Holiday Shuffle!

Due to the craziness of the season I'll be unable to make any headway on the Dark Eldar Tantalus until after the New Year.  In the meantime I'm catching up on some reading.  Mostly Codices and rules but also I have a stack of novels that has been growing at an alarming rate during the past three months!

Today's Codex  was the Necrons.  I just finished it and was struck by the notion that they have at least one weapon, the aptly named Death Ray, that allows them to intentionally shoot at their own units.  My gaming group has had a lot of discussions over the years about various races for whom it would be thematically acceptable, and possibly even routine, behavior to shoot up you own cannon fodder but had always come to the conclusion that the potential game breaking tactics that could evolve from such an allowance would preclude its adoption.  Then, low and behold!  Necrons...  I'm wondering if there are any other such exceptions in this edition that I've missed.  I'm really a fluff bunny and so would be completely unsurprised to discover a rules mechanic that I've overlooked.

I'm finishing up a troll through the Ogre kingdoms with an eye towards starting on the new campaign book "Blood in the Badlands"  I'm still churning over what the Geekfest theme will be this year and am hoping for some additional inspiration from the reading.  I did finish Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos earlier this week and was impressed with the art and layout of the book as well as the solid story and campaign elements.

I'm a little nostalgic because Fantasy Battle was what got me into the Workshop Hobby and I played it hard for many years but the last decade or so has been very tightly focused on 40k.  Oh, I'm still painting up Fantasy Battle armies but I haven't actually played a game of it in 8ish years.  I think the last game I played was 6th edition  Ogre Kingdoms against Wood Elves.  I've read the rules in the interim and like the look of 8th edition but haven't taken it out for a walk.  I may have to do an off-season WHFB thing kind of like the 40k Geekfest... but that is still more of a notion than a concept!

I'm also trending into Malifaux.  In part this has to do with the gaming community in my, currently, local area and in part with the wonderful atmospherics of the setting.  Truthfully if the required figure count and playing area (3x3!) were not so small I'd have passed this by but the portability and small time/space requirements allowed me to deceive myself into thinking that I had time for another miniatures game!  I'm enjoying my delusion at the moment and you can expect to see some modelling projects related to Malifaux appearing in the pile in the early part of the New Year.