Shadow War: Armageddon
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Openly labeled as the spiritual successor to Necromunda, Shadow War: Armageddon is a standalone boxed game pitting kill teams against each other in skirmish combat in the depths of a hive city. The stock scenario is set in Hive Acheron on Armageddon between Space Marine Scouts and Orks, but there's also extended rules for kill teams from virtually every other faction: Chaos Space Marines, Tyranids, Genestealer Cults, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Skitarii, Grey Knights, Necrons, Tau, pretty much the whole shebang.
The Game
[to be filled out in greater detail once some git can get his hands on the game].
Expect most games to be over in 2-3 turns between the SM scouts and the Orks.
What Rocks
- IT'S NECROMUNDA! (sorta)
- WITH ALL THE FACTIONS! (most of them, at any rate)
- Comes with a set of awesome modular Hive City scenery that's begging (and advertised) to be used for standard 40k, and can be built into constructions of truly epic proportions.
- It was announced at AdeptiCon that individual Shadow War content like the terrain would be available at full price a few weeks after release. On top of that, Warhammer-Community has confirmed that GW is working on a way to make the rules more widely available (not sure what there is to work on beyond just releasing the fucking book, though), and is even planning to expand them to include some of the factions that got left out.
- Unlike Kill Team you can include some HQ choices like Autarchs, Etherals and Fireblades.
- Fully customisable war gear options for different models in your team, want 3 Genestealer cultists with laspistols and knives, 4 with autoguns and 2 with lasguns? That's do-able.
- Actual fluffy differences between weapons that are the same in normal 40k. The humble lasgun is finally better than the crude autogun.
What Sucks
- It's not Necromunda. The closest things we have to the hive gangs and mutants of old are Chaos and Genestealer cultists, and that's...just not the same. This is probably because GW, for better or worse, seems to be be on a big kick lately to have their standard model range cross-compatible with all of their specialist games, and is apparently unwilling to make a bunch of new models just for a faithful Necromunda reboot. Far easier to just bring back the Necromunda style of gameplay using the existing factions and models.
- The boxed set is a limited release, and initial pre-orders completely sold out within minutes, catching GW completely off-guard with a demand that they hadn't prepared a supply for. Whoops.
- Despite having rules for most of the other factions available as free PDFs, the core rulebook that you need to actually play, along with the rules for Space Marines, Orks, and Imperial Guard, only comes with the sold-out boxed set, which kinda makes the PDFs of little use ATM.
- No rules for Sisters or Inquisition. Seriously, you'd think that including the latter would be a no-brainer, considering the vast majority of Inquisition novels and RPG scenarios take place in hive cities.
- Unlike Kill Team (which some claim that Shadow War is replacing), Shadow War: Armageddon is much more limited in what kind of units are allowed. Rather than bringing whatever you want within a set of loose parameters, you're given a specific set of units for leaders, troopers, new recruits, specialists, and special operatives, and that's it. No vehicles.
- Seemingly pointless unit choices for the factions, space marines get a "scout unit" as do the tau with Pathfinders (but no Kroot!), then surely other factions would have similar fluffy units...what's this? Eldar get guardians and not Rangers? Eldar are sending what are basically civilians on a scouting/commando raid? Meanwhile Greyknights get 5 expensive as fuck power armoured beat sticks chaos get
cultistsNurgle CSM aka The Toughest Motherfucker in the game, with cheap cultist body as meatshield and fire support.(you wish you had cheap body like this? Did you filthy loyalists?) Who thought of the balancing in this game! Chaos look overpower as hell.