New FanDex On The Horizon

I'll make something perfectly clear at the beginning of this post before I get an inbox full of crudely constructed paragraphs questioning my being well endowed; the AdMech FanDex is not going on the shelf. I love my dex so far, but it's far from completion and out of every tabletop project I have going, it's the one that gets the most attention. The shear amount of money I just spent on models is more than enough to keep me involved in the dex, with or without my fanboy craving for them. With that said, I am a fan of writing and most of all editing. There are few things I'm good at in this world, editing is one of them. The day I find an editing job is the day I'll truly be happy. I'm getting off track here, my point is with the AdMech FanDex needing less and less work done to it, I find myself a little more than bored in the off hours of my day. I'll be quite busy once my lot of AdMech models come in, but until then I've needed a writing-refuge. More after the break.

So as you've probably guessed, I've started work on a side project fandex, and it's for a Space Marine chapter (aren't I original?) This chapter is named the Dark Liches and is very subject to change as I'm not sure it really works for them (though the color scheme you see above I'm a fan of.) They're a slightly heretical chapter with very dwindled numbers due to their home planet constantly spewing out plasma-radiation. While their numbers are small because of this less than tolerable environment, it does provide them with limitless amount of plasma for their weaponry. How will this work in gameplay exactly? Well, most weapons have a Strength increase and more notably everything has Gets Hot! And when I say everything, I mean everything. Close combat weapons, ranged weapons and even vehicles are going to be affected, though I haven't fully worked out how that part is going to function. The table top will be utter chaos with this bunch out there giving it their all. A problem arose with this decision, though. If every hit, swing and anything "hurty" is going to require more dice rolls on 1's, I wondered how exhausting/annoying this would be for the player. A group of ten Marines charging into melee with 20-30 attacks each could get downright obnoxious. So how do I fix this problem?

I could remove the Gets Hot! bonanza I had come up with, but I'm quite stubborn when it comes to my ideas. So to reduce the rolling number increase; eliminate the number of dice being rolled. This came to me a couple of weeks back. We've all read stories on Space Marine chapters; capable of killing tens of hundreds of thousands of hordes of enemies only to come out more-or-less clean on the other end. This is not the case in gameplay, mostly due to the rule of 10 on stats for every unit in the game. I touched on this a bit in another post, which is probably where the idea came from. So why can't those Space Marines we all read tales about exist in-game? Why shouldn't ten Marines step onto the table and show fifty or so Orks what's what? Thus, the true-Space Marine dream was born. If I created Space Marines with the stats that fit their epic stories, their costs would be outrageous; putting ten or twelve models on the board in a 1000 point game. But with fewer models comes fewer rolls, so I ran with it.

(click for zoom)

From what I have roughly completed (which is only a single HQ choice, a single Troop choice and three transports,) the typical Tac Marine's cost is currently 74 points per model and I foresee that number inclining. For those of you playing at home, that's almost 400 points per Tac Squad of five Marines. So why doesn't GW take this outlook on their precious Space Marines? My guess would be sales, which is their first and foremost motivation in my humble opinion. If your currently most profitable codices are changed to twelve models for 1000 points rather than thirty or more for 1000 points, that's going to put a dent in your pocket, not to mention the stat changes to everything else in the game. But for everyone else, there's the 40k community. Now this fandex has barely made it off the ground, and I don't see an open beta of sorts opening up for another year or more, but if you're a fan of the AdMech Dex, I may have something else coming that you'll enjoy.

As always, stay tuned for more updates.