The Chime of Eons - Zogwort's Curse

"Live off the land. Go to find war. Kill wot comes close. The old ways are best."

- Grodd, Snakebite Runtherd


"Awww...it's Eldar! We can send 'alf da boyz 'ome!"

- Ork Grunt (Dawn of War)


"Damn oomie! Stay still so I can kill you!"

- Warboss Grimskull (Space Marine)

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On the one hand, it seems a lifetime between each Chime of Eons article, and as a fan of the setting I find myself hungry for more material, so that this wonderful LCG can become as great a representation of the setting's fiction as is possible.
On the other hand, as a card gamer, the speed at which warpacks are coming is disorienting. I've barely tested each of the factions two or three times before the cardpool changes on me again, and I have to unlearn and relearn the game's strategy all over again.

Speaking of upheaval, this pack brings yet another Warlord who flips upside down the way we have to think about a faction. While Nazdreg gave us a deck of economically priced tough units that hit harder the more you hit 'em, Zogwort brings a different approach and a new deck paradigm, relying in sheer numbers of snotling tokens to provide the resilience and force of attrition: a different enough tack that he needs to be played entirely differently.

Mechanically the game grows more and more interesting, and while playtesting will be needed to see if he is as solid as Nazdreg, he certainly brings an exciting new dimension to the game!

The exciting future and the dynamic present are one subject that this article series looks to cover, but the other thing we always look to examine is the glorious past of Warhammer 40,000.

That in mind, I'd like to put a recommendation out there:

Following the SC at Gamerz Nexus, I spotted a book on the shelf that I had long intended to pick up, and which I grabbed on a whim.

This book has been devoured, a real page turner that I've not put down in the last seventy-two hours, and which I'd heartily recommend to anyone who wants to know more about gaming and where this industry has come from. The opening volume also has a chapter on Games Workshop's humble beginnings, whilst I'm reliably informed that FFG's impact on the industry is covered in one of the later volumes.

I've deeply enjoyed this definitive work, and recommend it to you too:

Designers and Dragons. Please check it out!

http://www.evilhat.c...igners-dragons/






The Toof, and nothing but the Toof

"Old Zogwort" appeared first in Codex Orks 4th edition, and again in Codex Orks 7th edition.

I'll admit, he's not a character that I've been conscious of, despite owning above books. When I saw his preview, my first thought was "cool, a Snakebites Warlord!"

You can see why I made that mistake: he's got a strong snake motif going on in his picture and his fiction, he's a feral worlder and he's accompanied in this game by runtherders and a swarm of snotlings.

Thus my plan here was to write a bunch about the Snakebites Klan, and all their coolness.

Actually though, despite his backstory, I can't find any reference to him being a Snakebite, and he is in fact a Freebooter: an Orkish independent mercenary who has distanced himself from the Klan structure and works for payment and plunder.

Freebooterz are piratical outsiders, on the fringes of ork society. Even for orks, they're renowned as being unreliable and treacherous, but the extra firepower they can bring to a Warlord's army often makes them worth the many teef they cost to hire.

The Bad Dok card from the core set probably represents the first Freebooter of the LCG - a Bad Dok, is an Orkish Painboy whose eccentricity and love of insane surgery is such that an ork would have to be truly desperate to submit to their ministrations. Bad Doks often don't even need paying - for them the joy of surgery is all they need!

The most famous Freebooter is Kaptain Badrukk, a space pirate adventurer whose ship Da Blacktoof is feared by all, and who has fought Space Wolves, Tau and even a tendril of Hive Fleet Kraken to a standstill.

Our hero in this pack, however, is a different sort of Freebooter: a Weirdboy Warphead. Normally, Ork Psykers don't much like the company of Orks. The Weirdboyz are afflicted with headaches when too many orks are nearby, and in the heat of battle there's a tendency for the pent up Waaagh energies to cause a weirdboy's head to explode. For this reason, weirdboyz often need to be dragged bodily to the battlefront by their minderz, and pointed at the enemy so their psychic vomits can destroy the horde's foes!

Warpheads are a little different. These are ork psykers who actually enjoy the sensation of psychic energy, and who have mastered their powers to the degree that they are able to send their energies outwards at a whim. Warpheads actively seek out big orkish battles: the more Waaagh energy there is, the happier they feel.

Whereas mostly Weirdboyz want to avoid other orks, other orks mostly want to avoid Warpheadz. There's something inherently worrying about hanging around a mentally unstable psyker who might accidentally blow your head off with a thought, and while orks aren't averse to danger they prefer to have a proper fight be the cause of their death, not a psychic fart.

This pack isn't all about warpheadz and freebooterz though. In fact, as you'll see as we go through the signature squad, its not about them at all, really. The stars of the show, as far as the orkish presentation goes, are the Snotlings.

I've gone into the secret history of the snotlings before (here: http://www.cardgamed...-the-orks-r1218), so unfortunately the best bit of fluff I had regarding these noble runts is already done. However, there's still more to tell!

As to the rest of the factions, and the rest of the pack, there's no real theme to speak of, so we'll address the cards one by one!

Read on!

(a technical note: much as I'd like to have pictures of every card up, there seems to be a hard limit to the amount of images I can include in an article. sorry!)







Signature Squad

Old Zogwort

While Zogwort is a fun character, he's an even weirder pick for a Warlord card than most, as he's really a character who would have made more sense as a Unique Unit than as a leader. Being a Warphead and Freebooter, there's not much to justify him being at the head of a planet-conquering force.

