Castellan of the Ring

In this new series, I wanna share with you my thoughts on developments in our hobby and try to philosophize about future things that are yet to come. And to start it off, I took a great motivation from the discussions about the most recent news and releases for our system. And I will explain why I think to know, what our next expansion will be about + what I predict and want to see in it. I did not write anything regarding the many news our hobby enjoyed over the last couple of months. A new expansion released with great success. We had our very first dedicated live-stream (!) - something that was unheard of so far. We will receive a new starter-set and battle hosts for the four most common armies. Shadows from a far away past But it were two smaller miniature announcements that caught my interest. The new Glorfindel and even more important, the new plastic Elrond set. Glorfindel is a gorgeous model and it was about time he received an update and a mounted version. But the new Elro...

We are at the first entry of this new series and we will start with - what a surprise^^ - Numenor! It is the one I thought of and like the most as you might have guessed by now ;) Current status Numenor currently has two named heroes, one unnamed hero and one warrior choice. The two named heroes are among the best, human factions can muster and the unnamed hero and the warrior have a lot of equipment options. The army bonus is ok (as are their alliance options), everyone near named heroes, receives magic resistance and the warriors feature F 4 and S 4. And while there are better options in alliance partners, Captains of Numenor are really good at what they do. This, combined with the big choice of equipment options, gives this faction more flexibility than you might think on first glance. Drawbacks as a small faction The first drawbacks result from the miniatures themselves. They are among the oldest ones being around in the system and that shows. The heroes are ok but have no official...

 If you followed my blog so far, you might have noticed a tendency regarding the armies I play, collect and write about. I am drawn to the ones that are not mainstream, popular or in general not too often played. Or rather, this is a side effect and just coincidence to align with what I like. It depends on the look, the play style, their lore etc, etc. Nonetheless I am playing and thinking a lot about armies which are, for one reason or another, not so popular. And they all have something in common - very limited profile and miniature selection and/or coupled to that, a a limited number of ways to scale and/or play styles. You maybe can relate - when you really like a faction but are aware of its limitation, you think about how it could/should be expanded by GW to make it more usable - e.g. my thoughts on how to expand Numenor .  But while it was really fun to come up with new profiles, I also thought of the other smaller factions and that probably for each of them, there are ...

Am  9.2.2022  hat GW angekündigt, das ab 7. März die Preise des kompletten Sortiments (ausgenommen Farbe, Pinsel etc) erhöht werden. Hier ein Detail Ausschnitt aus der Meldung: In many cases, this will be about 5%. So, as an example of what you can expect on most kits, a box of Space Marine Intercessors will go up just £1 from £35 to £36.*A few things are going up about 10% (e.g. books, scenery, resin miniatures), and there are a couple of outliers (e.g. Blood Bowl teams and metal miniatures) which are going up around 20%. Wie wahrscheinlich jeder andere Spieler/Kunde war ich nicht gerade glücklich darüber. Aber ich denke dass dieses Thema etwas komplexer ist als nur über die Preiserhöhung zu schimpfen. Somit habe ich versucht eine mehr persönliche Erwiderung zu formulieren. Wie immer, ist dies hier meine persönliche Meinung und ich bin offen für andere ;) Ich denke nicht das es etwas bei GW bewirkt oder das sie diese Nachricht jemals lesen werden. Trotzdem fühlte es sich rich...

On  9.2.2022 GW  announced that with 7th of March, the prices of its ranges will increase. That is what they said about the price increases in detail. In many cases, this will be about 5%. So, as an example of what you can expect on most kits, a box of Space Marine Intercessors will go up just £1 from £35 to £36.*A few things are going up about 10% (e.g. books, scenery, resin miniatures), and there are a couple of outliers (e.g. Blood Bowl teams and metal miniatures) which are going up around 20%. Like probably any other player/customer I was not happy. But I think this topic is more complex than just ranting about higher prices. So I tried to formulate a more detailed personal response. As always, this is my opinion and I am open for other ones ;) I do not think it will change GW nor even that this message will reach them. Nonetheless it felt "right" to voice my opinion and maybe I am not the only one with it. Note:  I am also acknowledging that high miniature prices ar...