Opinion: Thoughts on Warhammer 40K, 10th Edition, and its Balance

As I begin to write this, it's clear that the 10th edition of Warhammer 40,000 is entering it's final months. Almost every faction has received its codex, and a big new campaign is under way. The pattern is there. So, as something a bit different, I’m gonna talk about 10th ed’s balance for a bit.

The most obvious gameplay challenge, the one everyone can spot and I have already written about, is that half the game is space marines. That is to say, half the game is based around super soldiers, and this has become a baseline average rather than anything noteworthy. This has created a sort of exceptionalism treadmill, where marines have to be the favoured sons of any style of warfare, with that one thing they are very good at, but still pretty good at everything else. Especially when it's your chapter. Yes, yes, with the arguable exception of horde infantry, space marines != horde, but Black Templars give that a good go too. People want their super soldiers to feel like super soldiers, which is fair, but that's a matter of comparisons and vibe, and it's deeply undercut if every second person is beakies. It also leads to a certain degree of envy and petty entitlement whenever a non-marine faction does well or somehow shakes up the meta. I'm not sure how you actually address this as a problem, except to say people keep confusing "The Emperor’s Finest", with the absolute best of the best, and given GRIMDARK they should probably loose more. Practically, what this means is that, for basically 'ever, a consistently prudent way to build an army is to build it around killing marines. But let's put a pin in that for a moment, and bring in another issue, tanks and other vehicles. 10th ed has done a solid job of making these durable, but granular. These often need to be worn down, but everything in the game can technically harm everything else, as opposed to previous editions where vehicles could be functionally immune to infantry in some situations. It's a more nuanced discussion these days, although vehicles, and/or big monsters, can create a scaling issue. Imperial Knights for example obviously only have vehicles, which presents a problem in smaller battles where anti-tank is often more difficult to field. You might also point to troop transports as a problem for similar reasons, although those function more as a force multiplier than the brute force of Knights. Ultimately, vehicles aren't an obvious balance issue, except in the skew-build way.  Which, of course, Knights of either flavour actually are. They are big, but they aren't clever. You either have a plan to drop a knight in one turn, or you play the objectives, but I digress.

Now, here's the thing. For a lot of units, and arguably some entire factions, marines and vehicles have the same solution. To kill marines, you want an attack with a high strength, good AP, and multiple damage. Mortal Wound effects are also very handy, as they bypass the usual dice rolling. The requirements for a tank are basically the same, adding only a preference for strength 12+, and/or a higher amount of raw damage. A weapon that can kill tanks will liquefy a marine, it's a weight class thing that nobody could argue against, while a weapon that is especially good at killing a marine is gonna have at least some secondary use against tanks. This is why you see plasma, melta and Lascannon weapons together so often. It's also why Orks take rokkit launchers over big shootas when they can. Going in on such weapons allows you to deal with hard targets, and whatever else the unit has is probably good enough to deal with any soft targets you might run into. And people generally don't do battleline units these days unless they have to, so raw numbers is often not a concern. This may sound like I'm making a case for individual weapon prices in 11th edition, and while that would be nice, it doesn't address the wider issue. The game is top heavy. And there is a further effect of this. GW has been hard on horde armies this edition, and I wonder if that might have been an attempt to manage this phenomenon. A force based on quantity rather than quality does not reward the type of weapon described above. Yes, put a load of plasma and melta into that Krieg unit, its overkill. Take flamers and heavy bolters instead? Well, that's largely gonna bounce off marines and especially tanks, but your average light infantry enjoyer might feel that's tailoring your list just to murder him, rather than actually playing the game. Is that a double standard given what I said about marines above? Maybe. Just maybe. But there's a difference between assuming you'll face the most common foe, and tooling your force to deal with someone specific. And tends to die in droves anyway. And nobody likes having to totally retool their force every game, do they? Also: just swamping the board with cannon fodder isn't any smarter than fielding Knights or your entire tank collection, is it? So I will give GW the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they're trying to minimise the people they upset with 10th ed. But if we assume all weapon options need to be valid, because they are priced the same, this needs to be addressed. Because the anti-infantry option, and especially generalists like missile launchers, just don't appeal.

 

As a case study, let's talk big shootas. Big shootas are the Ork equivalent to the heavy stubber, and they turn up wherever you'd expect a machine gun to. It is usually seen either as part of a rack of options, or as an inoffensive secondary weapon on a vehicle. In an earlier, scrapped version of this article I wrote a little history, ran some numbers, and did a few comparisons. Then I realised it was suffering for two reasons, A) it's anti-infantry role is largely redundant in this context and B) as the rokkit launcha has the blast rule, it can handle horde infantry just as well as having some use against hard targets. There's edge cases where the big shoota functions better, but the rokkit launcha is more useful most of the time. It's actually the generalist option rather than the anti-tank option you might think it is; they averaged out a missile launcher. Your basic rokkit lacks the accuracy and raw punch to worry a proper tank, but it's well placed to kill marines, APCs and the blast gives it use against hordes. Meanwhile, your typical Ork unit, ie Boyz, frankly has little issue with other hordes, but does need that extra bit of boomy. See also kan shootas as an example of an attempt to address this imbalance. Big shootas are only good when there is no opportunity cost. And historically, the only time when big shootas were particularly good was in 3rd edition or so, when you could get more of them in a mob, and rokkits didn't explode. So, in a world where every second army is marines, and every army has something like a tank, you aren’t gonna do the big shoota option, are you? And you see this dynamic anywhere where there’s a choice between an anti-tank gun and a machine gun.

Is this fixable? And how would you do it? Possibly, but I think these issues are kinda baked in at this point. As GW actively maintains the rules these days, I’m confident they’ll keep things steady. I suppose you could put in some kind of mechanism whereby weapons would work differently based on the target, as opposed to merely everything having a common statblock. Say a weapon would have different accuracy based on its target? That way you could have more nuance, and more levers to pull as a game designer. Or you could make everything generic? I dunno. We’ll see how 11th ed turns out. 

Oh and there's Battleshock. I forgot about that. But then, so does everyone else.... 