Zogwort, as we've noted, is a Freebooter. His story starts on Catachan, with his spore pod hatching under a total eclipse and in the midst of a nest of venomous Bloodvipers. As an orkish infant he was bitten dozens of times, but he crawled from the pit with a dead snake in each hand, and a mouthful of crushed vipers. From that day he has had a kinship with snakes of all sorts - not only is wholly immune to their venom, but his own bite is far more toxic than any serpent's. He rapidly became a legend and a hero to the Feral Ork tribes of that planet, as much from his reputation for strength and cunning as his strange birth.

Adolescence saw the awakening of his psychic powers, and Minders assigned to him were often mysteriously replaced by Squigs during the night.

The "mystery" was solved when in battle against an entire company of Catachan Guardsmen his powers were unleashed in full. Scores of Guardsmen were transformed into mewling squigs, and a powerful psychic blast that decimated the enemy also burnt out Zogwort's eyeballs.

After this, Zogwort was becoming too big for Catachan, and so accepted self-imposed exile, heading out into the wider galaxy as a freebooter, taking his loyal retinue with him along with his squig-snake pets.

So that's his background: he's the most powerful and notable of orkish psykers, whose signature trick is turning enemies into squigs, and who is a one-ork walking engine of destruction capable of demolishing an entire company from one of the toughest Astra Militarum regiments.

A high HP value is good to see, a low attack value not so much, but is acceptable within the abstraction of this game. Zogwort isn't meant to be a "fight from the rear echelon" psyker like Eldorath: he's a front line war engine who hits like a Leman Russ battle cannon.

Odder still is the weird emphasis here on Snotlings. It seems as if a decision had been made to have the second Ork Warlord do things with snotling tokens, and that mechanic has been shoehorned onto a character who really has nothing to do with Snotlings at all. Squigs (and Snake-squigs specifically) is Zogwort's thing, and the pack-name Zogwort's Curse refers specifically to his unique psychic power: turning an enemy into a squig.

While there is a Squiggify event card previewed in a later pack, it basically makes no sense for that not to be Zogwort's signature event. Likewise, his signature unit should have been a Squig of some sort, and his signature support and attachment should have related in someway to either weirdboy powers or his obsession with snake-squigs.

Instead, we have a Zogwort who is seeming to pretend to be a Runtherd. He summons snotlings, for no reason apparent to the fiction, and then he kills them all at the end of the battle, also for no obvious reason.

Mechanically I'm loving what this Warlord brings to the game, but in terms of the game representing the fiction, this is a huge disappointment.

It doesn't fit. It doesn't fit at all.

The only thing I can think that might have happened here is that an Ork special character was grabbed at random, and then someone doing research accidentally pulled up the details of the similarly named Zodgrod Wortsnagga, who is the maestro and virtuoso of runtherds. For Zogwort, the entire set of mechanical concepts is entirely misplaced.

The only way to recover this is to mentally delete the word "snotling" from the token card and from every incidence of it on the signature squads, and to replace it with the word "snake squig". Of course, do this, and the signature squad card ceases to make sense...

Zogwort's Runtherders

I've ranted already about why this is not a fluffy signature squad for this Warlord, so lets take that as given.

If we ignore the "Zogwort's" appellation and take the rest of the card, how does it look?

The first thing here is that generally speaking, the term is Runtherd not Runtherder, and the Orkish plural is Runtherdz, not Runtherders. However, this is Orkish we're talking about, and orkish grammar nazism is probably misplaced. Fans and writers alike have used the word "Runtherder" intermittently, and I prefer the way that word looks.

The art here is great, showing the Runtherd's traditional tools of grabba-stikk, whip and squighound, all the better to drive the snivelling runts into battle.

The game effect is fun, and abstractly a nice way of noting that the Runtherd needs to encourage his charges to take to battle, and that in turn a bit of injury to the ork encourages the runtherd to be more encouraging!

A particularly nice narrative comes from when the Runtherder is shot down. Because of the timing rules, you get the Snotling even if the Runtherder isn't around after the attack. This gives us a great mental image of vengeful Snotlings surging forward to attack the nasty marines who just shot down their beloved herder!


Zogwort's Hovel

The art depicts a weirdboy hovel in the jungle, and one can imagine that this was where Old Zogwort lived back in Catachan.

As usual, there's an issue in storytelling terms about why a location so far from the Traxis sector has any relevance in the current conflict, but I've ranted at length about this when we talked about Catachan Outpost in the past. A degree of abstraction is needed for LCGs!

That said, what I find less forgiveable is that a snotling-related game mechanic has been shoehorned onto this location, with no real fictional justification for it.

Wyrdboy Stikk

The cardgamedb database calls this a Weirdboy Stikk, and actually I'm thinking that the cardgamedb spelling is the better one, as Weirdboy is the spelling that is used 95% of the time in GW products, though Wyrdboy isn't "incorrect" either: as might be expected, orkish spelling isn't the most consistent thing in the universe, and this is reflected strongly in the fictional materials.

Wargear and Weapon are reasonable but not perfect traits to attach here, and with the exception of Blight Grenades, I note that this is one set of traits that FFG has applied carefully and consistently, and with good tie in to mechanical game effects as well.

