A new day, a new edition of Warhammer 40k.

Yesterday, as you may have noticed, was something of a special day for the Warhammer 40,000 community. No, it's not the Day of Ascension, it was the long-awaited and much-discussed release of 8th Edition!

Of course, I was one of the first in line at my local Warhammer Store (which opened super early for the joyous occasion) to pick up my copy of the new box set, Dark Imperium. After disembowelling the cardboard box and eagerly ripping off the film, I immediately dived nose-first into the rulebook to skim some of the more confusing rules and ogle what gorgeous new and old artwork was inside.

The store had set up mini-tables and had encouraged hobbyists to bring in 500pts (in old 7th Ed. money) or army to have a quick game and get into the swing of the new rules. So a short perusal of the book later, we started totting up what we had in new-fangled 8th edition terms, and they were all around the 22-23 Power Points (not the boring slides!) range, so far, so well-matched.

I pitted my Space Marines against one of the other regulars' Space Wolves and we commenced battle!

I lost. :(

But despite losing, I enjoyed the game immensely. Even though it was our first game and we'd literally seen the rules for the first time about half an hour prior, it was easy to get the hang of. The new style of play is punchy, fast and fun! There's a lot less having to pause play while you find the table you need to reference or dig through your codices looking for an obscure stat, everything is well-contained and easy to reference, you can basically just pick up your dice and go!

I only had time for one game, unfortunately, but I've already booked a second, slightly larger-scale game for next week and am hoping for a similarly streamlined experience.

In other news this week, I finished painting my Imperial Fists Tartarus Terminators in their lovely, 'difficult' yellow paint scheme.