I was going through the story from the beginning, just finished the third Brood War campaign, and it occurred to me that I've never actually played the Stukov Series (Deception, Mercenaries II, and Resurrection IV).
Are those the only ones from the map-of-the-month type things that have serious lore implications, or are there others that I should make sure to play through?
If you want to paint part of a transparent segment, but leave other parts clear, should you just mask over the clear parts and them prime and paint the opaque parts like normal plastic? Or are there good options for clear primer that you can cover the whole part with?
(side question while you're here: what's your opinion on superglue vs plastic cement?)
I understand her being softer than Artanis, the dude is built like a tank.
But she has worse Armor and worse Evasion than Jimmy does? Worse Evasion (and equal armor) than a common marine? And no way to heal?
Sure she has 12% more HP than Jimmy, but that doesn't mean much when she's taking at least 33% more damage than him. Her ranged damage output is significantly lower too, and she lacks his potent command powers.
Is the Queen of Blades supposed to be worse at fighting than Man With Gun?
(jokes aside, I get that a lore-accurate Class 12+ immortal psionic killing machine would need to cost waaay more than 250 points, and I appreciate the symmetry between the first three heroes in terms of pricing. But she genuinely seems like the weakest of the three, both in terms of direct combat and command powers. I was always planning to play my zerg more swarmy and less hero-y, but her stat sheet is not tempting me.)
If you're like me, you've been looking at these cool/adorable figures online a lot, and playing around in tabletop simulator, but you're not actually sure if you can afford to build a proper army or if it would be wise to do so. So I did some math, which might be helpful for you too.
Obviously sticking to the digital version is cheapest, but there's a lot to be said for the physicality of moving tokens and flipping cards instead of clicking through menus. And the way the rules are set up, you can play perfectly well using nothing but a bunch of cardboard bits that you cut into 32, 50, and 80mm circles, because the base is the only part of the mini that has any mechanical effect. Or if you have a 3d printer, you can make your own on the cheap. But if you want the full, official experience of collecting and assembling and painting your little army men and/or adorable bug monsters, it will be a significant investment. A hell of a lot less than 40K though!
First up, how many minis do you actually need for a full 2,000 point army?
Zerglings, including swarmlings, raptors, and Kerrigan's boys:
Roaches, including Vile and Corpser:
Hydralisks:
Queens:
Marines, including Raynor's boys:
Marauders:
Medics:
Goliath:
Adepts:
Zealots, including Artanis's boys:
Sentries:
Stalkers:
All the hero units are 250 each, 1/8th of a full army.
I'm going to be doing all the math off the official MSRP here. Note that actual sale prices are generally lower; I've found the full line at gamenerdz for 17-19% off, and miniaturemarket for 13-15% off, but those will likely be inconsistent. Rule of thumb for similar games in the past seems to be that you can usually find any given set for about 15% below MSRP, but as a very new game I doubt you will find great deals from people re-selling old armies for quite some time (though if, say, you only care about zerg and a friend only cares about terran, going halfsies on the 2-player starter set would be a very good idea).
Most of the boxes are officially priced at $49. For that you can get
For $39 MSRP you get
For $35,
For $29,
The TvZ starter set gives you 1.33 boxes of marines, half a box of marauders, a box of medics, 1.33 boxes of zerglings, a box of roaches, a queen, Jim and his turret, and Kerri and her worm, plus a box of terrain (and some dice and a bunch of tokens) for $229 MSRP. According to at least one review I read the standalone zergling box has enough upgrade sprues to make all 18 into either variant, while the starter box only includes enough for 6 raptors and 6 swarmlings; likewise the bits to upgrade roaches into the Vile strain are missing. Still, even if you knock off about a sixth of a box worth of value from the reduced zerg customization, and don't care about the terrain and dice, you're getting ~5 of the $49 boxes, plus one of the $39s, a $35, and a $29 adding up to ~$348 worth of stuff. That makes it a good deal even if there's a box of two worth of stuff in there you don't actually want.
The Protoss starter set gives you 2 boxes of zealots, one of adepts, one of sentries, and Artanis and his pylon (plus a bunch of tokens and dice), a ~$201 value for $129 MSRP.
it depends on which units you favor, whether you like max upgrades on a small force or large numbers of cheap units. etc. But the range is
So, overall range from 3.47-8.89 points per dollar. A full 2000 point army purchased at MSRP (not including combo boxes, discounts, etc) will run you somewhere between $245-539
I haven't worked through specific army compositions yet, but if I just average all those numbers it comes out to 5.64 points per dollar, or $355 for an army. Obviously putting more upgrades on each unit means fewer models on the field, which means you probably pay less money since elite troops and basic ones cost the same amount of plastic.
