Weekender XLBS: First 40k Battle Impressions & Genesys, A Cool New FFG RPG!
July 2, 2017 by dignity
For some website features, you will need a FREE account and for some others, you will need to join the Cult of Games.
Or if you have already joined the Cult of Games Log in now
What difference will having a FREE account make?
Setting up a Free account with OnTableTop unlocks a load of additional features and content (see below). You can then get involved with our Tabletop Gaming community, we are very helpful and keen to hear what you have to say. So Join Us Now!
Free Account Includes
- Creating your own project blogs.
- Rating and reviewing games using our innovative system.
- Commenting and ability to upvote.
- Posting in the forums.
- Unlocking of Achivments and collectin hobby xp
- Ability to add places like clubs and stores to our gaming database.
- Follow games, recommend games, use wishlist and mark what games you own.
- You will be able to add friends to your account.
What's the Cult of Games?
Once you have made a free account you can support the community by joing the Cult of Games. Joining the Cult allows you to use even more parts of the site and access to extra content. Check out some of the extra features below.
Cult of Games Membership Includes
- Reduced ads, for a better browsing experience (feature can be turned on or off in your profile).
- Access to The Cult of Games XLBS Sunday Show.
- Extra hobby videos about painting, terrain building etc.
- Exclusive interviews with the best game designers etc.
- Behind the scenes studio VLogs.
- Access to our live stream archives.
- Early access to our event tickets.
- Access to the CoG Greenroom.
- Access to the CoG Chamber of Commerce.
- Access the CoG Bazarr Trading Forum.
- Create and Edit Records for Games, Companies and Professionals.
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
![Warcradle Studios Reveal TINY New 10mm Festive Marker! [Updated]](https://images.beastsofwar.com/2025/11/christmas-kyle-main-600-338.jpg)
Happy Sunday!!
Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks – as any unsnobbish English teacher will tell you…
“I don’t care what it is – as long as it requires them to pick up a book and read words off the page! Magazines… graphic novels… Terry Pratchett…” and now handbooks!
Will my auto correct please stop changing gamebooks to handbooks!!
Haha, wish I had those teachers when I was at school, I wasn’t allowed to read them during reading time as they weren’t “proper books” 🙂
Without being too much of a SPOILER…
Isn’t that Pandemic S2 board starting with parts of W Europe and other territories around the N & S Atlantic??
Happy Sunday!
One thing to point out with transports, you may be able to leave a transport and move/shoot/assault, however you do need to disembark before the transport moves which might limit your move, disembark then shoot tactics for those fire warriors.
I sense a disturbance in the force, as if a million blood angel players dusted off their rhino rush lists and cried out in ecstasy
Happy Sunday!
Feng Shui is the first rpg I’m aware of that did the combat bonus for being creative with describing what you were doing. It sounded great in theory, and it was great to begin with, but it quite quickly became tedious and rote.
It’s the first that made it an official rule.
I’m pretty sure GM’s have been given bonuses to things PC’s did since the dawn of time …
It formalised it in a way that made the players mine it. Every combat became full of descriptions, which made them overlong and increasingly tedious.
It does sound pointless
munchkins and powergamers make any rule pointless and boring to the nth degree.
That’s a cop out. The problem is inherent to the system.
The Lone Wolf books. Online. For free. You’re welcome.
https://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books
And yes, the old FF covers are much better 🙂
Thinking back to the dim and distant past I remember the Line Wolf books being better than the FF ones
Lone Wolf even
As well as PC versions there’s also a mobile app version of Lone Wolf.
Thanks for the link.
I’ve been going through these recently and they really are fantastic 🙂
With a little forward planning you can play Pandemic: Legacy S1 without destroying anything or making permanent changes. I know a group that has played it multiple times with the same set. Misses the point IMO lol. If we can make the Let’s Play happen I shall invite you to rip some things up, Lloyd lol
I also suspect you’ll reveal the S2 board rather than add to it.
Yeah I don’t see the point in saving the components. Just play the game for what it us imo aye
Love the look of the Saga World Builder. Brings back so many memories
Just backed this for the Deluxe box. Too good to pass up
Happy Sunday all.
Black Terrence has been unleashed!!!
In reference to the FF game books, I still have many of the originals and the Lone Wolf books. Our next door neighbour’s lad is 10 and he and his father had never heard of D & D or any RPG, EVER! So I’ve lent them ‘Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ (the original) and they read/play this together, instead of their usual bedtime story! New recruits?
