd have succeeded!". Another classic is failing an unlikely roll, say a 6+ hit or save, and saying "It's not worth using my re-roll on that, but let's see what would have happened if I had." Of course, by the law of dramatic inevitability this 'virtual' re-roll then succeeds, leading to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Well here's the thing, my fellow disciples of the Great Cuboid Deciders- it doesn't matter. Don't worry, be happy, because none of these scenarios actually means what our grumpy, pattern-obsessed little minds think they do. For the reason why, we need to look to our old friend Chaos Theory, in a development that you might just possibly have seen coming.

To understand why, there's a simple experiment you can conduct. Pick up a dice, a D6 is best and a D4, for reasons I'll explain later, is best avoided. Hold it in your best rolling grip, taking note of exactly where  it is relevant to your dice-rolling surface, and let fly. Note the result. Now pick up that dice again, and try to roll it in the exact same way, with the exact same amount of force. You'll find that almost exactly 5/6**** of the time, you'll get a different score, assuming the roll is 'fair'. (i.e. that the dice actually rolls, which is why I discouraged the D4, since those things skid like a rookie F1 driver on the wrong tires in a monsoon.)

Counter-intuitively to what our brains like to think about things like science and physics, even a precision built device that always imparts the exact same amount of force to the dice and throws it from the exact same position will tend to end up with a seemingly random result. This is because there are so many tiny little variables that are impossible to take fully into account- small electromagnetic, seismic or gravitational fluctuations, tiny air currents, accumulating damage to the corners of the dice and the surface it lands on, etc.

So what does this all mean? Simply put, if you were able to go back in time and use that +1 ability you decided not to use the first time, the tiny difference in exactly when and how you rolled that dice would mean the result would be different. You might well still succeed, but you still might not. Likewise, re-rolling a dice to see what would have happened (or looking at the result of the next dice you roll and imagining what would have happened if it were the re-roll) actually tells you nothing, because if you actually had used the re-roll the result would most likely have been different.

Before the geek brigade (of which I am a proud member, let's be clear) turns up to point it out in the comments (ahahaha) we should note that there's an important exception to this rule, which is when your dice rolling takes place on a computer. Since random numbers on computers aren't in fact random, but are instead based on a 'seed' value that's then chewed up by a complicated formula, some implementations will always give the same sequence of results, as can be seen in some of the XCOM games where re-loading a save to retry a missed shot will always result in another miss unless you do something different first to alter the sequence. (I suspect this is why the official GW 'dice app' uses the accelerometer to roll the dice, though there are other ways around the problem). Random number generation is a fun topic if you feel like losing yourself in the labyrinths of Wikipedia for an evening, but probably not something we need to talk about right now.

To get back to the point, what I'm trying to explain here is basically that dice are evil little contrary beasts and one should never, ever assume they they're going to behave the way you'd expect. So the next time you decide not to use a re-roll and regret it, or use one and get another damn 1 again, just remember that whatever you think you would have, should have or could have done instead, it still might not have worked out. It all evens out in the end.*****


*The answer is seven.**


**That's a blatant lie, but I'm hoping no-one reads double footnotes.

***Or most likely, something with a little more spice to it.

**** Or 9/10, if you tried with a D10 like some sort of wise-acre.

***** Though with one of my regular opponents and his hyper-jammy 4++ saves, not yet.

The paint-before-assembly conundrum

Meet Mogthrash Kilzogg. Mogthrash is a Bad Moon Speedboss, and his interests include speed, krumping, dakka and teef. Not necessarily in that order.

Now as you can probably tell, this Defkilla Wartrike is a bit of a conversion, and if you're interested there's more info about him (and an even more ludicrously sized image) over on my Deviantart. What I'm going to talk about here, though, is something that's become more of an issue the more I've worked on the new Ork models.

