Neophobia and Metathesiophobia

Yup.  In other words, 6th Editions effect on mankind.

In the dark future there is only War and these two conditions.  i know that a lot of people have it just by reading about a million blogs and forums every day.

As the Day of Reckoning approaches and as all the online experts and pundits begin to sweat as their empire build on superlative statements about the game is about to crumble, I'd like to reflect a little bit here.

First, I started playing in 3rd Edition, the very tail end of it.  So I went into the game buying stuff for a game I knew would be changing very soon and I think that allows me to speak about the Neophobia issue.  Frankly, I couldn't care less.  I had done nothing but lose in 3rd Edition (admittedly, maybe a dozen games before the changeover) and could only hope that the pile of plastic and metal I invested in would grow more entertaining.

And it did.  the Pac-man assault rules where an orc horde could eat two units a round were gone and with it my nightmares began to subside.  But The thing about the change in general was, the game was so much better than it was in 3E.  So many positive changes happened in 4E and i got the feeling at that time that GW really was paying attention to what was going on.  At that time I never envisioned that codex's would grow progressively older without support.  That was the one dissatisfaction I had was the realization that new codex's weren't coming nearly soon enough.   Nonetheless, i enjoyed the game a lot and the addiction had begun.

When 5E came out I was blwon away by how much better it was and the missions were entirely acceptable.  Even the "my house, your house" mission wasn't bad as long as you weren't busy being wracked with Metathesiophobia.  5th Edition took it to yet another level and codex's started to come out a little bit more frequently it seemed like to me.

Now 6th Edition is staring us in the face and the codex creep that i really never put ANY stock in til I saw the Blood Angel codex (and by then I'd been playing for what, 7 years?) and now the Grey Knights, and people are asphyxiating over its delivery.  People are already talking about quitting the hobby over price increases and over the new rules...and not a single legitimate indicator of what they will be has really dropped! 

So what is causing all this neophobia?  The internet of course.  So many false rumors and half truths have been spread, made up or disguised as coming from "a good source" or just are misinformation campaigns, that people are literally getting worn down emotionally over the whole thing and its just overexposure to it thats causing all these doubts. 

The bigger source of concern comes from 8th Edition Fantasy.  The presentation was incredible but the rules were botched in a couple very important places and it decimated the Fantasy playing communities in a lot of stores around the world.  LOTS of people quit playing.  I feel like that is the primary contributing factor to peoples trepidation towards a 6th Edition.

i don't know what to expect but i know this:  worrying about what may or may never come does not add one day to your life.  Let it go peeps.  Stop working yourselves up into a furor over it and just wait.  The bad stuff will likely only be half as bad as you thought and the good stuff will be 50% better than you hoped and inbetween you'll have a whole new game to play.

And although one can easily argue that they "overdid it" on the Blood Angels and Grey Knights, their track record of improvement overall has NOT been worth yof the level of concern people seem to be experiencing. 

Chill out and get ready,cause your chance to be the next Tony Kopach is coming.  No one will be ahead o you in games knowledge.  No one will know the rules better than you anymore.  here's your chance to be every bit the expert those "experienced" players seem to be, and for you to get your mind generating new strategies and tactics that you can teach each other.  The reformation is coming.  Embrace it.

StingWings strike again!

While I wait for the battle reports from the person who took second, I am very excited about the fact that his Stingwings took the place of his piranha's successfully.

The Ambassadorial Tournament saw the Tau battling it out against the nefarious forces of the Imperial Guard.  Blinded by their devotion to a necrotic Gawd, these IG refused every effort the Tau made to rectify their mental block but to no avail.  Realizing that only in death would their sad servitude end and, their souls freed to pursue truth, the Tau Ethereals commanded an immediate emergency landing party.  The orders caused much of the force to be forced into reserve in the early going but the Tau valiantly fought the forces of the false Emperor and were up by 6 Battle points when the unexpected happened:  the Guard barely managed to finish off a unit of Crisis Suits which tied the game and took it into tie breakers, which the IG narrowly won.

But lost in all this excitement is the fact that the Stingwings were capable and valuable additions to the drop in firepower of the Crisis Battle Suits.  Again and again they threatened targets and forced the enemy to deal with them instead of other targets and they again and again carried their weight on the battlefield.  The jarring suddenness of their appearance was matched only by the jarring suddenness of their targets deaths!

With 4 units dropping in that wield incredibly awesome firepower there was little his opponents could do but watch in abject horror as their models were removed forcibly from the table and the sector of the board slowly cleared of the enemy "debris".

Though the mighty Tau Empire lost in the end, their meteoric rise to power was in no small part due to those thoraxically expressive StingWings.

Hoping to see more of them in the days to come.

Started a fun little poll on it to the right of the screen there.  Feel free to click your opinion.  =)

The Elvensword will soon carry the name of an eternal warrior...

Hey I got some pics to post of the Elvensword mentioned on the tournament website that we engrave the winning Ambassadors name and army onto.  These pics are of our first winning Ambassador in 2006 wielding it!  I dunno why I didn't post them before.  I hope you like it.  You can zoom in on it a little bit to get a slightly nicer view.
http://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i398/Jancoran/Elvenswordinhandwinninghands.jpg
http://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i398/Jancoran/ElvenswordGripcloseup.jpg
http://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i398/Jancoran/Elvenswordlaidout.jpg