Having said that, the copper staff of a weirdboy is probably the opposite of wargear or weapons. In fact, the staff is the means by which a weirdboy grounds excess psychic energy, to stop his head from exploding. Its not like a wizard's staff being used to focus spells, rather its the safety valve that weirdboyz can use to dump power when they haven't got a suitable enemy to unleash the powers of Gork and Mork at.

Indeed, the first thing a Minder will do when he wants to use a Weirdboy as a weapon is snatch away his copper staff (and then usually pick up the struggling psyker, and point him mouth first at the enemy so the resulting destructive tide of psychic vomit hits the enemy rather than da boyz).

Thus, a weirdboy stikk is only really a weapon in the same way that the safety on a machine gun is a weapon.

As before, I have to object to this item being tied to snotlings, for no good reason at all. If we mentally reskin Snotlings as Squigs, it kind of works for Zogwort, but this isn't an attachment thats limited to Zogwort. Indeed, the Oddboy trait required allows it to be put onto no less than five different units in the game, only two of which are psykers.

If only there was a trait that denoted the psykers in the faction, for this psyker-specific piece of equipment...

Launch Da Snots

This card fills me with joy, on many levels.

The art depicted here is of a Shokk Attack Gun, a bizarre specialist mek cannon that absolutely typifies the madcap brilliance of orkish technology.

The weapon somehow punches a hole in realspace, then creates a forcefield tunnel through the warp, between the shokk attack gun's muzzle and the target space. The other end of the gun is a hoovering nozzle, that sucks up hapless snotlings (who are usually desperate to escape, but who sometimes have been conditioned with tunnels and juicy treats into walking into cramped tubes). The snotlings are then treated to a nightmarish journey through warpspace, with the forcefield tunnel peristaltically shoving them forwards, but providing no protection against the sanity shredding forces of the realm of chaos.

On their arrival, the snotlings have been turned into frenzied ravening beasts, desperately clawing at anyone around them.

One thing that makes this weapon so effective is that the snotlings materialise not just around the target, but also inside the target. Have pity on the poor Space Marine Terminator who finds he is suddenly sharing his helmet with a madly clawing, wildly defecating, suicidally insane snotling!

Of course, ork tech being ork tech, the weapon is notoriously unreliable, and various editions of the wargame have given this weapon brilliantly written misfire tables, with effects ranging from the mekboy operator being sucked through his own warp portal to the snotlings coming out somewhere behind the firing position, usually in the vicinity of a soon to be troubled and angry ork warlord.

For a while, the orkish game was full of weapons like this, from kustom field generators that would ping damage in random directions, to hop-splat guns that fired chain linked cannonballs that would leap erratically around the battlefield.

Its this insanity that made so many gamers great fans of the orks!

So for a gamer like me, who has fond memories of the time that Abaddon the Despoiler had his day spoiled by snotlings, its great to see a card like this.

Still, the effect is abstracted a little too much for my liking, and the placement of this card as a signature event for Zogwort seems totally wrong. Ho hum.

Even so, I will be smiling when I first play this card, and will almost certainly be providing sound effects. Thats got to be a good thing!


Other Cards

Blight Grenades

Terribly annoying though the "Nurgle only" limitation is in mechanical card quality terms, its also extremely fluffy.

Blight grenades are manufactured from the shrunken and disease-ridden heads of those who have opposed Nurgle, erupting on impact into a bilious cloud of toxins and plagues that impact on a psychic and physical level.

The artwork here is just perfect, and I'll be keeping an eye out for more of John Dotegowski's work. Promise of Glory was also his work, and both pieces look to have been done especially for the Conquest LCG. While I don't object to recycled art, I think its great that FFG are shelling out for new commissions.

FFG: hire that guy again please!

AoE 2 seems a big explosive effect for a weapon that is essentially 90% a psychological attack, and it'd have been good to see this card echo the mechanical effects of Nurgling Bomb.

Blood Claw Pack

I've expounded before about the Space Wolves and their unconventional non-Codex organisational structure (here: http://www.cardgamed...blackmane-r1238) and I can't help but think that in designing this card FFG have tried to match fiction to rules-set, but have actually conflated related but separate concepts: something they are doing again and again. See the Morkai Runepriest for another example!

The game effect here suggests that the Blood Claws pave the way for other Space Wolves fighting forces. What the ability looks like, in narrative terms, is the Blood Claws sacrificing their own opportunity to attack the enemy in exchange for creating an opening for other forces to deploy.

Thats a nice effect, with a nice story. Its also an effect that would perfectly suit a unit that has a dedicated scouting role.

Unlike other Chapters, the Space Wolves don't put their new recruits in a scout company. Instead, young Blood Claws are grouped together into packs who are renowned for their eager recklessness and desire for glory. They're so keen to begin their personal sagas that they'll often break battlelines and surge towards the enemy to enter into close combat. Such a lack of discipline would be punishable in most chapters, but the Space Wolves recognise that the heroic fury of Leman Russ is in the veins of every Space Wolf, and you can only be young the once!

The ability presented would make a lot more sense for scouts of other chapters, or for the Space Wolves, for the experienced Wolf Scouts who are well known for the exceptional disruption work ahead of the main advance.

Its interesting to note as well that the trait allocation here gives these young wolves the full Soldier trait, which might be considered reasonable if the same trait had been given to all Space Marines. As it is, the 10th Company Scout and Eager Recruit- a codex trained ultramarine who is far more soldier than warrior - is given a Scout trait. It seems you can't be a Scout or Psyker if you want to be a Soldier, and that Space Marines are always Soldiers rather than Warriors even when coming from the Space Wolves! This seemingly haphazard trait allocation is driven be game mechanics rather than any sort of in-fiction sense, I am sure.

