Necrons and more



I don't put my face online, but this is a happy General,
 as taken by my wife outside the Vorhees, NJ GW Store



So yes, the rumors are true...I'm still alive.  I haven't been too active I know, but as a reward to the...4 or 5 people that actually read my rants I have a treat.  It's a double-article.  This weekend saw 2 big things happen.  First, the Necrons are playable again and second I got my first Finecrap so I can tell you, noble reader (singular) just how shit it is first-hand.

First the new codex...

Well I am proud to say I am not a bandwagon player, but a loyal 'cron general from 4th ed who found a useless army back in 2008 when 5th ed hit.  So since it's what Necrons do, mine went into storage, waiting for the time to rise once again.  3 years later and GW noticed that they have a few armies that are just not competative or even fun in thie current rules.  So they jumped into action...7 months before the new edition hits and my crons return to their slumber.  Here's my first impression...

Well, first the fluff has been basically re-written.  They're still the oldest species (when the Big Bang happened their race was alrready 17 years old) Necrons are no longer mindless automatons who are out collecting souls for their C'tan gods.  Now instead, they're the remains of a once mighty civilization who made a deal with the devil to defeat the Old Ones by transferring to Living Metal bodies only to realize the C'tan fed on their souls.  The Necron won the war and immediately turned on the C'tan, shattering them and locking the shards away across the galaxy (I guess it's one of these shards that's under the forges on Mars).  As the Eldar were starting to spread the decision was made by the Necron king to go into hibernation for millinea and arise to reclaim their once great Empire.  The king himself, wracked with guilt over literally selling the souls of his entire race, severed the command protocals that linked him to his subordinates and left to parts unknown.  Now the remaining Tomb Worlds are waking up and enacting their final orders to take back everything that belonged to them before time was time.

On the table, there's some familiar goodies and some changes.  WBB is now "Reanimation Protocols" which is a 5+ now, but you always get it unless the unit is completly wiped.  The rumors about Scarabs affecting armor was true, which means I'll have a healthy amount in my army again.  Foot lords got demoted so most Necron players get to buy a new HQ.  Destroyer lords are still awesome but for some unknown and stupid reason they can't take an invul save...ever.  Fast Attack will be tough to deal with because there's a lot of awesome choices.  C'tan are customizable and Elites now.  They're T7 so bolters can hurt them now, but they still explode on death so that's cool and some of their tricks are awesome.  They picked up some cool new Elites that I've just begun to look at.  Immortals are Troops now, but can't take a Ghost Ark which is a very decent transport.  There are new "flyers", too (one of which has an actual "Death Ray") which don't have models yet but look very Cylon Raider-esque.  Considering one of the special characters can "download" into a new body I think this makes sense.  One of them is a transport that uses their teleporter technology so if it gets shot down, the uniot won't be hurt but also now walks on from reserve.  The Monolith is back, minus the immune to melta (BOO!) but also cheaper.  Monoliths and Arks can also split fire (suck it Long Fangs)  There's my generic overview based on the reading I've been able to do the last 2 days.  Later, I'll explore the book further, but for now I'm pretty pleased.

Finecrap Really Does Suck



The other thing to happen is my first finecrap model.  I've been bad-mouthing this for a while and now that I have a Finecrap of my own, I have to say I was being very kind.  This stuff is absolute shit plain and simple. 

My Overlord's not striking fear in my foe with this

First a word on the "quality"  As the pic shows, there was some MAJOR warping and I picked the best of the 4 blisters there.  The redesigned package was the best idea as you can examine the model closely and pick the shinest turd in the pile.  I had to buy some liquid greenstuff to fill the holes and there were a lot of them.  (one GW exec to the other: "Should we make a model that's not absolute garbage?"  The other exec: Nah, we'll sell them stuff to fix the overpriced model instead"  Laughter and thunder outside the dracula-esque castle in Nottingham)  One piece came off when I made the mistake of touching it and I'm pretty sure his armor is missing a bit here and there.

Beyond that, I just don't like it.  It feels incredibly cheap and fragile.  It bends which is just frightening to think of what happens when I paint it.  It feels like it's a lower quality material than their plastics (or anyone else's including the more reasonably priced Mantic Ghouls I got a few weeks back)  So I used the hot water/cold water to straighten out the staff, spent almost as long removing flash and vents as it would take for me to whittle one of these things and today I'm going liquid Greenstuff crazy.