Games Workshop and US Copyright

I've been reading about copyright recently and wondering if it's okay to be posting some rules from various codexes and the main rulebook online.

Apparently it is. But! I cannot (or you cannot if you're going to do it too) post the rules verbatim you can say, "Furious Charge gives you +1S when you charge" but you can't use the exact wording as it appears in the core rulebook. This is known as expression of game rules and is registerable for trademark. Whether or not GW has registered this stuff, I don't know. I do know that I, or anyone else for that matter, can post their rules online as long as they don't use the exact wording as it appears in the rule book. That's why certain games have very similar knock-off versions that use the same rules; they're just worded differently. If you look at Dog-opoly, for example, it's almost an exact replica of Monopoly but each use different wording of the rules (and different square names) to create what the copyright office considers a unique enough game to avoid infringement. That's why you can have Dog Place and Dog Walk replace Park Place and Board Walk without infringement because even though they are essentially the exact same thing it's the wording that counts.

So, just to wrap it all up: You can post rules, just not with GW's wording. Neat!


For those interested in the documentation:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

High Elves Conversion Idea

For those of you into Warhammer Fantasy there's a simple conversion you can do to save yourself a ton of money and still have mounted flying elves.

1. Get and Elf (and kind of elf mini works)
2. Get a balancing bird toy (example: Birds, same size for $4)
3. Glue them together.
4. Laugh about saving ~$50

And there you have it. Balancing birds are also pretty cool because you can glue them by the beak to a base and they won't fall over! :O

He should be using his middle finger

GW's War on Customers

As a paying Warhammer customer I'm pretty amazed by all the recent moves GW has been making with regards to 40k and their properties. I'd like to discuss it here. It seems to me that the company, although they are doing 'well', is on the path of self-destruction.

Counter-Necron

9 of the top 16 lists at Adepticon included this:

Lord,
3x Warriors + Night Scythe
3x Annihilation Barge

and 8 included at least 2 6-man squads of Canoptek Wraiths w/whip coils. These are purely to tie up and live through dedicated CC and heavy weapons units. They are also good at popping AV10 vehicles. They're a really good jump infantry unit because they ignore everything but impassable terrain so they can fly in a straight line towards whomever they wish to engage. They also have 3+/3++ and are thus very hard to kill even with just T4 and 2 Wounds. Thankfully they don't have power weapons. It'd be grounds to ban Necrons from tournies that is, combined with Night Scythes and Annihilation Barges. People think Heldrake is under-costed. Look at Annihilation Barge! 90 points! Heldrake should be 80 at that point-scale.

Anyways, ranting about poorly costed units aside how do you counter units like this? Because, to be honest, these guys can ally with damn near anyone, cost nothing and are going to be Top 16 of every competitive tournament so building lists purely to counter these will probably get you far. 

Necrons, Necrons Everywhere

Kept thinking about the ridiculous lists from Adepticon (and how some of them had to have won purely by dice flukes and by being matched against even worse crafted lists). The Dark Eldar/Eldar lists sticks out particularly to me as the main fighting capabilities are a 300 point unit of Warriors and a 275 point unit of Wyches (albeit 55 of each are venoms, which are known to be extremely powerful when you only take 2). And a 240 point beast unit. Very scary with an average toughness of 3 and no armor saves against bolters. Oh and 665 points worth of unique HQs. Oh and 9 Necron armies. They were all roughly this:

Lord
Warriors, Night Scythe
Warriors, Night Scythe
Warriors, Night Scythe
Canoptek Wraiths x a few
Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge

Garnish as you'd like, win accordingly.

Adepticon 2013 Second Place list

I looked over the Top 16 finishers at Adepticon and I would love to post the second list because it is just the ticket for what might be good against the winning list. The list is SM/IG with 2 blobs, 3 flyers and Thunderfire Cannons. Which is really funny to me because I've seen Thunderfire Cannons get laughed at continually on the internet for being a waste of points and this guy took 3. List is below:

Adepticon 2013 1st Place List

Today I want to do an analysis of the winning list from Adepticon 2013. It's pretty easy to grasp list and can be seen below. I'm going to do an analysis of the army's capabilities and maybe show how tactically it's a really good, albeit cheesy-as-hell, army.