Gaming: Rambling About Front Mission 3

I've found myself playing the old PS1 game Front Mission 3. I had a long train journey, and I was bored with SRWJ, so I set it up on a portable. In the absence of a major project, I've revisited a few old habits, but I digress. As a game its pretty good, holding up well, but I have thoughts I’m going to try to express.

 

I wrote a review way back when I last played it, and while I largely stand by that, I've had more experience since, and my writing style has shifted. I've played a lot, a hell of a lot, of Super Robot Wars since then, which puts the game in a different light. First off a correction. I spent some time acknowledging the graphical limitations of FM3, but compared to the roughly contemporary Super Robot Wars Alpha, which I’ve also messed with, its a revelation. That game was still pixel art, but not well animated or creative pixel art. Graphics aren't everything, especially in a turn based game, but FM3 pushes harder in that aspect. Front Mission 3 doesn't look good these days, but it doesn't look cheap and certainly didn't back then. It plays with camera angles and visual effects, trying to be cinematic. Hell, it arguably looks better than the initial Armored Core games. I just have the suspicion that the engine can't handle more than four robots on screen at once, resorting to sprites on the map screen. That's the number of units you can field, and there seems to be a soft limit on the number of enemies of maybe ten? This feels confining after SRW, but fits the vibe. The combat is very gritty and personal, while the location based damage invites comparisons to BattleTech. I did find myself thinking in terms like "missileboat" and "brawler" with this play through. However two elements are grafted to the gameplay loop, and honestly don't sit well. Element 1 is the acquisition and use of battle skills is randomised and obtuse. I swear, there are entire skill families I’ve never seen because you'd need a FAQ to know what the prerequisites are, and it may not trigger anyway. These really needed to be controllable, but the execution instead feels like something borrowed from Final Fantasy 7, flashy but not functional. That's not a bad comparison to make, TBH, things are a bit more roleplay than tactical at times. You can't really build a strategy around them as you cannot trigger on the skills on demand, and occassionally your mecha just overperform, throwing me off my rhythm. The Internet functionality meanwhile feels ignorable a lot of the time, a way to handle worldbuilding without overloading the already lengthy cutscenes. There's stuff you can dig out here, like the best mecha in the game, but otherwise its a slow-slow-slow password hunt. Overall, there’s meat to the game, but perhaps not as much as I once felt.


As a little side note, it turns out that FM3 discourages power-levelling. I discovered that if you have a guide, you can get training maps way before you should. You'll probably die, but you can get a lot of experience that way. But if you do, you'll get marked down at the end of a mission. For a long time. Until you are where the game thinks you should be. Yay.


Coming back to graphics, that remake that just came out, or is about to come out as I write this. Let me embed some video here.

First, a longplay of the original.

Here’s the remake

There's been several remakes in this franchise recently, and while I've not tried them, something has always felt off. The remake of the first game annoyed me as it was 3D not pixel art, changing the entire vibe. That felt more like a budgetary limitation than an artistic choice, as its probably cheaper to remake the whole thing in Unity or sommat than redraw the pixels. FM3 was already 3D, so why am I reticent about this one? Well, it looks too shiny and quick. The PS1 version had very deliberate movements and a dirty look to the visuals. This was almost certainly the result of technical limitations, the console chugging away, but it was part of the game's character. That isn’t really present in this remake, everything looks too new. The remake is probably closer to the original intent, and objectively better looking, but I would have preferred the Ludicrous Edition treatment. Then there's the other changes, which seem to be AI generated for fucksake. I'm not in a hurry to play that remake.


Where am I going with this? Nowhere, really. Its a good, if old game. And it's easier to play now, at least. And I may have played it too much….

Warhammer 40K: My Opinion of the Leman Russ Vanquisher

OK, this one started out as a comparative article on the Leman Russ tank, a unit with almost as many variants as there are space marine chapters. Then I realised that it was gonna get a bit samey, and I didn't have the experience to add much to the conversation. Then I realised that I could probably focus in on one variant, perhaps with more of a game design angle than a purely tactical one. So, the Vanquisher. A unit that is popular due to a low cost, which results from a quirk of 10^th edition 40K, but its actually kinda bad at what its supposed to be doing.

 

A Leman Russ Vanquisher, Stygies VIII pattern, sourced from Lexicanum

Let’s start with a few basics. A Leman Russ is a decently mobile, heavily armed brick of a vehicle fielded by the Astra Militarum, A.K.A Imperial Guard. They lack an invulnerable save, although all their other defences are quite formidable. The 2+ save and W13 are key breakpoints, meaning common anti-tank tools will not totally bypass its armour, and require repeated good hits to destroy. Railgun equivalents, massed meltas, and properly brutal melee combatants can and will bring them down. But most things have to try, laying on sustained effort and mortal wound effects. It is routine for such a tank to stoically tolerate melee attacks and just keep blasting, although some variants obviously do better with that, for a reason I'm getting to. While differing in their turret armament and unique rule, each russ has access to a common selection of sponson and secondary weapons. Most of the time this results in a lascannon, HK missile, heavy stubber, and either two multimeltas or two plasma cannons, the two most destructive sponson options. This keys into a wider issue, as the choice between Blast weapons and non-Blast weapons has a substantial influence on how a russ is used. The latter makes a tank more melee tolerant and a natural brawler, because it can fire pointblank, while the former is better at ranged combat and hordes. Finally, through the order system you can make any if these tanks briefly faster, more accurate, and better at holding objectives. The Vanquisher is the anti-tank variant of the Leman Russ, historically described as being very rare in fiction and hard to make. As a tank hunter its defining feature is a very powerful anti-tank gun with range of 72 inches, the heavy rule, AP-4, and a damage of 6 + d6, supported by re-rolls to wound against its preferred targets. It can cover an entire board with that range and worry any singular hard target within it. Otherwise, a Vanquisher functions much as a stock russ does, although as it not feature a blast weapon in the turret, its a brawler, happy to fight close even with its massive effective range. As of time of writing, the Vanquisher is cheapest variant at 145 points, 5 points less than the unpopular Punisher, and 40 less than the vanilla russ which famously isn’t rare. How did that happen? One attack.

 

 One of the tanks I proxy as Leman Russes...

