White Dwarf #19 Review - Flash Gitz

As the cover suggests, the issue focuses on the new, very nice Flash Gitz kit and a little bit of background about just what Flash Gitz are. Essentially, they are Orks, obsessed with their fancy, souped up gun, and their showing off of said weapon leads to their banishment from the standard Ork society, where they join Freebooterz clans and sell their services to the highest bidder.

The issue is largely dedicated to showing off the very cool models, how to paint them, assemble the rather complicated gunz, and some of their background, including a piece on Kaptin Badrukk: The Flashest of Gitz.

This issue also includes a mecha stomp fest - an ~2,500 point battle report of 6 Knights facing off against a Stompa, 2 Morkanauts, a Gorkanaut, 4 Deff Dreads, and 7 Killa Kans. The game was reportedly short and fun; and was held up as a fun way to use Unbound armies (not that the force org ever really stopped WD Bat Reps before).

In a non-Orky segment, Jervis Johnson shares an idea for extra 40k Rules: The Fog of War. It is an optional variation on deployment using a standard deck of 52 playing cards. One player gets the red cards while the other player gets the black cards. Each unit in each army is assigned a card from the deck, with Dedicated Transports getting the same card as the unit they were purchased with. All assigned cards are then shuffled for each player.

At deployment, players deal out their cards in sequence to four piles. Each player rolls a D3, and the rolled pile (1, 2, or 3) is discarded, with these units not being used for the game. From there deployment continues as usual.

Some variants are provided for these rules, such as being allowed to swap one discarded card for a kept card, or only the first pile being deployed, with the second pile entering the reserve pool turn 2, third pile turn 3, and so on. A final variant is, rather than piling the cards, to deploy them face down. After both sides have deployed their cards, flip them and place the assigned units in the place of the cards.

These alternate rules are obviously for fun, though I can't say I would be a fan of discarding a quarter of the army I brought. That said, if you play regularly and are looking for a way to switch things up, this could be worth a laugh.

Finally, this issue includes the widely leaked rules for the Flash Gitz, who are nobs with super shooty guns (S5 AP:D6, Assault 3) and come it at 22 points a model. As a side note, Kustom force fields are confirmed to be a 6" bubble providing a 5+ invulnerable save.

All in all, some nice minis were showcased, and my biggest complaint is that only one Ork kit is being released at a time - I just want the dex already.