Post by RedsandRoyals on May 8, 2018 16:37:49 GMT -5
Swung by my apartment on my lunch break to get my Van Saars and Gang War 3. Some quick thoughts.
- "Let's break this arm up into as many pieces as possible and still force it to be mono-pose" does not count as having a "huge variety" of build options, no matter what GW says. Like most kits, the bodies are largely monopose, with heads and arms being the options. Except those arms that go across the chest while holding a weapon don't work too well with the female torso (because boobs) and the non-gun arm options are very limited. I would say that this offers rather limited customization like the Goliath kit.
- Holy crap they look awesome. Not very 40k, but awesome. The way they make the lasguns work (giving you a base stock and several types of fronts depending on your weapon type) works surprisingly well. Also? That shield looks awesome, and so do the helmets.
- You need to trim down the necks a bit if you want to put some other heads on them, since they're wider than, say, Escher necks, and they want to force the model's head to look in a specific direction. I'll post pictures of some basic headswaps I did using Panzerjagers from Dreamforge Games.
- They're all wearing armored underpants. I need to reread the rules but I'm fairly sure that those only add to an armor save and don't generate their own, so you need to buy armor for them. Okay they give a native 6+ save, once again representing GW's conviction you have a 1 in 6 chance of being shot in the naughty bits.
- PLASMA FOR THE MASSES! MOTHERF*CKING PLASMA CANNONS WOOOOOO! (not in the kit though, just in their house armory).
- Gang War 3 is great. Really, really great. LOTS of good stuff added, including expanded house armories that make Goliaths viable by giving them actual ranged weapons, firmly sanctioning the 'legacy" weapons for the new gangs, beasts, murderbots, and all kinds of other cool stuff. I only got halfway through the book, but I'm so glad I got it.
Quick Ratings Van Saar ganger kit: 3.5/5- Bad mono-pose syndrome and limited arm options weigh down seriously cool aesthetics and gear.
Gang War 3: 5/5: This is a "must buy" regardless of your gang, unlike Gang War 2.
Last Edit: May 9, 2018 11:24:10 GMT -5 by RedsandRoyals
There may be no "I" in "Team", but there is a "Team" in "Meat Shield".
Post by RedsandRoyals on May 9, 2018 11:33:15 GMT -5
Some updates after reading Gang War III last night...
- Thanks to some new upgrades and gear options for your leader, you can look so fabulous that you earn more money working your gang's turf and doctors will charge you less.
- You can have a ganger recruited by the Imperial Fists. Hilariously, this event does not exempt Eschers or female gangers.
- It is entirely possible for a ganger to shoot fire from their hands after snorting mushrooms.
- If there's an ongoing mutant cull during a campaign cycle, you can have your gang dress up the corpses of any gangers who died as mutants and try to claim a bounty for them.
- There's a new campaign option called 'Underhive Empires" where gangs start with 3000(!) credits, triple the normal number. It's basically Necromunda Apocalypse.
- There's a prison break mission included as well. The authors urge you to cap off a campaign with having all the gangers who were captured and sold to guilders in the prison (with each ganger under the control of the player who owns their given gang), and have the campaign GM run the prison guards. The players then all have to work together (or not!) against the GM to escape.
They really had a lot of fun developing this.
There may be no "I" in "Team", but there is a "Team" in "Meat Shield".
What Goliath weapons do you need to field to make them viable? I still only have the boxset Goliaths; so I'll need a second box at some point if I ever decide to play them for more than a couple of games.
"True, true. These are rather dark times. How fortunate for me, then, that cats can see in the dark."
Post by RedsandRoyals on May 9, 2018 13:06:53 GMT -5
They suffered from a lack of ranged weapons. They're not skilled shooters and lack access to the skill trees that can boost it, and most of their weapons have short or very short range and/or poor rates of fire. Compounding this is the fact that getting into melee is tricky, especially on a 3D game board (since your movement is 4). All of this is less onerous on the Zone Mortalis tiles that come in the box due to much more cramped lines of sight, but it make shutting down long hallways difficult. I don't have GWIII on hand right now, but I know they have bolters and heavy bolters now. That's a good (but expensive) option to close that weakness.
There may be no "I" in "Team", but there is a "Team" in "Meat Shield".
There were 4 White Dwarf articles recently, including the rules for Venators, Genestealer Cults and Chaos Helot Cult gangs. I'd probably choose terminators.