This is an unintended implication of 10th edition design conventions. Its a quirk that makes the Vanquisher mediocre at its stated job, so therefore cheap, and then exploited by the tournament scene. Its main gun is a railgun equivalent which is massively unpleasant against its intended target of vehicles, however it is only one shot a time, and as you might gather from my comments about durability above, GW generally doesn't let you one shot vehicles. You have to wear them down usually, or get a couple of good hits in. So you have to roll to hit, roll to wound, and then your foe gets a save, which is possibly invulnerable because a lot of big things have one, (if not, then cover, or some other damage resistance,) and then there’s the damage roll. The vanquisher battlecannon is undeniably effective when it connects, but its far from reliable due to that low volume of fire, and with the damage roll you’ll still need at least two good hits to drop the kind of target this weapon demands. This includes other russes, by the way. I repeat: one attack at a time. That can make the weapon feel bad for both sides, as the user spends multiple turns trying to stop rolling ones despite whatever buffs it has from other units to make it more accurate, or the foe suddenly finds a smoking crater where their tank used to be, with little in-between. Few things disappoint or annoy like a powerful weapon that feels like a coin flip, you know? So the Vanquisher is cheap, as cheap as a russ can be, but it paradoxically has a weapon on it that traumatises people when it actually works. But… A single shot anti-tank gun simply isn't consistent enough for that task by itself, especially with guard marksmanship, you need more shots to even things out, and even at this price the Vanquisher isn't easily spammed. So you look at the other weapons on the hull, and truthfully the Vanquisher tank is no better with those than most russes, and ranks behind a couple. If you start thinking about other variants? Well, their turret guns are obviously much less destructive, but all of them have dramatically higher rates of fire so they will do *something* every turn. As an example, the Demolisher is obviously much shorter ranged, and its own issues with inconsistency, but that's looking at twice the rate of fire at worst, hits like a lascannon, and is very happy in a melee. The vanilla Russ isn't an anti-tank platform, its a generalist, but having a bunch of rerolls and the Combined Arms detachment can go a long way. Either is better a lot of the time, while not being bad at anti-tank if properly armed, and that's true for basically all of the variants.


The only thing the Vanquisher does well at present is be a cheap Leman Russ. And that's ok, Leman Russes are good. You can get a lot from a mobile brick with two multimeltas and a lascannon on it. But the tankhunter probably shouldn't be the cheap disposable one, that’s a specialised role. This isn’t a Catachan situation, where something looks bad until you understand it. The Vanquisher is popular mainly via through min-maxing, people treating the main gun as a side bonus. To be blunt, that’s a failure of game design. I wouldn't say no to having them in my force, and I’ve fielded them before, but I’m honestly surprised that these went unchanged in the 10th ed Astra Militarum codex AND the June Dataslate.

Transformers: Retire Studio Series

And now, an old man yells at a cloud...

 

Things tend to rattle around in my brain. I’ll have an idea, run through it, write some of it down, and, on occasion, shelve it. Sometimes you don’t like the first draft, or you forget it in favour of more interesting things. Sometimes, the article gets unpacked after I remember it, or I feel that I need to fill a slot. So, here we are today, with an article that’s a bit of both. An article whose conceit may be both tritely obvious and inflammatory. I put it to you, dear reader, that Studio Series no longer serves a distinct purpose, and is in fact merely an imprint of whatever collectors line Hasbro is doing that year.

Studio Series Cogman, 2019

So, context and history. Studio Series is part of the all encompassing Generations block of collector aimed Transformers. It's stated goal was to appeal to fans of the live action films with high fidelity, premium toys matching the big screen as much as possible. Studio Series kicked off in 2018, the films having been an ongoing concern for a decade or so at that point, so there was definitely an audience for such a thing. More over, there was something of a need for do-overs. The original bayverse designs were infamously complex, which was something the toy people took a while to overcome. Some characters weren't well-served or lost in the shuffle. As time progressed, Hasbro opted to divide movie stuff into two, simple merch for kids, and more complex stuff for serious toy fans. The latter evolved into Studio Series, offering the chance of a do-over for some many characters. Studio Series was a fundamentally good idea then, catering to market I personally wasn't in, but entirely justifiable. The first toys appeared shortly after The Last Knight line wrapped up, actually inheriting a couple of moulds, the titanmaster-based Nitro Zeus and Cogman moulds. This was something of an odd blip now I come to think of it. The entire headmaster thing was something cut from the film, so it's kinda odd that they were in Studio Series. I mention it as it I need to bring up a fundamental point about Hasbro Transformers, which explains that and many similar oddities. Generations, be it Studio Series, Legacy, Kingdom, Earthrise, Siege or whatever, are all ultimately the same toy line. It's melange, spread across varying price points and imprints, but still ultimately from the same place and matching product numbers. I know I bring that up whenever I do opinion pieces on toylines, but it is vital context. So, other than those two early reuses, Studio Series was generally fulfilling it's brief, jumping up and down the timeline like Generations usually does. As mentioned, I'm not a movie guy, but they were doing good work and things people wanted. I mean, doing Devastator as a team of eight, spread across the deluxe, voyager and even leader pricepoints? That's pretty awesome.

Studio Series 86 Grimlock, (and an awful Wheelie), 2021

Mind you, simple reality would soon catch up with Studio Series. Come the time of the Bumblebee film, not even two years after Studio Series started, Studio Series had already made a significant dent in the bayverse roster. As much as I like that film, Hasbro seemed less invested this time around, and wasn't going as hard on the merch. So Studio Series stopped being purely about nostalgia and do-overs, and became the premium bit of a movie line for a while. And it immediately fucked up. The initial three toys for the tie-in, Bumblebee, car mode Shatter, and helicopter mode Dropkick, were based off outdated character models and thus had an only passing resemblance to the film. This defeated the entire point of Studio Series. And maybe they should have put the line on hiatus then, but they didn't. Instead they did two things. First off, they remembered the 1986 movie was also a film, so they could do actual Generation 1 characters too. Its the Generations Grabbag again, its things spilling over. Then they chose to do a toy for each character featured in the Cybertron scenes of the Bumblebee movie, a few brief minutes of fanservice with G1-adjacent designs. Because that was what we needed, when Earthrise had been fully G1. And Cyberverse was doing G1 but YouTube. And Kingdom being half G1 stuff. For Studio Series to alternate between actual G1, and characters that looked G1, but had mere seconds of screentime originating in reshoots.