January 1987, White Dwarf 85, advert for ‘Dungeon Rooms’ £3.95p! Games Workshop produced a whole range of dungeon and room mapping tiles, still have them!
Happy Sunday everyone 🙂 Az
Happy Sunday, great show. Tin Man games do a nice PC version of Warlock of Firetop Mountain available on Steam. Am very tempted by the Saga tile and I don’t even play RPG’s!
Yeah Lads ……. this is something which I never thought I’d near my self say, “Played my first game of 40K in 20 odd years* yesterday …..Absolutely loved it ” …. Weird hey
* First game of 40k except a confusing, tedious, “please kill me now” game of Apocalypse I played around 2009 ……Lord I want that weekend back $%%k me
The Tau have a special rule for overwatch, where every friendly Tau unit within 6″ of the uni being charged can also overwatch, and theres no limit on how many times a unit can overwatch in a turn
Ive played a few games of the new 40k, two with the starter set, and one 100 power battle of tau vs tyranids. Rules are very quick and easy, and there is a lot less of flicking through books, (only needed to flick between unit datasheets, am thinking of scanning them in a printing off the ones i need for a battle so i can have them all out in front of my to make it even quicker) but overall loving the new rules, the only thing i wasnt sure about was the new morale mechanic, but after playing a few games,i do quite like it.
“The Tau have a special rule for overwatch, where every friendly Tau unit within 6″ of the uni being charged can also overwatch, and theres no limit on how many times a unit can overwatch in a turn”
Hell yeah, will need to have a look 🙂
“For the Greater Good: When an enemy unit declares a charge, a unit with this ability that is within 6″ of one of the charging unit’s targets may fire Overwatch as if they were also targeted. A unit that does so cannot fire Overwatch again in this turn.”
Don’t get me wrong – it’s super useful when a well-kitted unit of Crisis suits is nearby, or you have a Cadre Fireblade letting Fire Warriors fire 3 shots each at the charging unit, but I didn’t want you to go into the game with inflated expectations.
Im out of the loop, where warren =o
On hobby night live mate 🙂
Happy sunday folks!
Having played a few games of 8th Ed, overall, I don’t like it so far.
There are some changes I like, for example:
– the death of formations and their replacement with “fluffy” force org charts
– adding run moves into the movement phase again.
However:
– deep strike / reserves is now just point and click as opposed to risk and reward. Before we had” will they arrive on time where I want them….” Now, “yes, there they are”. The fog of war element has been lost for me.
– randomised numbers of shots/damage instead of templates is just painful to watch. A Vindicator for example, instead of previously taking out chunks of large units, now pretty much just hits one mini very hard
But my biggest bugbear….. How do you take out a Land Raider? Pile lascannon shots into it? No, just stand 1″ away from it – it now can’t fire as it’s deemed to be in combat, if it reverses out of combat, it still can’t fire, so your 350pt monster tank is little more than moving terrain.
“Gunner! Open fire, all weapons!!”
“I can’t sir there’s a grot stood outside”
8th Ed is going to be dominated by horde armies – played a 2k game against orks last week, you simply cannot pump out enough damage in the first turn to survive the inevitable reciprocal turn 1 charge, and the rest of your game will pretty much be combat after that as you watch your units die to sheer volume of attacks.
I will be sticking with 30k and FW’s 7th Ed-based ruleset, whilst my 40k armies gather dust in the hope 9th Ed will bring some common sense back.
Return of Fighting Fantasy takes me back though, this is where this whole part of my life began – Deathtrap Dungeon….. May have to reminisce….
“8th Ed is going to be dominated by horde armies”
I know some high level 40K tournament players and this is basically their opinion also.
Hopefully the new FF will be easier to find in the USA. My originals came from the UK. My uncle owned a book shop in Italy at the time and purchased them for my mom and I collected them over time.
Happy Sunday!
I quite like the Medieval Demons. I love the old school sculpting style but the poses could be better. Lot of them look like they’re about to hug someone. On the plus side, they say backing the KS will save you from eternity of damnation. Gotta hope they deliver on that, otherwise I’ll come back to haunt the comments section.
And thanks for warning about the Pandemic legacy spoilers, I’ll try to keep as much of it as I can as a surprise.
BTW — “The Warlock of Firetop Mountain” game is on sale on Steam right now.
Those medieval demons are amazing. If I hadn’t just (this week) finished my demons for Frostgrave I’d be all over this. I’m still tempted. Buy em, work out what they’re for later.
