FTN TABLETOP GAMING NEWS (12/01/2013)

By David Reynolds

The New Year sees a tonne of new releases heading our way from Games Workshop, Mantic Games, Wizards of the Coast and others so let’s get straight to it.
Dark Angels have well and truly arrived now. The Unforgiven have the distinction of getting the second in Games Workshop’s new range of hardcover codices. This 104 page full-colour tome contains some great artwork and background on the First Legion, all the rules you need to field a Dark Angels force in battle and of course a stunning show case of Citadel miniatures, presenting the uniforms, heraldry and insignia of the Unforgiven and their Successor Chapters.

The Emperor’s Angels also have a stunning new range of plastic miniatures including the imposing Deathwing Knights and the baroque Land Speeder Vengeance.

Dark Angels – Ravenwing Dark Talon – Warhammer 40K

Excitement is reaching fever-pitch around Gatecrash, the latest expansion to Magic: The Gathering. The 60^th expansion in the best-selling trading card game from Wizards of the Coast, Gatecrash is set in Ravnica, a plane covered entirely by city and ruled by ten guilds, each of which draws on a unique and powerful combination of the five primal elements of magic.
Gatecrash will be released on February 1^st and features a host of powerful cards. Mind Grind is an even more powerful version of Destroy the Evidence which makes a great addition to any black/blue deck that features Jace. Gideon, Champion of Justice, is a Planeswalker who can become an Indestructible Human Soldier creature with Attack and Defence characteristics equal to his current number of Loyalty Points. Undercity Plague packs a number of nasty punches into 1 spell which you can then Cipher on to a creature to cast over and over again.

Turning to RPGs, December saw the release of Only War, the latest in Fantasy Flight Games’ critically acclaimed series of role playing games set in the grim darkness of the 41^st millennium. Only War puts you in the boots of an Imperial Guardsman, one of uncounted billions who serve on the front lines of the Imperium’s wars, defending the realm of mankind from the alien, the mutant and the heretic. With a wide variety of specialities to choose from you can enter the battlefield as anything from a stalwart Commissar to one of the Omnessiah’s Enginseers.
A book length adventure entitled Final Testament will be released for the Only War system in late February. This scenario sees the player characters deployed to Hervara, a frontier mining world under the sway of the insurgent Severan Dominate. The Imperium is keen to retake this strategic asset as part of a larger plan to turn the tide against the insurgency but little do they know that greedier eyes are watching from space, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to seize the world for themselves.

Sticking with the grim fate of soldiers in the far future, this January Mantic will release their new line of plague infected marines. At just €35 and including enough components to assemble 35 plague zombies this is a real bargain not just for Mantic fans but also for anyone who’s Chaos Space Marine army is led by Typhus, Herald of Nurgle.