The mainline Voyager class Rhinox toy, 2023

In all fairness, I did like that Brawn. Anyways, like I said Studio Series and Generations are the same thing. Anyways this continued for a bit, until we catch up with the near past. Studio Series would bide its time for a while, doing the most G1 of G1 stuff, until the new film happened, Rise of the Beasts. This had been subject to delays and reshoots, and was a little bland as movies go. Toyline mishaps also happened, as its arguable star Mirage was largely forgotten, in favour of the usual suspects. There was also two sets of "proper" movie tie-ins, one doing fun stuff like battlemasters and Studio Series releases seemingly benefiting from the delays. For some reason, the deluxe and voyager price points were present in both, competing with each other. Why?! Did the delays mess things up so bad? Was Hasbro trying to double dip and got the timing wrong? Regardless, ‘beasts came, did pretty much everybody, and went with an almost spectacular lack of lasting impact. Even the TFNation dealers room was noticeably light on beasts stuff, and that should have been a gimme. I mean, that might just be my experience, ancedotes are not evidence, but I suppose the box office wasn't great was it? If it had took, we'd be swimming in beastformers. That's another story though. Then we got some video game stuff, the so-called Gamer Edition, which are, um, not top tier? Then we got the reveals that got me writing this the first place, way back in November, the toys based on concept art. Which, by definition, aren’t on screen.

Stock image of Concept Art Megatron, unreleased at time of writing

So, where do I stand on this? Well, I feel conflicted. The concept art Megatron is honestly fascinating as a piece. It's what could have been, and is a triplechanger, so it should be fun to mess with. If I saw it on sale, I'd be tempted. Then again, and this is the autistic bit of my brain talking, what is Studio Series for if its not slavishly matching media? Doing a concept art toy in Studio Series is a contradiction in terms. So what I'd suggest here is either a pause or a rebrand, or some combination of both. Studio Series has had a good run, but the bottom of the barrel is not only visible, but showing scratch marks. You could rebrand it as "boutique" or similar, and concentrate on the difficult and interesting. Or, you could retire it for a year or two, let people grow to miss it, and come back with fresh eyes. Or they could just continue as they are, just treading water until the next film comes out. And with that, eventually, they’d have to think about doing Skids and Mudflap.

And no sane person wants that.

 

Some Arguments Against G.I Joe as a Shared Universe Property

I recently went to see the new Transformers film, Rise of the Beasts. I'm not going to write a review of it, as I'm struggling to find a vein. It's a very adequate movie, that does everything it chooses to do in a mediocre and inoffensive manner. One thing it did do though was tease a shared universe with G.I. Joe, Hasbro's toy soldier brand. That's had a few movies too, but those didn't gain traction like the Transformers have. Say want you want about the Transformers films, but everybody has heard of them. G.I. Joe is also going to be part of the new Transformers comic series by Skybound, echoing the Revolutionaries thing of 2017 and the much more obscure Unit: E of circa 2013. Hasbro seems to want G.I. Joe to be a thing. They seem to want it very badly. More generally, they want to have a shared universe with all their properties, but they seem to see G.I Joe as the key part of those plans. So, the Joes are set to piggyback off the success of Transformers. Speaking purely as a Transformers fan this always bemused me, as Transformers fans are a group famous for not liking the human characters that convention demands be there. I'd imagine fans of Kaiju movies have similar feelings. But, let's put Transformers aside, let's try and separate that as much as possible from the discussion. Instead, let me discuss the reasons why G.I. Joe may not be able to be a worldwide success.

G.I. Joe has actually been around for a very long time, the first prototype being made in 1963. It started out as an attempt to make dolls for boys, by adopting a military theme and using the somewhat euphemistic term “action figures”. Yeah, we don’t have time to unpack that just now, but if you’re getting a vaguely, shall we say, conservative angle? Well, you’re not actually wrong, war toys generally aren’t left wing. G.I. Joe gained significant-if-cyclic success, including international licensees such as Action Man, but it wasn’t until 1982 we got what is largely considered to be the definitive iteration, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. This reworked the concept from doll-sized toy to a 3.75 inch scale in imitation of Kenner’s Star Wars toys, something that lowered costs and allowed for easier implementation of vehicles. They also took the opportunity to add fiction to the toyline, but of a kind that stepped away from specific, real world organisations. Even in the early days, war toys had periods of being unfashionable or politically unpopular. This gave us G.I. Joe as an organisation, rather than simply an individual, versus the terrorist organisation Cobra, and endless toyetic war materiel. That toyline ran for 12 consecutive years, and has had several revivals since.

With the historical place of G.I. Joe established, I feel that there are two massive and unavoidable barriers to the franchise being a global brand, the inescapable real-world connection and the ubiquity of the “toy soldier” concept. Basically, if you don’t know the fiction, G.I. Joe struggles to have a unique selling point versus any of number military-themed toys. And if you do? G.I. Joe looks like a tone-deaf recruitment ad, something of intense interest to stereotypically patriotic Americans and ageing 80’s kids, but of lesser interest to the world at large. Please, don't anybody yell at me about putting politics in your toys, it's baked in. G.I. Joe is patriotic military fiction made by the USA. Such things do not travel well. If country Y makes something that casts it's military in a positive light, the rest of the alphabet are not gonna be predisposed to like such things, and may very well look to their military for such needs. Perhaps the only kind of patriotic military fiction with multinational appeal is one where you are slaughtering Nazis. This is because the primary function of a military is to, well, kill people on the other side of a border. I shouldn't need to give examples, this is a self-evident truth of human history. And Hasbro knows this. It is why G.I. Joe was rebranded into Action Force, and other names for foreign markets. It is also an implicit reason why G.I. Joe got reworked in the 80's with a He-Man style naming scheme. They needed a bunch of baddies to fight whom weren't obviously another nation. So they made a home-grown terrorist organisation called Cobra. It worked, for a time. We largely would not be talking about G.I. Joe if it hadn't found a niche. It had found a way to do military toys without the baggage of real world groups, and real world bloodshed. Then the War on Terror happened. I will not be flippant or otherwise downplay those events, but I will gesture towards the tragedy associated with that time, the scar it left on the American national character, the effect it had on international politics, and its substantial body-count. With that in mind, the idea of a toyline about an American special forces group hunting terrorists seems in poor taste. It also seems a bad thing to try to work into a cinematic universe which is trying to be an international success.