All of the wonderful new Ork vehicles have a lot of detail and most of them have quite a few very characterful krew models. Even the most obstinate hater of painting models before fully assembling them- and I place myself firmly within that proud company- has to admit that they're going to have to leave the Krew unattached until they're painted. However, with several of the new kits things are a little more complicated than that. Here's a WIP shot of the Deffkilla:

As well as showing off the parts that I nicked from the Speed Freeks box (hint: they're yellow) this also shows the bitz that I ended up leaving off until the model was painted. The driver was also left loose, he's just in his seat here to make the photo easier. What's perhaps not immediately obvious here is that his right arm comes attached to the handlebar of the trike, and that handlebar then slots in to the support for the dashboard. On top of that, because of the way the Boomstikks are designed (I think the idea is that that driver fires them by pressing the top of his toes into the triggers) they also get in the way of the driver's body to the extent that I was fairly sure that if they were attached, I'd never get the git back on. So in the end, the driver, dashboard, both Boomstikks, fuel grot and Speedboss all had to be left off the model. It would be very easy for an inexperienced modeller to either fall into the trap of building the whole thing and finding it almost impossible to paint, or worse, paint it with just the krew left off and be unable to finish building the damn thing! *

Do I have a point here? Well firstly, if you've not picked up any of the new Ork kits yet consider this a bit of a PSA- it's really, really important when building these things to dry-assemble them and make sure you're not going to get in your own way later. They look awesome when built, and it'd be a real shame for someone to accidentally spoil such great models. Secondly, I do think GW need to think a bit more about this side of things when they make models and instructions. I've been doing this for almost 30 years now (dear God, I'm old) and I still get caught out occasionally. ** I was really surprised that the instructions for the vehicles didn't have any 'paint this bit first' notes which those for other kits have had in the past, and with Speed Freeks and its coloured plastic the danger of someone falling into the trap is particularly acute. The whole set practically screams at the new player to get everything built as fast as possible so they can play the game, after all.

So anyway, there's that. I'll probably pop up again later in the week to bang on about chaos theory or something.



* It might also be possible to forget to attach the little 'axle' parts of the front wheels of the Shokkjump Dragster until the hull was fully assembled, meaning you had to drill a hole in the wheel mounts to get the things in. Hypothetically, of course....

** Not by the Dragster, though. Like I said, that example was hypothetical. Honest.

Legio Metalica Maniple(s)

It's been a bit slow around here recently, I know, for which I can only say 'IRL' and leave it at that.

Anyway, around everything else that's been going on I did manage to finally finish my Legio Metalica titans, as seen here. For the curious, their names from left to right are:
Dyer's Eve (Reaver)
Master of Puppets (Warlord)
Overkill (Warhound)
Orion (Warhound)
Call of Ktulu (Warlord)
Harvester of Sorrow (Reaver)

I've already talked about the Legio and its colour scheme when I uploaded Call of Ktulu to DA,, but there are a few other little things to mention. By careful use of magnets, I've made the arm weapons of the Reavers compatible with the carapace weapon mounts on the Warlords, so Master of Puppets is armed with a Gatling Array, for example. I did something similar with the Warhound arm guns, making an adaptor piece out of an old fantasy Goblin shield and part of the 'hole' from a 40mm base to allow me to fit those to the carapace of a Reaver, as show here with the Turbo-Laser on Harvester of Sorrow. The Reaver carapace weapons pose an interesting problem, because whilst both the Vulcan Mega-Bolter (as seen here on the arm of Orion) and Turbo-Laser are options for it, as far as I know Forge World never made them for the 40k-scale Reaver. The laser looks OK, but the Bolter, with its two big underslung box magazines, looks a bit odd turned upside-down. On the other hand, if it were the right way up the boxes would bump into the carapace. Assuming the part is ever made for the smaller version I'll be interested to see it!

There's a small modelling cheat on Harvester of Sorrow, in that rather than paint the iron skull on the carapace freehand, I used an old Empire shield boss. On the other hand the Aquila on the head of Orion is something I'm quite proud of, since in order to make it stand out against a half white, half black background I took a black and a white transfer and cut them both down the middle. To say I was surprised to manage to get it to line up is an understatement, to put it mildly! 

In game terms, these Titans will probably be fielded as two Maniples, a Myrmidion Maniple (the two Warlords and a Reaver) and a Venator Maniple (two Warhounds and the other Reaver). That might mean a weapon-swap for Dyer's Eve since both those maniples emphasise shooting, but I like the punchy look for this picture. Certainly Harvester of Sorrow's all-laser fit would work well in the Myrmidion. On reflection, since the Venator Maniple only grants the Reaver an attack with one weapon if one of the Warhounds knocks down a target's shields, Dyer's Eve could probably get away with just taking a carapace Turbo-Laser to do the deed.

Still, all this is moot until I get the chance to play again!