I bought the new 40k edition, unfortunately I think I just wasted money, game is surely better than the last edition I played but still igoyougo, no reaction, weapons range ridiculous, terrain rules non existent, units feel like a bunch of hit points that are reduced when they lose mmodels, it is really the same old 40k with plenty of models, lot of variety but no fun for me. Very happy to see GW mentality changing but still far from my taste. Antares is so far the best sci-if game in the market, by far 🙂 – please don’t kill me 40k fanboys 😉
As long as I’m not the only one who doesnt like it 🙂
Universal rules sets work much better for RPGs than for miniatures games but even so you can’t go for a purely universal system and what you tend to find – and have for many years – is what I call “common rules” with tailored versions for different settings and I really really like games like that.
Looking back over the last 20 years, when Wizards released D&D 3 (and 3.5) under the open source license, that led to a surge in 3rd party settings, some of which came with their own custom rule book. The core mechanic was D20 but with subtle changes to suit. They also release D20 modern with a range of supplements for D20 Post Apocalypse, D20 Historic (Black Power era) and D20 Future. These provided Add Ons for the core D20 modern rules to play games in those genres.
Moving forward I look at Savage Worlds, which was a very generic system to start with, leaving it up to GMs to decide which parts of the game (i.e. which skills and equipment) to restrict for their setting. It was also heavily licensed and has probably more settings for it than any other RPG I have ever seen (yes, even more than D20!). Each setting would come with a book or range of books introducing new setting specific skills and rules but the core game rules remained unchanged.
More recently I can see Modiphius doing something similar with their 2D20 system. They started off with the Mutant Chronicles RPG but have since expanded it with Mutant: Year Zero, Star Trek, Conan and Infinity. Each of these games has its own core book containing all the rules and those rules are tailored slightly for each setting but the core mechanics are the same. If you can play Conan you can pretty much play Infinity.
I think, for RPGs, where the story and the narrative is the primary focus, a common rules set is a great idea for regular gaming groups. It can reduce the number of books you might have to buy, but it also means that you don’t have to learn loads of different rules systems – which are often an order of magnitude more complex than wargames – just to play in different settings. I have played many different RPGs over the years and I think looking back, some of my favourites have been the ones that can be used in lots of different settings and genres with minimal re-learning of rules. The exception is Shadowrun, which in my opinion, has a setting strong enough for me to overlook the ridiculously complex rules and lack of portability
Also, the dungeon tiles are a big yes from me. I have experimented recently with Battle Systems Dungeon terrain, but it takes too long to build and rebuild for each new encounter. If you want to play RPGs with miniatures – as I do – 2.5D is definitely the way to go. Use tiles to do the bulk of the work and just add 3D items such as doors, chest and other furniture to the tiles. We currently use a mix of Red Dragon Games’ tiles for outdoor encounters and the Dungeon Tiles Master Set from Wizards of the Coast.
I would definitely recommend anyone looking to use miniatures in fantasy RPGs who doesn’t already have some tiles to look at something like the world builder modular tiles
A great eps. as always, and yea, I’m pretty much a sucker for those tiles. Actually, I’m surprised you guys don’t cover the Dwarven Forge kickstarter. The Dungeon of Doom just looks amazing, with different thematic elements. It seems DF gets overlooked, and yet they have a great modular system. Just saying.
I did pledge for DF ks, but alas my car needs tires. 🙁 … but its still pretty impressive.
Great news on the “Re-release” of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone`s Fighting Fantasy Game books, it`s been a long time coming. Now new generations of children can have the same experience we had as kids or teenagers, i`ll have to dig out my set (from back in the day) and let the grandchildren have a go.
I`m with @lloyd……………………….we need more “Demon Chickens” in dungeon`s, just think of all the mayhem it`ll course. Can just see it now, new piece of equipment for dungeon explorers…………….Paxo the wonder filler, cost 1 silver.
Going to keep an eye on……………Saga World Builder Modular Tiles, not something i would normally think about, but it could be time to become a DM for a while and this KS is the way to go.
I’m more enthusiastic about the FFG Genysis system than I was on initial announcement. I didn’t realise it came with ‘setting modules’ in the core rules – something I think is likely to be essential to make work / worth bothering with.
I don’t know about the Star Wars game, but the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system which this has evolved from came with too many extra bits for my liking (cards, extra moves, chits for tracking things, etc.). It felt a bit like they had a really elegant system and then piled on so much stuff that it lost some of the freedom and flexibility. Or that it required you to have a really good knowledge of all the extra stuff _and_ a lot of experience playing with it (which clearly you’re not very likely to have when you start out).