 

 

At this point, a disagreeing reader might ask why it matters what foreigners think? Perhaps you feel that I’m overthinking it, you’re cool with G.I. Joe's overall vibe, and think its fine for your children. Maybe you used the term “snowflake”? You do you. But it matters if you want G.I. Joe to be some kind of big international cultural touchstone, as Hasbro so clearly does. G.I. Joe is unavoidably tied to the reputation of the USA. That is a highly variable factor. It's brand name is no more than a term for a US infantryman, followed by the phrase “A Real American Hero”. You look at its contemporaries and you realise how weird that is. Everything else was a step or two removed from real life, still products of their time, but not bound to it. This is why they've been so open to reboots. GI Joe? Not so much. Its not impossible to do patriotic American stuff that sells elsewhere, see Captain America for example, but he benefited from being a time-displaced Nazi-puncher. Everybody loves a Nazi-puncher. Top Gun maybe? NCIS? But otherwise examples are few. If you take out American militarism, what's left? And what goes in the hole left behind? According to Hasbro & Skybound, the answer to the latter is "be a human response to Transformers", akin to Sector Seven and NEST from the Bay Films, at which point you' d be asking why they'd call it G.I. Joe? And yes, I am aware of G.I Joe: Renegades, not a bad of way doing it, I acknowledge, but that didn’t stick, did it? Not all things can be timeless successes, and G.I .Joe could very well be fated to be a mainly American thing. And there's nowt wrong with that. America is a big market, and people do like tanks and army men. Although, that’s also part of the problem.

 

 

Having dealt with my more inflammatory takes on the G.I. Joe, and resisted the temptation to reference Team America: World Police, and I’m now going to talk about the other barrier, its issues with a Unique Selling Point. It comes down to the fundamentals of a toy based property, the actual toys and their issues with ubiquity. Let us consider the humble ball. Its a classic feature of play and sport. The concept is thousands of years old, and while there are variations and reinventions, were talking about something fundamental to culture at this point. A ball is something you can pretty much get anywhere and is made by any number of companies. Logically, there should be a premier ball brand, like whatever the World Cup uses, but would people the wider population give such a thing any thought at all? Its everywhere, and therefore not acknowledged or considered in any depth. The play pattern of G.I. Joe is in a similar position. While the concept of “action figure + vehicle” is a relatively recent one, toy soldiers have a history going back to at least the 18th century, and even as far back as 2500BC if we consider “tiny representation of a warrior” to be the same thing. Not only has this sort of thing been around for an almost geographical timescale, there’s a great many companies doing pretty much the same thing as G.I. Joe at various prices. What innovations G.I. Joe brought are now the standard. Military-looking action figures are an established thing. They seem to sell without a cartoon. And if you like military-looking stuff, there’s plenty of it that’s based on actual militaries. And if you want military stuff that isn’t based on real stuff, you can go to Star Wars or Warhammer 40K. I mean, there’s some nasty stuff in those two if you look seriously at ‘em, but they aren’t hobbled in the first place by their own names. If you are not already invested in G.I. Joe as a concept, what are the toys bringing to the table? Does G.I. Joe have a unique selling point? I find myself wondering if it does.

None of the above is me suggesting G.I Joe is somehow bad. There’s positives to be found most things, and its entirely possible for talented creatives to make G.I. Joe a success in modern times. But what’s going to get in the way of G.I. Joe, is, frankly, G.I. Joe. And Hasbro asking £105 for this.

 

Warhammer 40K: First Impressions of 10th Edition, by an Ork Player

OK, let’s do this. A reactions article to the big pile of rules that have been dropped. I’m kinda obligated to do so as an Ork fan. But, first, I must make a disclaimer. I played precisely zero games of 9th edition, or any games of 10th, so there's gonna be better takes than mine out there. That said, 10th edition is a hard reset of the game, and at time of writing this introduction has been playable for mere hours. We've had several weeks of the rules being drip-fed to us, only to become playable at the very end with release of the points costs. This is something conducive to hype, and sudden disappointment, rather than considered opinions. It's gonna be a few weeks before things have settled down and people have got a handle on the game. In such an environment however, I'm sure my observations are as good as any.

The Big Picture

10th edition is a root and branch reform of the game, and as such there are too many changes for me to usefully address here. However, the biggest change is the one they saved for last, the points costs found in the Munitorium Field Manual pdf. Continuing a design trend we've been seeing for a while, units are costed and composed based on the contents of their model kit. The number of models is fixed, and what equipment options they have have been subsumed into a single points cost. Returning players should immediately recognise this as an evolution of the Power Level system of earlier editions, something that gives me cause for concern. The reason why a lot of people didn't like Power Levels was because it lacked granularity and seemed to be easily abused. People liked fine-tuning thief army lists, and Power Levels were simply not suited, nor intended for, competitive play. The new way of doing things is very much the same thing by another name, so I really hope the GW did some serious play-testing. Assuming this works as intended, army building should be a dramatically faster experience, especially for those armies with a lot of moving parts like T’au, but decidedly less important to actual play. Whatever happens, I expect a transitional period where everyone with an existing army adjusts their squad sizes to be a multiple of 10 or 5, with units like Battlewagon suddenly having new guns glued to them, and people homing in on the one optimal load-out for each unit. Then again, Age of Sigmar has been working like this for years, maybe it's fine. Another significant change, and one I think more welcome, is a general attempt to remove redundancy. Each seems to have been granted a unique party trick to help it stand out and be valid for reasons other than cost. Some armies do this better than others, Space Marines remain bloated in the extreme for example, but it's something I like. The net effect is that the game seems more characterful, the general simplicity of things allowing for two sentence concepts to make big differences. I will say from a general presentation and readability angle, GW has done a fine job.

