Death from the Skies? That's new -- isn't it?

A £20 supplement book just so I can keep using a unit that's already in my codex GW? That sounds like a great idea, where's my wallet?

I wasn't going to go down this road but then I saw Alan Rickman...

Stop!

Let's take it back a step here shall we? I don't want to get ahead of myself.

So, Death from the Skies is the newest supplement book GW are tempting us into buying. It's got a catchy title you can say that at least. On a first look from its description I'm drawn to the bottom paragraph:

'There are rules for using the Stormraven Gunship with a Codex: Space Marines and Black Templars army; updated rules for the range of Warhammer 40,000 Flyer models, including new bestiary and army list entries for the following codices: Black Templars, Blood Angels, Dark Eldar, Grey Knights, Imperial Guard, Necrons, Orks and Space Marines.'

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=&prodId=prod1950012a 

here for the actual product details

So this looks to me that GW have written new rules for all their existing fliers (from pre-6th ed codices) and packaged it together so we have to buy it to use them. I thought this was what White Dwarf was starting to do? Why?

I'm sorry. I'm doing it again. I'm getting ahead of myself. Somehow I always leap to that conclusion when looking at this supplement I don't know if it's just me. Perhaps I should be giving GW more credit for this.

Their previous supplement was Crusade of Fire which, after having had a sneak peak into it (Thanks Doombringer) looks pretty good. There are some interesting ideas in it even if they're not all as good as we'd hoped (tried the gladiator duel thing, it was surprisingly difficult to work out. Then again, I just don't think it's designed for solo HQs to take on hordes, even if it says it is). I like this direction GW's taking, they're thinking outside the box to an extent; they're bringing in different ways of playing the old 40k game we love so much (which I know we do, no matter how much we like to complain about it) and this is a good thing. More of this please! It's thinking like this that lead to Cities of Death and Apocalypse (and cough-planetstrike-cough).

like this...oh yeah

I say that so sceptically only because I've only actually seen apocalypse played (it's great for getting loads of people involved), the other too are rarely mentioned but in my mind I think of them quite highly. I'd love to get some close quarters city warfare going on. It just seems cool.

And this is why I think we have Death from the Skies. It's cool. Dogfights are pretty cool (with planes I should clarify) and we finally have the proper ability to use fliers in our armies. If these dogfights work as a ruleset maybe we'll start seeing people using them regularly to try to counter all this moaning about fliers (admittedly that's slowly calming down anyway). And some of these fliers may not be quite right rules-wise so why not tweak them. Just as long as they don't penalise you for using the rules in your codex, not everyone can buy every supplement for one unit entry that they'll need. Optional is better in this case.

So I'm quite hopeful actually. Will I buy Death from the Skies? Maybe. Not right now, I'm not buying anything yet so I don't end up having to use Death from the Skies as my next meal (I think it is easily possible to spend that much money on this hobby of ours) but at some point in the future I may well do so.

Just remember, the sky isn't falling. It's just bloodstrike missiles!

(depending which codices are allowed them now...am I really still stuck with mindstrike...?)

Meh. Probably.

For now, that is all.