test version of campaign missions

I spend nearly the whole day to set up this test version of the campaign rules. They are not finished and need to be reviewed and some details are missing as well as a history part. Comments are welcome:

Campaign (click here)

planetstrike : my preliminary opinion

So I took a look at the new planetstrike book and here are somethings I have to say about it so far:

First of all, it seems to be a nice idea of expanding the rule book with a planetstrike book, since this offers you a lot of new ideas for campaigns and stories. And the rules themselves seem to be very nice, some nice ideas. But here comes the first point:
Even if from a formal point of view, this rules can be applied to games in "normal" size, e.g. 1500points, the rules seem to be made for larger games. It is said in the book explicitly that you may reckon that many of your troops are going to die. Well, I did not like the concept of Apocalypse because for my personal understanding of gaming this was too big and I could never cotton up to this lost of regimentations. Hence, I do not like the idea of being forced to play bigger games to use these new planet strike rules. But never judge a book by its cover, so maybe it can be applied to "normal sized" games without problems.
The introduced scenarios are nice and the tactical options also. But this book lacks (as many books in the recent past) in good color pictures. It seems to become normal for GW to use pictures in their rule books or codices that have allready been shown many times in the White Dwarf or Internet. A good expample was the recent CSM Codex, all the pictures (color with models on it) have been shown in the WD before, disappointing. And this is almost the same in this book, one is really familiar with the pictures, with some (frankly speaking nice) exceptions. My favorite picture is the two-sided picture of a battle Eldar against some Imperial Guard Base, with a broken Baneblade and the Forge World Base on it, the rest is at most average. For me, somebody who emphasizes on such hobby pictures it is very frustrating. In early books you could find some themed armies, armies of some of the staff, nice conversions and nice handmade scenery. But today and in particular in the planet strike book, there a just studio armies, studio scenery (it seems like a pure commercial for those new buildings) and nothing really new. And yes, the studio armies are very well painted, and yes they look good but they do sometimes look like a commercial and GW would not loose its face if they would show something else. For example the Cities of Death codex, the Iron Knights army (blame me, i am starting exactly this army) was - at least in this two-sided picture and full size - something refreshing.

Ok, before start to become to sentimental i will stop this preliminary review here and leave it by the following summation:
The rules and ideas are nice, even though it concentrates on big games but the book itself is disappointing and way below GWs best!

Scoutpictures

I just used the digi cam of my girlfriend and tried to make some pictures of my scouts. They are finished up to the highlighting of the black. I am a absolute photo noob so the quality of the pics is not the best but I just had to take some, take a look, comments are welcome!

tss.. its a joke

Yesterday night I read a article on http://plasticlegions.blogspot.com/ about the new blastscape from GW. Today I went to my local GW store and I was shocked. The guy there already knew the problem and was also not so amused. So I did not take these and instead took the new Planetstrike book. Before I come to this maybe a little comment on the blastscape: I think that it is a joke to sell things like this, if there was something which GW could rely on at the past time then it was the quality of their plastic miniatures. This absolute catastrophic production is hopefully just a faux pas. But this is what happens if you try to safe some cents in production and give it up to china, always the same. Same was it with the spray pistol some time ago. So whats left is the hope for a callback. Anyway I took the Planetstrike rule book and the first look was 'ok'. Personally I am no fan of big fights but this book offers good ideas for some nice scenarios.

blastscape

tomorrow the new blastscape will be available in our local GW Store, since their number is limited i preordered me one package and hope to find the time tomorrow to pick them up. I am a little bit excited about them, I hope they are as cool as the moonscape I allready have. Normally I am no big fan of buying scenery and I try to build scenery myselfe as often as possible, but these moonscape have been so cheap an perfekt looking that I could not resist. I am pretty confident that the blastscape are also very nice... so maybe a quick review tomorrow

moved

Finally i changed my flat. My move is completed but still there are many things to do. Most important to set up my desk. But since i want to have one desk for working (studying) and one for my hobby this is no as easy as i thought it would be and this is why i am still not working on my army again. Additionally i have to start learning for the penultimate exam, which will be estimated at the end of August, due to the Holiday of the Professor. But nevertheless i am very confident to start working in the next days.