The artwork also fails mildly. While its correct that Blood Claws wear Power Armour (and not Scout Armour) its also the case that they are generally armed with close combat weapons (normally bolt pistol and chainsword), whereas the fellows depicted here are using two handed boltguns - normally the province of the Grey Hunters. However, the red on yellow heraldry is correct, so presumably this is a squad who have switched up their weapons for less archetypal ones.

For me, a lot of Space Marine cards could have used shuffling around in how titles were matched to traits and card effects. I'd have liked to have seen the Eager Recruit be an Eager Bloodclaw, for example, and for the Morkai Runepriest to... well, to make sense mechanically and fictionally.


Bloodied Reavers

The Reaver is the Dark Eldar version of the Eldar jetbike, though the Dark Eldar style of using jetbikes is one that centres around up close and personal engagement. Blades mounted on the bikes allow fly-by cuts, while hooks and snares can drag a hapless victim behind the bike. This combination of terrifying speed and close quarters inflicted pain is something which the pilots consider have raised to an art form.

As might be expected, Reaver pilots are part of the Wych Cults of Comorragh - a trait that is notably missing from this card.

The card's name doesn't reference any established lore - there are two Dark Eldar groups that use the word "Bloodied" (Kabal of the Bloodied Claw and Kabal of the Bloodied Talon) but as Reavers aren't Kabalites, that can't be the association being drawn here. Also, as others have observed, it is somewhat clumsy to use a word which is a game term (Bloodied) in the title of a card, even if the potential for confusion is minimal. It might have been justifiable if an in-universe squadron of note was being referenced, but actually this was just a case of a random adjective being tagged onto the unit.

The stats and ability here make no sense to me.

It looks to me as if the designers initially conceptualised Bork'an Recruits, and came up with a good and fluffy rules match for that concept, and then realised that they needed to balance out the Eldar alliance options mechanically then forced this card into existence with no thought as to whether mechanics echoed fiction. If the expected pattern holds, we'll likely see at least a couple more units that cost 2 and have the same ability text, and likely with no more in-fiction justification than this card has.

While I absolutely understand that good game design and balance comes first I consider it a real shame that this card rule had to be pushed onto a unit of this concept, especially when it would have made perfect sense (well, within the previous establishment of "bikers in space" sort of sense) for a card representing Dark Eldar Reavers to be a Mobile card instead.


Crucible of Malediction

Eldar are inherently psychically sensitive to a far greater degree than humans are, and yet that psychic nature also renders them highly vulnerable. For example, the Eldar are wholly dependent on the Webway for interstellar travel: were they to try travelling through warp-jumps as lesser races do, their bright minds would prove far too tempting for daemons of the warp, and they would be far more likely to suffer possession or annihilation than a human making the same journey.

For the Craftworld Eldar, this psychic nature is carefully regulated through the Witch Path, a formalised and disciplined approach to magic that insulates the Eldar mind from his own psychic nature through runestones and protective ritual technologies. For the Dark Eldar, who are more interested in self-indulgence than self-discipline, the Path of the Eldar can't offer such protections. Instead, they deny their psychic nature, suppressing it as much as possible. Fearful of She Who Thirsts, they cripple their own psychic potential.

A lack of active battle psykers does leave the Dark Eldar vulnerable to witchcraft in battle, however, so they have defences in the form of Crucibles of Malediction. These arcane devices contain the trapped spirits of tortured psykers, who can then be released in battle to unleash a psychic cacophany that will deafen and disorient the psi-sensitive, while those that are insensitive (or who have purposefully hobbled their own sensitivity through drugs and self-delusion) hear nothing at all.

So how does this fiction tie together with this card and its effect?

Well, it doesn't, even the slightest.

Nice fluff reference though, even if the card effect has nothing to do with what it represents!

Doombolt

One of the known Chaos Undivided sorceries from the wargame, Doombolt is a psychic blast of energy coalesced from the spite and loathing of the sorceror.

In the wargame, its about as close to a boring magic missile spell as you can get.

The effect here is more interesting mechanically, and the traits make sense, particularly the rightful absence of a Chaos God trait. The art is very nice too, though it doesn't look much like someone casting a bolt, more summoning power while surrounded by adoring cultists.

Also, the flavor text is a quote from Xereth, a Black Legion Sorceror, and while being suitably evocative is actually a reference to the Tyranid invasion, stating why Chaos must be opposed to the Tyranids.

That is, "you don't get to eat this galaxy, alien gribblies, because our chaos gribblies have already called dibs."

That in mind, we've got a combination of a power referenced from the wargame, an interesting game effect that doesn't really reflect that power, a great piece of art that reflects neither of those and a great quote thats unrelated to all three of the above!

I'd much rather have seen a similar game effect attached to a Nurgle-traited power entitled Plague Wind or Foul Sepsis, and for the sake of playability having it affect all units at a planet or HQ, rather than just one.

As it is, in fictional terms this card is about as vanilla as Chaos can be!

Gleeful Plague Beast

In contrast, we have here a card that is exciting the game community with its mechanical potential, but is actually also very nicely consistent with the in-universe fiction and the established characterful mechanical themes of Nurgle.

