The Fallen Rise.

And so the Dark Angels have officially arrived. I've seen the leak pics, and I have to be honest I thought I'd best reserve my opinion until we get official pictures. They're finally here, so heres my thoughts.

Belial. A fair static model, but I think it shows off a commanding presence, and works pretty well. I'm not a huge fan of the bone armour with green robes... it looks a wee odd. Overall though a nice model, and I think a better colour scheme would improve.

Ah the return of Asmodai. A nice update, and I think DA fans will lap him up. 

The Codex itself, it'll be hard to have many thoughts on this until I've seen the rules and how the book looks and feels, but artwork wise the cover is pretty darn nice!

 Thsi first variant flyer. I really think this looks terrible. Why on Terra would you put stone like statues on a flyer? Absolutely horrible only made better by being able to make this...

 Now thats more like it. You can see the Storm Talon influence, but has an Imperial Guard feel to it too. Looks nice, and has no statues on it. Thank the Emperor! Missiles under the wings look good too. Also intrigued with the nose cannons...

Wowser. And I don't mean that in a positive way. One of the things that did appeal to me about the Dark Angels, was the Ravenwing. The idea of an army of bikes and speeders is always good, and like the white scars would be an impressive looking army on the table. Unless you have this speeder variant. This is horrible beyond even Nurgles doings. I like the idea about the rumoured rules for it, but this is just terrible. The gun point at the front is bad, the engines look pretty pap where they are... I just cannot stand this model.

This variant of the hideous flyer is only marginally better for the plasma cannons on top... but even those look unlike the usual plasma cannons of the Imperium.  Still a dire looking thing.

More bad colour scheme, but the models themselves look alright.  One thing that used to bug me about the 'watchers of the dark' is this... they're so mysterious, yet wear power armour. Look at the foot? A really odd choice that always confused me with Azrael's watcher.

Terminator command squad? I think these are kinda cool. The plasma cannon looks nice, and I'm jealous I can't use one in my Evandalists! The only negative I have for these is the banner. It looks daft on the top, how do you fit that in a Land Raider? I remember seeing one with a termie holding one, and that didn't look right either. I think they could have changed it to be holding a relic of some kind that had the same rules and purpose as a banner. 

So they are my quick thoughts on some of the new DA releases. Very hit and miss, I don't think many non DA fans will be turned but users of the Fallen will probably enjoy the new set of releases. What are your thoughts?

(All images property of Games Workshop)

Reavers Day of Reaving

So I've already post about The Tredegar Reavers having had an all day at club, but heres the second post I promised showing off the other two games that went on. Huw's Pirate game and an Apocalypse game consisting of Tyranids, Eldar, Chaos, Grey Knights and Dark Angels. As you can see, bio-titans and heirodules made an appearance as well as the entire Deathwing company of Dark Angels and it looked fantastic! Anyway, I'll let you look at the pics themselves, as well as a few thoughts of the day from some of our members.

Jamie Chadd; "my best moment was when my grey knights slew their first ever demon prince lol"

Huw Williams; "Owain getting his mast shot away by the Spanish Guarda Costa, Owain going up the tavern to celebrate their victory and catching syphillis (there's a special dice-roll), the pair of them getting cheated out of their prize ship by the Governor of Jamaica, the planting of a map and first clues to a vast Inca treasure: The Fabled Golden Cock of Atahualpa"

Mark Llewellyn; "My favourite part was my deathwing putting Josh's chaos army through the grinder."

Michael Browning; "my favorite part was Huw's reaction to Owain and Aaron's audatious attack on the 'best ship' in the spanish fleet and the eventual capture of said ship. Also it was my shot that took out owain's Mast!!"

Owain Richards; "Morgan's reaction to the Bio-titans, still cracking me up now. Mike taking down my mast in one shot, Celebrating a job well done with a job of a different kind and getting Syphillis and Aaron and me conducting piracy against the Spanish Navy. T'was a good day."

Morgan Payne; "Avatar fighting a heirodule for 3 turns was epic, karandras completely smashed a hive tyrant, jain zar took a harpy straight out of the sky, eldrad and his seer council survived against a carnifex, 10 gaunts, 5 warriors and 20 genestealers, the heirpohant was a challenge, kept getting its wounds down only for it to regen the next turn"