The average for zerg is about 5.86 or $341; an army heavy on hydras and lings will be cheaper than one with a lot of queens or roaches, especially basic ones (since you're paying for the roachlings even if you don't use the corpser strain).
Average for terran is about 5.90 or $339, making them probably the cheapest army but by a very small margin. Using a bunch of goliaths will cost more (but be really cool).
Average for protoss is about 5.21 or $384, making them probably the most expensive to play at the moment, but not by a big margin. Using lots of stalkers will make the army cheaper, sentries and adepts are more expensive. On the other hand, you can probably get the most benefit from the starter box because it's not split between two factions, and the only units not included are the ones that are cheapest (on a per point value basis at least) to buy separately.
First up, while both games use a 2000 point standard for a typical game, 2000 points in 40k is a lot more models than 2000 points in starcraft.
I don't have time to go through anywhere near all of them, but to pick out a few near-peer examples...
Firstborn tactical marines are 14 points per model, while primaris intercessors are 16. A terran marine ranges from 23-45. So each terran marine represents 2-3 times as large a fraction of your army. Likewise astartes devastators are 20-24 points per model, while terran marauders are 70-105.
Hormogaunts are worth 6.5 points per figure, zerglings are 12-24. Tyranid warriors are 22-25 each, hydralisks are 65-105.
So a full size starcraft army is going to be on the order of 1/4 - 1/2 the size of a full scale 40k army.
Second, each individual figure in 40k costs more. The MSRP for a squad of intercessors is $65, for 10 figures, making them $6.50 each while a terran marine is $5.44. Ten hormagaunts costs $53, for $5.30 each, twice the price of zerglings.
I started calculating out the points per dollar for 40k figures (2.46 for intercessors, 1.23 for hormagaunts, 2.17 for a carnifex...) but I got tired of that quickly. So I looked up the results of people who care a lot more about warhammer than I do!
The cheapest faction in the game to play, Custodes, has an average points per dollar of 3.19, followed by Grey Knights at 2.92, then Imperial Knights at 2.76. At those rates, a full 2000 points would cost $627-$725.
On the expensive end of things, Tau are 1.62 points per dollar, Sisters of Battle are 1.59, and Adeptus Mechanicus are 1.49. At those prices, a full army costs $1,235-$1,342.
That's not counting discounts of course, nobody actually pays MSRP and it's not uncommon to get an entire army of one of the cheaper 40k factions for under $500, but that takes months or years of waiting for good deals to come up, and usually getting a lot of it second-hand.
But still, even the most expensive army you could legally field in a 2000 point starcraft game (33 baseline roaches, for $539 MSRP not counting therapy bills, or $440 at the best prices I've seen so far) is less of an investment than the cheapest Warhammer army.
That said, cheaper does not mean cheap. If you're going to really get into this as a hobby, you're probably going to spend at least $250 on it, likely significantly more. Whether that makes sense to you is entirely up to you.
Sci-fi fans love arguing about the stats of fictional weapons, but most of them don't have enough solid information to form any conclusions about. Not this one!
First up, that magazine capacity might sound ridiculous at first glance, and it would be if you were firing chemically propelled slugs and needed to deal with a big brass cartridge around each 8mm spike. A coilgun only needs a chunk of inert metal though, so you could do a 10x50 stack that's only 8cm wide and 40cm long, or a 20x25 that's 16 by 20 cm, either one of which would be fairly easy to fit in the models we see fully armored marines carry in cinematics. Therefore I will call the 500-shot capacity reasonable!
Now, I wanna know what kind of energy is involved in shooting this thing. We're going to get a range of results for each step here; I'm going to always focus on the low end of the range, so that we can get a confident number for the minimum energy of a spike.
Coilguns are generally more effective with long, narrow projectiles. This, combined with the word "spike", implies a long, narrow profile to the slug. I'd guess a minimum of a 10:1 ratio of length to diameter, so a 8 cm long (just over three inches) spike? Looking at the size of the magazine, it would seem to accommodate a much longer round than that, possibly 16 or even 20 cm (~6-8 inches, a 20-25 to 1 ratio), but I think 8cm is a reasonable minimum length, a lower bound for our estimates when we do math. It also allows us to simplify the math by acting as if the spike was a cylinder, rather than mucking about with cones.