The Boyz

So, how might Orks work in this edition? Well, let's consider the humble Ork Boy. The bread and butter of the faction. At first, Boyz seem to be rather a lot like they were in 8th & 9th, just the terminology has changed, and things maybe look better? Shootas get Rapid Fire 1 rather than Dakka 2/3 for example, Rokkit Launchas aren't Heavy but still get Blast, and the lads get a 5+ save now. What they don't get is a native bonus to charge rolls any more, that sort of thing now the domain of Stratagems, unit synergy, and the Waaaaggghh. This not to suggest that Orks are any less choppy, the Waaaaggghh effects everything, and often triggers unit specific abilities, while the "army composition" bonus is exploding 6s in melee. You will likely be recognising that as the Goff trait, but the orky clans are not currently present in the rules. I'm disappointed, but not surprised. Boyz notably max out at 20, but their special thing is that they can be joined by two leader models, one of which has to be a Warboss which are being pushed a bit in the Ork Index. Warbosses are pretty hardcore, so that's not really a problem, and it seems to forestall some potential game-breakers. A few interesting effects come out of this, like the Big Mek adding a re-roll-1s shooting bonus, and the Painboy inflicting mortal wounds, which again, is quite characterful. The potential for a 22 model unit is also reflected in the Battlewagons troop capacity, though the Trukk seems fated to have a spare seat. What discourse I’ve seen tends towards mechanisation as the way to go with Orks, as Trukks are notably cheap, although I wonder if people are sleeping on the assorted leaders and their effects. While squad sizes of 30 are a thing of the past, you can certainly pull off a Green Tide.

Meganobz, the Anti-Tank Role & Combi-Weapons

These guys are interesting from a game mechanics perspective. These are a rare unit with multiple squad sizes do to a quirk of the kit, an example of how the new style combi-weapons work, and an example of how vehicles seem to work now. Starting with the vehicle angle, most now have a Toughness of 10, making them much harder for the tried & true Power Klaw to take out. Killsaws do better, but you don’t get many attacks out of them. Orks having difficulties with the anti-tank role isn’t exactly new, but the general theme here is S8/9 and D2/3, so a rethink is probably required. Now, you’d think the clever thing to do here would be to look at Tankbustas, but GW’s “only what’s in the box” policy kinda screws them over, as you can only have 5 of them in a mob, and only 3 have Rokkit Launchas. Yay. Presumably, this is where Beast Snaggers come in, whom come at that problem from a different direction, getting rerolls and fixed wound rolls on stuff. So, going back to the Meganobz, anti-tank is something they can do, but their weapons seem to a favour an anti-infantry role. That’s where the Kombi-Weapons come in, having the Anti-Infantry and Devastating Wounds rules. This makes them quite capable of killing dudes, but also means my favoured tactic of rocking up and setting fire to things isn’t possible any more. Given that exactly the same thing has happened to Space Marines, I wonder if this might be GW applying some common sense. Previously, these weapons were essentially a rifle plus a much better gun, say a Meltagun for humies. Being able to spam weapons like that is exactly the sort of scenario I’m worried about with respects to points costs above, so its good GW closed it off. Also of note: a Big Mek in Mega-Armour can resurrect the dead of its squad. Unexpectedly.

Giant Stompy Robots

Well, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t touch on this. As often happens, there’s been a bit of shift in relationship between Killa Kans and Deff Dreads, with the kans being more immediately appealing. You get three Kans to one Dread, offering more dakka and arguably better melee for the same price. Kans also win on personality, now having a rule that makes their attacks ignore cover, if occasionally shooting that one bastard whom picked on them, aka the nearest ork unit. They also get an improved version of the Big Shoota, thus making that option useful. Where the Kans suffer is in durability and speed. While both get a native invulnerable save, Deff Dreads are tougher and move 10 inches, which is Battlewagon pace, and cause Battleshock as bonus. ‘Orkanauts meanwhile continue being big tough bastards, and have gained a transport capacity of 12, thus meaning they can actually carry units of note. The Morkanaut oddly lacks a Kustom Forcefield though…

Oddments and things That Aren’t a Parargraph by Themselves

Something that affects a lot of units of the Speed Freek variety is the change of Twin-Linked from being two guns nailed together into a reroll-to-wound. This means slightly less dakka overall, the weapons generally have been rebalanced, so.. swings and roundabouts? Do you like Grots? Well, its time to go looking in your bitz box, because Runtherds are mandatory now. They can generate CP though. Do you want to really annoy a shooty army? Well, Kommandos can’t be targeted by Overwatch.

MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Wrapping things up

I’m fairly sure that within weeks, somebody will have found a way to break the game. Its just how statistics and the average wargamer tend to work. I’m also sure that the rules bloat problem will come to haunt this game as much as it did 8^th and 9^th edition. At this precise moment however, its hard to complain when everything is in a free PDF, and GW seems to be actively maintaining its games these days. <Cautious thumbs up>

Transformers: Earthrise & Me

I used to sell toys on the side. It was my hobby, and my attempt to run my own business. I can't honestly say it was a success, because we are talking in the past tense, but I gave it a good go over five years. I tend to be stubborn about these things, but I think I learned something from the experience. Skills, understanding of the fandom, understanding of Hasbro, and possibly of myself. The last Transformers line I dealt with was Earthrise, by which point the fun was going out of it. What follows is a discussion of that toy line, the impression it made, what worked, and what didn’t, from my point of view.

Context

Following on from Siege, War for Cybertron: Earthrise was the middle of the trilogy. Continuing the same trends as it's forebear, Earthrise promised G1 characters, this time in their Earth modes, with an almost "mini-Masterpiece" design. The initial response to it could be summed up as "yeah, those look really cool... wait...wait, you guys are doing the seekers AGAIN? Why did I buy that Prime then!?”. As I outlined in my Siege article, Hasbro had already done those characters the year before, so people got annoyed. It felt to some like they'd been duped into buying something when Hasbro had a better version on standby, which often was a limited release. Often, it was not the merely the same character, so much as the same engineering, but to be fair to Hasbro though, it might not be entirely their fault. Siege was seemingly hurried to market following the short-lived Power of the Primes, and then the other thing happened. Let us acknowledge the elephant in the room, Earthrise suffered a nine month delay due to the pandemic, a completely reasonable and understandable thing under the circumstances, which may explain a few decisions that Hasbro made. The line only did a year in general retail too, meaning that it just didn't last as long as Siege either. That said, there is a lot of inertia in toy manufacturing, so it's hard to say the extent to which Hasbro course corrected. The thing is though, if we take off our tinfoil hats, and put aside terms like "distribution woes" and "obsolescence", Earthrise does have an issue with consistency. When it's good, it's really good. Earthrise has a solid claim to having the best Optimus Prime, and the best Titan class, and does build on Siege's good points. When it's not, well, you get things like Arcee and what happened to the smaller price-points. If you can even find the toys...