Beasts of Nurgle are daemons represent the aspect of that ruinous power at his most joyful. They lollop happily across the battlefield, treating it as a playground to meet new friends. When they find those friends, they give them loving hugs and pustulent kisses, and bless them with gladly given gifts of bile and vomit that any good child of Nurgle would be glad to receive!

When those friends stop moving, they're always a little sad, but hey, look... more people to make friends with over there!

The game ability is playfully indiscriminate, and nicely representative of the miasma of illness that these daemons bring to a battlefield, while their actual attack value likely represents the one-on-one love these putrid buddies bring to their favourites.

The artwork here too is great fun: the Plague Beast just wants to give you a huuuug!

Guardian Mesh Armour

In the core set, I complained muchly that there was a wargear card for a Godwyn Pattern Bolter, as that weapon is the standard armament of space marines. I observed that giving such a weapon to many of the Space Marines units in the game would actually be downgrading their arms, and that the game effect made no sense either, as the Godwyn is a short ranged small arm designed for FIBUA and boarding work.

This card echoes the same flaws, but in a worse way.

Mesh armour is a high tech Eldar armour formed of tens of thousands of pieces of interwoven thermoplas, that reactively hardens for a few moments to impact, and which dissipates heat and energy that strikes it as well.

As the card name suggests, its also the standard armour type of Eldar Guardians, who are the civilian militia of the Craftworlds and who are too individually precious to send to battle unarmoured, but who lack the specialist training or warrior mindset to effectively use the far better Aspect Warrior armours.

In other words, Mesh Armour is the absolute minimum protection that an Eldar will ever have on the battlefield. Every career warrior will have armour that is better than this, and no Eldar army unit could be upgraded by being issued mesh armour, as thats what they already have at the very least.

Furthermore, shield doubling makes absolutely no sense at all for this armour-type. Likewise, a resource cost equal to that of Biel Tan Guardians is insanity: a squad (or indeterminate size group) of Eldar warriors in Mesh Armour has the same cost as the Mesh Armour on its own?

Its not as if Eldar technology lacks for suitable concepts for this game effect. An Exarch's Forceshield, for example or a Shimmershield. The effect would even work for a Rune of Witnessing or a Rune of Warding, especially if tagged as Psyker-only rather than Eldar-only.

There are some cards that are great fluff representations but are of questionable value mechanically.

There are cards which are exciting for what they bring to gameplay, but whose representation of the fiction could be better.

Then, there is Guardian Mesh Armour.

Heavy Marker Drone

"Um... Lord Zarathur... why is that drone hovering around our Heldrake?"
"Why, I have no idea! I wonder why its drawing a big crosshair on the Heldrake's power unit with that green light?"
"Oh well, sure its not important, Lord Zarathur."
"Right you are, peon. Carry on!"

Comedy value aside, I'd note that Marker Drones are a key part of the Tau arsenal, with Markerlights and Targeting Arrays helping the Tau overcome their general lack of martial skill (as in their dedicated warrior caste shoots no better than a Guardsman conscript, and is as weak in close combat as a gretchin) with technological superiority.

For fun, I heartily recommend saying "Target Acquired" whenever you play this attachment. Its just plain satisfying!

Its an odd decision to make this an attachment on an opposing unit, rather than a drone army unit that can activate that benefit as a triggered effect, as it means that at present there's absolutely no means for an opponent to shoot down the drone in anyway. It also makes for the weird situation where a No Attachments enemy unit is immune to markerlighting (though Flesh Hounds are the only ones that would realistically be selected for targeting). Still, mechanically speaking its an excellent and enjoyable game effect that feeds the whole attachment-driven combined arms theme of the Tau faction in this game.

A final niggly point: the art depicts a Marker Drone, not a Heavy Marker Drone, the key difference between the two being that a Heavy Marker Drone carries the powerful Burst Cannon, making it a decent firebase in its own right.

Rally the Charge

A recycled artpiece from the Battle For Maccrage material, this card whets the appetite for upcoming Space Marine on Tyranid violence.

The full pic is worth checking out (http://vignette3.wik...=20140427205322) not so much for its amazing quality (though its not bad at all) but rather for it being so typical of a certain phase that GW went through with its art: big war scenes with two conveniently primary coloured battlelines fighting at three foot's distance, with a jaunty thirty degree angle, the protagonists all handily facing the camera and some huge war machine in the smoky distance. Seriously, there's about two dozen of these pieces, more posed and positioned than a spine-twisted Catwoman comic cover, simultaneously looking utterly ridiculous and totally frikking METAL.

Which when you think about it, pretty much is 40k all over.

The card effect here fits well with the overall Space Marine mechanical theme of combat surprises and combat heroics, and for that I applaud the broader design strength of the game. Cards like these are really nice in that they maintain and reinforce the mechanical character of a faction while simultaneously bringing a new option to the table.

Sa'cea XV88 Broadside

Sa'cea is a densely populated and highly militarised Tau Sept World, and a good choice for place of origin for this battlesuit. The colours here are spot on, and though the Sept-symbol on the chest is that of T'au sept, that's something that GW also does with its miniatures and art pieces, presumably indicating a higher loyalty to T'au.

XV88 and Broadside are equivalent terms: XV88 is the battlesuit designation for the Broadside design, not a type of Broadside. The armament load out here is no less than THREE missile pods, along with a weapon on the left shoulder thats hard to make out but is probably a Railgun.