I think Az is probably wrong though on thinking that a system like D20 gives the GM more flexibility. A game can basically take one of two routes. The first is to have a lot of detailed mechanics which describe whether you succeed/fail with minimal GM input. The second is to have quite a freeform system which relies much more upon the player’s input and the GM’s imagination – with both contributing. The FFG dice system is more towards the second style i think, and as long as you don’t try to be too religious with your interpretations of the dice, the system actually gives you a huge amount of flexibility. And it encourages everyone to ‘be the GM’, rather than just the GM. I think it also encourages players to be more creative and imaginative. Not for its own sake, but to think more about the setting and the mood.
Having played with the Star Wars system, the concept is brilliant. The ability to really shape every situation with the dice pool you make gives the game a much more dynamic feel that just a D20 system. It’s a major learning curve before you are able to look at the dice and figure out what the heck you rolled, but it has a lot of potential.
The Star Wars dice are the same as the Imperial Assault/Descent dice and even though I play Imperial Assault a lot, I still find the dice to be a royal pain in the arse.
great XLBS guys. the demons will be great mixed with newer ones. the saga floor tiles look fantastic good for many games even 40K/spacehulk for storming bases.
Happy sunday!
Great news to see Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks making a comeback! I played through a lot of them including some of the “Black Eye”. It was what i was doing at the time during the week between sessions of AD&D 🙂
I’m not sure about the FFG rpg system, it could be good… or not. We still have to see character creation, combat and all… Will check it out anyway.
I will go take a second look at those Dungeon Tiles KS, the first box seems about right for my needs…
Demon chickens: absolutly not! Saw them in the news and… well, no way!
See you guys next week!
You’d like the new rules Lloyd. All the battlesuits have the “fly” rule, which means they can jump out of the combat like normal and then fire all their weapons back into it. Whereas normal foot troops can’t fire after leaving a combat. Also, tau can still overwatch with squads other than the one being charged, if they are within 6 inches. So if you had battlesuits within 6 inches of the chaff unit you get charged, you can overwatch them with the battlesuits as well.
You’d like the new rules Lloyd. All the battlesuits have the “fly” rule, which means they can jump out of the combat like normal and then fire all their weapons back into it. Whereas normal foot troops can’t fire after leaving a combat. Also, tau have a special rule that means they can still overwatch with squads other than the one being charged, if they are within 6 inches. So if you had battlesuits within 6 inches of the chaff unit you send forward to get charged, you can overwatch them with the battlesuits as well.
Happy Sunday, on Monday 🙂
I really like both Kickstarters this week, those demons are proper old school monsters! Literally scary as hell!
Good to see more people like these demons!
I have to agree with @thisisazrael and it is the main reason I prefer the Saga rules for Star Wars over FFG’s (very shiny!) offering. As the GM, it is both my prerogative and my job to interpret a simple D20 dice roll and factor in how the player is going about it and what I know about the situation and environment in order to describe a fair, realistic – and hopefully entertaining – outcome. In other words, I can decide what side effects might arise from a success or failure when it is appropriate.
For me, FFG’s system is too much like X-Wing, where the mechanics of rolling has become some kind of mini-dice game of it’s own and the net advantages or threats MANDATE those side effects even if I don’t think it is appropriate. Of course, as a GM I can just hand wave those negative effects and ignore them, but you can’t really do that for net advantages because for the players it is absolutely part of their meta game, with abilities that hinge on manipulation of those results. To ignore the system entirely would be like playing X-Wing with a house rule that a Focus result on the dice is the same as a blank result – this would make many abilities and upgrades entirely useless, and the same is true here.
Also, the abstract range system (which feels very similar to the one used by Fate) does not sit well with me.. but I guess that is more of a personal hangup from all those years playing D&D3E, or 3.5, where the rules were there to support the use of miniatures whenever you wanted it (or 4E, where it was more or less assumed that you would be using them for combat in every encounter).
the thing that bothered me with the Star Wars RPG from FFG is was that leveling up was too restrictive.
True, although in fairness Saga edition went the other way. Whether you were gaining a feat or a talent, you had about a billion choices each time you levelled up!
I love the concept of bringing the art of those medieval demons to life and, while these have done a good job being true to that, I think a more modern sculpting style would be more my taste – but still keep the chicken pieces, and the faces in all the wrong places…
Oh that is actually to amazing kickstarters – I’m diigin’ them both. The style is just so fun and for the demons, absolutely creepy.
Thanks for a great show!