The 2020 Earthrise Smokescreen Toy

Didn’t I buy this last year?

Something which is very notable in Earthrise is the ratio of 32 regular releases to 29 exclusives, including Generations Selects, significantly more than either Siege and Kingdom, and nearly as much as both together. As a majority of these multipacks covering characters like the Seekers, Earthrise technically has more contemporary exclusives than mass market versions of its toys, although Generations does tend to overlap, so it depends on how you count to an extent. There’s just less of it to go around, and its being reused on the same scale as Siege, which makes me wonder about last minute changes. Did a wave or two get reworked as Amazon fodder? Maybe not, this is possibly just a matter of stop-gapping, but it really wouldn't be a shock. The Modulator retools look like a wave 4 thing to me. Earthrise also does the same Generations Grab-bag thing Siege did, and as a result we get a lot of late G1 and 86-movie toys filling out the ranks. Its doing a better job than its predecessor did, if only because Earth modes are the norm, but the characters selected for the exclusives have to be some of the more desirable characters around, and notably, a lot of the ones with strongly defined Earth modes. It feels wrong that its easier to find a Quintesson than say, Prowl, Bluestreak, Ironhide, Ratchet, Ramjet, Dirge, Thrust and Runabout. Earth mode Bumblebee and Soundwave were also off being Netflix/Siege exclusives around this time, Siege having not actually gone away, thus ensuring comparisons would be ever present. Perhaps Hasbro thought that these toys may not sell as well immediately after their Siege iterations, as reused engineering was prevalent here, and so they scaled back, or just decided to maximise sales by making a big name a limited release? Whatever happened, the main line suffered as a result. The theme was undermined, the type of people who’d want the 1984 big names were now being frustrated by limited releases, and/or really annoyed at their Siege purchases, and assuming you were in a position to see Earthrise toys in person, the odds were it would be a less-desirable mass-market release. Obviously, I wasn’t Amazon, so this situation wasn’t great for my business at the time, but its not about me. Even if we hadn’t been dealing with a global plague at the time, all the while desperately looking for some escapism, this was a massive PR misstep, and I can’t stress that enough.

The 2020 Earthrise Arcee Toy

More Speculation

So, why might it have played out like that? I mean, yeah, the pandemic must have had some effect, and we must cut everybody some slack on that, but its not a blank cheque. Why did Hasbro arrange things like they did? Well, speaking as someone whom has sold toys as a business and dealt with wholesalers and such, I feel there is a point that I should stress for the unfamiliar. There is no internal difference between the assorted collector-aimed Transformers lines. Generations has been running since 2010 and its banner includes Studio Series and most exclusives; this is what things like product codes and shipping boxes tell us. It all bleeds together after a certain point, regardless of branding, so saying Earthrise followed Siege, or is better/worse than Siege is a little misleading. Siege and Earthrise are two peas from the same pod. Earthrise is functionally waves 6 to 8 of Siege, and if you view it like that, things start to make more sense. The two share so much in play patterns, engineering and price-points that they might as well be one thing, the only difference being packaging. For the record, Kingdom is a similar-if-nuanced situation, as while that continues the same thing, its hard to argue that beastformers aren’t a meaningful change. Furthermore, Hasbro is also a famously difficult company to source from, as their distribution tends run off a random number generator, and their thought processes can be a little inscrutable. So, the matters discussed in the preceding paragraph aren’t really out of character for them. They are, from a dispassionate point of view, trying to fill price-points. This viewpoint also explains the issues with theme I keep bringing up, as unrelated ideas get brought in to round out the numbers, and the habit of reusing stuff to save money. If anything can be said about Earthrise, its that it makes Hasbro’s business practices more noticeable, by giving the G1 fans exactly what they wanted, and then making it hard to buy. The difficulties I had in the basic area of having toys to sell, along with general pandemic uncertainty, were a large part of my decision to close my business. Not the only thing, and I’m certainly not blaming them, but it is what it is.

The 2020 Earthrise Exclusive Ironhide Toy

Engineering Heaven, and Engineering Hell

A few paragraphs ago, I used the words "mini-Masterpiece" in reference to Earthrise, and many of them were. We’re talking a high level of cartoon fidelity here, and often involved transformations. The poster boy for this is undoubtedly Earthrise Prime, but Cliffjumper was also an early leader in this trend. There’s definitely a lot of good in Earthrise, but there’s also more mediocre and outright bad. And with so many things, its often easier to write about the bad, than to highlight the good. As I’ve written previously, this “cartoon model” design approach would have a few unfortunate downsides, notably resulting in an Arcee so overtly flawed I almost can’t believe its from the same line. I really didn’t like the idea of ordering that one, especially in solid cases. New mould Earthrise toys often have a bit of a problem with partsforming, faux kibble bits, Q.C issues, troubling uses of translucent plastic, and prematurely ageing plastic from what I’ve heard. Moulds re-using engineering from Siege were largely OK if over-familiar at this point, but that didn’t stop some of them coming out worse in the process. You know how Earth mode Ironhide was an exclusive? Well, his earth mode was mainly a removable roof segment that went over his siege alt form, which still left his feet exposed, ruining the effect. Oh, and unpainted windows, and varying shades of red. Maybe some of these were exclusives because Hasbro knew it would be a harder sell otherwise…

