Square to Round: Iron Wolves and 6th Edition

Today we have some contempt or dread goodness, read on for more!

        Like a lot of the player base out there, the impending release of WH 40K 6th Edition has had me in a bit of a holding pattern.  For me particularly, this started a few months ago when the rumors really started heating up.  Did I really want to finish this army AND start playing 5th Edition rules just in time to have to switch everything over to a new set of rules?  No, I really didn't want to do that.  Finishing the army wasn't really such a big deal, but the learning of a rule-set was another matter.  It didn't make any sense anymore.  So, I've decided to just hold on til 6th pops and then start at the ground floor with everyone else.  Although I am very familiar with 5th Ed rules, having owned them for years and watched hundreds of games played...I never actually played a game!  This may sound strange, but I actually think it could be to my advantage.

     If 6th Ed is as big a change as WHFB 7th Edition to 8th Edition was, you're all going to have to totally rethink the game.  8th Edition was a monumental change, requiring players to totally revamp everything from their Army Lists to Tactics to Deployment...just about everything had to be reevaluated and rethought.  The other thing that required a different sort of thinking was the actual rules themselves.  WHFB 6th and 7th were pretty similar as far as rules went..yeah they tweaked stuff and changed it up a bit but the learning curve wasn't very steep.  Veteran players had a much harder time adjusting to 8th..lots of 'I thought is still worked this way' and 'Sorry, I must be thinking of 7th' going on.  Not to mention GWs maddening habit of just removing rules without referencing that they were gone.  It's really hard to have an opponent read the whole rulebook (especially during a tournament) just to prove that an old rule doesn't exist anymore.  I was running into this problem a whole year after the release of 8th!!

    So, I head into 6th with a clear mind..a sponge ready to delve into the book and find my own combos that will work.  No preconceived ideas of 'optimal' builds.  I'm really excited about this and have ramped up the modeling and painting in order to have an army ready for the table-top when 6th pops.  I'm also no longer shackled by the thought that certain units I really wanted to run are going to automatically 'suck'.  Of course, they still might but I'm going to add a Bike squad, an Iron Priest and a couple Forge World Models that I picked up recently.  The 'Kool-Aid Man pictured below is one of them.  Many tournaments are starting to allow certain FW models and rules in lists.  I just think this model was too cool to pass up and hopefully I'll get to use him in the future:

     I also ended up purchasing FW Dozer Blades for my Rhinos which I'm almost finished with.  Not the greatest casts I've ever gotten from FW to be honest, took a lot of work to clean them up.  However, I think they'll look pretty good and at least I'll be truly WYSIWYG now.  I'm busy working on my Land Raider Crusader which also has FW reinforced armor and FW doors and a fully detailed and painted interior.  These are the final 2 models I need to complete to get the army on the table.  It certainly won't be the final build, but at least it will be playable.  When that is done I plan on continuing to work on the units I mentioned above, plus a Storm Eagle that I'm picking up at Games Day.  I couldn't resist the model and it's the one true Flyer (big Flyer) that is legal in Space Wolf builds..granted it's FW rules but still...

     This is more of an editorial by me, rather than the normal 'Here's where the army is at'.  Next series will detail the construction and painting of the LandRaider, I've been taking tons of pictures and intend to do a step-by-step.  Until then, I hope everyone out there is excited about 6th..I know I am.