Musings of a Green Man

I've been tabletop gaming for far longer than I like to think about. Ive fielded armies full of infantry, bikes, cavalry, transports, armour, even mecha. The one thing I've rarely used is aircraft. Current meta makes that a rather glaring absence in some games, so I'm looking to address that. I've used aircraft plenty in 6mm, where the scale allows for them to bank, wheel and dogfight freely. In Heroics scale, however, there's far less room to manoeuvre the great beasts of the sky. The only time I've used aircraft at this scale was back in Warhammer 40,000's first edition, when Landspeeders and jetbikes were capable of full flight, and so could tear across the battlefield in a strafing run. Flying units fell from favour after that. In 40k's third edition, aircraft were expensive models who would see little time on the table, essentially just tearing across in a strafing run, then entering the long Reserves shuffle.  Since then a lot of games have develop...

There's been a bit of an outcry in recent years about the lack of female representation in gaming miniatures.  A lot of this is based on some idea that to be female, the model has to have cleavage, whether exposed, corsetted or shielded by totally impractical boob-plate, have long hair and wear high heels. The old Sisters of Battle managed to tick every box. They were, however, far from the only Range with a significant female membership, more just an opposite number to the marines. Anyway, this post, as ever, isn't about the gender of models, but gender stereotypes in the wider hobby. For more than 20 years I've been aware of a hobby that has a fairly even gender representation. Despite this, the archetype gamer that most people will imagine is a single, socially awkward, male. We see it a lot, from The Big Bang Theory to Fresh Meat. It's nice to see that the archetypal, all-American Riverdale, in its TV incarnation at least, isn't sticking to that, having 2 genera...

I've seen a fair few posts on various platforms decrying the move by Games Workshop, for events that they sponsor and organise, from the old staple of a "three colour minimum" to a "tabletop standard" for the minimum level of painting required for the forces used. "Tabletop standard" is an ambiguous phrase, since, on a lot of tabletops the standard is the grey plastic horde. That aside, my tabletop standard is very different from someone else's, since i love adding the details, heraldry, etc., by hand which many players add with decals or leave off altogether. That, however, is not what this post is about. Struggling to find sleep this morning i came to a realisation: the more models a force requires, the more complicated it's paint scheme tends to be. Let's take GW's 40k for an example, since they are in the trigger. Space Marines, Necrons and Knights are all relatively expensive per-model in terms of points, 16-200 or so minimum, ...

A friend, who's only been playing tabletop games for about 6 years, recently decided to start an Imperial Guard army for 40k. He's used to playing Space Wolves or World Eaters, and so is struggling to adjust to the quantity rather than quality. We were discussing this and the limitations that the organised play restrictions that can really hamper the Guard: whereas in third edition you could have 5 heavy weapons squads as part of a HQ slot, and in 4th could have another 15 in the Heavy Support slots, you're now limited to 3 in a 2,000 point force, etc. The discussion shifted to maximal playing: getting the most models and Command Points possible. He's often faced a Tyranid swarm with his marines, and was in disbelief when I said that the Guard could out swarm the 'nids, because Guard have cheaper HQ. What followed was my obsessively perusing the Codex, Chapter Approved 2018 and Imperial Armour: Index: Forces of the Astra Militarum for 5 hours, determined to pull to...