New 40K day!

Ah ha.

I haven't posted in a while. There are a few reasons why. Firstly I got distracted re-organising the gaming room, which took a while. Then I got distracted sorting out some other collections of models (mainly historical stuff - Napoleonics, American Civil War, that kind of thing. I've got some pictures I'll put up soon. Promise.). Work also got a bit busier.

Mainly I'm lazy.

Anyway, today is a good day to make a new blog post, because it's New 40K release day. Yay!

A shiny pile of things turned up at around 8:30AM, which is much earlier than I'd expected.

So what did I get....

This is the little haul. The Indomitus box set, the Chapter Approved books, the Open War cards, and two of the Crusade journals (because I figured my partner would want one). Lets have a look at these things then.

So, what do we have first. It's the Crusade journal. I know many of you (assuming this actually gets read!) will have already seen a lot of these things, as the internet is full of people who have had their sets for weeks (or months, maybe!), and GW have been steadily releasing details for a while, but I figured, why not blog it anyway!

Basically this little book is just multiple copies of the pages you see above. Saves on printing I guess (which is mainly why I bought them - I have a tendency to lose bits of paper. Plus I don't really like using apps, phones or tablets for reference when wargaming. Call me old fashioned, I prefer books.

So what do these pages give us? Well, essentially each pair of pages lets you track a unit for your Crusade games. Note I haven't looked at those yet - this is all first impressions from a couple of minutes flicking through stuff. So we have slots for tracking the unit name, role, keywords, equipment, etc, as well as units they have destroyed, Battle Honours and Battle Scars (which as far as I know are positive or detrimental effects earned as the campaign progresses. The second page is a Crusade force tracker - and appears to track up to 15 units. I guess you could use a second page if your force is bigger? If they get bigger.

I suspect it would be best to use pencil (I'll probably use a mechanical one) for this kind of thing, as we have "During this Battle" and "In Total" segments for tracking units killed. This way you can amend it easily.

The book itself is bound in the way that the last few GW game tracker books have been (for 8th Ed 40K and AoS). Seems fairly sturdy, and the binding looks OK. There are two ribbon markers as well, which probably makes things easier.

Should you get it? Well, I guess if you have enough disposable income and think you'd use it (so that's me) - but ultimately I guess it depends if you prefer using a book like this or other forms of tracking stuff. I guess many people will prefer a different tracker (maybe on mobile) and will spend the spare cash on more models, or whatever.

I think I would have preferred it to be maybe half crusade force tracker/unit trackers, and the rest to be game trackers, but you can probably still pick up the older journal for that, if you want... *checks GW website*... oh. Maybe not. The older ones for tracking battles might be available on there somewhere, but I couldn't see them. That's a bit of an odd decision. 

Also the cover is the same, as far as I can tell, just the newer logo instead. So might have been confusing in stores I guess.

Right, what's next. Ah, freebies!

Yeah, I ordered this from GW. So it cost more. The main reason I did this was I thought I'd have a better chance getting a copy from GW - fortunately I think i got there just before the problems started. 

So, what are the freebies like. Well, as advertised, we get 6 objective markers in a little drawstring bag, and a two sided metal coin with Ultramarine and Necron sigils.

The objectives are quite nice. They are clear, made of acrylic (apparently - I've never been good telling my plastics apart. I guess I could chop a bit off and shove it in a machine at work, see what the spectra came out like and try to fit it to a polymer database. But that sounds wasteful. And time consuming, when I have better (interesting) samples to look at. Let's just assume they are acrylic, which is what GW said, and what these things seem to be made of most of the time).

Yeah, I think these will get used. Took a while to peel the protective backing off them, but they seem nice enough, and will be fairly obvious from a distance.

The bag is the same as other similar ones GW have done. It's not very nice. But it is free, so we can't complain there really (wait... we can. But lets move on).

Yeah, I have no idea what I'd use this for. It's a thing. That exists.

I guess some kind of single objective, or priority marker, maybe. It's pretty weighty, but picks up fingerprints easily.

Next we have the Open War cards. Similar to the old ones, but new. As expected, useful, if you end up playing Open War. Not sure if I ever did in  the last edition, but I definitely used the AoS ones a few times, and that was quite fun.

You get a little card telling you how to use them, then five decks - Objectives, Deployment, Twist (not Twit, as I originally wrote. That kind of card feels more Rogue Traderish! Which of your soldiers is a moron today?), Ruse, and Sudden Death. The cards and box are the standard GW affair at this point, so seem decent quality. Text size is OK, so yeah, probably worth it if you want to play different types of game than the normal missions.

Right, Chapter Approved 2020. This is a bit different. I have to admit, I'd not expected it to be this small!

The Munitorum Field Manual is your points list. Enough said?

The Grand Tournament 2020 Mission pack - right, this is interesting. It's ring bound, and has an elastic strip to hold the page you want open in place.

We get secondary objectives, Incursion and Strike Force missions (9 per game size), and a copy of the basic rules, including the terrain rules and a rules terms glossary at the back. That's pretty nice. I haven't looked at the main rule book yet, but this feels very handy to travel around with. Good stuff!

Right, that's a nice little haul, isn't it. How do we feel? Yeah, I think most of it seems to be decent enough, at first glance. Some improvements could have been made to the Crusade Journal, but otherwise, seems good to me.

Oh wait, there's this.

Yeah, I'll look at this next.