So, an 8mm wide, 80mmm long cylinder would give us a minimum volume for each round of just over 4,000 cubic milimeters (4,021 if you want to be pedantic), or four cubic centimeters.
The density of steel ranges from 7.65 to 8.5 grams per cubic centimeter. For the sake of making the math easy, I'm going to call that 8.0.
So, each spike would weigh a minimum of 32 grams. (this means that a full magazine would weigh at least 16 kilograms, or 35 pounds! Not a problem in powered armor, but if you wanted to use this thing outside of a suit you might want a reduced capacity magazine, and you definitely wouldn't be carrying a lot of spares without armor)
(Yes, I am aware of the U-238 " hot shots" ammunition upgrade. U-238 has a density of 19.052 grams per cubic centimeter, roughly 2.4 times that of steel. However, it is difficult to propel a pure uranium slug using electromagnets. It is weakly attracted by magnetic fields, so in theory by applying enough raw power to the coils you could make it work, but in practice you would either want to use a hybrid round with a uranium tip or core but a ferrous shell to launch it with, or to put a uranium spike inside of a ferrous sabot which falls off after leaving the barrel. Regardless, the fact that uranium rounds are considered an upgrade in game makes me think that these are not standard, so I'll do the math assuming simple steel spikes and maybe come back to this topic later.)
Finally, velocity is not described beyond being "hypersonic". Definitions of that term vary a little bit, but it's generally accepted that the low end of the range is roughly mach 5, with the high end being either mach 10 or mach 25 depending on who you ask. The speed of sound varies by temperature and pressure, but at standard values it's about 330m/s, so the minimum speed to be considered hypersonic would be about 1,650 meters per second (~3690 mph or ~5940 kph).
So, bring that all together and the smallest reasonable size of projectile, moving at the lowest possible speed, has a kinetic energy of 43.56 kilojoules.
A .50 BMG slug ranges from 42-52 grams, and when it leaves the barrel it has a velocity of 882-928 m/s. That comes out to an energy of about 18-20 kJ. Weapons using this round are generally considered to have an effective range of 1,800 meters, and a maximum range of 7,400m.
So, the minimum value for a C-14 shot carries more than twice as much energy as a shot from a modern heavy machinegun or anti-materiel rifle.
In addition to the pure energy involved, narrower projectiles at higher velocity tend to have better armor penetration than heavier but slower projectiles. Higher velocity also leads to a flatter trajectory and lower lead times, both of which generally increase effective range and precision, though a lighter projectile tends to be more affected by wind patterns.
20mm autocannons typically have a projectile weight of 90-130 grams, and a muzzle velocity of 800-1100 m/s, leading to a kinetic energy somewhere in the vicinity of 50-60 kJ. They have an effective range somewhere in the area of three kilometers.
So, the lowest estimate of C-14 power is more than 2/3rds the power of something like the M61 Vulcan.
And just for fun, a GAU-8 30mm cannon fires 173mm long shells that weigh anywhere from 362-665 grams depending on their contents at a muzzle velocity of 1010m/s, leading to anywhere from 184-340 kJ of kinetic energy (and then most of them explode).
Well, lets go back to all our early assumptions. There's three places where the numbers could get a lot bigger.
First, projectile size. The 8mm diameter is canonical, but a length of 16-20cm would seem to fit the size of the magazine boxes we see better than the 8cm I assumed earlier. If we call it a 20cm (~8 inch) maximum, but we don't want to deal with the math for tapering, we can probably just double the volume of each spike to eight cubic centimeters.
Second, projectile material. Earlier I ignored the possibility of partially uranium slugs; now I'm gonna go to the opposite extreme. If the entire slug was made of U-238, with a ferrous sabot or something to actually interact with the electromagnets and push it forward, that would multiply the density by 2.4.
Third, velocity. I'm not even going to pretend that a mach 25 slug makes sense. It would disappear in a burst of plasma long before it got to the target. But if we aim at the mach 10 range instead, which might be plausible in theory even if I don't think it would be very practical, then that's double the velocity which means four times the kinetic energy.