In the fiction and the wargame, Broadsides mean business: they carry the big firepower, sacrificing a battlesuit's normal mobility for the ability to kick ass.

They are always piloted by a veteran Shas'ui (would have liked to see this traited, as the precedent was set on other cards).

The ability here is a little bit odd, as you'd expect that AoE capabilities come as part of the armaments shown in the card art, but clearly the battlesuit can only fire its missile pods if you first give it an Ion Rifle or a Blacksun Filter!

Weirder still is the flavour text (which accurately described the Broadside's role) being preceded by a lack of Armourbane.

Still, this card is nice in its overall feel, and has a good sensation of "heaviness" in its game mechanics, sufficient to make opponents worry when you drop it on the table, with suitable sound effects.

And yes, the sound effects are mandatory. If you're not making them, you have no place playing 40k!

Searing Brand

Lord Voldemort goes S&M.

Yeah, I'll just leave that out there, for you to think about.

Not much to say about this card, except that it represents "torturing someone, but a lot rather than a little". Its not a card thats as conceptually strong as some other tortures, but at least its mechanically interesting.

Not sure really how a Searing Brand could really be considered a "Tactic", however. Its possible that the Dark Kin have a much lower threshold as to what constitutes high strategy than the Craftworld Eldar do...

Secluded Apothecarion

I LOVE THIS CARD.

This may surprise some of you, who have seen me slating it in the forums, or on the card comment section of the database, but I really do like it a lot.

This is a card that represents a non-combat aspect of the universe. While the tagline to the wargame might be "There Is Only War" we true fans of the setting know that this really is not the case. The best stories to come out of the universe have been the adventures and mystery solving of Ravenor and Eisenhorn as written by Dan Abnett. The best cards are those which show 40k as more than a battlefield.

I love the concept here, and the way that it is neatly abstracted into a simple LCG game mechanic. I love the flavor text that tells you all you need to know, while also hinting at their being more lore to read up on if you're interested. I love the artwork, and its depiction of the Apothecarion at a quiet time, just before hell breaks loose, just before the time of blood, and surgery, and heroic but futile battles on the operating table. I love the combination of clinical tools and workstation with medieval decor.

If I must raise objections, I'll say this:

First, I'd have liked this to be a Unique card. Not so much because Apothecaria are unique, but because you can't take a geneseed back more than once, and exhausting three of these to gain three resources seems kind of silly.

Second, I'd have liked this to be a 0-cost card, as strategically I can't justify including this, and I really really want to.

Third, and FFG is not at all to blame for this, I've always felt that Apothecary and Apothecarion are the wrong words for Space Marine medics. An apothecary is a pharmacist and master of medicines. An apothecarion is a store of drugs. The primary role of space marine medics, in contrast, is in battlefield surgery!

Staging Ground

You see this card's art? The ranked regiments of guardsmen, marching in their thousands into the warzone? The ridiculously enormous landing ramp disgorging the troops from a carrier of Herculean scale?

Thats the game, thematically, that Conquest should have been.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go add this to my deck so I can deploy a single Stalwart Ogryn as a surprise to take out my opponent's single Khymera.

BAH! That's not a Staging Ground!

That's barely a Staging Cupboard.

Hell, if you're deploying a Ratling Deadeye, its probably a Staging Suitcase!

I promised not to grumble about the scale of the game any more, but sometimes, I find myself unable to resist!

Steel Legion Chimera

If FFG had shown me the cards before printing, I would have said "hey, you should add an Armageddon trait with that, to keep it in line with the planet traits you've put on all those other unit cards."

Just saying. So, um, FFG, if you want to send me some images of cards to come, I'll sign that NDA...

Anyway, to the fluff!

The Chimera is the workhorse transport of the Imperial Guard, an APC whose design was established thousands of years beforehand and which has proven itself durable and versatile across countless millions of battlefields. It is amphibious, easily customised, easily repaired, decently armed and armoured and capacious enough to deliver a dozen guardsmen into the fray.

Not every guardsman gets to travel to battle in one of these: indeed, human life is a far more abundant resource than mechanised transport, so most of the Imperial Guard must footslog through a warzone.

On the warzone of Armageddon, however, the mechanised divisions of the Steel Legion are something of a necessity: constant battles against the orkish infestation and vast polluted wastelands to traverse mean that the Steel Legion is constantly in demand, and is the armoured fist of the Imperium on a world constantly riven by war.

In game mechanic terms, its nice to see the nature of this transport abstracted in this way, showing that a Chimera is there to help get the infantry to the front line without getting too shot up, but its not a bulwark of indestructibility either.

Its a shame that it synergises so well with the high-HP ork allies, and old Commissar Yarrick would likely be furious if he found out that orks were riding inside the Steel Legion chimerae. To be honest, the Steel Legion probably wouldn't allow orks in their tanks either, except maybe in the form of a decapitated trophy head or six.

Tallarn Raiders

Praise and criticisms out of the way first:

On an opening note of praise, I love that this card refers to a plural number of soldiers of indeterminate quantity, which is the best way. Also great is how the art clearly shows a full formation of soldiers.

On the downside, the ability doesn't particularly make sense for Tallarn Raiders, and could even be construed to be mildly offensive. So you have these Space-Arab desert warriors, the best at guerilla warfare and hit and run tactics, but without the (white skinned) Warlord leading them, they're useless? What is this, Sly Stallone plays Lawrence of Arabia?

