JellalSlayer

The original Far Side Cow Tools Cartoon by Gary Larson. A cow stands on its hind legs behind a table, staring blankly at the viewer from behind its heavy brow ridge. On the table are four crudely made tools: a lump, a lump with an offset crooked handle, a long stick with hooked prongs at the end, and a crude handsaw with irregular teeth. In the background a barn sits on a hill. Caption reads, "Cow tools."

43 years ago today, readers the world over opened their newspapers and gazed upon cow tools for the first time. happy birthday cow tools. you look great.

I always forget how much of a pain in the ass decals are to work with

A teal Lego biker helmet

Oh yeah - and also a teal Lego biker helmet.

No idea how this ended up with one of the guys. He had no idea either. But I have it now.

A 3D printed elf warrior

I also picked this guy up. He is printed in pitch black resin so it was very hard to capture him on camera. I can assure you though, the detail on this man, is immaculate! I have no idea who he is 🎵🎶 or where, or how or why he is 🎶🎵, but I do know he is going to be a lot of fun to paint.

Suggestions as to what clan I should paint this chap as, are more than welcome!

Every component necessary to build an Ork for Warhammer 40000. He has a backpack which has a Gretchin in it.

Funnily enough, multiple people brought Orks along. And I could get enough stuff to build a whole Ork! A complete one! I love him, he is gonna be so cool!
He even has a little backpack Gretchin. A pocket friend!
Man, I love Orks.

An assortment of Eldar parts. Mainly weaponry

Eldar heads

Warhammer Female head parts. About half are from the Leagues of Votann range, the others are from the Stormcast Eternals range

Now, for something more exciting.
I picked up a whole load of Eldar bits. I've been in an Exodite mood lately. We'll see what comes out of this.

Also an absolute truckload of female heads. The previous user didn't want them, so I could have them for free.
His loss.

A gaggle of Warhammer parts. Mostly guns and swords.

Three Space Marine breastplates

Two Graviton Cannons

Some more Marine bits. Again, nothing overly exciting, such is the deal with Marines, but once again, very useful stuff. I wanna get some Fallen together, the knightly parts will come in handy, and extra bolters and chainswords are always useful.

A half empty sprue, with seven shoulderpads on it

I picked up some Ultramarine shoulder pads, from the old Upgrade Kit. It's not crazy exciting, but it's gonna come very useful with a project I have at hand.

Alright, I organized everything, let's go through everything one by one

A plastic food container, full of various Warhammer components,.. and a Lego biker helmet.

Another year, another Bitz Bazaar! I will be sharing what treasures I found this year

a cartoon character is looking out a window at a burger king ALT: a cartoon character is looking out a window at a burger king

I didn't really like the Saturnine Terminators when they came out, but I kinda wanna get one now, to convert it into a Krork

And what if- I ran him as an Armiger in a Knight/Chaos Knight army, made entirely of Krorks?

My prediction is that the meta will quickly become this (in one hero formats at least) :
>Pick a hero, that starts with an advanced class skill
>Get the better advanced class, for a total of 6 skills
>Get Scouting and Logistics for a total of 8 (if they aren't part of the package already)

So far, I'm thoroughly whelmed. It's fine. It's okay. The bar wasn't set high by 7, but Olden Era definitely made it.
Nothing so far blew me away, but it's definitely a fine addition to the series.

Would I still pick 3, Chronicles, 5 or even 4 over this?
Yes. But it's fine. It's okay. It can stay.

I understand, it's a very early build, but that's also why it's important to point these things out.

I'll be posting more of my thoughts throughout the weekend. I only played one game so far, don't wanna draw deep conclusions, these are just the things that immediately jumped out to me, and felt like might become problematic later down the line.

As far as I know, none of the heroes start with a subclass relevant skill- which doesn't really give you much wiggle room. It's very easy to be locked out of these secondary classes.
I know the intention was to open up hero building, and encourage niche builds- it didn't work. Quite the opposite.

On the topic of skills:
The secondary classes feel much more restrictive than the ultimates in 5, or the advanced classes of 4.
In 5 you needed 3 specific skills, and subskills which weren't hard to get for your class, and you might have already started with.
Here, you need 5. 5 out of the 8 total

Also, Necromancy is PATHETIC in this version. My prediction rings true.
I played a Necro Specialist, and leaned into buffing her ability with laws, and skill choices. Still, the skill was basically irrelevant by late game.
At least, they are kinda tempo now. That sure is new.

Where are the ranged units?
I played a whole game of Memory Lane and I think I ran across *one* ranged stack.
I love that they finally reused the attack from one hex away ability from 4, was about time, but I feel like, given how many units have that now, it eat a bit into the ranged unit budget.

In general the controls feel a little stiff. I miss stuff like double clicking to build and recruit, or even nicher mechanics like being able to que up movement during combat from 4. On that note - let's talk about combat a little-

Still on the topic of the overworld: There are a lot of places of interest that are basically redundant. I can get behind having different late game creature banks, that's fun- but do we need three different Shrines of Enlightenment? Or two different type of Star Axis?

Overall, the art direction feels a lot better, now that I'm actually playing. The overworld feels very busy though. It isn't more crowded that previous entries, it's just much harder to read. Zooming in and holding alt helps, but it's not ideal.

The game runs by default in Hungarian!
The translation is extremely high quality, but I don't know if the translators knew that the term they used for the Hungarian name of Scysm has a very derogatory meaning. That's the the only bad thing I can say about the translation.

The Olden Era Demo is out!
I'm going in!

Okay the TTRPG by Modephius looks really fun

No news of the Wargame thoough that's a little disappointing.

Okay the Pioneer Program sounds interesting as a way to get feedback from old-timers-
But then again, so was the Shadow Council and that didn't work at all

Jesus Christ the presenter is so unfunny

And a piano concert album by the legendary Paul Romero!? Holy-