Double the volume and 2.4x the density means each spike now weighs 153.6 grams (more than a 20mm shell), and double the velocity on top of that means you end up with 836.4 kilojoules of kinetic energy per shot, about 3-4 times the energy of a shot from a 30mm cannon (if it were an inert slug rather than packed with incendiaries, anyway).
Do I think these numbers are reasonable? No. Well, maybe the increased spike length, but probably not the density, and definitely not the velocity. I would put an upper bound on reasonable estimates of the energy of a C-14 shot at like, 80-90 kilojoules. That's still considerably more than a 20mm cannon, but much closer to something that a human could actually use.
It's fucking nonsense is what it is. I know it's technically canon, but that was a lazy retcon that the Starcraft Field Manual added because they wanted to explain why some artists who didn't know what a gauss rifle was decided that dropping shell casings would look cool. Nobody would ever make a gun that way.
The "warning" about keeping your powder dry doesn't even make sense for gunpowder weapons made any time after the year 1808, because the powder is all contained within a metal shell with the bullet plugging up the end; water can't get inside until after you've already fired. Most modern guns actually work just fine while completely submerged.
There's a whole heap of problems, but off the top of my head,
Not really? The most powerful 8mm rifle cartridges that I could find online only have enough powder to supply 5-6 kJ of energy. That's less than 1/7th of the smallest estimate for the kinetic energy of an Impaler spike. I think you would lose more than that just from the inefficiency of making the coilgun work around 30 powder explosions per second, not to mention all the other problems. You could do something like those ridiculously oversized cartridges that neck down to a teeny tiny bullet, but that means more complicated mechanisms, less reliable feeding, and even less ammo capacity. I can't think of any way to make this worth it.
This is a big honkin gun, and it makes sense that it can not only shred infantry, but also chew apart armored vehicles and aircraft. It would be inefficient due to overpenetration against soft targets like zerglings, but it's a good balanced options if you don't know what kind of enemy you'll be facing. It also gives you a sense of how tough things like hydralisks and CMC armor are, if they can withstand this kind of power for several seconds at least.
There's some mention of people outside of armor using a C-14, and some models even having a second set of grips and triggers for tiny human hands. This is not implausible, because unarmored humans use .50 BMG guns, and an electromagnetic weapon will have less recoil for the same impact energy than a powder based one since you're only pushing the projectile itself rather than that plus a bunch of wasted hot gas... but I don't think anybody could do more than a single shot at a time, and they would be heavily bruised afterwards. Burst fire should be reserved for only people in power armor.
The effective range on this thing is most likely "the horizon". The books talk about those big shoulder orbs being full of sensor arrays and targeting computers, so under ideal conditions a properly equipped and disciplined marine could cut down anything that isn't working at artillery ranges or immune to bullets... but in practice between burrow ambushes, unfavorable terrain, and other complications you'll end up engaging in close quarters a lot more than you would like, and it's really hard to remain calm and focused when where's thousands of slavering monsters trying to chew your face off, or nine foot tall superhuman soldiers sprinting toward you at motorcycle speeds while your shots bounce off the air around them.
We all know the primary colors associated with each manufacturer; Blue for IPSN, Gold for SSC, Green for Horus, Purple for HA.
The core book talks about a "dark Union Grey" uniform for Administrators, and Solstice Rain has pictures of Union navy mechs in red-and-grey with the Union symbol/logo front and center. GMS is basically just a branch of that government, so the same symbol and red and grey again but maybe flipped?
Each House in the Baronies has its own heraldry, and the most prominent ones have banners pictured in the book, so those are clear.
Albatross uses white and gold on red. Ungratefuls tend to wear sky-blue.
But if you were going to make a flag for the Armory, for example, what would be the second color your use? Do you start with a purple field and then just put the triangle-and-hexagon logo in something neutral like black or white, or is there an established secondary color associated with their empire?
And are there any known color palette associated with the Aun?
EDIT: it has been pointed out to me that despite what compcon and the flairs on this sub say, IPS-N is associated more with red in the book, not blue.
Meanwhile Winter Scar displays the Union logo in grey-on-green just as often as grey-on-red, so I think that for official government use the only constant is grey and that's combined with different things depending on circumstance?
Meanwhile if you're talking about the Baronies as a whole rather than an individual house, the book mentions a Karrakin Maroon (aka Royal Prime, the color of the Prime Baron).