Those comments aside, lets look at the fiction behind this most excellent regiment...

Tallarn was settled in the 29th millennium, at the time a verdant and lush world that soon became one of the primary farming worlds of its sector. The Horus Heresy, however, saw the world come under attack from the Iron Warriors Chaos Space Marine Legion who bombarded the planet with potent virus bombs, which scoured the planet almost entirely of life, reducing its biosphere to a harsh desert. A fraction of Tallarn's populations had managed to find shelter in sealed defensive bunkers, and they emerged to take on the invaders.

With the now toxic atmosphere and poisoned deserts, armoured warfare was the key, and Tallarn saw the largest tank battle that has been recorded in Imperial history. A million wrecked tanks later, and the men of Tallarn had somehow seen off the Iron Warriors invasion, and driven them from their world.

There's a further story hidden behind this, regarding the secret motivations of the Iron Warriors, and the Cursus of Alganar, but I'll leave that to you to check for yourself, or will revisit it on the next Tallarn card we see!

Regardless, the Tallarn Desert Raiders (formed twenty years after that first battle) have since remained amongst the best desert warriors in the Imperium, maintaining their expertise in hit-and-run armoured warfare. Their three doctrines are stealth, swiftness and the killing blow, and they have applied these in numerous theatres of war and campaigns, including the suppression of the Chaemos Rebellion, the core of the Taros Intervention Force and many others.

The card here, aside from artwork and trait, doesn't really reflect the character of Tallarn in any way at all. As I've already observed the "Warlord Groupie" mechanic is particularly inappropriate. Even so, the sheer mechanical quality and in-game cost efficiency of this card means we'll likely be seeing it in a vast number of decks from this point onwards.


Tense Negotiations

First contact between the Tau Empire and humanity was actually relatively peaceful, with the diplomatic Water Caste ambassadors approaching human populations and offering them superior Tau technology in trade, before looking to bring them into the fold of the Tau dominion. For many Imperial citizens, in the far east of the galaxy, the Emperor was a distant figure and the philosophy of the Greater Good (along with the benefits of Tau technology and way of life) was highly appealing. The Tau called these human defectors Gue'vesa (translation: human helpers).

While the Imperium treats these defectors as traitors and xenos-worshippers of the worst sort, they're actually often a lot better off following Tau ways than being under the Imperial yoke.

It was the loss of Imperial citizens (and more importantly, Imperial worlds and means of production) that led to the first war against the Tau: the Damocles Gulf Crusade. Since then, relations between Tau and Imperium have frequently been defined by all out war, but at the same time there have indeed been periods of fragile ceasefire and tense negotiations, as of all the threats the Imperium faces the Tau are amongst the most benign.

Equally, the Eldar and the Tau have reached an accord and understanding in many places, with fewer reasons to conflict than most. Exodite worlds and Maiden worlds precious to the Eldar are rare in the vicinity of T'au, so competition for territory is not often an issue, while their foes are often the same.

Fluff-wise, this is a great card, bringing another dimension to the game in a nice abstracted way. Clearly, this card represents the movements and machinations of the Tau Water Caste. When played by a Tau player, its the clever accrual of the benefits of victory without needing war, and when played by an allied player, its the benefits of trade and diplomacy with the Tau. Exhausting the Warlord is a clever cost, representing the necessity for leaders to engage in diplomatic efforts combined with the military vulnerability such missions leave them with.

Vectored Vyper Squad

The presence and ubiquity of antgrav technology has been mildly retconned through the lifespan of the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Let's go off on a tangent here!

In the original Rogue Trader book, technology was presented as being far more universal beween species. While some factions definitely favoured certain weapons, it was basically the case that whether you were eldar, ork, squat or human you had access to bolters, shuriken catapults, lascannon and the rest.

As the setting has evolved and refined, Games Workshop's writers took the decision to increase the mechanical and visual identity of each faction by differentiating their armaments and technology. Boltguns became very much the weapon of the Imperium (and of those with Imperial origins, such as the Chaos Marines), shuriken catapult became an Eldar weapon, and so on.

A lot of the information in Rogue Trader - being part of the history of the game - was outright retconned, but in a clever move acknowledging where they had come from, Games Workshop increasingly incorporated Rogue Trader styles and designs into the lore as how things were in the history of the setting itself.

For example, the famous "beaky" space marine armour (the Mk VI Corvus Armour) that was standard in the Rogue Trader game became a historical armour type, with the Mk VII being represented by newer minis, and older Mk models of power armour also being produced. Likewise, when Forge World was directed to produce Heresy-era vehicle models, their design was very much informed by the classic range of miniatures from the Rogue Trader era. The classic Land Raider, for example, had long since been replaced by a better sculpted but slightly less characterful version, and the Heresy-era Land Raider echoed the original RT design, albeit produced at a scale better suiting modern miniatures, and with modern scuplting skill.

Coming back to anti-grav technology, the original setting had it ubiquitous through many races. The standard wargear list included jetbikes (bikes suspended via antigrav devices but with ramjet propulsion), suspensors (small devices attached to heavy weapons to negate their weight), grav-chutes (parachutes using antigrav technology rather than air resistance to slow descent) and power-boards (surf boards that fly, the conceptual history of which I mentioned before when discussing the Hellion Gang in the Dark Eldar Chime of Eons article).

