Category: news

The end of an Odyssey

British-born science fiction author Arthur C Clarke has died in hospital in Sri Lanka at the age of 90. Clarke had been in and out of hospital since his 90th birthday in December and had breathing difficulties, his aide Rohan de Silva said.

“Sir Arthur passed away a short while ago at the Apollo Hospital,” Mr de Silva said.

Clarke, who foresaw communication satellites in 1945, wrote more than 80 books.

He was most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was made in to a film by controversial director Stanley Kubrick.

Clarke was Sri Lanka’s best-known resident guest and has a scientific academy named after him.

AFP

Though I believe that 2001: A Space Odyssey was first a film collaboration with Kubrick, for which he wrote the book as an exercise in working out the storyline for the screenplay.

Sad news indeed.

Heresy today, heresy tomorrow

Well after the announcement that the Black Library was no longer going to produce Dark Heresy raised a few eyebrows, especially after the initial print run sold out it was interesting to read that there may have been reason behind the madness.

According to a press release from Fantasy Flight Games they now have the licence to publish the role-playing, board and card games set in the Games Workshop universe.

Fantasy Flight Games (“FFG”) and Games Workshop (“GW”) jointly announced today that they have reached an agreement for Fantasy Flight Games to become the exclusive publisher of board games, card games (including collectible card games), and roleplaying games based on Games Workshop’s family of renowned intellectual properties including Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer 40,000. Additionally, the deal will grant FFG the exclusive rights to publish new versions of the classic board and card games titles published by Games Workshop over the last 25 years.

Further down the press release we read:

FFG will continue production and new-product support for the Universal Fighting System CCG, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay RPG, and the new smash-hit Dark Heresy RPG.

So it looks like Dark Heresy is here today and will be here tomorrow. In the meantime you can buy the current version from both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Both Amazons are offering it at a discount.

Dark Heresy

Bitz Online

Games Workshop have released online their bitz and collectors catalogue as a downloadable PDF, quite large at 10MB, but lots of colour pages.

Alas very few bitz!

Is it just me, but once you remove all the collectors stuff, they are only selling a very limited range of bitz?

I knew that they were going to collate bitz together, but it seems whole ranges of models are now no longer available.

That’s a pity.

Zzap Gun

Today I had my first game using the new Ork Codex and my Ork Gunwagon was armed with a Zzap Gun. Now in the old Codex the Zzap Gun automatically hit its target and you rolled 2D6 for the strength of the attack.

Now in the new Codex, the range has been extended to 36″ however no mention is made of automatically hitting anymore.

So what does this mean, do I now have to roll to hit as well as rolling strength?

If so what is the point of the Zzap Gun, might as well get a Kannon which always has a strength 8 shell shot which is (on average) higher than the strength of the Zzap Gun.

I may have missed the bit in the rules which talks about automatic hits, but in the old Codex it was quite explicit.

Of course playing revised rules means you miss some new rules which benefit your side (Furious Charge) and some which benefit the opposition (there may have been a Stormboyz rule I missed).

Overall my Orks  did not do so well, but the Squiggoth and the Fighter Bomma performed above expectations.

Deffkopta

As well as Killa Kans, George Dellapina’s funky Speed Freeks Ork army on display at Bristol Conflict 2004 included a flight of nice converted Deffkoptaz.

He had converted the pilots (this was the inspiration behind my converted pilots) and added Big Shootaz from Killa Kans as they matched whereas the twin-linked version on the model didn’t really look like a Big Shoota.

Deffkoptaz are now part of the main Ork Codex (released in January 2008) and in theory (after been mail order only) will be sold in the shops as a boxed set.

The Speed Freeks list only allowed three, the new Codex allows a flight of five, so I might get two more.

However I may wait as (as with the Killa Kans) there are weapon options which are not available on the metal model, so there may be a new plastic model.

See more of George’s funky Ork army.

Plastic Killa Kan, perhaps…

There are a few rumours flying about the web that there may be a plastic Ork Killa Kan released sometime this year.

For me one thing which confirms it for me is that in the Ork Codex one of the (new) weapon options for the Killa Kan is the Grotzooka, which is not available as an option on the current metal kit.

It is this which confirms for me that there will be a plastic Killa Kan model this year.

Now whether that will be as a separate kit or as part of a boxed starter set, that is a different question.