Apartment Wargaming: Been Gaming.

Played a few games of Warhammer 40k 6th edition with a buddy a while back. Thought I would try out the new rules, and I found them to be really fun. Off hand (from what I remember), I like that overwatch special rule is back! I missed it, because it makes so much sense. You can throw grenades, which is sweet, and I like that all of your assault phase is resolved at one time, speeds the game up and doesn't tie up your units for rounds at a time.

Snap fire is awesome! Being able to fire with a heavy weapon when it has moved, or fire vehicle weapons if you move 12" is amazing. Granted you need a 6 to hit regardless of BS, but that's better than not being able to fire at all. I always felt they didn't represent tanks blazing as fast as they can firing all weapons without aiming hoping for the best, or to suppress and force to ground. Makes your units a little more mobile now because you no longer have to choose between moving and using your heavy.

Air Units look cool but who cares. To me it seems like classic GW. Give you something flashy, change the rules to accommodate the new thing they have created, and then release the rules for it in a magazine they publish and charge 10 dollars for, making you wait for the next codex. Strafe runs, and air transport could be useful sure, but I feel like it's gonna be a Drop Pod situation. My buddy's army had a few air units and they weren't as scary as they looked. They do look bad ass though, especially the Orc Bomber. One thing GW will always have is amazing sculpts!

Hull damage on tanks, so glancing hits now do something helps speed things up a little bit. Leader Characteristics are a nice little addition. A bonus random ability for your General is awesome for adding a little flare to your games. Not to mention the fact that each terrain type can now trigger good and bad events when a unit or model enters it. Makes you think twice about entering those forests, or cutting through a swamp. I really love when random things happen during the course of the battle, really brings it all to life.

Allies is another nice feature because it allows you to use some of the models you may have sitting around. You may only have 500 points of a different army, and now you can ally with them if they are compatible on the allies chart. For our game we played 4000 pts Black Templar vs 2000pts Codex Space Marines+ 2000 pts Imperial Guard in an Infantry Platoon. Took 4 Hours to Complete which is 3-4 Hours less than it probably would have taken in 5th ed. Over all I had a lot of fun playing it, but not enough to want to buy models or even the rule book for that matter. I will definitely play again though. The pic below is all of his force up top and the bottom corner was just the infantery platoon at 2000 pts, which is insane. I thought Orcs was a hoard army, look out for Apocalypse Infantry Platoons!

Have been playing Warmachine more lately now that summer is over. Played a few games at my LGS with a local group who also put on a small tournament that I joined. Not too sure where I placed, but it was pretty fun! Tournament format was 20pt Highlander, and I ran a Cryx list that held up alright. The turns were timed so I forgot to do a couple of things that cost me some points. My List was: (Highlander: 1 caster, 1 jack, 1 unit, 1 solo, extra points spent on Jacks.)

pDeneghra
Nightmare
Nightwretch
Bane Thralls (Max)
Pistol Wraith

Took Nightmare with Deneghra for the stealth affinity, and prey is also really nice to get the extra movement and att/dmg rolls. Everything had stealth except for the nightwretch. The idea was to run up the nightwretch to use it's arc node to sling crippling grasp, parasite, or venom at anything I could, as well as shoot an AoE if need be. I took the pistol wraith to slow down enemy jacks. If you hit twice with the pistol wraith the enemy jack must choose to either move or attack but not both. And I took the Thralls for their stealth, weapon master, and dark shroud (-2 Arm to enemy's within melee range).

Another fellow Cryx player won the tournament with a similar list. Deneghra > 2x Death Ripper, Bane Thralls with UA and Bane Lord Tartarus. Below are some of the pics from the event.