Now the setting has been changed to make anti-grav tech a relative rarity in Imperial technology.
Grav-chutes are still referenced as being in common use (vide Elysian Drop Troops) and are described as using anti-grav suspensor technology, though these are large and bulky full backpack devices now. Suspensor webs that off-set weapon weight are now noted as being a Heresy/Crusade era tech, that largely hasn't survived to the current age. The classic Imperial jetbike design from Rogue Trader has now become a Heresy-era technology as well, with the last known Imperial jetbike in production being the Mk 14 Bullock Jet-Cycle, which ceased production after the Great Crusade. The modern Imperium distrusts skimmer technology, seeing it as having the taint of the xenos to it. The only Imperial jetbike remaining in military service is named Corvex, and is ridden exclusively by Sammael, Master of the Ravenwing company of the Dark Angels.
In a way, this is something of an oddity, as the Imperial forces continue to use Land Speeders that hover through anti-gravitic technology, but elsewhere within contemporaneous fluff its stated that anti-gravitic tech has been lost to the Imperium. It is, however, noted that the tech behind Land Speeders is now poorly understood and hard to replicate, and its likely that the Tech-priests of Mars simply don't know what they're doing when they follow the ancient STC-template for a Land Speeder, and are fully incapable of reapplying those same principles to remake other skimmers.

The Eldar, meanwhile, have been identified as being the masters of anti-grav technology, and this has been made their niche. For a while in the game, they were the only faction with access to jetbikes on their regular troops, and the eldar jetbikes were given plain superior statlines and abilities to Imperial groundbikes. Likewise, all their tanks are grav-skimmers and are noted as being faster and more manoeuvrable than Imperial tanks of their weight class.

The introduction of the Dark Eldar opened this up a bit, with Reaver jetbikes initially being presented as being just plain better than Eldar Jetbikes, but then things levelled out again with both becoming equal once more. The Tau also were presented as having access to skimmer troops, and while these are noted as being airborne from anti-gravitic technology, the design of the vehicle miniatures suggest they don't use gravitic propulsion as Eldar vehicles do, but rather propel themselves forward with rockets and ramjets, with the possible exception of drones, which seem to have no other propulsion source. The Devilfish in particular is called out as using this dual-technology approach, with the skimmer hovering on an anti-gravitic "cushion" while the jet engines provide motion.

The Vyper was a relatively late addition to the Eldar armoury, appearing in the 3rd edition of the codex. Its described as being a heavier two-Eldar version of the jetbike, carrying a more powerful armament. One upgrade option here is Vectored Engines which are specialist grav devices that allow eldar skimmers to make sharp turns and changes of direction with incredible manoeuvrability and responsiveness.

The game ability here is interesting, as there doesn't seem to be much reason to label a Falcon as Mobile when the equally fast Vyper is not. Gaining Mobile only when undamaged has interesting game repercussions though, and was likely put in place to prevent excessive power from the Death From Above card. Its fluffy yet mechanically disappointing to have this unit be strictly inferior in mobility to the Wildrider Squadron. I'd have liked to see the Vypers extra firepower give it a superior attack value compared to that unit, or for the Vectored Engine to provide some sort of damage reduction or attack prevention effect. An Alaitoc trait hopefully ties it to some future trait interaction, but as I said in the Eldar article, while all Craftworlds use 95% of unit types, it'd have been more representative of the fiction to have Units craftworld-traited to match the Craftworld that is most famous for that unit type: in this case, Saim-Hain. Thats not a failing of the card, more an aesthetic choice and a way to help trait-themed decks look more like a typical army of that craftworld.

One hopes that the apparent weakness of this card isn't because Alaitoc is meant to be a beneficial trait in itself: as we've seen from Nurgle-traited units, thats often a game design decision that mechanically punishes deck theming.



Conclusion

As usual, FFG have brought us a warpack that mixes brilliant fluff interpretation on some cards with dubious representation of fiction on others.

Two of the most exciting cards for the competitive metagame - Tense Negotiations and Gleeful Plaguebeast - are also amongst the fluffiest depictions this game has yet seen. Equally, one of the most valueless cards (in my opinion) in the form of Secluded Apothecarion is a triumph of fluffiness. But then we have the mechanically poor and fictionally dumb-to-represent-as-a-card Guardian Mesh Armour, and the potentially powerful in-game but appallingly represented Blood Claws Pack and Tallarn Raiders.

The Warlord especially is disappointing for me on a fluff-level, a seeming mashing of two unrelated Oddboy types, with no representation in this pack of the pack's namesake: the Curse of Zogwort itself. Hopefully when we see the Squiggify card in full, it will properly remedy that.

Despite these failings, this is a pack that has excited me as a game player, and as a lover of the setting. I applaud FFG for continuing to support this most excellently designed game, and hope there are many many more Warpacks to come!



Quiz

Always the most popular bit of the article, let's test your 40k knowledge!

So far, I may have been aiming a little too easy on the questions, so let's step it up a level...

1) T was where they started, X is where they are now, and V was between the two. What was the problem with V?

2) I chew the wood and build my house from my puke. I ride my cousin to war. I am hollow inside. What am I?

3) The smallest league has four, the largest over three thousand. What are they?

4) A view from the sky inspired me to create an axe in tribute to wolves. A path to the sky was forged with the words that truth will win out. The same words were placed upon my fist, before I left for Mars. Who am I?

5) If 40 is Horrible Stench, 44 is Illusion of Normality and 82 is Silly Walk, what is 100?

That's all, folks!