The Vexing Question of what is Important

Long-time readers or occasional browsers of this blog might remember that in the past I've explored the subject of time-travel and how a huge number of plots based around it make very little sense. I've also talked before about the level of 'suspension of disbelief' and how it varies from one person to another. Well, something quite recently caused me to revisit those opinions and have another little think about them.

Let's not beat about the proverbial bush here- I'm talking about 'Rosa', the recent Dr Who episode featuring Rosa Parks, which has already been hailed in many circles as a modern classic. Now, I'm not going to say there wasn't a lot to like in there- it was certainly good drama and the timing (yes, I'm looking at you, Ryanair) was so perfect that you could almost believe the Doctor herself had done a bit of cheeky engineering of the TV schedules. Also we had the 'is the Doctor Banksy' gag which I hope they revisit because the concept is a lot of fun.

The 'problem'- and I went back and put quotes around that because I'm not even sure it is a problem- is that as a science-fiction story in general, and a Dr Who story in particular, it was nonsense. There's a very good reason that the show doesn't generally do 'making sure history happens properly' stories, which is that quite beside the fact that deciding what history should and shouldn't be could be construed as somewhat megalomaniacal, it's very hard to make them make sense. (For why, the two 'about time' posts linked up there go into a lot more detail). The plot of 'Rosa' was full of more holes than a slice of Leerdammer, but to address the simplest, we're asked to believe that the US Civil Rights movement would have been irrevocably derailed if Rosa Parks had not made her protest on that exact day. Were I the sort to use such language, I would almost call the suggestion that she wouldn't have plucked up the courage to do what she did the next time the bus was full 'problematic'. But I won't make that claim, because it's patently obvious that the writers intended to force the Doctor and her Companions into the situation of engineering a horrible, uncomfortable situation for the greater good.

That's not exactly a new idea in sci-fi- the classic example being the original Star Trek's 'The City on the Edge of Forever' - but it's a good one. However, getting the characters so closely involved in the historical story opens up a huge can of temporal worms (not to mention that whole business with the Reapers which exist largely to explain why the Doctor doesn't do... exactly what happens in 'Rosa'.)

So, as I was watching the episode, it's safe to say I was eye-rolling a bit. As the sort of person who gets out his pencils to calculate average walking speeds before deciding how long it takes a character in a story to walk from one place to another, the various plot holes were deeply annoying me. We'd seen before that when popular shows that are generally of a high quality do this the fans are up in arms, a good example being the teleporting characters and supersonic ravens in the penultimate series of Game of Thrones. So once the episode finished, I took a look online to see the reaction. It was, of course, seemingly nothing but page upon page of fulsome praise. For what appears to have been the vast majority of viewers, the drama the story set up and the message it delivered massively outweighed any plot issues to the extent that nobody even mentioned them.

In part, it's indicative of the online climate these days that I decided not to bring it up at the time. There were already a few of those depressingly predictable comments flying about that anyone who didn't think the story was an all-time classic must by definition be a drooling, eye-rolling bigot, and the last thing an obscure author needs it to be dumped into that particular pit. But leaving that aside, it really got me thinking about why 'Rosa' got away with it. Is it simply the case that if your story's message is strong enough (or to spin it the other way, politically correct enough) you can get away with it being deeply implausible even within its own rules? We might draw a parallel with 'Zootopia', which pushes a very hard anti-prejudice message and was critically well-received, despite the fact that its 'races' were predator and prey animals, the latter of which have extremely good reasons to be wary of the former.

Perhaps the answer is that the most important thing is to stay true to your own goals. The late, great Roger Ebert was a master of this philosophy, judging films not just on how 'good' they were, but how successful they were in doing what they set out to do. Thus the latest Russ Meyer 'trash' might still be well-received if it was successfully trashy. A slasher horror movie shouldn't be judged on criteria used for serious drama.

For me, personally, the cardinal rule is to stay true to the established rules of your own paradigm, and it was on those grounds in particular that 'Rosa' irritated me. Clearly for many others, that's not the case- or the story was engaging them so strongly in other ways that they simply didn't notice it. Some people (like me) can't re-watch Fight Club without pointing out all the ways it doesn't make sense. Others don't care. Ultimately, I'm going to keep trying to avoid plot holes and contradictions in my own work, but then I've never been a 'message' guy.

To thine own self be true, I suppose.