The 2020 Airwave toy

Play Pattern Woes

Of course, while the partsforming and such were often merely minor annoyances, the real design failing was probably the A.I.R Lock system, which was a big part of smaller price-points, and is largely forgotten now. When I asked my twitter followers what Earthrise was like, this went totally unremarked upon, maybe I should have mentioned it? The basic idea here was to create base modes for Micromasters, with larger toys having connection points, the Weaponizer concept being reworked into Modulators which could form playsets, and Battlemasters playing a supporting role. Unfortunately, Micromasters in Earthrise were not a significant improvement over the Siege version, they didn’t quite commit, and this ended up spoiling two otherwise excellent play patterns. We only really got two Modulator moulds, and they were OK, but there wasn’t enough of them to really explore the concept, nor did they have the sheer mass required for a good base mode. We needed more and bigger. The Battlemasters were similarly limited in scope, and had the misfortune to be largely made of translucent plastic while turning into bits of road/shields. No matter how you spin it, that’s a worse idea than the weapon types they followed. As a result, the few new toys Earthrise had that weren’t heavily 1980’s, end up feeling like compromised curios. Definitely interesting, but it didn’t quite work. And I’d say this, as much as anything, took the shine off Earthrise for me as a collector, rather than a business man. I can take or leave G1 accuracy, what matters more to me is fun, and the edge cases. Siege had plenty of fun and edge cases. Earthrise had a bunch of G1 characters with very vanilla interpretations, and fumbled the bits I’m usually interested in.

Having dealt with the big picture stuff, let’s now look at the toys by price-point.

The 2020 Earthrise Slitherfang Toy

Battlemasters

Now, you can make the case here that the best toy here is one repackaged from Siege, Smackdown, although as retailer I wasn’t too fond of repacks. He’s a little robot minotaur hammer, whom serves as the Wreckers’ mascot, and he’s pretty great. Meanwhile, Rung is fine, and the three original moulds feature a lot of translucent plastic, while transforming into bits of road/shields. As noted, its a little hard to recommend those, but Slitherfang is interesting. Give him to Siege Barricade, he makes for a good colour match.

The 2020 Earthrise Daddy-O Toy

Micromasters

These followed on the same pattern as Siege Micromasters, I.e. half a team, an unconvincing weapon mode, and no real improvement over the original toys. If you’re not already onboard with Micromasters this is a hard sell for me. These were relatively easy for me to source wholesale, perhaps for that reason. Possibly the Hot Rod Patrol is your best choice here overall, given their relative competency, vehicle forms, and Daddy-O’s name. 

 

 

 

The 2020 Earthrise Cliffjumper Toy

Deluxes

Things begin to pick up a bit in the deluxe slot, but its not great, especially around wave 2. Arcee is there, as is the rather simplistic Allicon, and Smokescreen is standing around like some lesser-known member of the Jackson 5. That’s a dated reference, I know, but this is an 80’s tribute line. Overall, wave 1 probably offers the best selection of toys, and probably the best Cliffjumper ever made, faults included, although if you have a certain big boy, your mandatory purchase is Fasttrack. Meanwhile, Airwave is a personal fave of mine, and Runabout’s fake heelie-wheels are dumb. Seriously, they stick out in car mode.

The 2020 Earthrise Starscream Toy

Voyager

Another weak showing, the main attraction here is Starscream, whom is a pretty good, but clearly Classics inspired, iteration of the character. He’s very much in the Goldilocks Zone of mass-market toys, yeah, there’s improvements that could be made, but there’s only so many before you go over budget or make things less fun. The rest of the slot is decidedly less brilliant. Grapple had a problem where his pegs would break during transformation. Snapdragon had a similar issue with cockpit doors. The Megatron retool has more partforming than the Siege version and suffers from photodegradation. Meanwhile, the Quintesson Judge is modulator-adjacent, partsforming into a prison playset. Its…. Okay?

The 2020 Earthrise Optimus Prime Toy

Leader

Let’s not mince words, if this Optimus Prime toy hadn’t been a thing, the discourse around Earthrise would have been completely different. On the upside, it has many upsides. Its a mass-market, mini-masterpiece; it does an awful lot well, too many to mention. On the downside, it shares parts with the Siege version, and basically is a voyager with a box trailer that does very little. Its both a shining example of the positives in Earthrise, while appealing deeply to collectors, and of Hasbro’s business practices, while frustrating collectors. Otherwise, this slot ends up a bit thin. Astrotrain is back, and making actual sense this time if that’s your thing? Sadly, I just didn’t like Doubledealer in hand. He’s big, but feels off, like it needed another design pass.

The 2020 Earthrise Sky Lynx Toy

Big Boys

Possibly the area that Earthrise unashamedly wins, we have two toys whom definitely fall under the heading of Generations Grab-bag, but are just as definitely welcome. Sky Lynx is a quality update of the frankly bonkers original, which throws an actually good base mode into the mix. Scorponok is something I regret passing on, another quality update that makes him a double-headmaster. Both have reasonable claim to be the best toys in their respective, and immense, size classes. Part of that is probably the source material, and the lack of other versions, but generally I’d say these were more fun-oriented than some of the smaller toys. I mean, Sky Lynx is a cat-bird-dinosaur-robot sponsored by NASA. And Scorponok takes design elements from Japanese media, not just the G1 cartoon, while stealing Fort Max’s gimmick. That's genius.

The 2020 Earthrise Exclusive Deluxe Centurion Drone Toy

Exclusives

Sorry, we still have to talk a bit more about exclusives. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about the seekers etc. again, because aside from plonking big names into this category, there are a few more interesting choices. The Centurion Drone set serves as a vessel for all the accessories which didn’t make the budget on other toys, which is good, but to the point were the actual toy is secondary, which is a shame. A few moulds from earlier lines come back, such as Punch/Counter-Punch, whom didn’t get a wide release before, so that’s nice. There’s also some G2 stuff, such as Sandstorm, a Gobot in the form of Bug Bite, an “Alternate Universe Optimus Prime”. Or, more accurately, Dead Prime from the 1986 movie. Because we needed a toy of a corpse, apparently. Of course, you’re gonna have a hard time finding them for a sane price.

Conclusion

Earthrise is endlessly frustrating to me as a toy line, due to what might have been. We can chalk some of this up to highly unusual circumstances, but generally it feels mismanaged. The ratio of exclusives to mass releases is borked, there’s varying issues with quality control, everything near the Micromasters suffered, and there was a general lack of wow factor. But then again, it might just me associating it with some past disappointments. It got some things very right, much more right than the series average. Overall, Earthrise is the awkward middle child of its series, and while that’s not the same as saying its bad, it doesn’t look that great with its siblings on either side.