Tabletop Teacher

Yeah, it's very early to speculate. We don't have any concrete evidence that there will be an 8th Edition, and by concrete I mean official statement from Games Workshop. There are rumours of course, and compelling evidence, but nothing firm yet. However, using my crystal ball far more effective logic and reasoning, I think I can somewhat predict the future of monstrous creatures in 40K. As the rumours fly about, we keep hearing that we're going to get some mechanics of Age of Sigmar, and I think I know which ones. Right now, Monstrous creatures are very powerful compared to other units. This is right and proper, otherwise we wouldn't give them the name Monstrous, and they would just be creatures. Or robots in the case of Eldar and Tau. The biggest advantage of Monstrous Creatures is the fact they do not lose power over the course of the game. Typical units (Firewarriors, Terminators etc.) will lose influence and ability the more the game progresses. Even...

Blood Angels. Next question. Ha, no. In fact Blood Angels are not the great assault army they're fluffed out to be. They're certainly a little more assault than most, and the Death Company leave a mark wherever they go. However, with the removal of Assault Marines as troops, the majority of the army is red coloured Space Marine. But don't take my word for it. let's do some maths to find out who the best Assault Marines are! The Experiment We need to clarify what is actually meant by 'the best Assault Marines'. For the purpose of this little study, we're going to take Assault Marine as meaning jump pack equipped Marine with 2 close combat weapons. We're going to exclude the special units out there, such as Vanguard Vets and Death Company, as we're only going to be looking at the actual Assault Squad, as laid down by the Codex Astartes and adjusted on a chapter to chapter basis. We're also going to have to set some conditions in ...

Space Marines are a lovely army to start with. From one set of similar miniatures you can get at least half a dozen army lists out. Which is why I've taken the time to create a 'core' for my students to build towards. Space Marine Core Formation: CAD Points: 350 HQ: Librarian - Bike, Force stave - 85pts Troops: Tactical Squad: Razorback with Twin-linked Lascannon (or Assault cannon), 5 Marines, Flamer - 150pts Tactical Squad: Rhino/Drop Pod, 5 Marines, Meltagun - 115pts What the above gives us is a solid core of marines which can take on a variety of roles. I've put the Librarian on a bike, but those 20 points can be easily re-purposed for any number of things. I would leave him on the bike though, either running behind the transports out of line of sight, or dropping in with the Tac squad's drop pod. Or use those points to convert a Rhino to a Razorback. Up to you. The Tac squad in the Rhino/Drop pod is flexible depending on your ow...

Warhammer Community has certainly made it easier to ride the hype train. Whoever they have working at Games Workshop's marketing department now really knows how to get the fan boy juices flowing! This video was released earlier this weekend on Warhammer Community : So a lot of things confirmed in this video. The warp fire flamers look like they're going to be AP3, which should have every jet-bike, White Scar and Ravenwing player quaking in their bike treads! Ignoring cover and most armour is going to turn this unit into a tremendously valuable anti-infantry unit. The sprues shown on the Rubric Marine pre-order page shows a great deal of flamers on there, as in one per RUbric Marine. Just like the infamous Wraithguard D-Scythe, it appears as though this is could be built as a burner unit. The downside to this is going to be the standard Rubric Marine Slow and Purposeful rule, somewhat muting the awesomeness of an entirely flamer equipped unit. It remains to be ...

Just a quick one today. As a Physics teacher I have access to some interesting tools to help speed up the painting process. Here's one: I wonder if any one else has some every day or work place device they use to help them with table top gaming. I'd love to see some ideas! Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please visit and donate at my  Patreon . Every Little helps!

Tabletop Teacher is one month old today! Hooray! Let's do some analysis. So far I've published 52 articles, of varying length, for an average of 1.7 articles a day. Not bad, considering I thought I'd slow down to 3 posts a week. For the time being I'm going to keep this up. I have an awful lot to say about 40K and table top gaming, and there's always something new to discuss. I actually was inspired to blog by EVE Online, where I started to record my exploits as a solo pilot. Back then Jester's Trek was the king of blogs, churning out at least one quality post a day, earning him the nick name Robo-blogger. I used to wonder how he could keep that up and still do his day job... now I think I know how. For the right topic all you need is an excuse to write. In terms of views, we're now on a total of 734, which is small compared to any blog, but seems massive to me. That's an average of 14 views per post, and 24 views per day. That's jus...

I was in my local Games Workshop store last weekend, discussing the club shenanigans with the shop manager. For those who consider Games Workshop to be a faceless monolithic money-grubbing organisation, I suggest you pop down to your local shop more often. You'll soon discover the majority of employees are neck bearded nerds like yourself, and drop the internet cynicism that pervades the web ways. I get on well with the manager, and am fairly certain he's going to have a good time this Christmas judging by my student's Christmas Wish-lists. Even though it's only November they have written their 'Dear Santa' letters, with Santa crossed out and the manager's name in place. It's an odd time to be running the club, as greed spills over and students are picking my brains for advice on what models to buy. Whilst dreams of shiny new Space Wolves in 4+ cover under the Christmas Tree are being woven, Dark Angel's from various Starter kits remain onl...